The Whirlpool by Jane Urquhart

Author:Jane Urquhart [Urquhart, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-55199-430-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1986-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

“Now you’ll see,” said David McDougal to his wife as he made preparations to leave the vicinity of the tent. “Now you’ll see what the river can do.”

“It’s total nonsense,” she replied, “these men flinging themselves into the rapids, as if the river cared. Why do you always think you have to conquer something just because it’s there. I already know what the river can do. No one has to prove it to me.”

“Don’t you think it’s rather mythical,” David continued, “the dangerous quest-like journey, braving the elements in the body of an animal. You should like that. A good image, don’t you think? And that poet will be there. Maybe he will write a poem about it.”

He entered the tent and returned a few minutes later with an umbrella. Fleda added a few more branches to the fire.

“What an odd fellow that poet is,” said McDougal. “That business about swimming – if I know poets, he’ll probably just write a poem about it.”

“Does he say he wants to write about it?” asked Fleda, imagining a metaphysical response to the whirlpool.

“Did you know,” David asked, ignoring her question, “that the Yankees, in retreat from the Lundy’s Lane fiasco, actually tried to swim the river? Or at least some of them. They were in retreat, by the way Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.”

“What are his poems like?” asked Fleda. “Did you bring some for me to read?”

“You’re not actually becoming interested in Canadian Letters?” asked David. “Well it’s about time. His poems are… well… short.”

“Short? That’s all you have to say?”

“Yes, short… and with lots of pine trees.”

“Then, I’m not interested.”

“How can you not be interested? All you ever think about is poetry.”

“I am interested in the English poets.”

“Why? Because of the pine trees? Look around you -” David gestured to the left and right – “you can’t live in this country and ignore pine trees.”

“No English poet,” said Fleda, “would spend a lot of time worrying about pine trees.”

“But,” thundered McDougal, becoming quite angry, “this is not England!”

After her husband marched testily away Fleda looked at the dark pines that surrounded her and knew that her argument had been with David, not with the poet’s choice of subject matter. She had secretly, all the while, been imagining poems filled with the smell of cedars carried on the breath of a northern wind. Scotch pines, white pines. Roots in the ground, needles in the sky.

She walked to the part of bank where she could see the beach through the foliage. From that height the crowd looked to her like a large dark stain growing at the edge of the whirlpool. Wondering how Wordsworth or Browning would interpret landscape such as this or events such as these, she turned away.

She absolutely refused to take part in it. She felt alien, completely different, distant. She could not understand why her husband would want to be a witness, to watch a man who killed animals kill himself inside an animal. At

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