Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page B

fearsome boulder ... I expect each has a significance for you, a hidden power. Those ponies, pretty and dappled, but wild ... wild and quite unpredictable. It must be common ground ... I noticed people — strays, youths, louts—and one or two caravans, much drabber than yours. To tell you the truth I am quite breathless .. .I have been over yonder for the last hour ... I saw that you were occupied ... I saw your sign—Do Not Disturb. Made myself scarce. The previous client ... I happen to know her. We are, neighbors. Her people's land abuts onto our avenue which of course is more exclusive what with our belt of trees, yews, and cypresses that have matured down the years. Good lady, I imagine that you are resting ... it stands to reason ... you are drained. When a young girl, may I say a buxom young convent girl such as your last client, comes for advice it is usually pertaining to matters of the heart Comprende. I hope you don't mind my sitting here and gabbling away ... it lessens the fret. I shall try to admire the surroundings ... though to be honest I would rather I were not observed. Matters of the heart must be strictly confidential. Comprende. I am Mildred ... wife of Gerhardt, Mr. Gentleman ... my maiden name was Butler ... we are descended from the House of the Ormonds ... our flower gardens and our fruit gardens were renowned — open on certain summer Sundays to the public whence teas were served in a little summerhouse. As a matter of fact Mr. Gentleman wooed me in the kitchen garden, in and out between the raspberry canes and the loganberry canes and the tall delphiniums. Many girls, it seems, had set their caps on him, this young and eligible barrister, set their caps on him to no avail. My yearning was for the stage ... how I loved the magic, the make-believe. Even at the age of six or seven when my mother took me to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for the pantomime and we sat in a box, I drank it all in—the orchestra, the miming, the intrigues, the dames, the villains, the skits and the ever-happy ending. My father would wait for us at his club in Stephen's Green, and we would have dinner in a very salubrious dining room. I played Desdemona in my boarding school ... Othello, well she/he was somewhat uncouth .. .ah yes, one who loved not wisely but too well. So when I met Gerhardt I was full of Desdemona but not for long. You see my heart went on a ninety-mile ... what is it called ... revolve. I lost my head. I waited for the ring of our garden bell. Oh what a chirpy sound from that big fat copper bell ...Mr. G. coming on any excuse, the flimsiest of excuses, in a suit, or in old dungarees and always when least expected ... how the heart registers these thunderbolts. I was much younger and younger still for my actual years ... yes, in and out between the raspberry canes, and the loganberry canes, and would you believe it our dog Hector got so jealous he would bark and chase Mr. Gentleman, in venom, and one day he took a great scoop out of the side of Mr. Gentleman's hand, kept his teeth there, and what did Gerhardt do ... he did a strange thing, a rather cruel thing—he kicked Hector, beat him into submission, and Hector became his friend ... Mr. Gentleman could handle beast or man or woman or girl In time he was welcomed indoors ... a sherry and so forth ... his pursuit of me was both adamant and subtle, which was why they thought him ideal. He always brought gifts — chocolate or cherry brandy truffles — he was one-eighth foreign, Normandy stock, which added to his mystique. He proposed in a country churchyard and it was dusk and there was not a soul about .. .just like the elegy— "the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea"—and he made a ring of grasses ...a magic ring, engagement and eternity so to speak. A couple of nights before our wedding he was in the library with my father ... they had become bosom friends or should I say bosom buddies—they played backgammon, they reminisced, they drank