"‘I haven’t
heard you laughing.’
‘I’m laughing
on the inside.’
Then she
turned to look at him with determined inquisitiveness. A disquieting pause
preceded her question. ‘Are you sure everything is all right? After we talked
this morning, you seemed a bit upset.’
‘Not at all,‘
he lied. ‘It’s all good.’
He wanted to
spin the interview on its head, turn the spotlight back on Cassy. A surge of
vindictiveness surfaced and stood ready to ride the wave of his next words. As
it waited, perched in acrimony, Angus hoped there was no corresponding change
in his face.
‘You accused
me of having an affair and I denied it so we’re all good.’
‘I didn’t
accuse you.’
‘It sounded
like an accusation,’ said Angus, steeling himself for the argument. ‘What would
you call it? You asked me if I was having an affair. What would you call that
if not an accusation?’
Cassy stared at Angus, her skin flushing on her cheeks and neck."
Lovesick Chapter 21
"‘Anyway, I remember Samantha invited me to her place and we sat on her
bed, with the door open of course, at her mother’s insistence, and we talked
and listened to INXS and Split Enz. I asked if she wanted to go for a walk in
the nearby Camelia Gardens. After gaining reluctant permission from her mother
we walked there from her place and found a park bench in a quiet shady corner.
Suddenly I became nervous as though the change of location and the shaking off
of parental supervision might require something more of me. I wondered if she
expected me to do anything, and if so, what? The silence was weird and
unnerving…"
Lovesick Chapter 27
Despite the presence of the prefix dis-which normally denotes a negative,
quiet and disquiet are not opposites. Quiet is a nice adjective (oh no not ‘nice’
again) whereas disquiet, a noun, is not a good thing-unless you like feeling uneasy.
The two words are however related in an interesting way: Quiet is external and although it mostly relates to silence, people
often speak of seeking peace and quiet. Disquiet suggests inner turmoil, in other words, a lack of peace. If
quiet, that is, a lack of noise, is desirable, then disquiet is a lack of internal
quiet. When people speak of feeling
peaceful, they mean they feel quiet inside.
I told you it was an interesting relationship. Do you know any other examples of such relationships?
