they? When it comes to it? They can do things, and they know that I can’t.
‘
You weren’t bright enough to be educated,
’
the goblin said, happily repeating the old truths.
‘
And you weren’t maternal enough to be allowed to keep your baby … and Rose just laughed when you wanted to help with the war effort. They don’t like you. You just get in the way. You’re tiresome …’
‘I’m tiresome even to myself!’ Julia cried out loud on the seafront. Then, ‘For goodness sake, Julia, throw that goblin in the sea!’ She’d unclip its nasty long nails from her shoulder and untangle it from her hair, silence its wheedling voice, and stop it from constantly turning her mind backwards. She pictured it with long tentacles reaching down through her ear into her blood, down to her heart and belly, enveloping them and growing, sinking into them like ivy round a rock; roots, feeding. A network.
How painful it would be to pull them out. And how beautiful.
She had an image of the goblin uprooted and surprised, blowing away from her in the restless wind off the sea, tumbling down the path, hurled and gusted against the rocks, where it would break and smash. Or from the deck of a boat: one twirl, and into the briny, to sink with the weight of its own nastiness. Or she’d throw it in the path of a long low car and watch it splatter under the wheels, all its poison draining out, etiolated, flaccid and dying.
Does everybody have them? Does everyone fight themselves all day and all night inside their own head?
She took off her hat, and spread her arms as she leant on the railing, looking out into the Atlantic, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders a little. The scent of salt and juniper was clean, aromatic and invigorating; the snow-capped Pyrenees gleamed in the south. The sunshine played on her neck, warm and delicious – but she had to put her hat back on. She could not allow sun on her face. The doctors had agreed.
So it is
,
she thought,
that we learn to appreciate things when we lose them.
No!
she thought.
Get rid of all that
.
Clean, new. Better. Do something better, be something better. Future! Toughen up!
*
Across the road, a tall blond American officer was watching her. The town was still full of soldiers waiting to be shipped home, exhausted, hysterical, victorious, in a party mood in this busy town. Teddy Roosevelt had just been, General Pershing turned up; the King was expected. The mayor was a charming chap – Monsieur Petit – with a beard and black eyes, honest, energetic, full of plans for his town. It was terribly clean. The ghosts of pre-war glamour infused the mayor’s rebuilding programmes, and all the French were in love with both the English and the Yanks.
The American had been amusing himself with days at the Hippodrome de la Barre and outings to San Sebastien for the bullfight, cocktails back at the Rotonde, and nights at the Pavillon Royal or le Caveau, where Latin-Americans danced with Russian exiles, and undoubtedly there were Secret Service men in disguise. He was a New Yorker, accustomed to fun, and he found Europe droll. His service had been comparatively light, but he had seen enough. He was getting a little bored now.
He knew that she was Mrs Lucke, a war widow, respectable but mysterious, at Biarritz for her health. He had noticed her at the Grande Plage, sea bathing with her personal
baigneur
, her wide hat in place under a veil. The contrast of the revealed limbs and the hidden face had caught his eye. Then he had seen her in the foyer at the hot fountains and mud baths at Dax, and again at the Thermes Salins
,
where, according to the advertisements, the nervous, the insomniac, the weak, the irritable, the neuralgic or those in need of general healing after injury could take medicinal brine baths, with heliothantic physiotherapy, and massage. He wondered which of those she was – if any. Anyone can benefit from attention – even paid-for attention – when they have had
‘
You weren’t bright enough to be educated,
’
the goblin said, happily repeating the old truths.
‘
And you weren’t maternal enough to be allowed to keep your baby … and Rose just laughed when you wanted to help with the war effort. They don’t like you. You just get in the way. You’re tiresome …’
‘I’m tiresome even to myself!’ Julia cried out loud on the seafront. Then, ‘For goodness sake, Julia, throw that goblin in the sea!’ She’d unclip its nasty long nails from her shoulder and untangle it from her hair, silence its wheedling voice, and stop it from constantly turning her mind backwards. She pictured it with long tentacles reaching down through her ear into her blood, down to her heart and belly, enveloping them and growing, sinking into them like ivy round a rock; roots, feeding. A network.
How painful it would be to pull them out. And how beautiful.
She had an image of the goblin uprooted and surprised, blowing away from her in the restless wind off the sea, tumbling down the path, hurled and gusted against the rocks, where it would break and smash. Or from the deck of a boat: one twirl, and into the briny, to sink with the weight of its own nastiness. Or she’d throw it in the path of a long low car and watch it splatter under the wheels, all its poison draining out, etiolated, flaccid and dying.
Does everybody have them? Does everyone fight themselves all day and all night inside their own head?
She took off her hat, and spread her arms as she leant on the railing, looking out into the Atlantic, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders a little. The scent of salt and juniper was clean, aromatic and invigorating; the snow-capped Pyrenees gleamed in the south. The sunshine played on her neck, warm and delicious – but she had to put her hat back on. She could not allow sun on her face. The doctors had agreed.
So it is
,
she thought,
that we learn to appreciate things when we lose them.
No!
she thought.
Get rid of all that
.
Clean, new. Better. Do something better, be something better. Future! Toughen up!
*
Across the road, a tall blond American officer was watching her. The town was still full of soldiers waiting to be shipped home, exhausted, hysterical, victorious, in a party mood in this busy town. Teddy Roosevelt had just been, General Pershing turned up; the King was expected. The mayor was a charming chap – Monsieur Petit – with a beard and black eyes, honest, energetic, full of plans for his town. It was terribly clean. The ghosts of pre-war glamour infused the mayor’s rebuilding programmes, and all the French were in love with both the English and the Yanks.
The American had been amusing himself with days at the Hippodrome de la Barre and outings to San Sebastien for the bullfight, cocktails back at the Rotonde, and nights at the Pavillon Royal or le Caveau, where Latin-Americans danced with Russian exiles, and undoubtedly there were Secret Service men in disguise. He was a New Yorker, accustomed to fun, and he found Europe droll. His service had been comparatively light, but he had seen enough. He was getting a little bored now.
He knew that she was Mrs Lucke, a war widow, respectable but mysterious, at Biarritz for her health. He had noticed her at the Grande Plage, sea bathing with her personal
baigneur
, her wide hat in place under a veil. The contrast of the revealed limbs and the hidden face had caught his eye. Then he had seen her in the foyer at the hot fountains and mud baths at Dax, and again at the Thermes Salins
,
where, according to the advertisements, the nervous, the insomniac, the weak, the irritable, the neuralgic or those in need of general healing after injury could take medicinal brine baths, with heliothantic physiotherapy, and massage. He wondered which of those she was – if any. Anyone can benefit from attention – even paid-for attention – when they have had
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