that she was suffering from an intermittent cough and had been to the doctor who advised her to stop smoking. It was around noon when Sebastian left the house, frustrated and miserable. Stella undressed. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was unquestionably thin, she felt, but magnetically young all the same she knew from the automatic bite of Sebastian’s blind, metallic eyes. Perhaps the magnet that pulled his eyes into her body resided in her small, rounded breasts and slender legs balancing themselves like fashionable twigs of whittled and daring flesh in league with technical body. It was as if the marrow of sex dared not only to wear bone but magnet, white and rosy marble.
Magnetic exposure! Yes, one throve on hidden varieties of magnetic exposure. One’s mirror was crowded with phantom, shared bodies of fashion. Cinematic nudes. Fashionplate buttocks. Stella pirouetted in the mirror. Perhaps she should have been a model or a dancer. The room seemed now full of eyes as if an invisible camera were presiding over a private auction-block riddle, invisible camera impressed with the faces of eighteenth-century , nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, staid accountants who flocked Father Marsden’s Angel Inn in search of the blessing interfused with the curse.
Perhaps Mary could advise her. Forlorn hope. Mary and she had not been on good terms lately. A wall had risen between them. Mary felt Stella was neglecting John.
She turned from the crowded mirror, the invisible camera, and slipped into bed but not before swallowing a couple of valium pills or sleeping tablets. She forgot John who was playing in the sitting room with his trains and chariots. Sleep settled upon her. A thundering knock smote the door like the hooves of a horse. Stella shot up and was filled with horror to discover that she had not corked the bottle of pills on the table beside her bed, and John had come into the room and was about to empty the contents into his mouth. Stella snatched it from him in the nick of time.
“You wicked, wicked child,” she said.
But he saw nothing wicked in what he had been about to do.
The thundering hoof came again.
Stella arose, went to the window and peered through the curtains. She could just make out the shadow of someone standing at the front door and was flooded with gratitude. His knock had wakened her, thundering judgement day knock. He knocked rather less loudly now and began retreating down the steps into the narrow garden from which he looked up at the window where Stella stood. Perhaps he glimpsed her naked body through the slightly open curtain and it made him curse softly. “You, lady! Sebastian owes me a fiver. Let me jump you and he can keep it.” And then, as if to confirm what he was, he undid his fly and exposed himself with studied deliberation. It all happened in a flash, phantom jockey, phantom horse. He buttoned his fly again and vanished into the street but Stella remained at the curtains as if she had been judged, if not jumped. Her posture broke. Tears rose, evaporated, rose afresh. Her first impulse was to berate Sebastian’s “horses”, to curse him for his friends and the abuse they heaped upon her. It was he who had summoned the beastly man. Was he beastly? Was judgement day the moment of the beast, mutual beast, mutual animal in whom birth and death are mirrored in sex, truth and lies, salvation and damnation? She pulled John against her and turned from the window. She stared at the bottle of pills she had now placed out of his reach.
“Oh my god,” she said, “thank god! You are safe.”
*
When Sebastian learnt later that day of the events of the afternoon he seized upon them to justify his frustration.
Stella was unbalanced, he said.
It was clear, he said, that John had been in the greatest danger because of her prime carelessness.
He brushed aside the story of the jockey who had exposed himself in the street or in the narrow garden under the bedroom window. It
Magnetic exposure! Yes, one throve on hidden varieties of magnetic exposure. One’s mirror was crowded with phantom, shared bodies of fashion. Cinematic nudes. Fashionplate buttocks. Stella pirouetted in the mirror. Perhaps she should have been a model or a dancer. The room seemed now full of eyes as if an invisible camera were presiding over a private auction-block riddle, invisible camera impressed with the faces of eighteenth-century , nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, staid accountants who flocked Father Marsden’s Angel Inn in search of the blessing interfused with the curse.
Perhaps Mary could advise her. Forlorn hope. Mary and she had not been on good terms lately. A wall had risen between them. Mary felt Stella was neglecting John.
She turned from the crowded mirror, the invisible camera, and slipped into bed but not before swallowing a couple of valium pills or sleeping tablets. She forgot John who was playing in the sitting room with his trains and chariots. Sleep settled upon her. A thundering knock smote the door like the hooves of a horse. Stella shot up and was filled with horror to discover that she had not corked the bottle of pills on the table beside her bed, and John had come into the room and was about to empty the contents into his mouth. Stella snatched it from him in the nick of time.
“You wicked, wicked child,” she said.
But he saw nothing wicked in what he had been about to do.
The thundering hoof came again.
Stella arose, went to the window and peered through the curtains. She could just make out the shadow of someone standing at the front door and was flooded with gratitude. His knock had wakened her, thundering judgement day knock. He knocked rather less loudly now and began retreating down the steps into the narrow garden from which he looked up at the window where Stella stood. Perhaps he glimpsed her naked body through the slightly open curtain and it made him curse softly. “You, lady! Sebastian owes me a fiver. Let me jump you and he can keep it.” And then, as if to confirm what he was, he undid his fly and exposed himself with studied deliberation. It all happened in a flash, phantom jockey, phantom horse. He buttoned his fly again and vanished into the street but Stella remained at the curtains as if she had been judged, if not jumped. Her posture broke. Tears rose, evaporated, rose afresh. Her first impulse was to berate Sebastian’s “horses”, to curse him for his friends and the abuse they heaped upon her. It was he who had summoned the beastly man. Was he beastly? Was judgement day the moment of the beast, mutual beast, mutual animal in whom birth and death are mirrored in sex, truth and lies, salvation and damnation? She pulled John against her and turned from the window. She stared at the bottle of pills she had now placed out of his reach.
“Oh my god,” she said, “thank god! You are safe.”
*
When Sebastian learnt later that day of the events of the afternoon he seized upon them to justify his frustration.
Stella was unbalanced, he said.
It was clear, he said, that John had been in the greatest danger because of her prime carelessness.
He brushed aside the story of the jockey who had exposed himself in the street or in the narrow garden under the bedroom window. It
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