Quoyle lay in the heather and stared after her, watching the folds of her blue skirt erased by the gathering distance. The aunt, the children, Wavey. He pressed his groin against the barrens as if he were in union with the earth. His aroused senses imbued the far scene with enormous importance. The small figures against the vast rock with the sea beyond. All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.
The sharpness of his gaze pierced the past. He saw generations of Quoyles rinsed of evil by the passage of time. He imagined the aunt buried and gone, himself old, Wavey stooped with age, his daughters in faraway lives, Herry still delighted by wooden dogs and coloured threads, a grizzled Herry who would sleep in a north room at the top of the house or in the little room under the stairs.
A sense of purity renewed, a sense of events in trembling balance flooded him.
Everything, everything seemed encrusted with portent.
Excerpt from The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Painting: Looking out over a turquoise sea, Arisaig, Scotland
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