A Little Death by Laura Wilson

Author:Laura Wilson [Wilson, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Books Ltd
Published: 2003-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

EDMUND

I don’t understand women. I’d say I was like most chaps in that respect and in any case, one was never encouraged to look too deeply into these things, it only leads to morbidity. But I have always been fond of Louisa. Ever since I can remember, she’s been my – well, my pin-up girl, if you like to use these modern terms. When we were children, if I knew she was coming to see us, she and her brother, I’d look forward to it more than anything else. I’d wake up on that day and think: Louisa’s coming today, and I’d feel happy and excited. Special, you might say. Something special was going to happen. I don’t know why – why does any man prefer one girl to another? Not even the scientists know that and they seem to know everything else nowadays. Louisa had this wonderful soft hair and she was always smiling. You couldn’t say that she was elegant or beautiful like Georgie, but she had a kind face and her hair was nice and wispy. She’s still quite lovely now, only much older, of course – we all are. Everyone wants to talk to Louisa because she listens to what they say and she never laughs at anyone or says clever things to make them look foolish. Both men and women enjoy talking to her, I’ve noticed that. People don’t seem to like talking to Georgie much, I think she frightens them. She treats Louisa terribly, says dreadful things about her. Never to her face, of course. Louisa’s always been so kind to her, but sometimes I think Georgie’s got some demon inside her that can’t be silenced.

It’s no use wishing now, but one can’t help thinking if I had proposed to Louisa before I went to France and she had accepted me, everything would have been quite different. Louisa would have met Davy Kellway afterwards, of course, but she would have been my wife by then, so she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, or I suppose she wouldn’t. And even if she had taken a shine to him, nothing would have come of it because she would have been married to me.

But I didn’t have the confidence, certainly I never had the confidence of a chap like Davy, or Roland, or even Jimmy, come to that. Roland had confidence shining out of him. If he’d proposed to a girl it would simply never have occurred to him that she might turn him down. Wouldn’t have occurred to her either, I shouldn’t think. But I didn’t know if Louisa would … I didn’t know if she cared enough to marry me. I used to tell myself that it was all for the best. Suppose we’d been married and I’d lost a limb in the war, or been blinded, or had half my face shot away, what sort of a husband would I have been then? That was what I told myself, but it wasn’t the true reason.

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