Lew dried the mug and the spoon. He put them both away. He wiped down the scratched, old stainless-steel work top, although there wasn’t a crumb upon it. “Your trouble is, you want everything to be fun. But life’s not that way, and you don’t want to see it.”
Cadan gestured outside, towards the back garden and the surfing kit that his father had just rinsed off. “And that’s not fun? You’ve spent all your free time for your entire life riding waves, but I’m supposed to see that as…what? Some noble endeavour like curing AIDS? Putting an end to world poverty? You give me aggro about doing what I want to do, but haven’t you done the very same? But wait. Don’t answer. I already know. What you do’s all about grooming a champion. Having a goal. While what I do?”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a goal.”
“Right. Yes. And I have mine. It’s just not the same as yours. Or Madlyn’s. Or what Madlyn’s was.”
“Where is she?” Lew asked.
“I told you?”
“I know what you told me. But you must have some idea where your own sister might have taken herself off to if she didn’t go to work. You know her. And him. You know him as well, if it comes down to it.”
“Hey. Don’t put that on me. She knew his reputation. Everyone knows it. But she wasn’t having any words of wisdom from anyone. And anyway, what you really care about is not where she is at this exact moment but that she got derailed. Just like you.”
“She isn’t derailed.”
“She bloody well is. And where does that leave you, Dad? You pinned your dreams on her instead of living your own.”
“She’ll get back to it.”
“Don’t put money on that.”
“And don’t you?” Abruptly, Lew bit off whatever it was he’d intended to say.
They faced each other then across the width of kitchen. It was an expanse of less than ten feet, but it was also a chasm that grew wider every year. Each of them stood at his respective edge, and it seemed to Cadan that the time would come when one of them was going to topple over the side.
SELEVAN PENRULE TOOK HIS time about getting over to Clean Barrel Surf Shop, having quickly decided it would be unseemly to bolt out of the Salthouse Inn the moment the whisper went round about Santo Kerne. He certainly had reason to bolt, but he knew it wouldn’t look good. Beyond that, at his age he was beyond bolting anywhere. Too many years of milking cows, not to mention herding the bloody bovines in and out of pastures, and his back was permanently bent and his hips were done for. Sixty-eight years old, he felt like eighty. He should have sold out and opened up the caravan park thirty-five years earlier, and he would have done so had he only had the cash, the bollocks, the vision, no wife, and no kids. They were all gone now, the house was torn down, and the farm was converted. Sea Dreams, he’d called it. Four neat rows of holiday caravans like shoe boxes, perched on the cliffs above the sea.