Context: Unhappy Childhood
1 In her summer holidays, Denise joined her father
1.1 • in that year’s country
• on the cheapest flight, via two third-world airports
• the in-flight meal a hard-boiled egg in a damp napkin
• no one met her, she carried her own bag, directed the cab
• “I thought it was next week,” Peter sighed at her mistake. He turned away, he turned the television on.
2 He drank most nights, that was a different ordeal.
2.1 “This is just my daughter, I’m not robbing the cradle,” he winked to the barflies.
2.2 To her, sotto voce:
• “That girl’s a little well-developed for a Chinese.”
• “Aren’t you old enough to drink yet? Why not?”
• “Oh, you look at me with those cold, judging eyes.”
• “I know you must hate me for giving you that face.”
2.3 As she grew up, she repaid him with impassioned scorn.
2.4 She stole 10,000 dollars from him and went adventuring in the Himalayas. She came back haughty as ever. At Peter’s demands for the cash, she sighed: “It’s gone, it’s gone, you’d best forget it.”
3 Peter told her John Moffat was:
• “An old friend of your mother.”
• “He said he gave you a lobster once and you might remember it, I don’t know what that’s all about.”
• “I taught him all the cards he knows. He looks up to me – don’t look as though that’s so incredible.”
• “Maybe she was having an affair with him,” he concluded with the air of a man philosophically inured to life’s blows: “He has a good physique.”
4 She remembered Mr. Moffat holding the lobster by its waist, Mum wheedling, “Don’t cry, Deesey-beast, it can’t bite.” She remembered him singing to her on a carousel, sidesaddle on a static kangaroo. At some point in her childhood he had kneeled to hand her a square of pink frosted cake on a napkin. He’d taught her “See ya later, alligator,” at some point.
4.1 “I remember him,” she said, stunned: “They played tennis.”
“Well,” Peter ended the topic: “He’ll be in France.”