Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery.
A novel of great literary beauty structured as a tense psychological thriller, The Trout is a tale of predators and prey, deception, and the hidden crimes that can shape a life. Alex’s physician father loved to fish and imbued in him a deep knowledge of the sport. In brief passages, this fisherman’s lore periodically comes to the surface and resonates deeply with the dark mystery at the core of the novel.
Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery.
A novel of great literary beauty structured as a tense psychological thriller, The Trout is a tale of predators and prey, deception, and the hidden crimes that can shape a life. Alex’s physician father loved to fish and imbued in him a deep knowledge of the sport. In brief passages, this fisherman’s lore periodically comes to the surface and resonates deeply with the dark mystery at the core of the novel.
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Overview
Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery.
A novel of great literary beauty structured as a tense psychological thriller, The Trout is a tale of predators and prey, deception, and the hidden crimes that can shape a life. Alex’s physician father loved to fish and imbued in him a deep knowledge of the sport. In brief passages, this fisherman’s lore periodically comes to the surface and resonates deeply with the dark mystery at the core of the novel.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628727470 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcade |
| Publication date: | 07/04/2017 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Peter Cunningham is an award-winning novelist, who won the Prix de l’Europe and the Prix Caillou for his historical novel The Sea and the Silence. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy for Arts and Letters and lives with his wife in County Kildare, Ireland.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Winter, when it leaves Muskoka, often does so over the course of a single night. One evening, darkness falls over a steel grey, ice-bound landscape; next morning, red squirrels, beavers and racoons reappear on the islands and ice quickly becomes a memory. Within forty-eight hours, white-tailed deer can be seen along the shoreline, grazing the groves of maple and hemlock. The lake cottages, shuttered since Thanksgiving, reopen as if a single lock has turned and the accents of Toronto and Detroit can once again be heard in Bayport.
A blue jay, squatting in the lower branches of the oak that stands on the boundary between our garden and the road, is calling to an unseen mate. Soon my room will lose its comforting redolence of books and paper to the fragrance of cut grass and pine. I know I like to deplore the short, cold days of winter, but the truth is that in winter I work best. During four such entombed seasons the story crept from me, word by word, until eventually it lay there in a stack of pages that went on to become a book.
Our house, its foundations blasted into the rock of the Canadian Shield, is built on rising ground half a mile outside the lakeside town of Bayport. Fifteen miles farther west by road, or ten miles by boat, lies Charlton, the district's administrative centre. From our front porch, looking north through stands of white and red pine, birch and oak, Lake Muskoka can be seen: in winter white as bone, in spring — as now — joyfully blue.
Kay walks down the path that runs diagonally to the gate. Tall, with iron-grey hair and strong features, she still moves like a cat. As the blue jay takes off, screeching, she waves a greeting to it, an age-old Irish superstition to deal with the magpie, cousin to the jay.
A small boy with a large purple rucksack on his back comes up the road, the sun's rays dancing in his black curls. He runs the last few yards to his grandmother, who hugs him, then turns to where she knows I am, as if to say, Look who's home!
Up the path they come and the child runs ahead, leaving his grandmother to bring the rucksack.
"Granddad, guess what?"
I show him my puzzled face. "Tim?"
He takes a flying leap into my arms, grabs my beard with his small fists and buries his head there.
"We won! Our team won!"
CHAPTER 2The population of Bayport is 889. Although the town depends on the lakes for its living, in the off-season we still manage to tick over. Bridge clubs and book clubs flourish. Mr. Amos, the local grocer, who ties flies for sale in the spring and summer, builds up his stock. The annual production of the town's light opera society is traditionally unveiled at Christmas. Cross-country skiing expeditions thrive. Two churches serve the mainly Episcopalian and smaller Catholic congregations; there is one bar, the Muskoka Inn, and one restaurant, Francini's. The mail for Bayport comes from Charlton, where you go to do banking business, to buy a new shirt or the latest book, or to catch the bus out of Muskoka.
I worked for over thirty years as a teacher of English in Saint Celestine's, Toronto. A lot of teaching. They say it burns you out in the end, or at least that's the explanation I settled for. When the school appointed a new, young headmaster with fresh ideas, bringing in a new regime, I quit. We sold our house in Milton and moved up here, so I could write full-time. That was all fine until the economic crash came along and took most of our investments with it. Not that we're complaining — we've enough to get by on — but we've had to put travel plans on hold.
Our son Gavin, Tim's dad, is the palaeontologist with a Canadian archaeological team that's in China for six weeks to do whatever it is they do with the remains of a 200,000-year-old human. Tim's mother died in a pileup in Toronto when he was three. If there's a school camp going when Tim comes to stay in Muskoka, we enroll him so he can be with kids of his age.
As we sit on the porch with iced teas, the mail van arrives. In some quarters, the late arrival of the mail each day is a major issue: Mr. Amos is chairman of a committee whose sole purpose is to have the delivery to Bayport made before noon.
Kay is reading Tim's school camp report, which she found in his rucksack. Birdsong is building along the canopy by the lakeshore. In just two days, the light has soared.
"How's he doing?"
"He's doing fine." She hands across the single page. "They say he's got an eidetic memory."
At a desk just inside the window the child peers at the computer. Tim is dyslexic, of mid-range severity, according to the specialist in Toronto. He also exhibits behavioural idiosyncrasies, with which his father and we have become very familiar.
"I hope enough is being done," I say.
Kay smiles patiently, as if I'm deliberately missing the point.
"Alex, the man he's seeing is in the top three in North America."
I know what I want to say. I know whose medical opinion I'd really like to hear on my grandson's condition.
Kay gets up. "I've got work to do," she says.
CHAPTER 3The seats of the black Humber Hawk were of stitched red leather, including the rear bench seat on which I knelt, bare-kneed, inhaling the leather fragrance, surveying the receding world. It was my world, different to what the doctor saw out of the front window: my world at seven years of age, seen through a much smaller frame and going in the opposite direction.
As he drove, the doctor spoke of the power of learning, of the wisdom to be found in books, and of how literature is second in grace only to religion. He spoke in the deep, rich rhythms of Ireland's south-east, his accent one of soft, uvular articulations. The doctor's words, when his humour was good, swirled lovingly around me; but when his humour changed, it changed everything.
The mailbox flap slaps down and the van speeds away. For years, a woman with a pleasant face has done the mail run; she has been replaced and now it seems like a new person every other week. Tiny shoots of growth are bustling either side of the path, luminously green pinheads. For Christmas, Kay gives me a subscription to The New Yorker. Once a week, as now, I savour the first glimpse of the magazine's cosmopolitan provenance through its cellophane wrapping.
Jerry Fisher, my literary agent, who initially placed my book with a publisher in Toronto, has promised early news on a sale in New York. No letter has come from Jerry, but there are several for Kay, who works as a psychotherapist in the hospital in Charlton. For our first year up here Kay relished the break from the job that had kept her so busy in Toronto and she threw herself into painting, at which she excels. Her work has been shown in a small gallery in Toronto, where every canvas sold. And yet, because of our circumstances, she feels she cannot rely completely on her painting, which is why she now works part-time in Charlton.
I see a card from Larry White, who has come to live down by the lake in Bayport and is already trying to stimulate interest in next winter's theatrical production. Larry, a former Mountie, arrived here late last year but already sees himself as Bayport's leading man.
Kay is looking out from the porch. Sometimes her glance, as now, contains sadness, as if she is harbouring personal regrets, or fears that our happiness is never more than provisional.
The letter at the bottom of the pile is addressed in type on a brown envelope. A Toronto postmark.
Alex Smyth Author Bayport Lake Muskoka Ontario
Our postcode. Since the publication of my novel Sulphur, I have received three letters, written to me care of my publishers. Two readers called me a hero; the third, a woman in Vancouver, said my book made her physically ill.
In the kitchen, I take the paperknife.
CHAPTER 4According to most dictionaries, the word trout is used to describe a number of species of freshwater and saltwater fish belonging to a subset of the salmon family. The colour of trout reflects the environment they inhabit: in the sea, these fish look silvery, whereas in rivers their appearance is much darker.
By some estimates, fifty-two different trout varieties have been recorded. The brown trout is the only trout native to Ireland. He is among the most aggressive of the species and, as spawning time approaches, he will defend his territory with fury.
"They're very excited; they really want to get behind you."
Two days have gone by and Jerry Fisher has driven from Toronto. His expression is one of keen anticipation as Kay fills his glass from a pitcher of her homemade lemonade. Kay likes Jerry, she told me after she had first met him. Now he gives her a big smile, sips the drink and smacks his lips.
"Thank you, ma'am!"
Jerry is small and round, with a scrunched-up, weather-beaten face from four decades of sailing on Lake Ontario. Whenever he phones me, he uses his tone to convey the reality of my literary prospects. A downbeat opening, Oh, hello, Alex, so that at first I wondered if he had suffered a personal misfortune, paves the way for news of rejections; whereas, Alex!, a cry of joy, can only mean that the omens are promising.
"Yes, this is a fantastic opportunity," Jerry says and puts down his glass.
He's been stoking the interest of an editor in a mid-size New York publishing house and now has a contract in his sights. A few days ago I would have relished this news.
"Apart from the money, what will be involved?"
Light bends through the birch trees in a golden arc. Jerry leans forward.
"I guess nobody's going to pay ten grand without a whole host of people in-house committing themselves to promoting you in a major, major way. It's what every author at your stage dreams of."
"What sort of promotion?"
Jerry chuckles.
"They're not going to hand over the money and let you go fishing."
Fear surges from deep within me.
"Let me think about it."
Jerry can't hide his surprise. "Think about it?"
"I'm quite a private person."
"I'm sure Alex just wants an idea of what he might be getting into," Kay says, and her green eyes flash as she shoots me a look.
All at once Jerry is uncertain of what's happening. "It's like what he's done already, only more," he says to her in a wheedling tone.
What I've done already involved an article in the Charlton Gazette, an interview with a Vancouver-based literary magazine and a tiny get-together — to call it a launch would be ridiculous — in a bookshop in Toronto, where twenty people drank budget wine and I signed some books. Jerry begins to describe what a low-to-mid-level publicity campaign in New York might require.
"You grew up in Ireland, right? I mean, how else could someone write a great book like this? That whole business about the boy out fishing with his father — unforgettable. That's what they want to hear!"
CHAPTER 5The shrimp is a shy and furtive creature that lives on the riverbed. Greenish in colour, it clings to stones with its tiny legs, back hunched, its head down. When the trout wants a shrimp that is crawling along the bottom of the river, he must shovel it off with the flat side of his mouth.
The lake is still bright at Roger's Quay, where for years I have rented a covered berth — a space in a long shed on a jetty with an electric hoist to lift my boat clear in winter.
Jerry had left earlier. Although we'd agreed to meet soon in Toronto, it was obvious he was unhappy. I helped Kay tidy away the glasses.
"I'm going to check the boat," I said, but she turned away. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong? What's wrong is that we sold up in Toronto and came here so that you could write. Now most of our savings are gone, but when you get the kind of break we were praying for and your agent comes to talk about how to promote you, you act like you're autistic."
Beneath the spaced wooden jetty boards, the water twinkles. Boats are still coming in from the islands. This place is cold and dead in winter, but from now on it will sing with activity.
A man emerges from a berth. He is broad-shouldered, dressed in blue overalls, and his ink-black hair is tied in a ponytail, the way a lot of the Ojibwes wear it. I've never been able to gauge Keith's age from his deeply creased brown face, but he has to be at least fifty.
"Mr. Smyth."
"Keith, how are things?"
"Good." Keith is a man of few words. "Boat's all set."
He can turn his hand to anything, the opposite of me. On his time off, for a few bucks he'll come over and do odd jobs around the house.
"I might take her out later," I say.
"Keel's good as new."
Maid of Kerry, my white-hulled, twenty-foot launch, has high bows, a spray-hood and a windscreen. Forward of the cockpit is a semicircular bench done in imitation white leather. The head of a ninety-horsepower Evinrude shines above the stern.
"Looks great."
"Thanks," Keith says.
There's a story from way back about how Keith once did time in a juvenile prison, south of Chatham on Lake Erie, for trafficking in contraband cigarettes. Seems he worked there on a boat for old Danny Forman, whose son now owns the business here in Roger's. When Keith got out of prison, Danny gave him a job.
"Seen any strangers?" I ask casually.
Keith's dark eyes fasten. "A few cottage people back."
"But no one hanging around."
"You expectin' someone?"
There's another dimension to Keith, a different person who occasionally steps into view.
"You know that book I gave you?"
"Sure." Keith scratches his head. "Kinda started it, but ..."
"Sometimes you get reporters. Trying to find out about writers, looking for a story."
"You goin' to be famous, Mr. Smyth?"
Something mocks in Keith's slow smile.
"Hope not. But you never know — you could get someone poking around."
"Want me to keep a lookout?"
"Just in case." I make myself smile. "Best be ready."
"Like they say," Keith says, "no smoke without a fire."
CHAPTER 6Put yourself into the mind of a trout, braced against the current of the river, two fathoms down. Suddenly, up in the bright air dome something changes: a shadow splits the light above your head. What do you do? Memory deep as oceans clutches at you. All you can think of is survival. What do you do? You do nothing. In the cool recess of the bank you wait. You sit it out. If you stay down here the danger will disappear. You do nothing.
Kay lifts her easel from the box room where it has spent the winter, and her palette, and brings them out to the porch with a canvas, a box of paint tubes, brushes and white spirit. Tim is with the Echenozes, our neighbours, whose son Pierre is eight years old. The wind has gone south. Across the fence Dimitri Echenoz is barbecuing.
Over the years Kay has tried to paint indoors, but has never liked it. And whereas she seldom paints what she sees, her thickly layered and richly coloured oils hailing from deep in her psyche, it is only out of doors that she can find her stimulation. She spins the wing-screws that adjust the easel's legs, secures the canvas, assembles the brushes and jars on a low table and begins.
As she paints, she tries to relax. She has been worried about our marriage for some time. Over the years, when I have become depressed, when an inner turmoil has overcome me, when I have been prey to nightly panic attacks and feel I am being suffocated, she has urged me to go into analysis, but I have always resisted. When Gavin, our son, grew up and we moved to Milton, we both had careers that ate up our days and often our weekends, but we valued our time together. We were financially secure. That was before I took early retirement. Now, in Muskoka, we spend most of our days under each other's feet and have to watch every dollar. We seldom have sex more than once a month.
She thought that writing the novel would be a catharsis for me, that it would amount to a form of self-analysis that might help me come to terms with my problems. It seems the opposite has happened; I have become even more eccentric. Today with Jerry Fisher was a new low, as if I had deliberately placed at risk everything I have worked toward. Kay grits her teeth. She doesn't know how much longer she can take it.
Since we moved to Muskoka, our lives have become more isolated. At least in Toronto we had professional friends and colleagues, but here, in this lake wilderness, she realises, there is no one to turn to.
When she begins to paint, Kay seldom does so with any fixed idea. Even at the moment when the loaded brush meets the canvas, her mind is divided: one part guides her hand, the other sorts, analyses, and files away matters that until now were circling in the air. She extends the line downwards in a graceful curve.
We got married when we were nineteen years old, children, something she often thinks about now and wonders once more if our decision was a mistake. Neither of us knew anything about life, or what we did know amounted to so little. She wonders about the huge gamble we took and, in the process, the great potential she may have left behind.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Trout"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Peter Cunningham.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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