THE FINAL REMARK TAMMY HAD HURLED AT HIM BEFORE GETTING out of the car in Casvelyn was, “You don’t understand anything, Grandie. No wonder everyone left you like they did.” She hadn’t sounded angry as much as sad, which had made it difficult for Selevan Penrule to counter with anything abusive. He’d have liked to fire a verbal missile in her direction and, with the satisfaction that comes from long experience in the field of vocal warfare, to watch it hit its mark, but there was something in her eyes that prevented him, despite the pain that her parting shot caused him. Perhaps, he thought, he was losing his touch. Either that or the girl was getting under his skin. He hated to think that might be the case.
He’d confronted her when they were on the road to Clean Barrel Surf Shop, and he had been quite proud that he’d mastered in himself the compulsion to tackle her on the previous afternoon. He didn’t like secrets, and he hated lies. That Tammy possessed the first and acted on the second disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. For despite her oddities of dress, behaviour, nutrition, and intention, he liked the girl, and he wanted to think her different from the rest of the world’s furtive adolescents, who had clandestine secondary lives that appeared to be defined by sex, drugs, and bodily mutilation.
He’d believed this to be the case about her: her essential difference from others of her age. But then he’d found the envelope under her mattress when he’d changed the sheets, and he knew from reading its contents that she was, indeed, very like her contemporaries. Whatever progress he thought he’d made with her was nothing but a sham.
In some situations, that knowledge wouldn’t have bothered him. Nothing was going to happen immediately, so he could redouble his efforts and eventually bend her will to his…and to her parents’ as well. But the problem with that belief was that Tammy’s mum was a woman not known for her patience. She wanted results, and if she didn’t get them, Selevan knew that Tammy’s time in Cornwall would be terminated.
So he’d brought forth the envelope he’d found beneath her mattress and he’d placed it on the dashboard as they drove into town. She’d looked at it. She’d looked at him. And damn the girl, she’d taken the offensive. “You’re going through my personal things when I’m not home,” she’d said, sounding for all the world like a fatally wounded spirit. “That’s what you did to Auntie Nan, didn’t you?”
He wasn’t about to get into a discussion of his daughter and the worthless hooligan to whom she’d been married in alleged bliss for twenty-two years. He said, “Don’t make this about your aunt, girl. Tell me what you’re about with this nonsense.”
“You can’t tolerate anyone who disagrees with you, Grandie, and Dad’s just like you. If something’s not part of your experience, it’s not to be bothered with. Or it’s bad. Or evil, even. Well, this isn’t evil. It’s what I want and if you and Dad and Mum can’t see that it’s the sort of answer the whole bloody world needs just now in order to stop being the whole bloody world…” She’d grabbed up the envelope and shoved it into her rucksack. He thought to snatch it from her and toss it out of the window, but what would have been the point? Where that one came from, another could be got.
Her voice was different when she spoke again. She sounded shaken, the victim of betrayal. “I thought you understood. And, anyway, I didn’t think you were the sort of person who snoops in other people’s belongings.”
That was rather maddening to Selevan. He was the one betrayed by her, wasn’t he? She was hiding correspondence from him, not the other way round. When her mum phoned from Africa and Tammy was the object of discussion, he didn’t hide that from her and they didn’t speak in code. So her umbrage was completely out of order.