The Goat Woman of Largo Bay by Gillian Royes

Author:Gillian Royes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Paperback

CHAPTER THIRTY

“C omputer?” asked Meredith McKenzie, glancing from her new boarder to Shad over the top of her glasses. She was standing in her kitchen wielding a rolling pin over a slab of dough, strands of gray hair clinging to her face.

“I need to get onto the Internet,” Cameron said, “check with my office—”

“No, sir, I don’t have one of your computers. They cost too much and I wouldn’t know how to use it!

“Technology,” she said, in the preachy voice she’d used at the blackboard, “will never take the place of writing. I’m just grateful to the Almighty that little of it come to Largo.”

“I just wanted to—,” Cameron said.

“When I was a student,” she said with a thump of the rolling pin, “I received a lot of prizes for my handwriting. It sloped to the right, the way they taught me. I never brought the pen off the page, you know, until the last letter.” She smiled to herself.

“So I never understand why a fountain pen and a typewriter with good oil and a fresh ribbon, you know, aren’t enough anymore.”

Her cinnamon arms speckled with flour, she waved toward the corridor.

“There’s a phone in my bedroom, if you want to use one. Ten US dollars for ten minutes. I have to keep the price up because I never know where people are calling and how long they talk. If you want a cheaper call, you have to go to Port Antonio.”

She started talking to the row of dumplings beside the board.

“Everybody who come here too tense, if you ask me,” she said. “They should just enjoy the sea breeze and don’t worry about all that computer business.” She broke into laughter underlined by the gold fillings, and the rolling pin thudded down again.

Cameron and Shad threaded their way back through the living room with its heavy mahogany furniture. On the wall above the sofa, a spear slanted over a triangular object.

“Ever hear of a boomerang from Australia?” Shad said, and stopped in front of it for a second. “Miss Mac said a man who stayed here sent it. Imagine, all the way from Australia— a boomerang.”

Out on the main road, traffic was light and the men walked down the middle of the long, straight road that paralleled the beach. It had been Eric’s suggestion that Cameron should learn to row and Minion should teach him—so he could go out to the island himself if he had to—and Shad had volunteered to take him to Minion’s house.

Shad pointed out Solomon and Maisie’s cottage and the larger home of the head teacher.

“Are all the children in school?” Cameron said.

“Days gone by, only a few children stayed in school. When I was ten, my uncle took me on to work in his boat, and I had to stop school. Most of my friends had to do the same thing. Things better now, though. Most of the children go to school, learning all kinds of things. They even have a computer in the school.

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