Charles opened his schoolbag and drew out the folded brown paper sheet. I helped him spread it out carefully on the table and looked at Emma. Her eyes were fixed on me. It was a testing time for me.
I asked Charles, "Did I tell you, I am on the sea most of the time, handling machinery. Your Dad was perhaps flying aeroplanes, fighter planes!"
Charles smiled pleasantly. He had lost his Dad before he had gained any knowledge of what wars are about and why and how they are fought. I was moving into troubled waters. What did he need most at that point of life? Knowledge of how life is lived, or the love, tough and playful, which only a father could give? And I could read Emma's mind now. I could see that the reason why she was thinking of marriage was to give a foothold in life to Charles. She hoped to find a man who would be both, a husband to her, and a sort of surrogate father to her brother.
I stopped in my tracks ,as thoughts moved swiftly across my mind. I didn't know at what level I should steer the conversation, at the level of Charles who was in need of a strong support or at the level of Emma who was caught between a youthful restlessness and a responsibility that held her pinned down to her parent's home?
She sat there facing me with a defiant indifference that I had seen in her in our first encounter. I was afraid to ask her any questions about the seriousness behind the direction in which her thoughts seemed to be moving. The look on her face seemed to say that she had divined the trepidation in my mind, but she was not going to brook any deeper scrutiny of her thoughts. The kind of mask she wore seemed to say, "I will smash my ship on the rocks if I please. It's my life; I'll steer it myself!"
I asked Charles, "Did I tell you, I am on the sea most of the time, handling machinery. Your Dad was perhaps flying aeroplanes, fighter planes!"
Charles smiled pleasantly. He had lost his Dad before he had gained any knowledge of what wars are about and why and how they are fought. I was moving into troubled waters. What did he need most at that point of life? Knowledge of how life is lived, or the love, tough and playful, which only a father could give? And I could read Emma's mind now. I could see that the reason why she was thinking of marriage was to give a foothold in life to Charles. She hoped to find a man who would be both, a husband to her, and a sort of surrogate father to her brother.
I stopped in my tracks ,as thoughts moved swiftly across my mind. I didn't know at what level I should steer the conversation, at the level of Charles who was in need of a strong support or at the level of Emma who was caught between a youthful restlessness and a responsibility that held her pinned down to her parent's home?
She sat there facing me with a defiant indifference that I had seen in her in our first encounter. I was afraid to ask her any questions about the seriousness behind the direction in which her thoughts seemed to be moving. The look on her face seemed to say that she had divined the trepidation in my mind, but she was not going to brook any deeper scrutiny of her thoughts. The kind of mask she wore seemed to say, "I will smash my ship on the rocks if I please. It's my life; I'll steer it myself!"
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