The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble

Author:Margaret Drabble [Drabble, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Ailsa, sitting in an old ladies' tearoom in Ornemouth with a cup of stewed and acrid tea, stiff with tannin, believed that she could recall almost verbatim that long-ago conversation about goodness and badness. Such a puzzling evening, with such a strange outcome. Had she intended to seduce him? Poor Humphrey, poor good Humphrey. Even his name was virtuous. A comfortable, old-fashioned, virtuous name. Whereas Ailsa was sharp and rocky and washed with icy spume. Ailsa was a weatherbeaten sail, putting out to sea. Ailsa Kelman, Ailsa Craig.

The tea was the colour of red Devonian mud, and as thick as poster paint. She shuddered as she sipped.

Was this the tearoom that had once been the Copper Kettle, where her parents had sometimes taken tea and scones? It had relabelled itself the Periwinkle, but was not otherwise much altered, and the familiar façade of Longbone and Son, Grocers, still occupied a large stretch of the frontage across the road.

She had not seduced him that night, nor he her. Instead, they had 'fallen in love'. This was not what had been intended.

The courtship had proceeded along conventional lines to its unconventional denouement. She had taken more of the initiative than was usual for women at that period, but that was because her status as grisette and woman about town justified it, indeed in a manner dictated it. Her boldness, in those early days, was only body deep, and in herself, deep in herself, as she later tried to explain to her analyst, she had been frightened. 'I was such a mixture of cowardice and confidence. I would hype myself up and psych myself up and perform, and then I would go home and cry. I had to throw myself at things,' said Ailsa, 'or I couldn't do it at all.'

Like the salmon going up the falls.

And so she had thrown herself at Humphrey Clark.

Ailsa stared at her undrinkable tea, and at the common pattern of the cheap pale green teashop crockery. Eau de Nil, was that the name of that unpleasing colour? Jacques Cousteau had made a film about the sources of the Nile. She had watched it, long ago, with Humphrey.

Tears rose to her eyes, and the waters threatened to break and spill over.

Prince Rupert's tears, St Cuthbert's beads.

So hard, so fragile, so old, so indissolubly frail.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.