The Turning by Tim Winton Page A

wharves to think about his prospects. He was barely halfway to the docks when a
woman called his name.
    Peter Dyson! cried a tall grey-haired woman in her sixties. It is you!
    She stood in the doorway of a newsagency with a girl of seven or so whose lank blonde hair fretted in the wind.
    Mrs Keenan?
    Marjorie, she said with mock sternness. You’re not a boy anymore.
    How are you? he asked.
    Gobsmacked. Don’t just stand there, boy. Come and give me a hug. I don’t believe it!
    Dyson stepped up and embraced her for a moment. He’d almost forgotten what another adult body felt like. For a moment he found it difficult to speak.
    Look at you, she said. Just look at you.
    He managed to laugh. Marjorie Keenan was still sprightly but her face was lined. She seemed older than she was.
    And what brings you back to town? she asked, composing herself and pulling the child gently into her hip.
    Oh, life I spose. I’ve moved into Mum’s place.
    I don’t believe it! she declared with delight.
    Well, neither did I. But there we are.
    Come for dinner. Don’d love to see you.
    Maybe I will some time.
    Bring your family.
    That’d be nice.
    You know that I’ll keep you to it, she said with a smile.
    I don’t doubt it for a minute.
    Dyson looked at the little girl who chewed her lip.
    This is our Sky, said Marjorie Keenan.
    Hello, said Dyson.
    I’ll chase you up, said the old woman.
    Dyson laughed and stepped back into the street. He headed down to the town jetty with a creeping sense of disquiet. It was the child, Sky. Of course it was possible that she was a
neighbour’s daughter or one of the many strays of the sort he used to meet at the Keenans’ himself when he was a schoolboy. They were warm, kind people, Don and Marjorie, and their
place was often a haven for runaways or foster kids, the beneficiaries of one church mission or other. Sky had the shop-soiled look of one of those children. But the dirty-blonde hair and the way
she clung to Marjorie made him think that she was a grandchild. She had to be Fay’s.
    On the jetty old men jigged for squid with their heads lowered against the wind. Dyson stood out there looking across at the yacht club and the rusty roofs of Cockleshell on the farther
shore.
    Fay Keenan. He hadn’t even considered that she might still be in town. Hadn’t she left long before him? He had anticipated some awkward encounters. There would be the people
he’d gone to school with, the ones who always talked of shooting through to the city at the first opportunity but never actually left. He prepared himself for their prickly defensiveness,
consoling himself in the knowledge that after ten years these meetings would only be momentary. Most people would settle for a wave in the street, a brief greeting in Woolworths. But he
hadn’t considered folks like the Keenans. They were full-on people. They were salt of the earth. They would never settle for just a meeting on the main drag.
    And Fay. With a daughter. He hadn’t considered that at all.
    For a few days Dyson kept to the house. He only went out to take Ricky to school and collect him afterwards. All day he absorbed himself in little projects of household repair
and modification. He told himself it was the rain that kept him at bay but in truth he had the jitters. He was back to feeling that weird, diffuse guilt which had dogged him all his life.
He’d given up teasing that one out years ago. The old man’s early death, the disappointment he was to his mother, the business with Fay. And, God knows, the unravelling of Sophie. It
was old news but ever fresh in him. The way he’d jumped, blushing already, when Marjorie Keenan called his name.
    With Ricky beside him, he lay awake at night with real misgivings about coming home. Irony he could deal with, but the complications of history might be another matter.
    On the third day, in the early afternoon, Marjorie Keenan came knocking as he knew she would. Come for dinner tonight, she told him.