The Pages Read Online Free PDF Page B

have on. In other words, nothing.
    â€™ Lindsey Antill’s smile widened and remained wide. ‘Our father and his iron laws, dressing every night for dinner being one. It’s not uncommon on the older properties. Our father took it to extremes. Even in the middle of summer he wouldn’t dream of coming in and sitting down without a coat and tie.’
    Mention of the father and Sophie would rush to collaborate. After all, her own situation was exasperating too, and cried out for description.
    â€˜Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more. Did you find you could talk to him, I mean easily? Were you close to your father? What I have noticed is they assume in their little heads they are close enough, while we – the poor confused, misunderstood daughters – may not think so at all. Don’t you find? I know with my own, who’s still alive, touch wood, he’s completely impenetrable! Do I understand him? I’m his only daughter, if you please. He keeps me at arm’s length, in every sense, which makes me want to scream. Normal intimacy is foreign to him. He resembles a lump of granite.’
    But then she smiled as she remembered how easily he made her laugh.
    Lindsey had a rectangular face, a pink shoebox with worn edges, and therefore appeared to be a practical sensible woman.
    â€˜Fathers are interested in things we are not,’ she said. ‘The way he was hard on my brothers, Wesley especially. He did it without so much as blinking.’
    â€˜Women like us who have a father-problem have difficulties with men.’
    â€˜Do I have a father-problem?’ Lindsey frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’
    Brushing a speck of dust off her hip Sophie gave the impression she was perhaps more knowledgeable in this particular area, at least when it came to the behaviour of men.
    Half-listening to them, Erica, with no warning, had a dizzy spell. She almost keeled over. Although she sat down, she felt like limping.
    Sophie and Lindsey were smiling at something they each said.
    â€˜I am sorry,’ Erica got to her feet. ‘I think I need to lie down.’
    Sophie came forward. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ She touched Erica’s forehead: it didn’t tell her much.
    All Erica wanted to do was lie down. She’d go to bed. In the country, people got up early.
    The bedroom was quiet.
    At crucial moments in her life, Erica paused; it had become something of a habit. If she happened to be advancing along a promising path, such as a line of abstract thought, she would, at the moment of possible resolution, hesitate, and remain in one spot, like a car waiting at the lights – just to be sure – an afraidness of continuing, of embracing result. If she took the next step it might all unravel, perhaps. Instead of taking one more step she took a step back. With people too, a similar story. At the moment when all the instincts nudged and whispered, continue, go forward to this person, Erica, while remaining friendly enough, held back – reluctant, just then, to allow her true feelings. It would mean opening up – to what exactly? It had happened with a number of men. By withholding she remained in an uneven state, and some days she felt incomplete.
    And now, inside a strange house which made her feel small, where for many years her designated subject, Wesley Antill, had lived hidden away, a philosopher unknown to the rest of the world, she was expected – and she had agreed! – to rifle through his papers, his life-thoughts, and cast a judgment on them, that is, on him. What she had imagined back in Sydney to be a privilege was swirling with presumption. No wonder she felt sick at the thought.
    The house was so large Erica wondered what she was doing there. It was as if she was already asleep.
    For a philosophy to be possible today it would have to begin afresh – ‘begin with nothing’. Go back to the beginning where there