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did, and there must’ve been some barbed wire left over from something. Hidden for years maybe in the low brush, and the swan—who knows why?—the swan got into it. My dad said he heard a distress call. Hard to describe it, but swans can sound quite the alarm. He got a wire clipper, clipped the swan out and drove it to the veterinarian’s and woke her up. Her name’s Naomi Bloor. She’s very good at her work. Our swans are a great challenge to her. But she’s learned her way around them over the years.”
    â€œHow’s the swan doing?”
    â€œRecovering. Bandaged up like a World War One casualty, my dad said.” Maggie pressed backward against David.
“I often think of my father as a man who talks to swans all summer long. Growing up, I heard my dad consoling or reprimanding swans in ways that had some effect.”
    â€œWhat kind of swans are they?”
    â€œMute swans. The classic-looking kind. Long, curved necks—not tundra swans. My father taught me the different kinds, from books, mainly. Their habits, migratory routes and such. It was a separate education, that’s for sure. It’s fair to say my dad’s a self-taught scholar on swans. Anyway, the ones he takes care of are called mute swans. ‘Leda and the Swan’ swans.”
    â€œA girlhood spent with swans, then.”
    â€œDon’t worry, I had human playmates too. I’m not—feral.”
    â€œThat’s disappointing.”
    â€œWhen I was nine,” Maggie said, “I snuck around to the far side of the pond and skinny-dipped in and swam out there with a whole group of swans. That was absolutely forbidden me. Because they can get very very nasty, very aggressive. Guess I don’t have to tell you that, huh? But I did it anyway.”
    â€œEver tell your father?”
    â€œI told my mother. She told my father.”
    â€œNo family secrets, I guess.”
    â€œThat time I went into the pond, I muttered and clicked and whistled at the swans like my dad does. But they kept to
the opposite side, far away as possible. A few reared back, flared out their wings, and that was a little frightening, even at a distance. I remember that clearly.”
    â€œProbably your dad swam with them himself, a hot summer’s day.”
    â€œNot that I knew about. Nope, I never saw him in the pond. My mother liked to swim there. Swans or no swans. When I was a kid my dad took me to the beach. The ocean was close by. This one beach near Parrsboro had shallows quite a ways out. He’d buoy me up, swirl me around, let me splash him, things like that, when I was little. What’s strange is, I don’t recall him actually swimming—you know, sidestroke, or backstroke, or just freely swimming along. And as for the pond, hmmm, I always wondered about whether he swam with swans out there. Now that you mention it, I bet he did.”

Things Said in Sleep

    M AGGIE HAD INSTALLED her father in the main house in late September 1985. He had slept through the entire flight from London to New York, slept the flight from New York to Halifax. Slept in the car to the estate. Since then, Maggie had made eighteen visits and telephoned at least once a day, even from Europe or the United States. David circled the date of each of her visits on a wall calendar in his kitchen. On all but a few of those, Maggie stayed the night in the upstairs bedroom of the main house.
    Ground rules were set right away. William wrote them out:
    Under no circumstances—none—does my daughter want to
see you. If possible I’ll give you 24 hours advance warning of her visits. When Margaret is here, you need to be a ghost. You eat breakfast, lunch and supper at the Glooskap restaurant or the bakery or wherever. There’s an all-night diner in Truro. P.S.: To my mind you’re a goddamn fortunate man that Margaret’s allowing you to remain her husband, on paper. For norm at least.
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