by Edna O'Brien
When she turned thirty, her husband had her portrait painted; it was in their sitting room at that very moment, watching him and Rita, unless he had turned it around, or unless Rita had splashed house paint over it. Rita was unruly, it seemed. Rita’s jealousy was more drastic than the occasional submarines of jealousy Mrs. Reinhardt had experienced in their seventeen years of marriage—then it was over women roughly her own age, women with poise, women with husbands, women with guile, women who made a career of straying but were back in their homes by six o’clock. Being jealous of Rita was a more abstract thing—they had met only once and that was on the steps of a theater. Rita had followed him there, run up the steps, handed him a note, and run off again. Being jealous of Rita was being jealous of youth, of freedom, and of spontaneity. Rita did not want marriage or an engagement ring. She wanted to go to Florence, she wanted to go to a ball, to go to the park on roller skates. Rita had a temper. Once at one of her father’s soirées she threw twenty gold chairs out the window. If they had had a daughter, things might now be different. And if their son lived at home, things might now be different. Four people might have sat down at a white table, under a red umbrella, looked out at a brown lake, whose color was dimmed by the cluster of trees and saplings. There might be four glasses, one with Coca-Cola, one or maybe two with whiskey, and hers with white wine and soda water. A young voice might say, “What is that?” pointing to a misshapen straw basket on a wooden plinth in the middle of the lake, and as she turned her attention to discern what it was, and as she decided that it was a nest for either swans or ducks, the question would be repeated with a touch of impatience—“Mam, what is that?” and Mrs. Reinhardt might be answering. Oh my, yes, the family tableau smote her.
So transported back was she, to the hotel and a united family, that Mrs. Reinhardt was like a sleepwalker traversing the rocks that were covered with moss and then the wet sand between the rocks. She was making her way toward the distant crags. On the sand there lay caps of seaweed so green, and so shaped like the back of a head, that they were like theatrical wigs. She looked down at one, she bent to pore over its greenness, and when she looked up, he was there. A man in his mid-twenties in a blue shirt with lips parted seemed to be saying something pleasant to her, though perhaps it was only hello, or hi there. He had an American accent. Had they met in a cocktail bar or at an airport lounge, it is doubtful that they would have spoken, but here the situation called for it. One or the other had to express or confirm admiration for the sea, the boats, the white houses on the far side, the whiteness of the light, the vista; and then quite spontaneously he had to grip her wrist and said, “Look, look,” as a bird dived down into the water, swooped up again, redived until he came up with a fish.
“A predator,” Mrs. Reinhardt said, his hand still on her wrist, casually. They argued about the bird; she said it was a gannet and he said it was some sort of hawk. She said sweetly that she knew more about wildlife than he did. He conceded. He said if you came from Main Street, Iowa, you knew nothing, you were a hick. They laughed.
As they walked back along the shore, he told her how he had been staying farther up with friends and had decided to move on because one never discovers anything except when alone. He’d spend a night or two and then move on, and eventually he would get to Turkey. He wasn’t doing a grand tour or a gastronomic tour, he was just seeing the wild parts of Brittany and had found a hotel on the other side that was hidden from everybody. “The savage side,” he said.
By the time she had agreed to have a crepe with him, they had exchanged those standard bits of information. He confessed that he didn’t speak much French. She confessed that she’d taken a crammer course and was even thinking of spending three months in Paris to do a cookery course. When they went indoors she removed her headscarf and he was caught at once by the beauty of her brown pile of hair. Some hidden urge of vanity made her toss it as they looked for a table.
“Tell me something,” he said, “are you married or not?”
“Yes and no …” She had removed her wedding ring and put it in the small leather box that snapped when one shut it.
He found her reply intriguing. Quickly she explained that she had been but was about not to be. He reached out but did not touch her, and she thought that there was something exquisite in that, that delicate indication of sympathy. He said quietly how he had missed out on marriage and on kids. She felt that he meant it. He said he had been a wildcat, and whenever he had met a nice girl he had cheated on her and lost her. He could never settle down.
“I’m bad news,” he said, and laughed, and there was something so impish about him that Mrs. Reinhardt was being won over.
On closer acquaintance she had to admit that his looks were indeed flawless. So perhaps his character was not as terrible as be had made out. She pressed him to tell her things, boyish things like his first holiday in Greece, or his first girl, or his first guitar, and gradually she realized she was becoming interested in these things although in them there was nothing new. It was the warmth really and the way he delighted in telling her these things drat made Mrs. Reinhardt ask for more stories. She was like someone who has been on a voyage and upon return wants to hear everything that has happened on land. He told her that he had made a short film that he would love her to see. He would fly home for it that night if only he could! It was a film about motorcycling and he had made it long before anyone else had made a film about it, or written a book about it. He told her some of the stories. Scenes at dusk in a deserted place when a man gets a puncture and says, “What the hell does it matter …” as he sits down to take a smoke. She sensed a purity in him alongside everything else. He loved the desert, he loved the prairie, but yes, he had lived on women and he had drunk a lot and he had slept rough and he had smoked every kind of weed under the sun, and he wished he had known Aldous Huxley, that Aldous Huxley had been his dad.
“Still searching,” he said.
“It’s the fashion now,” she said a little dryly.
“Hey, let’s get married,” he said, and they clapped hands and both pretended it was for real. Both acted a little play; it was the • same as if someone had come into the room and said, “Do it for real, kids.” In jest, their cheeks met; in jest, their fingers interlocked; in jest, their knuckles mashed one another’s; and in jest, they stood up, moved onto the small dance area, and danced as closely as Siamese twins might to the music from the jukebox. In jest, or perhaps not, Mrs. Reinhardt felt through the beautiful folds of her oyster dress the press of his sexuality, and round and round and round they danced, the two jesting betrothed people, who were far from home and who had got each other into such a spin of excitement How thrilling it was and how rejuvenating to dance round and round and feel the strength and the need of this man pushing closer and closer to her while still keeping her reserve. On her face the most beautiful ecstatic smile. She was smiling for herself. He did slide his other hand on her buttock, but Mrs. Reinhardt just shrugged it off. The moment the dancing stopped they parted.
Soon after they sat down, she looked at her tiny wristwatch, peered at it, and at once he flicked on his blue plastic lighter so that she could read the tiny black insectlike hands. Then he held the lighter in front of her face to admire her, to admire the eyes, the long nose, the sensual mouth, the necklace.
“Real,” he said, picking up the green beads that she herself had become so involved with and had been so intimate with.
“Think so,” she said, and regretted it instantly. After all, the world did abound in thieves and rogues, and ten thousand pounds was no joke to be carrying around. She had read of women such as she, who took up with men, younger men or older men, only to be robbed, stripped of their possessions, bled. She curdled within and suddenly invented for herself a telephone call back at the hotel. When she excused herself, he rose chivalrously, escorted her through the door, down the steps, and across the gravel path to the car park. They did not kiss good night.
In the morning the
world was clean and bright. There had been rain and everything got washed, the water mills, the ducks, the roses, the trees, the lupins, and the little winding paths. The little winding paths, of course, were strewn with white, pink, and pale-blue blossoms. The effect was as of seeing snow when she opened the windows, leaned out, and broke a rose that was still damp and whose full smell had not been restored yet. Its smell was smothered by the smell of rain, and that, too, was beautiful. And so were her bare breasts resting on the window ledge. And so was life, physical well-being, one’s own body, roses, encounter, promise, the dance. She drew back quickly when she saw that there Monsieur was, down below, idly hammering a few nails into a wall. He seemed to be doing this to make a trellis for the roses, but he was in no hurry as he looked in her direction. He had a knack of finding her no matter where she was. The night before, as she drove back late, he was in the car park to say that they had kept her a table for dinner. He had brought a spare menu in his pocket. The big black dog looked up, too. Somehow her own whiteness and the milklikeness of her breasts contrasted with the blackness of the dog, and she saw them detached, yet grouped together in a very beautiful painting, opposites, one that was long and black with a snout, and one that was white and like the globe of a lamp. She liked that picture and would add it to the pictures that she had seen during the years she sleepwalked. She sleepwalked no longer. Life was like that, you dreamed a lot, or you cried a lot, or you itched a lot, and then it disappeared and something else came in its place.
Mrs. Reinhardt dawdled. She put on one dress, then another, she lifted a plate ashtray and found a swarm of little ants underneath; she took sparkling mineral water from the refrigerator, drank it, took two of her iron tablets, and by a process of association pulled her lower eyelid down to see if she was still anemic. She realized something wonderful. For whatever number of minutes it had been, she had not given a thought to Mr. Reinhardt, and this was the beginning of recovery. That was how it happened, one forgot for two minutes and remembered for twenty. One forgot for three minutes and remembered for fifteen, but as with a pendulum the states of remembering and the states of forgetting were gradually equalized, and then one great day the pendulum had gone over and the states of forgetting had gained a victory. What more did a woman want? Mrs. Reinhardt danced around the room, leaped over her bed, threw a pillow in the air, and felt as alive and gay as the day she got engaged and knew she would live happily ever after. What more did a woman want? She wanted this American, although he might be a bounder. He might not. She would have him, but in her own time and to suit her own requirements. She would not let him move into her hotel apartment because the privacy of it was sacred. In fact, she was beginning to enjoy herself. Think of it, she could have coffee at noon instead of nine-thirty, she could eat an éclair, she could pluck her eyebrows, she could sing high notes and low notes, she could wander.
“Freedom!” Mrs. Reinhardt told the lovely supple woman in the flowered dressing gown who smiled into the long mirror while the other Mrs. Reinhaidt told the lovely woman that the mirabelle she had drunk the night before was still swishing through her brain.
After breakfast she walked in the woods. Crossing a little plaited bridge, she took off her sandals and tiptoed so as not to disturb the sounds and activities of nature. It was the darkest wood she had ever entered. All the trees twined overhead, so that it was a vault with layer upon layer of green. Ferns grew in wizard abundance, and between the ferns other things strove to be seen, while all about were the butterflies and the insects. Mushrooms and toadstools flourished at the base of every tree, and she knelt down to smell them. She loved their dank smell. The air was pierced with birdsong of every note and every variety as the birds darted across the ground or swooped up into the air. This fecundity of nature, this chorus of birds and the distant cooing of the doves from the dovecote, thrilled her and presently something else quickened her desires. The low, suggestive, all-desiring whistle of a male reached her ears. She had almost walked over him. He could see her bare legs under her dress. She drew back. He was lying down with his shirt open. He did not rise to greet her.
“You,” she said.
He put up his foot in salutation. She stood over him, trying to decide whether his presence was welcome or an intrusion.
“Amazing,” he said, and held his hands out, acceding to the abundance of nature about him. He apologized for his presence but said that he had cycled over to see her just to say hello, he had brought her some croissants hot from the oven, but upon hearing she was sleeping, he decided to have a ramble in the woods. He had fed the croissants to the birds. He used some French words to impress her and she laughed and soon her petulance was washed away. After all, they were not her woods, and he had not knocked on her bedroom door, and she would have been disappointed if he had cycled off without seeing her. She spread her dress like a cushion underneath her and sat, folding her legs to the other side. It was then they talked. They talked for a long time. They talked of courage, the different courage of men and women. The courage when a horse bolts or the car in front of one crashes, the draining courage of every day. She said men were never able to say “finito.” “Damn right,” he said, and the jargon struck her as comic compared with the peace and majesty of the woods.
“You smell good,” he would sometimes say, and that, too, belonged to another environment, but for the most part he impressed her with his sincerity and with the way he took his time to say the thing he wanted to say. Before the week was out she would lead him to her bed. It would be stark and it would be unexpected, an invitation tossed at the very last minute, as when someone takes a flower or a handkerchief, and throws it into the bullring. She would be unabashed, as she had not been for years. They stayed for about an hour, talking, and at times one or the other would get up, walk or run toward the little bridge, and pretend to take a photograph. Eventually they got up together and went to find his bicycle. He insisted that she cycle. After the first few wobbles she rode down the path and could hear him clapping. Then she got off, turned around, and rode back toward him. He said that next time she would have to stay on the bicycle while turning around, and she biffed him and said she had not ridden for years. Her face was flushed and bicycle oil had got on her skirt. For fun he sat her on the bar of the bicycle, put his leg across, and they set off down the avenue at a dizzying speed, singing, “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy, all for the love of you …”
He would not stop, even though she swore that she was going to fall off any minute.
“You’re O.K….” he’d say as he turned the next corner. In a while she stopped screaming and enjoyed the queasiness in her stomach.
Mrs. Reinhardt stood in the narrow shower, the disk of green soap held under one armpit, when she saw a rose branch being waved into the room. As in a mirage the petals randomly fell. Which of them was it? Him or Monsieur? She was feeling decidedly amorous. He climbed in through the window and came directly to her. He did not speak. He gripped her roughly, his own clothing still on, and he was so busy taking possession of her that he did not realize that he was getting drenched. The shower was full on, yet neither of them botherad to turn it off. The zipper of his trousers hurt her, but he was mindless of that. The thing is, he had desired her from the very first, and now he was pumping all his arrogance and all his cockatooing into her and she was taking it gladly, also gluttonously. She was recovering her pride as a woman, and much more, as a desirable woman. It was this she had sorely missed in the last ten months. Yet she was surprised by herself, surprised by her savage need to get even with life, or was it to get healed? She leaned against the shower wall, wet and slippery all over, and lolled so that every bit of her was partaking of him. She did not worry about him, though he did seem in quite a frenzy both to prove himself and to please her, and he kept uttering the vilest of words, calling her sow and dog and bitch, and so forth. She even thought that she might conceive, so radical was it, and the only other thought that came to her w
as of the lobsters and the lady lobster lying so still while all the others sought her.