The Water Child by Mathew West EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Mathew West
- Language: English
- Genre: Social Issues & Christianity
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Portugal, 1754
The largest window in the house is in the parlour and it looks out over the
ocean. In fact all of the windows in the house look towards the ocean: in the
parlour, in her drawing room, her bedchamber, and in John’s study – all the
windows in the rooms she makes regular use of, anyway. Wherever she is
when she is at home, all she need do is turn her head and there it is. The vast
Atlantic shifting and flashing beneath the sun, a brilliant, glittering tapestry
that stretches towards the blurred haze of the horizon.
A hot slice of sun falls at a slant through the glass, shining a bright
diamond shape across the parlour floor. Cecilia stands carefully positioned at
its edge, her toes just clear of the burning patch. Without knowing she is
doing it, she shifts her feet every fifteen minutes or so, adjusting her position
to account for the sun’s perpetual motion through the sky. Within the shade
of the house it is cool – outside, in the full glare of the afternoon heat, it is
close to unbearable.
She is staring at the water. She stands with her hands clasped before her –
not in prayer, though a passing observer who happened to glance in from the
outside might easily mistake her stillness for that of a churchyard statue. She
watches the waves. This is where she can most usually be found: at her
window, watching the bay.
Her house is located at the very pinnacle of the town, proud at the summit
of the cliff, below which a tumbled confusion of dry red rooftops that zig and
zag in crazed, angular patterns lie in a chaotic heap, stretching down towards
the glimmering sea. Viewed from above, it appears as though the entire town
must have been caught up in a landslip and the local people now live in the
jumbled detritus of their former homes. But the buildings are simply very,
very old, and they lie where they always have, built in centuries past when
the town was nothing more than a humble fishing village, well sited beside a
natural harbour.
But now, springing up all around and above this ancient town, there are
new buildings, tall and grand – buildings like her house. The air smells of
freshly sawed wood and new paint. At all hours of the day you can hear the
knock of hammers and the toothy rasp of jagged saws slicing into timber: the
sounds of construction, the sounds of expansion. The majority of these new
buildings stand at the clifftop: ornate jewels upon a crown of blooming
prosperity.
From her window Cecilia can see the docks: the broad, bustling port that
has brought such wealth and commerce to this once-sleepy town on the
westernmost coast of Europe. A conveniently located, freshly minted pin at
the centre of the wheel of eighteenth-century trade.
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