such a proprietary attitude towards the trunk they’d sent aboard the ship. She seemed to be dressed in a manner meant to bolster a questionable claim to adulthood.
John Senior said, “This is the young one you’ll be watching out for. John Peyton,” he said. “Miss Cassandra Jure.”
She reached out to shake his hand, bending only slightly, but enough to make him draw up to his full five feet five inches. “Are you a reader, John Peyton?” she asked, still holding his bare hand.
He was about to say he was and stopped himself. It occurred to him she was asking something other than whether he knew
how
to read. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well,” she said. She seemed to wink at him then, giving her words a conspiratorial air. “We’ll soon find out.”
Through that first summer Peyton worked with his father hand-lining for cod morning and afternoon, and in the early evenings while John Senior cleaned and salted the fish with two hired hands in the cutting room, he did sums at the kitchen table or read to Cassie from
The Canterbury Tales
or Pope’s translation of the
Odyssey.
He decided early on that he was not, in fact, a reader. It was something he could easily have given up if he didn’t think it would upset Cassie, to whom it seemed to mean so much that he become one. They struggled through Blake’s
Songs of Innocence
and
Songs of Experience
, Samuel Richardson’s
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady.
They read
Paradise Lost.
She saw much in the poems and stories that he did not. She was sometimes cryptic and high-minded in a way he found off-putting. She could wander into flights of speculation beyond his interest or understanding, and this was usually the case when he was too tired to know what he was reading, the words on the page like beads on a string that he shifted from one side to another.
“What does that mean?” Cassie would ask then. “
To justify the ways of God to man.
What is Milton saying?”
Peyton’s eyes were bleary with exhaustion. He had been on the water since five that morning. He did not know what it meant. He stared at her in the hope she would pity him enough to explain it.
“A story is never told for its own sake,” she said. “True or false?”
“True,” he said. “False,” he added quickly.
Cassie sighed and worked her fingers in her lap.
He stared at her. He was the only person in the world she had to talk to about poems, to discuss her peculiar notions about stories. It was a disappointment to them both that he thought of her books as a discomfort, like being forced to walk in shoes full of gravel. She seemed so peculiarly out of place in their house, so lost. Almost as long as he’d known her, Peyton wanted to make that otherwise.
He’d kept his marital aspirations close for years, telling himself he had little to offer yet as a husband. Running his own trapline was a first step towards a station from which he felt he might legitimately declare his intentions, and the thought of this, along with the alcohol, had made him reckless in Reilly’s company.
He stepped outside to relieve himself a final time before he went to his own bunk, pissing into a snowbank at the edge of the trees. He said, “
Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.”
Where was that from again? He lifted his head to stare up at the sky as he shook himself. Stars winking through the moving branches of trees like flankers rising from a distant fire. He was drunker than he realized. He raised his head a notch higher and fell over backwards into the snow, his cock still in his hand.
The morning John Senior and the officer left for White Bay, Cassie pulled a pair of John Senior’s leather trousers on beneath her skirt, turning the cuffs up at the bottom for length, and buttoned a sheepskin waistcoat over her bodice. She closed the animals up in their shed with a week’s supplyof hay and packed herself a bag with provision enough for two days’
John Senior said, “This is the young one you’ll be watching out for. John Peyton,” he said. “Miss Cassandra Jure.”
She reached out to shake his hand, bending only slightly, but enough to make him draw up to his full five feet five inches. “Are you a reader, John Peyton?” she asked, still holding his bare hand.
He was about to say he was and stopped himself. It occurred to him she was asking something other than whether he knew
how
to read. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well,” she said. She seemed to wink at him then, giving her words a conspiratorial air. “We’ll soon find out.”
Through that first summer Peyton worked with his father hand-lining for cod morning and afternoon, and in the early evenings while John Senior cleaned and salted the fish with two hired hands in the cutting room, he did sums at the kitchen table or read to Cassie from
The Canterbury Tales
or Pope’s translation of the
Odyssey.
He decided early on that he was not, in fact, a reader. It was something he could easily have given up if he didn’t think it would upset Cassie, to whom it seemed to mean so much that he become one. They struggled through Blake’s
Songs of Innocence
and
Songs of Experience
, Samuel Richardson’s
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady.
They read
Paradise Lost.
She saw much in the poems and stories that he did not. She was sometimes cryptic and high-minded in a way he found off-putting. She could wander into flights of speculation beyond his interest or understanding, and this was usually the case when he was too tired to know what he was reading, the words on the page like beads on a string that he shifted from one side to another.
“What does that mean?” Cassie would ask then. “
To justify the ways of God to man.
What is Milton saying?”
Peyton’s eyes were bleary with exhaustion. He had been on the water since five that morning. He did not know what it meant. He stared at her in the hope she would pity him enough to explain it.
“A story is never told for its own sake,” she said. “True or false?”
“True,” he said. “False,” he added quickly.
Cassie sighed and worked her fingers in her lap.
He stared at her. He was the only person in the world she had to talk to about poems, to discuss her peculiar notions about stories. It was a disappointment to them both that he thought of her books as a discomfort, like being forced to walk in shoes full of gravel. She seemed so peculiarly out of place in their house, so lost. Almost as long as he’d known her, Peyton wanted to make that otherwise.
He’d kept his marital aspirations close for years, telling himself he had little to offer yet as a husband. Running his own trapline was a first step towards a station from which he felt he might legitimately declare his intentions, and the thought of this, along with the alcohol, had made him reckless in Reilly’s company.
He stepped outside to relieve himself a final time before he went to his own bunk, pissing into a snowbank at the edge of the trees. He said, “
Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.”
Where was that from again? He lifted his head to stare up at the sky as he shook himself. Stars winking through the moving branches of trees like flankers rising from a distant fire. He was drunker than he realized. He raised his head a notch higher and fell over backwards into the snow, his cock still in his hand.
The morning John Senior and the officer left for White Bay, Cassie pulled a pair of John Senior’s leather trousers on beneath her skirt, turning the cuffs up at the bottom for length, and buttoned a sheepskin waistcoat over her bodice. She closed the animals up in their shed with a week’s supplyof hay and packed herself a bag with provision enough for two days’
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