Read Online Walking into the Ocean by David Whellams - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Whellams
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fountains inhabited some of the boxes. There were still incongruous items â a lawnmower? â yet the overall tone in every box was reverent. The Annunciation boxes invited interpretation, as Peter probably intended, but she knew they were incomplete, not ready for viewing. It also felt disrespectful invading his privacy so casually. Finally, she admitted to herself that maybe she didnât want to imbibe the darkness in some of the assemblages: knives coming from a cloud, tears of blood and a tree on fire.
She turned from the workbench and decided that vacuuming the room, so soon after her husband had left for the week, would be finicky and slightly impertinent. She looked around the space appreciatively. She came in once in a while to dust the books on the wide shelves, not that she harassed him on the matter; but there were a few on a special shelf that she never disturbed. They werenât secret volumes but rather some of his favourites: a first edition of the full-scale
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, a signed tome of Wordsworth poems, a history of New Scotland Yard, an out-of-date
Whoâs Who
, and a set of
Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories
. They gathered dust most of the time, the exception being the Holmes collection. Peter had adored the Conan Doyle series since his teenage years. They were bound in leather and were worn at the corners of the covers. Joan was unsure whether the three-volume edition on the shelf dated back to his youth, but she had often seen him in the middle of a stressful case pick out a volume and flip to a story at random, for relaxation. She had never read the stories herself, although she felt that she knew the red-headed man and the dog who didnât bark.
She leaned closer to the shelf and was surprised to see that dust had settled thickly into the top grooves of the three Holmes volumes. They hadnât been taken out in six months or more; she knew dust. Her first instinct was to take the books out one by one and clean them off with a rag, but she merely removed Volume One and blew the dust off as best she could. Then she opened the tome and read the table of contents. She flipped back and was surprised that there was no dedication on the flyleaf; she had imagined that the set had been a gift from Peterâs father. She returned to the table of contents and read the list of story titles, some of them familiar. She opened
A Study in Scarlet
near the middle and sampled the story, as a shopper in a bookstore might. Checking that the phone was nearby, she sat down in the rocking chair, turned to the start of the novel and began to read.
She finished
A Study in Scarlet
by noon. She loved it. She had noticed that Peter hadnât been reading much lately. At some point in the midmorning she glanced up at the shadow boxes and wondered if there was a correlation between the increase in Peterâs interest in the boxes over the last year and the decline in his reading, which usually was voracious. Or did the decline correlate with a growing curiosity about religion? She realized that this was unfair speculation about her husband, yet Sherlock had put her in the mood to hypothesize. Ever since Peter and Tommy had departed, she had felt odd about his current case, even though she knew few of the facts. She intuited, with no salient evidence, that she, or they, were on the brink of something different. It was no more specific than that.
When she went inside to grab a tuna sandwich for lunch she found that she couldnât concentrate at the kitchen table, and so she took her sandwich, bag of crisps and glass of milk out to the shed, and cuddled up in Peterâs chair. She read the first three Holmes short stories but then, for reasons she didnât understand, began to read the very last ones, taking Watson and Holmes back in time and experience, tale by tale.
About 4:00 p.m., she glanced up from her reading. She hadnât seen the pheasants all afternoon. The fading sun
She turned from the workbench and decided that vacuuming the room, so soon after her husband had left for the week, would be finicky and slightly impertinent. She looked around the space appreciatively. She came in once in a while to dust the books on the wide shelves, not that she harassed him on the matter; but there were a few on a special shelf that she never disturbed. They werenât secret volumes but rather some of his favourites: a first edition of the full-scale
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, a signed tome of Wordsworth poems, a history of New Scotland Yard, an out-of-date
Whoâs Who
, and a set of
Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories
. They gathered dust most of the time, the exception being the Holmes collection. Peter had adored the Conan Doyle series since his teenage years. They were bound in leather and were worn at the corners of the covers. Joan was unsure whether the three-volume edition on the shelf dated back to his youth, but she had often seen him in the middle of a stressful case pick out a volume and flip to a story at random, for relaxation. She had never read the stories herself, although she felt that she knew the red-headed man and the dog who didnât bark.
She leaned closer to the shelf and was surprised to see that dust had settled thickly into the top grooves of the three Holmes volumes. They hadnât been taken out in six months or more; she knew dust. Her first instinct was to take the books out one by one and clean them off with a rag, but she merely removed Volume One and blew the dust off as best she could. Then she opened the tome and read the table of contents. She flipped back and was surprised that there was no dedication on the flyleaf; she had imagined that the set had been a gift from Peterâs father. She returned to the table of contents and read the list of story titles, some of them familiar. She opened
A Study in Scarlet
near the middle and sampled the story, as a shopper in a bookstore might. Checking that the phone was nearby, she sat down in the rocking chair, turned to the start of the novel and began to read.
She finished
A Study in Scarlet
by noon. She loved it. She had noticed that Peter hadnât been reading much lately. At some point in the midmorning she glanced up at the shadow boxes and wondered if there was a correlation between the increase in Peterâs interest in the boxes over the last year and the decline in his reading, which usually was voracious. Or did the decline correlate with a growing curiosity about religion? She realized that this was unfair speculation about her husband, yet Sherlock had put her in the mood to hypothesize. Ever since Peter and Tommy had departed, she had felt odd about his current case, even though she knew few of the facts. She intuited, with no salient evidence, that she, or they, were on the brink of something different. It was no more specific than that.
When she went inside to grab a tuna sandwich for lunch she found that she couldnât concentrate at the kitchen table, and so she took her sandwich, bag of crisps and glass of milk out to the shed, and cuddled up in Peterâs chair. She read the first three Holmes short stories but then, for reasons she didnât understand, began to read the very last ones, taking Watson and Holmes back in time and experience, tale by tale.
About 4:00 p.m., she glanced up from her reading. She hadnât seen the pheasants all afternoon. The fading sun
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