Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien

port or Armagnac—in those days I did not drink ... slept like a baby ... whereas now the evening tipple is mandatory. I overheard them speak of women—how much they loved women, idealized women—dilated on their necks, their sloping shoulders, their hindquarters, their ankles ... all very detached ... almost clinical ... my father did not mention my mother, Alannah, not once. Stressing how certain pieces of music reminded them of their trysts with certain women, either because the music was being played on a gramophone in some lady's drawing room or perhaps, some more ... obtuse reason, my dear mother ... so beholden. I could always tell when they had been intimate because next morning my father would be most imperious, quite snappy, munching his toast ... crumpling his newspaper, and my mother a trifle foolish and obliging. Yes I stood in the doorway half expecting my husband-to-be or my father to say "Ah Millie come in" but they didn't, either because they were so engrossed and did not see me or else they thought my presence was inappropriate. Madame I know you are resting ... each seance, each session, call it what you will, must take a lot out of you, reaching into the soul ofthe person and draining out the inmost secret, the kernel.
    Perhaps you are praying— "And death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be anymore." I regard myself lucky to have found you, to have tracked you down ... now where was I ... oh yes, oh yes our wedding ... it was beautiful ... it was written up in more than one daily newspaper ... the smell from the lily of the valley drenched the little country church in County Waterford ... our own lily of the valley at that—tiaras of it for the bridesmaids and bunches for the little maidens of honor—it was intoxicating ... a choir ... hymns ... me poured into my ivory slipper-satin. My husband could not take his eyes off me that June morning ...I should like for a moment to say something about my husband's eyes ... they are in the normal course of things, as he broods over his papers and his briefs, they are not unlike an oyster, which is to say that they are gray with a milkiness .. .but when, as for instance our wedding morning, when the dart of cupid has struck, they are opal, the merest hue of silver, limned with blue ... I saw them then and many other times and ... and I see them now and they are not on me and they are not for me and it is awful ... and it is awful. Our honeymoon was ... well it was sailing into the sunset ... pure bliss ... unadulterated bliss ... there is no other word quite so appropriate ... or so nuanced, devoid of affection and small talk. But which does one want more, bliss or affection, and moreover I had brought a stack ofbooks ... the Aegean Sea a palette of blues ... and all those guidebooks with tales of the ancients, the gods and the goddesses ... what spitfires they were ... with their intriguings ... always plotting to get the upper hand of one another ... if Hera liked you, Athena didn't, and Juno marrying her own brother Jupiter, who wooed her in the guise of a cuckoo ... not to mention old Poseidon ... who could stir up a storm in a flash ... yes ... essential to keep on the good side of Zeus, and as for poor Dido it was not a willow in her hand with which she bade her love to come again to Carthage, it was a sword on which she impaled herself ... poor poor Dido. It was there that I read how the Egyptians were the first to master the art of clairvoyance ... they could by knowing the date of a person's birth, tell the character, the life's eventualities, and the day of death — but it was not called astrology, not until Roman times was it connected to the stars ... but good lady you know all about that—those gods and goddesses had their seers ... people just like you ... they in their shrines and you in your painted caravan and I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be here ... to be able to let off a little steam. Yes, it was