Read Online Trains and Lovers: A Novel by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online Page B

further away was a river, on the banks of which were flat expanses of rock, covered when the water was in spate, but exposed when it was low. Further down, where the river broadened out into an estuary, there were two houses lived in by fishermen and their families. Their boats, white and wooden, bobbed about on moorings in front of their owners’ houses. He would watch them set off on the ebb tide and then see them again when they returned from the inspection of their pots. They often caught crabs, a writhing mass of waving claws, but their real quarry was something different. His mother sent him to collect lobster from the fishermen once a week, and he would be given a couple of large specimens, their claws firmly secured by the heavy-duty rubber bands they used for this purpose.
    “You don’t let one of these fellows get your fingers,” said one of the fishermen, showing him a bent index finger on his left hand. “See this? A lobster did that years ago. Snap. Didn’t even have to exert himself.”
    He stared at the lobsters and they stared back, their unreadable black eyes fixed on him. He did not like the way they were killed. He heard their screams and thought that no creature would make that sound if it did not experience pain.
    “They don’t feel it,” said his father. “Lobsters don’t feel things.”
    Adults lie, he thought. They lie about lobsters and a whole lot of other things.
    THEY SPENT SIX WEEKS OF EACH SUMMER THERE . His father owned a small property business in New York that looked after itself—or so he claimed. In reality, the business was carefully nurtured by its long-term manager, who did all the work and who was given a small share of the profits as a reward. This manager never went away, apparently having no interest in taking a holiday.
    “Why leave New York?” he said. “New York’s got everything. If you go some place else, you’ll end up missing things you have in New York. Better stay where you are. Far better.”
    The business did well, and funded a large apartment on the Upper East Side as well as this house in Maine. The family did not live extravagantly, money being invested rather than spent. In due course all this went to David. But that was a long way ahead.
    His father, he realised, was grateful for this good fortune. “Look at this,” he once said to him. “This house. This place. We wake up to the sound of birds. We lookout our window at an orchard. If we want fish, we go out and catch them.”
    This gave him pause for thought. Yes, he understood that this was a good place to be, but he wanted to be elsewhere. He wanted to see the world beyond the boundaries of New England; beyond the boundaries of the United States itself. Africa. India. Australia. There were all these places where the houses were not made of neat white board and shingle; where there was colour and movement and danger. There was no danger in that small town, where people’s lives led neatly and correctly to the grave; where the water came dosed with chemicals and the food was cleanly wrapped. He wanted to go somewhere else.
    “Yes,” said his father. “There are other places—sure there are. Plenty of places to go and get sick because the water’s rotten and there’s malaria and cholera and so on. There are plenty of places like that.”

ON HIS FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY, WHICH FELL IN mid-July, when they were always in Maine, he was given a boat. It was delivered to the house at night, when he was asleep, and so it was there as a surprise for him when he woke up. It was a small dinghy, twelve feet in length, made of welded aluminium, and came with a set of varnished pine oars. His heart gave a leap; he had dreamed of possessing a boat, but had always had to make do with the occasional use of boats belonging to neighbours. Now that he had his own, the river and the estuary were his to explore.
    “Watch the tides,” said his father. “Don’t forget how powerful they are. Be careful.”
    He