‘There’s the line,’ John continued, ‘about the mortar and the pestle, the grinding, etcetera, of the grain. I know it’s a, well, sort of a joke, on your part, but he thought it was coming on a bit heavy.’

I was listening now. Even Queequeg couldn’t distract me and he was, currently, my hero.

Mother burst out laughing. ‘But that’s all deliberate!’ she said. ‘The whole poem is about the ludicrousness of those images, those symbols, and how people are too coy to just call a spade a spade.’

‘Yes, but you see, Veda, for McMannish, it goes too far. You go too far. In amassing those images, veiled or not, one after the other—even if you are sending them up, you make the whole thing weighted with, well, sex. He feels the poem stops being veiled and starts being lewd. He doesn’t like it. They don’t like it.’

Mother put her head in her hands, still laughing. ‘Oh god,’ she said.

‘I do agree with you,’ said John Honey. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Mother. She got her cigarettes out and lit one and I even thought for a moment she was going to throw her lit match down on the page proofs and watch them catch fire. But she didn’t. She kept looking through them, one-handed, as though seeking another insult. ‘I feel like I need to re-read the whole thing now,’ she said. ‘In case they’ve changed words, or whole lines, without telling me.’

‘Well, do read the whole thing! Of course you must. Read it through. Check it over. But I can assure you, they’ve touched nothing else.’

Mother folded the brown wrapping paper back over the stack of proofs and sat up straight, with her arms crossed and her hand smoking. ‘So, I’m just looking for typos then?’

John Honey blinked. ‘Mainly. But it’s your last chance to change anything. It’ll go to print and that will be it. You won’t have another chance.’

Mother nodded sagely.

‘Keep the changes down, though, Veda. We don’t want to give the buggers another reason to postpone.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Or complain.’

Mother ashed her cigarette with supreme contempt.

‘Hard not to want to tinker, I know,’ said John.

‘Well, I won’t. I’ll be disciplined, I promise. Might briefly revisit the sonnet, that’s all. Looking at it now, it’s a little under-baked.’

There was silence. Mother stubbed her cigarette out and took the coffee cups away without asking John Honey if he wanted more.

I went back to Moby Dick. Stubb secured his flat spade to its long handle and bunged it straight down into the head of a shark so blood spurted into the water.

‘How are you going there, son?’ said John Honey. He seemed to have forgotten I’d been there for the whole conversation. I wondered if he knew he’d said the word sex in front of me.

‘It’s a challenge, reading Moby Dick,’ said John. ‘You a prodigy like your mother, Owen?’