Read Online Three Views of Crystal Water by Katherine Govier - Free Book Online

push, stood.
    She kissed his cheek. He smelled sweeter now. Like an old thing. It was death approaching, or maybe all the fish Keiko fed him. He smelled like a grandfather, not a sea captain. Of clean cotton and sweet tobacco and only a hint of the ocean.
    ‘Just let me deal with Miss Hinchcliffe and I’ll be back,’ Vera said.
    Her presence at Lowinger and McBean had changed from being that of a visitor and a child to that of a watcher, and a keeper. Vera had adopted a bustle, as if she actually had jobs todo in the office. She stood in front of Hinchcliffe’s desk. ‘Did the shipment come in? Did he meet the man from Birks?’ She wanted to make sure that these visitors conveyed their needs to him, and not to the secretary.
    Miss Hinchcliffe faced Vera with an ironic twist to her mouth. She protected the old man, but he refused to be endangered. Her expression said that Vera was a child and childhood was a phase; it would end, and she would go on to another passion, while she, Hinchcliffe would remain permanently on guard at her desk.
    While Vera stood wishing she could get rid of Hinchcliffe. The secretary was like a foreign power. Her grandfather would find this ridiculous, of course. If she complained he would only chuckle; he would never say a word against anyone. He said the office couldn’t be run without her. Hinchcliffe sometimes complained of Vera as well.
    ‘She doesn’t need to come here day after day,’ the older woman said. ‘She’s taking up a great deal of our time.’
    And James chuckled over that, too.
    ‘Did he have lunch?’ Vera asked.
    ‘He won’t eat the sandwiches,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. The sandwiches came around every day from a man with a cart; they’d been coming to everyone in the block for years. ‘That Japanese housekeeper has got him used to noodles. That’s all he wants.’
    Vera bridled. Keiko was Vera’s to insult, not Miss Hinchcliffe’s.
    ‘She is not the housekeeper,’ Vera said.
    ‘What is she then?’ said Miss Hinchcliffe daringly.
    Vera ostentatiously let her jaw drop open. You dare to ask?
    ‘Does she not cook the meals?’ Implied was, such as they are. A long pointed stare at Vera’s concave midriff.
    ‘Yes,’ said Vera. ‘She doesn’t actually cook much. Mostly we eat raw fish.’ She said this to annoy.
    Miss Hinchcliffe rolled her eyes. ‘It isn’t my place –’ she began, but Vera could see that she did think it was her place.
    ‘I don’t think that –’ Vera flipped her plank of long, thin, blonde hair.
    No one finished what they began to say.
    Vera retreated to the table where the woodcut prints were kept. Someone had put out a set of three. She wondered if her grandfather had been looking at them. Or if he had left them there for her to look at.
    ‘Did you see those?’ he said, appearing at the door of his office, poking his head in, his large sinking head with the handlebar moustaches still hoisted to the horizontal. ‘Quite lovely. You can spend plenty of time lost in there.’ Idly, as if it didn’t really matter, he turned away.
    The three prints had been enclosed in a folder, which lay beside them. On the front of the folder was written, in fading blue ink, in a hand that Vera did not recognise, Three Views of Crystal Water.
    James disappeared back into his office, telling her they’d go for coffee in a few minutes, and she was left alone with the pictures.
    The first view was of a seashore, seen from the top of a dune, as if an observer were crouched there unseen. Near the edge of the water was a circle of women, standing and sitting. They had built a small fire and it was this that drew them together, as if they were warming themselves. They did not huddle and shiver, but stood, tall, and elegant, revelling in their beauty. The women wore only a loose fabric draped over their hips, leaving belly and breasts bare. They were wet, hair dripping down their bare backs. Around their feet were baskets.
    It was strange to name this