Lantern Slides by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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IN THE MORNING things seemed quite different—sparkling. The sea was bright, like a mirror with the sun dancing on it, and there was nothing to stop her going down there and spending the whole day walking and breathing—getting rid of the cobwebs, as she put it. She would pack a basket and bring down her things. She would write cards to her sons and her friends; she would read, reread, and, after the few days, she would be something of her former self—cheerful, buoyant, outgoing.

The sand was a pale, biscuit colour that stretched way ahead of her—to the horizon, it seemed. The people dotted here and there were like figures in a primitive painting. Those in red stood out, both the toddlers and the grownups; red was the one splash of colour in this pale-gold, luminous universe. The sea was a baby blue and barely lapped. It seemed so gentle, not like the sea that roared and lashed, but like an infinite and glassy terrain that one might scud over. There were dogs too—the local dogs resenting the dogs that had come with the newcomers, snarling until they got to know them. Some people had erected little tents, obviously intending to settle for the day. Some walked far out to sea, and a few stalwarts were bathing or paddling. Although sunny, it was not yet a hot day. She would walk forever; she would gulp the air with her mouth and her whole being; she would resuscitate herself. Here and there, as she looked down at the sand, she would see empty cans, or seaweed, or little bits of sea holly in clumps—shivering but tenacious.

“I am walking all my bad temper away … I am walking my bad temper away,” she said, and thought, How perfect the isolation, the sense of being alone. She loved it—the near-empty seashore, the stretch of sand, the clouds racing so purposefully, and now the sea itself, which had changed colour as if an intemperate painter had just added blue and green and potent violet. The colors were in pockets, they were in patches, and even as she looked there were transmutations—actual rainbows in the water, shifting, then dissolving. She would walk forever. There wasn’t a boat or a steamer in sight. As she looked back at the town, its cluster of white cottages seemed like little rafts on a sea, on the sea of life, receding. People she met smiled or nodded, to compliment her on her stride, and the good thing was that she always saw them as they came towards her, so that she was not taken by surprise. Yet it was a jolt when a woman ran up to her and took her hand. She recognized Nelly from the short time when she had been a television announcer.

“You disappeared so suddenly,” the woman said, and Nelly nodded. She had given up her glamorous job for a man, even though she knew she was throwing in her lot with a black heart.

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