The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien Page B

canes and Moira, the daughter of the house, had invited me over to pick some. He came in with another man and spoke to us and he asked me what I wanted to be. I said a poet maybe, because I had written little verses. He said he would set me up as a lady of letters later on. He waited three years before he asked my family if he could take me out. They were very surprised. He worked in a bank, whereas we were very poor, we scraped all our lives. He and I would go for walks by the river and in time he proposed. The way he did it was that he asked me to meet him, along with a friend of his that also worked in the bank, at lunchtime and it was there, on the steps, that he said to his companion, “This is my intended Donal,” then looked at me for an answer. The engagement was announced in the Social and Personal column of the papers. My parents were too shy to come to the wedding in Dublin that was in a beautiful church, I had awhite dress and a tiara of orange blossom. You see, I was heartless then, I had gone up in the world, I didn’t think too much about my poor parents, nor visit enough when they were sick and when they were dying. I had cut myself off. I remember the skeleton of a rotting horse that died on us, its bones bleaching in the field and somehow my parents are mixed in with it and shut out. But I changed with time. At first I did not want a child, but as time went on the longing grew in me. One day I was on an aeroplane going to London and beside me was a mother with an infant on her lap. She was from the north of Ireland, but her husband was from Fiji, he was one of the small platoon of foreigners serving in the British army there. The child had this gaze that I shall never forget. It looked so beautiful and so knowing, it was a half-caste, the skin brown and creamy and the mother said to me, “You’ve hypnotised it,” and I said, “No, it’s hypnotised me.” I wanted to stroke it, I almost wanted to eat it and then I put my index finger out and its fingers gripped mine and began to suck, all the time gazing with this beautiful understanding smile and for the rest of the journey it was like that, staring at me and I staring back and I thought if I could have this child, my life would be different, my life would be full. It would break my husband’s heart if he knew I was here telling you this.’
*
She came out of the bathroom, her hair unpinned, wearing her own lilac-coloured dressing gown and not one of the towelling robes that were in a pile on a stool. The bedroom was almost dark. Small candles flickered on a tall bureau and in the grateunder logs pencils of light pulsed and gave to the brass fire dogs a brazen reddish tint.
‘First Science, then Eros,’ he said as he stood above her and with an instrument, began to trace what he called her neuron path, the chakras from the crown of her head to her frontal cortex, her earlobes, her throat, her chest and her belly. Afterwards, he poured freezing drops of oil over each point, allowing the heat of her body to melt it. Then turning her over onto her face, he ran a hot mocha stick over her vertebrae, hot to the point of burning. It was not how she had imagined it and it was not how she wanted it. She was his patient, his puppet. Once again, he turned her over and as she lay on her back, he blindfolded her with a black scarf that smelt of verbena. With a pendulum, he searched for the different energies she emanated. Not once did he touch her. She put her hand out to be held and when it wasn’t, she pulled the scarf off and asked what was he so afraid of.
‘Afraid of?’ It nettled him.
‘It isn’t right,’ she said.
‘What do you mean it isn’t right, Mrs McBride?’
‘It’s an experiment … you feel nothing … all you have is your power and your pendulum.’
‘It’s a procedure,’ he said coldly.
‘It’s a very bizarre procedure … are you afraid of love, is that it?’
‘Why should I be afraid of love?’ he said and drew back as if