As to the story itself, I thought it beautifully written, particularly the dialogue, and moving. I had better add that I did not even remotely countenance the possibility of incestuous relationships nor that the Kinsellas were related to the girl’s mother. (In the book she has no name, and I don’t think she even gets referred to as ‘petal’.)

That, coupled, with Petal calling her foster parent “Daddy,” shows she has grown under her foster parents’ care and learned the distinction between the person she calls “Da,” and what a very caring father figure can be like.

Petal’s relationship with Kinsella _is_ “sexual,” in the way that a father holding his daughter’s hands, hugging her, praising her body, and putting her on his lap is “sexual.” There are healthy father-daughter relationships, and unhealthy ones. Kinsella modeled a healthy one, and “Da” did not.

Only in contrast with the chaste frigidity of “Da” does Kinsella’s warmth seem excessively sexual. Isn’t it weird that a girl has never held her father’s hands? In this context, when that girl lovingly holds a man’s hands for the first time, it must feel extraordinary good, and maybe even sexual (in a good way).

Petal’s betrayal can be adulterated, and interpreted as adultery. She betrays her parents by falling in love with the Kinsellas. She hides this fostered love from her parents like an adulterous woman hiding her affair. Since adultery and sexuality is a common rubric for adult understanding of amorous betrayal, the reader can graft that rubric onto this story, along with the sexual baggage.

You feel the calm of the household and the security, reassurance it will give the girl even before she does – “We walk through into the heat of the kitchen, where I am told to sit down, to make myself at home. Under the smell of baking, there’s some disinfectant, some bleach. She lifts a rhubarb tart out of the oven and puts it on the bench. Pale-yellow roses are as still as the jar of water they are standing in.” You know the people are civilized and generous there – “He opens a jar of beetroot and puts it on a saucer with a little serving fork, leaves out sandwich spread and salad cream. Already there’s a bowl of tomatoes and onions, chopped fine, a fresh loaf, ham, a block of red cheddar” – and that she will have a respite from the coarse lovelesness of her home.

I was tremendously relieved to learn of the boy’s accidental drowning, as it cut off the possibility of anything truly sinsiter as the cause of the only disturbing, dysfunctional instinct of either of the Kinsella’s, the woman’s reluctance to buy suitable clothes for the girl.

It never occured to me that there was anything sexual, expresed or not, in the feelings between the girl and Kinsella. I felt the only ambiguity at the end was whether her father, walking strongly toward her and Kinsella, would reclaim her out of some pride, certainly he could not from love, or let her go back to her new-found home.

I thought it was clear the Kinsellas are not related but by distant marriage to Petal’s father – “He looks nothing like my mother’s people, who are all tall, with long arms, and I wonder if we have not come to the wrong house” – and that the woman and her mother are relations – “Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them, too, something I have never felt before and have no name for.”

I read it straight through the first time in one sitting and then various parts over and over, the first time in ages I’ve done that with short fiction. Yesterday went and found one of Keegan’s two collections, “Walk the Blue Fields”, which has a harrowing story in which incest does play a major role. Like “Foster” it is powerful but unlike here the language there is short and hard, you feel the dry hollowed insides of the protagonist/narrator’s consciousness. Keegan is remarkably skillful.

“Petal” is a common Irish term of endearment… my wee Petal! I doubt the adults in the story are related – if they were, John and Edna would be Uncle John and Aunt Edna. I even refer to my great aunt’s as such… and it is common in Ireland to do so. I think maybe that they are cousins.

I do not believe the relationship was incestuous. I believe it was affection, love, and the power of touch to heal and bond. (Affection that Petal never received from her own father – he had never held her hand.) The bond between John and Petal helped mend his broken heart from the loss of his son.

I think Petal’s blushing may have been due to her realizing, however subconsciously, that maybe she has betrayed her mother by having feelings of affection and/or love, for John and Edna. Her mother no doubt senses this shift as well. I also wonder about Petal’s cold? Was it a delay tactic so as not to be retuned to her family?

I loved all the characters in the story and ‘felt’ for each of them. The father who just couldn’t help himself, his wife who did her best with what she had, and the Kinsellas who had lost so much but still had so much to give.

The ending where Petal refers to John as Daddy is to differentiate between her real father, (Da) and the man whom she wishes were.

I am already looking forward to revisiting ‘Foster’ as the days and weeks go by and taking delight in reading each and every word again!

Now, as I said, it’s now been a while since I read the story, and while I remember it well, I remember it in the way I read it. If there’s more than a slight intimation of sexual energy in their relationship, it flew by me then. Though I read it twice a few weeks ago, I see I must read it again! And more and more I’m looking forward to the longer version.