The Sea by John Banville Page B

merely as a corrective, that for the best part, I mean the worst part—how imprecise the language is, how inadequate to its occasions—of the year that it took her mother to die, she had been conveniently abroad, pursuing her studies, while I was left to cope as best I could. This struck home. She gave a hoarse bellow between clenched teeth and thumped the heels of her hands on the wheel. Then she started to fling all sorts of accusations at me. She said I had
driven Jerome away
. I paused. Jerome? Jerome? She meant of course the chinless do-gooder—fat lot of good he did her—and sometime object of her affections. Jerome, yes, that was the scoundrel’s unlikely name. How, pray, I asked, controlling myself, how had I
driven him away
? To that she replied only with a head-tossing snort. I pondered. It was true I had considered him an unsuitable suitor, and had told him so, pointedly, on more than one occasion, but she spoke as if I had brandished a horsewhip or let fly with a shotgun. Besides, if it was my opposition that had
driven him away,
what did that say for his character or his tenacity of purpose? No no, she was better off free of the likes of him, that was certain. But for now I said nothing more, kept my counsel, and after a mile or two the fire in her went out. That is something I have always found with women, wait long enough and one will have one’s way.
    When we got home I went straight into the house, leaving her to park the car, and got the number of the Cedars from the telephone book and telephoned Miss Vavasour and told her that I wished to rent one of her rooms. Then I went upstairs and crawled into bed in my drawers. I was suddenly very tired. A fight with one’s daughter is never less than debilitating. I had moved by then from what had been Anna’s and my bedroom into the spare room over the kitchen, which used to be the nursery and where the bed was low and narrow, hardly more than a cot. I could hear Claire below in the kitchen, banging the pots and pans. I had not told her yet that I had decided to sell the house. Miss V. on the telephone had enquired how long I planned to stay. I could hear from her tone that she was puzzled, even distrustful. I maintained a deliberate vagueness. Some weeks, I said, months, perhaps. She was silent for a lengthy moment, thinking. She mentioned the Colonel, he was a permanent, she said, and set in his ways. I volunteered no comment on that. What were colonels to me? She could entertain an entire officer corps on the premises for all I cared. She said I would have to send out my laundry. I asked her if she remembered me. “Oh, yes,” she said without inflexion, “yes, of course, I remember you.”
    I heard Claire’s step on the stairs. Her anger had drained all away by now and she walked at a dragging, disconsolate plod. I do not doubt she too finds arguments tiring. The bedroom door was ajar but she did not come in, only asked listlessly through the gap if I wanted something to eat. I had not switched on the lamps in the room and the long, tapering trapezoid of light spilling across the linoleum from the landing where she stood was a pathway leading straight to childhood, hers and my own. When she was little and slept in this room, in this bed, she liked to hear the sound of my typewriter from the study downstairs. It was a comforting sound, she said, like listening to me think, although I do not know how the sound of me thinking could comfort anyone; quite the opposite, I should have said. Ah, but how far off, now, those days, those nights. All the same, she should not have shouted at me like that in the car. I do not merit being shouted at like that. “Daddy,” she said again, with a note of testiness now, “do you want dinner or not?” I did not answer, and she went away. Live in the past, do I.
    I turned toward the wall and away from the light. Even though my knees were bent my feet still stuck out at the end of the bed. As I was heaving myself over