The Village by the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

else?” asked her aunt briskly. It was like a test at school.
    â€œThere’s a little boat,” Emma said. “I can’t see how many people are in it. It looks like a toy next to that cliff.”
    Aunt Bea nodded. “The silliness of human beings next to the force of nature,” she said as if to herself. “Life is a laugh.” She wasn’t laughing. When she went on, her voice rang out as though she were on a stage. “That happens to be a reproduction of a painting by Claude Monet— The Cliffs at Étretat. No one can paint like that anymore. It’s all a sham these days, the painters are all fakes.”
    â€œThey paint differently now, Bea,” said Uncle Crispin. “There are fine painters today, too.” Although he had contradicted her, his voice was agreeable, friendly. Was he running her aunt like a little circus, as her father had said?
    â€œThere you go—being reasonable, fair !” Aunt Bea said, and she laughed loudly, looking all around the room as though many people hidden from Emma’s and Uncle Crispin’s view were silently laughing with her. Uncle Crispin smiled as he went into the living room. Maybe, Emma thought, his being reasonable was an old joke between them. Aunt Bea was looking at her.
    â€œI assume you brought the watercolors I gave you,” she said. “This is the place to use them.”
    Emma had not used the watercolors even once. Her voice faltering, she answered, “I didn’t bring them. I’m not much good in art class. I sort of like to draw, though.”
    On Aunt Bea’s face, Emma recognized her big doll’s expression, her eyes enormous and unblinking. “The child in the neighboring house along this cliff has a blazing talent,” she said. “Absolutely blazing.”
    She couldn’t think of what to say to that. But Uncle Crispin returned from the living room, his hands filled with glasses and cups, and saved her from having to answer. Aunt Bea was still staring at her as though waiting. “I’m going to take Emma for a walk on the beach,” he said.
    Aunt Bea opened her mouth in a noisy yawn and sank back in her chair. She heaved herself forward, poured tea, plucked for a moment at her fingers, and once more picked up the silver pen. Without a glance at the definitions, she filled in all the remaining spaces of the crossword puzzle.
    Emma took her glass and plate into the kitchen. To be out of sight of her aunt, even a few feet away, was a relief. Uncle Crispin was rinsing cups in the sink. He glanced at her briefly. “You would like a walk, wouldn’t you?” he asked in a low voice. She nodded. He lined up the dripping cups on the counter. “Aren’t they pretty?” he commented. “So many ordinary things are pretty, so nice. You have only to look at them.”
    Emma looked at him, not at the cups. She felt a rush of affection for him. She didn’t know if he was ordinary, but he was certainly nice.
    Aunt Bea paid no attention to them as they went past her to the screen door. Once out of the house, Emma felt free for the first time since she had awakened that morning in her own bed.
    She ran ahead of Uncle Crispin and, holding on to the narrow splintery handrail, went down the tottery stairs to the beach and jumped into the sand. She raced to the water which curled against the shore in waves not much larger than Emma’s fists. There was so much to look at—pebbles and shells, seaweed, worn bits of glass and driftwood.
    She waited for Uncle Crispin, who picked his way across the sand like a cat. “I hate sand in my shoes,” he said as he joined her at the water’s edge. For a while they walked along on the firmer sand. Now and then he would point out something to her: a house whose shingled roof she could see—it was so close to the cliff edge—where a girl her own age, he thought, spent the summers with her