Cadan managed an answer to this. “Jennie’s all right.” He hoped that would put an end to the matter, leaving him to his headache and general queasiness in peace.
Madlyn said, “Oh, I suppose, if you like them that age, she’s all right. The other one, though…Leigh’s a real piece of work.” She said nothing for a moment, and Cadan saw that she was watching him watching Pooh. He was waiting for the parrot to finish a breakfast of sunflower seeds and apples. Pooh preferred English apples?Cox, if he could get them?but in a pinch and in the off-season, he enjoyed an imported Fuji, which he was doing now.
Madlyn continued. “But for God’s sake, he’s had his kids. Why would he want to go through all that again? And why didn’t she see that? I can see it. Can’t you?”
Cadan mumbled noncommittally. Even if he hadn’t felt like worshipping the porcelain god, he knew better than to engage his sister lengthily or otherwise on the topic of their dad. So he said, “Come on, Pooh. We got work to go to,” and he offered the last sixteenth of apple. Pooh ignored it, and instead wiped his beak on his right claw. Then he set about investigating the feathers under his left wing, looking like an avian miner with all the digging he was doing there. Cadan frowned and thought about mites. In the meantime, Madlyn went on.
She was turning to use the mirror over the tiny coal fireplace in order to see to her hair. In the past, she’d never given much attention to her hair, but she hadn’t needed to. Like Cadan’s and like their father’s, it was dark and curly. Kept short enough, it was low maintenance: A good shaking sorted it out in the morning. But she’d grown it because Santo Kerne had liked it longer. Once their whatever-it-was-because-Cadan-didn’t-want-to-call-it-a-relationship ended, he’d thought she’d cut it?to get even with Santo if for no other reason?but so far she hadn’t done so. She hadn’t got back to surfing yet, either.
She said, “Well, he’ll move on to someone else now, if he hasn’t already. And so will she. And that will be an end to the whole thing. Oh, I expect there may be a few more weeks of tearful phone calls, but he’ll do his pained-silence thing, and after a time, she’ll get sick of that and realise she’s thrown away three years of her life, or however long it’s been because I can’t remember and as the clock is ticking, she’ll move on. She’ll want a man before her sell-by date comes along. And, believe me, she knows it’s out there.”
Madlyn was pleased. Cadan could hear it in her voice. The longer their father had seen Ione Soutar, the more anxiety ridden Madlyn had become. She’d been household goddess for most of her life?thanks to the Bounder’s final bounding shortly before Madlyn’s fifth birthday?and the last thing she had ever wanted was another woman usurping her position of Sole Female. She’d wielded considerable power from that position, and no one with power ever wanted to let it go.
Cadan scooped up the newspapers from beneath Pooh’s perch, balling them up against the detritus of his meal and the copious morning excretions of his body. He spread out a fresh old edition of the Watchman, and said, “Whatever. We’re off, then.”
“Off? Where?” Madlyn frowned.
“To work.”
“Work?”
She didn’t, Cadan thought, need to sound so amazed. “Adventures Unlimited,” he told her. “I got hired there.”
Her face altered. Cadan could see how she would take the information: as a fraternal betrayal, no matter his need for gainful employment. Well, she was going to have to take it whatever way she wanted to take it. He required a source of income and jobs were practically nonexistent. Still, he didn’t want to engage her on the topic of Adventures Unlimited any more than he’d wanted to engage her on the topic of Ione Soutar and the end of her affair with their father. So he set Pooh on his shoulder and said by way of diversion, “Talking of sell-by dates, Mad…What the hell were you doing with Jago night before last? His went by round forty years ago, didn’t it?”