Free Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson Page A

understood that for Daddy the boathouse was a sacred place and not to be disturbed in any way. Nobody went down the field near the beach and the boats had to tie up at the herring jetty.
    It was a very hot summer and the wind never blew.
    Mummy drew and drew and every time a drawing was cleaned up with a rubber she allowed herself to take a dip. I stood next to the table on the veranda and waited till she held up a drawing so that the Indian ink could dry faster and we both laughed because we were thinking what it was like in town when drawing was done at night and made you so tired that you felt sick. Then we ran down to the beach and jumped into the sea. When Old Charlie had people from town staying with him I had to wear my knickers in the water.
    Daddy was working in his new studio. He went there after he’d been fishing and had his breakfast. Daddy loves to go fishing. He gets up at four in the morning and takes his fishing rod and goes and looks at the bleak fish in the bait box.
    It was so hot in the bay that the bleak all died, and we put out the net almost every evening just off Sandy Island. We put a packet of crispbread for Daddy on the veranda every morning. He filled his pockets full and rowed out through the sound.
    A mooring-stone is very important. One can look for hours without finding a really good one, as they have to be slightly oval and have a notch in the middle. In the morning Daddy goes fishing by himself. Nobody interferes with him and nobody says he mustn’t. The lighting is wonderful then and the rocks look just as good as if Cavvy had painted them. One just sits and looks at the float, and one knows the fish will bite and when they’ll bite. There’s a rock underneath the water that has been named after Daddy, it’s called Jansson’s rock and will be called that for ever and ever. Then one makes one’s way home slowly, looking to see if there’s smoke coming out of the chimney.

    Nobody else likes fishing. But Mummy helps with the bag-net and sits at the helm and trails a trolling-spoon. She has no sense of where the right spots are, but that’s something people are born with and it’s seldom found in women.
    Daddy went to his new studio after breakfast. It was just as hot every day and there was never any wind.
    Daddy got more and more glum. He began to talk politics. Nobody went near the boathouse and we didn’t bathe near there either but went to the first bay instead.
    The worst thing was the way in which Old Charlie’s visitors behaved. They went out of their way to cut Daddy off when they saw him coming and addressed him as sculptor and asked him whether he had had any inspiration or not. I have never heard anything so tactless. They crept past the boathouse in an obvious way, putting their fingers up to their lips, whispering and nodding to one another and giggling, and naturally Daddy could see the whole performance through the window.
    And the worst thing was that they suggested motifs to him. Mummy and I felt so terribly embarrassed for them, but what could we do?
    Daddy became more and more glum and in the end he didn’t speak to anyone at all. One morning he didn’t even go fishing but stayed in bed staring at the ceiling with his lips pursed.
    And it got hotter and hotter.
    Then all of a sudden the water began to rise. We didn’t notice it until the wind got up during the night. It all happened in half an hour. A mass of dry twigs and rubbish from the yard was blown against the window-panes and the storm roared through the forest, and it was so hot that one couldn’t even bear to have a sheet over one in bed. The door was burst open and we ran out onto the steps and saw that there were white horses behind Red Rock, and then we saw the water glistening right up round the well and Daddy cheered up and shouted, well, I’ll be damned! What weather! and put his trousers on and was outside in a jiffy. Old Charlie’s