Free The Village by the Sea by Paula Fox Page A

Visit with me. What’s so fascinating on the beach? I suppose you’ve met that girl next door. Sit down and eat a civilized lunch.” She was scratching at her fingers. Emma glimpsed a sheet of paper covered with handwriting, the letters like plump balloons.
    â€œBertie is waiting for me,” she said uneasily.
    â€œSo you did meet her!” her aunt accused. “Bertie! You ought to advise her to change her name. She’ll end up being called Bert, the truck driver. Look! I found this in my desk and I thought you’d love it!”
    She was holding out a comic book, although the cover didn’t look like any comic book Emma had ever seen. She wanted to run out of the room. Aunt Bea continued to hold up the book, her mouth smiling, but something hopeless about her eyes, like someone watching a fire burn up her house. Emma reached for the book. Aunt Bea snatched it away. “No, no. I want to show it to you.”
    Reluctantly, Emma stood beside her. Aunt Bea’s reddened finger pointed at every object in the cartoons: a brick, a small ramshackle jailhouse, a path with a single cactus growing beside it. Emma had to admit to herself that it was funny.
    â€œYou see, it’s always the same story,” Aunt Bea explained happily. “A triangle—Krazy Kat, Offissa Pup, and Ignatz Mouse. Look at the drawing itself. Wonderful! There’s nothing to match it these days. The mouse always ends up in jail for throwing bricks, but he’s the winner! That’s because Krazy Kat loves him so.”
    â€œI have to go, Aunt Bea,” Emma said.
    Aunt Bea bowed her head over the comic book. She looked up to gaze at her poster. She poured tea. Then she said slowly, “This is more valuable than anything you’ve got on the beach. Well—then go!”
    Another day when Uncle Crispin was out, she had fixed Emma an enormous sandwich. “Look at that! It’s for you. And I’ve made some China green tea, very mild, suitable for someone your age.” She had set a place for Emma at the table with a huge ragged linen napkin and a heavy silver fork.
    The sandwich was delicious, but Emma knew she would have to pay for it.
    â€œDid I ever tell you about the time Crispin and I were in Sicily?” she asked in a high, rather silly voice. “It was winter when there were no tourists. They were home where they belong. We had driven along the southern coast … look, here’s a map I got out for you … and night fell. In Messina, we had heard of a marvelous hotel. We stopped there. We could see one dim light somewhere in what must have been the lobby. Can you imagine! Night—in Sicily—in winter! What looked like an empty hotel! We started to get out of the car when a pack of monstrous wild dogs came out of the darkness, howling, snapping their great jaws.”
    Emma stared at her, her interest caught despite her wish to go. She remembered what Bertie had said when she told her about Krazy Kat, and how her aunt had tried to make her stay. “Granny says she goes nuts when he’s away.”
    â€œWe sat there all night,” Aunt Bea was saying, her eyes boring into Emma’s. “And in the morning, my dear, the dogs were still there, waiting for us, their big meal of the day. At last some peasant came along and shooed them away with sticks and stones, and the donkey hee-hawed and your poor Uncle Crispin and I got out of the car like two stone statues.”
    â€œThat’s a good story,” Emma said. “But I have to go now.”
    â€œI have another,” Aunt Bea said, her eyes getting glassy, “about a cliff of birds on the west coast of Ireland.”
    That day, Emma was rescued by Uncle Crispin’s unexpected arrival; a student was ill, a lesson cancelled, and Emma set free.
    Every evening, her mother called. Each day there was a new event. Daddy was out of Intensive Care and in his own room. Daddy walked. He ate two