Storm of Fortune by Austin Clarke

Author:Austin Clarke [Clarke, Austin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36425-8
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 1998-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

They had talked long into the night, that first night in North Bay. And even after Mrs. Macmillan had confessed that she had deceived Estelle with all her grand promises of living with her in Timmins, and had confessed that she didn’t know why she had done it, still Estelle harboured no hard feelings against her. The greatest irony in the whole affair was that she should meet Mrs. Macmillan again, for the second time, when she really needed someone she could trust.

They had walked from the hotel, through a side street, then for about two more blocks, to a small prefabricated-looking house, where Mrs. Macmillan said she lived, “Alone, honey!” She hadn’t the money to pay a taxicab. And Estelle didn’t want to suggest taking one and having to pay for it, because she felt that the circumstances of their second meeting were really the circumstances of Mrs. Macmillan’s finances and wealth. Estelle promised herself to leave the money Mrs. Macmillan had left with her somewhere in the house, before she left for Toronto again. She would put it in the kitchen: there must be some place there. In a teapot, for instance. And she was sensitive enough to surmise that Mrs. Macmillan was flat broke; and now, for her to hint at her straitened circumstances after her promises of easy living in Timmins would inflict an unnecessary wound upon this woman’s sensibilities. But although Estelle was dog-tired, she did not resent having to walk. It was a short walk. A walk in the early morning, in a strange town, with a deep insistence of a dream.

“Enter my parlour,” Mrs. Macmillan said, unlocking the front door. “Said the spider to the fly!” Estelle resented the allusion, and the metaphor.

The house was small. It had a small living room: there was one couch, two stuffed chairs and a coffee table made out of a flimsy shiny wood that did not look like wood at all. From the living room, Estelle could see through a passageway into the kitchen. On either side of the passageway was a door. Presumably, there were rooms leading off the doors. On the wall, facing them, was a large cheap technicolour print of a man with a very pallid complexion, brown silky hair, and a brown full-length beard; he was dressed in something resembling a nightgown with a red robe covering it. The man’s heart was exposed. It came out of his insides and was planted outside, on top of his chest. Something like flames were surrounding the man’s heart. His eyes seemed as if he were drugged; as if he had been smoking marijuana from the time of his birth. One palm (Estelle had difficulty in determining whether it was his right palm or his left) was raised outward, as if this man intended to bless somebody. A drop of blood was caught in the slow motion of the painter’s realism, and it was suspended an inch below the heart. She could find no hole in the heart out of which the blood might have come.

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