August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien [O'Brien, Edna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780224609920
Publisher: Plume
Published: 1965-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

SHE WAS LYING LIKE that, dropping off to sleep when Gwyn came in, in her stocking feet, walking unsteadily with her hands in front, groping as if it were dark. It was quite bright.

‘Aren’t there any cigarettes?’ she said, and Ellen sat up and saw the face that had gone to bed early to look nice for Jason. In the penetrating afterstorm light her hair was thin and worn, like a cheap doll’s wig with the scalp showing through. Repeated bleachings had weakened it. Her face, because of the effort gone into preserving it, looked far older than a middle-aged face should.

‘There was a storm,’ Ellen said, to account for ornaments knocked over and broken.

‘Don’t be funny, it was a hurricane,’ Gwyn said, and looked around impatiently for cigarettes.

‘Behind you,’ Ellen pointed, and the woman turned and bent towards a low table where there were tipped cigarettes and kitchen matches. Holding the long match as a taper she trained it on the floor to see how far the water came across the room.

‘Go call the housekeeper, it’s like Venice in here,’ she said, but Ellen made no move.

‘And the whole goddam place smells of flowers,’ she said, sniffing. In the freshness the smell of flowers came from the garden and there were flowers also in vases all around.

‘Looks like a funeral parlour to me.’ She wandered from one vase to another, looking at the flowers’ faces, trying to identify them. ‘They lupins?’ she asked. A small bowl of misty blue flowers had been put there, it seemed, to match the blue of a stained-glass religious figure on the wall. She looked up at it. ‘Old Moses,’ she said defeated. Then she saw the nylon birds and screamed.

‘Holy Jesus.’ Instinctively she put her hands up to protect her eyes and her frail cotton-wool hair.

‘They don’t fly,’ Ellen said. They were small gay-coloured birds, made of cloth that resembled down. There were dozens of them throughout the room, perched on the rims of vases and window-ledges and on the curtains. Those on the curtains were hung so as to appear dead.

‘Boy, do I need a drink.’ Gwyn poured a very big vodka, added tomato juice and then ground pepper furiously into the drink.

‘A little fruit juice?’ she said to Ellen. But meant a drink.

‘Too early,’ Ellen said.

‘You’ll rue it, my girl,’ Gwyn said solemnly as she raised her glass to nothing and drank as if she’d been parched. She drank it right down in one draught and made herself another.

‘I don’t want to get drunk,’ Ellen said, peevish. Gwyn faced her, paused, ran her tongue over her front teeth and said, ‘You want to know something?’ For a minute it looked as if she was going to deliver a punch.

‘Yes,’ Ellen said, raising herself to kneeling position and balancing on the arm of the sofa.

‘The secret of not getting drunk is to drink all the time.’ She delivered the words slowly and surely as if it were the one thing in the world she was certain of.

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