Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson

Author:Ethel Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781551994109
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1990-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

Each year the idea had been that Alan’s father and mother would go up to Three Loon Lake in May before the fishing season opened and that they would take Alan with them. His father might go earlier, because however cold and difficult life might be on that hilltop beside the lake before the ice had gone, Haldar could hardly keep away from his lake, even when it was not possible for him to get much work done alone. There was always work waiting to be done, and while he remained in Kamloops the thought of work waiting there possessed him. There was wood, always wood, to cut; ice to cut and store if possible; repairs to be made; an attempt at new building.

Now that Alan was going to school, controversy arose about taking him out of school and letting him go up with his father, or even taking him out of school later when his father came down and returned with his mother to open up the lodge ready for the fishing at the end of May when business came with a rush. Nothing is more potent and insidious than unanimity about an only child or division about an only child. Alan was used to an accompaniment of this kind of controversy. He was old enough now to be a little useful. Not very useful, but undoubtedly Alan was able to do some little chores that saved his mother’s steps, and his father’s too, especially now that Haldar (to whom work had formerly been so easy) should be spared steps and movements. One of the things to which Vera awoke none too soon was that this saving of Haldar, which dominated everything, must not be brought home to him by words or even by actions, or he became unwontedly surly and life was uncomfortable for everyone. Haldar’s crippled condition and his fluctuating pain had a restrictive effect upon him. This might not have been so if his passion for his property had not been so strong. It was ridiculously strong, and so disproportionate that Haldar began to live in a world of disproportion, where people and events did not exist in and for themselves, but were only adjuncts to his operations at Three Loon Lake and to his inability to perform these operations. Vera had until now been the party in his marriage whose likes and dislikes had been considered or pleasantly ignored, and whose small and frequent complaints had passed unnoticed by her husband, formerly an agreeable man. Thus do our weaknesses betray us. Vera found the whole readjustment difficult to accept and apply. She had an assumption that Haldar’s happiness came first with her and that she was the most unselfish of women. It was a good assumption but it was not true. It was easiest for her at the end of a half-done day to say fretfully to Haldar, “Why can’t you leave those boats! It’s too heavy for you and I’m dog tired working in these cabins.

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