Swann by Carol Shields

Author:Carol Shields
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307367242
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 1996-10-21T22:00:00+00:00

Rose and Homer Take a Sunday Drive

“Feel up to taking a drive over to Westport?” Homer says to Rose two weeks later. It is the middle of a cold, windless Sunday afternoon when he phones. At this moment Jean and Howie Elton are quarrelling loudly downstairs. Some heavy object has been dropped on the floor, an act of carelessness on Jean’s part, it seems, and Rose can hear Howie shouting and slamming cupboard doors, and the shrill counterpoint of Jean defending herself. (It has been going on for more than an hour; at first Rose listened with a disabling sense of excitement and eagerness. Then there was another loud crash and the sound of weeping; Jean’s of course.) Rose puts her lips close to the telephone and whispers to Homer that yes, she would love a drive over to Westport, that he is a godsend—which seems to please him inordinately.

The road to Westport is clear of ice, and the running glare on the snow-filled fields is so bright that Rose feels herself grow buoyant. “Oh, I love it,” she says. “It’s a wonderful day for a run. I love it.”

People in Nadeau, at least those older people who still subscribe to the idea of a Sunday “run,” quite often travel the twelve miles to Westport. Westport is a smaller village than Nadeau, a prettier village. Its white houses with their shining windowpanes and painted doors are arranged not in neat rows as in Nadeau, but charmingly, haphazardly, along the lake shore. In Westport you can stand by the side of the lake next to the old ferry shed and get a fine view of the ice fishing out on the bay. Afterward, if you like, you can stop in at Lou’s Antique Barn where blue glass insulators and pink glass relish dishes are arranged on rustic shelves, and then you can warm yourself up with a cup of coffee and a muffin at the Westport Luncheonette.

Homer Hart, buttering his second muffin, is in a merry mood. He has a feeling in his bones, he tells Rose, that Daisy will be home by the end of the week. He is ninety-nine per cent sure that there will be a letter from her Monday morning telling him when she’ll be arriving.

Anticipation makes him adventurous, and he proposes to Rose that they go back to Nadeau by way of the back road. He feels sure that the snowplough has been through by now. It’s still early, just three-thirty, and the road is prettier that way.

“Well,” Rose says, “I don’t know.” But after a minute she agrees. She’s feeling uneasy now about Jean, and wondering if she’s done the right thing leaving the house. On the other hand, the back road is prettier, just as Homer says, even if it does take a little longer.

For the first mile or two it follows the lake and then cuts north, wandering back and forth gaily between low rounded hills. Rose often thinks to herself what a

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