August Is a Wicked Month

by Edna O'Brien

  ‘Kick, kick, kick,’ he would say as she moved towards him and he moved an equal distance away.

  ‘Kick as if you were kicking a man,’ he said. They laughed and stood for a while, and in the water he embraced her, a thing he had not done on land.

  ‘We’ll stay here for ever,’ she said. But he said no. The first day she couldn’t overdo it because her limbs would tire. True enough when they did come in and lie on the mattresses her legs ached and her stomach felt as if it had just been put to the first use in its whole life. They swam a couple of times more, and once they dried off with the sea water on them and another time they stood under the tap and he washed her all over and washed her hair even though she didn’t wish that. Then he swam out alone and she kept looking for him but lost him among all the other swimmers. They lunched on the beach and afterwards he got the driver to take them up to the mountains. They went to a town where the shops sold only pottery. Vacant lots were strewn with yellow rubble, stone dust got in the back of the throat, and looking at some dying broom in front of houses she yearned again for rain, and the sight of cold violets overwhelmed by strong rain. They walked up and down the streets comparing the different pots in the different windows and with so much to choose from they ended up buying nothing.

  He came every day then to give her a swimming lesson and afterwards they would lie side by side, hardly talking. Sometimes he would ask if she wanted anything and she’d reply with, ‘We’re lucky, aren’t we?’

  ‘We’re sneaky,’ he’d say, or smile or wink or just turn her hat around so that the back ribbons dipped over her face.

  ‘And it’s not over yet,’ she’d say, and to that he always said, ‘Shush,’ and they’d cease talking and lie for several more hours of inaction until dinner.

  Once they came out of the water quickly due to the fact that she panicked when he tried letting go of her hands, and standing on the beach he stretched himself restlessly. All the strength and rest of days bunched in his shoulders. A fierce lustre in his green eyes. She thought she was about to lose him.

  ‘I want white peaches that are imperishable,’ she said, shivering. He looked down at her. He mistook her trembling for fear. He knelt and stroked her back in a round-and-round slow movement and said, ‘The water won’t harm you, baby.’

  ‘It’s not the water,’ she said, and then he said, very thoughtfully, ‘If I don’t make you happy it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘But you do make me happy,’ she said, leaning back on him. The rise and fall of his breathing deciding her own breaths. At times she thought her heart had gone behind his skin and his had entered her own, magically.

  That night they went to another restaurant along the port at Cannes and she tasted another new fish.

  ‘Twelve new fishes,’ she said.

  ‘Even Christ didn’t have that variety,’ he said. He looked at her laughing face, loose hair, honey-sweet glow on her neck, except where a gold chain kept a hair-line of white, a pendant between her fingers, the lips parted.

  ‘You know something?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to save you for Sundays and Holy Days…’

  ‘And I’ll save you for weekdays,’ she said. Her muscles ached from the swimming. Soon it would not be enough to sit opposite and lie near and feel his heart beats through her own. She wanted to die in him. He knew but hung back from it. He kissed her each night at the bedroom door and left until morning. Not in so many words but with a look she would try to ensnare him.

  ‘See ya…’ he always said and went away. At times she wanted him so badly she would have grovelled. On these occasions she felt possessed by deep and agonizing humiliation. She must not degrade him. And yet he liked her and it seemed so unnatural that he should not want to consummate his liking. He, the notable philanderer. The idea that he might love her did not take grip because in some ways she was not devoid of common sense. She had a constant ache to be close to him. Under cover. The way they were in the sea. But he always drew back. A resentment slipped in between them when she tried to prolong his kiss. Was she merely unattractive? He had loved Denise. Ripe now and rosy all over with a heart like a breaking rose, she wanted to lie under him and get from him a child, quickly. She said it next night when they were in a swish bar in Cannes. Always after dinner they went to various bars for drinks. People looked at him, waved, and sent drinks over, and still he gave everything to her. He might look jokingly at the girls on stools poised for discovery, but never long enough to alarm. She lived in the world of his light-green eyes and his sudden madness and his equally sudden spasms of torture. Sometimes he looked as if his body was being sawn through. She thought he had a pain but he said no.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to hurt you,’ he said, ‘getting back to the sleeping bit.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I won’t plague you tomorrow or the next day, I’ll leave you alone.’ She believed this as she spoke it, because since her son she thought the only valuable thing in the world is the gift of life. She could cope with loss now, and a broken heart, and aloneness; she could cope with longing except when he sat opposite her and trained the searchlight of his being on hers. Her legs would automatically curve out and her knees fall apart, surrendering. Her legs and the thighs above them were like tree trunks frozen throughout a winter until he had come, the God of Thaw, to flow through the tree trunks of her legs and make it spring again.

  ‘But I might plague you,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t.’ He was going shortly, to make a picture, and she was going home. Their paths, as she said half jokingly, half solemnly, might never cross again.

  ‘Drink up,’ he said. They went to the next bar. They liked to go to several each night. They were energetic and wild and they loved to hustle into these quiet bars and liven them for a bit, and also to revive themselves by the newness of each place and the different sets of faces with their very similar expressions, expressions hungry for fresh adventures. He met up with friends whom he could not ignore. Whole chains of people converged and put their arms round his neck. He seemed to be a prodigal to them; He drank a lot, and his eyes got quickly bloodshot. Again she longed to bathe them with a little eye bath of soothing, lukewarm liquid.

  ‘Show ya…’ a man said to him and took out a list of telephone numbers. They were all girls’ numbers. He wanted Bobby to take a copy of the list. After each girl’s name there was a dossier:

  ‘Mary, Mary must not be touched above knee.’

  ‘Stella schoolteacher likes to come first.’

  ‘Denise back from Austria on the 12th.’

  But Bobby had these numbers. He took out his own diary, read a telephone number, then another, and smiled! They were the same numbers. Ellen walked out into the lobby, she could not bear to listen. She kept walking up and down looking at scarves and blouses in the hotel display windows.

  ‘You’re full of shit,’ she said when he came out. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Did I ever say otherwise?’ He linked her. They were going on to other night-clubs. Better spots.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On…’ His voice was very loud. She had a feeling that she should not go, that their days and nights were going to be fouled upon.

  ‘I’ll go back to the hotel,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ He looked hurt. He was asking her to stay. She said she felt out of place. He cursed furiously. A whole string of ill-matching swear words flew from his lips, and above and beyond their resonant foulness she knew that he had called her a ‘goodie-goodie.’ She resented that and swore bitterly that she had never tried to thwart him in any way. One of his men friends came and asked what was going on, and shrugging it off Ellen followed them to the cars outside.

  ‘We won’t be too late,’ she said. Bobby didn’t answer. They went to a gambling place but she never got past the bar. Bobby and two other men disappeared for about an hour. She was among women who talked about the celebrities they knew and men who bought numerous drinks. Bea
utiful girls sat along the walls, patiently waiting for their gambling partners. If he didn’t come within the hour she would go. Her mind was boiling over with vexation, but she tried to keep calm and centred her attention on a man who was contemplating a plate of sandwiches and who suddenly wrenched the beef from between the slices of bread and ate it with venom.

  ‘Hello nurse.’ Bobby came back to say he had lost a lot of money and would she mind waiting for a while until he retrieved some of it.

  ‘You stay, I must go, I must go,’ she said. She was tired and had drunk too much. The place frightened her. The people behaving like people in a slaughter-house, intent on only one thing: massacre.

  ‘You won’t stay?’ He had collected an audience.

  ‘I’m going.’ She got off the high stool and moved shamefully towards the door.

  ‘Okay, big nurse, you’ve been trying to bull it for weeks.’ He followed her. His friends sniggered as they watched him catch hold of Ellen’s shoulder. Out on the street he became contrite.

  ‘I must stop it, I really must,’ he said. ‘I must get a shit detector.’ She agreed. Such stupid people! Talking about celebrities and Thunderbird motor cars and jewelled watches.

  ‘Even you,’ she said.

  ‘Even what?’ he asked. He had the edginess of the drunk.

  ‘Boasting about your wine cellar.’

  ‘Don’t even have one,’ he said and brought her to the car. That night he did not conduct her to her own room but to the suite he had booked for himself in her hotel. She’d never set foot in it.

  ‘My nurse,’ he said and put his face to hers and kissed her as he had not kissed her before. They made love, of course. The sun that had passed into her limbs and through her old, bereaved bones came to life in her then and as they loved and struggled and fought and re-united she begged for him to thrust higher and higher and deeper and deeper because this time there was to be no mistake and nothing was to leak out of her. Afterwards she clung to him with her thighs and, extracting himself, it was as though he was now the breaking rose and his strength had fallen away inside her, like petals.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. She could not understand him saying it.

  ‘Are you shocked?’ she said. He turned over and went to sleep. It was morning. Dawn glimmered through the half-shut blinds and light coldly entered the strange room. Unaccustomed as she was to a man she could not sleep with him beside her.

  He wakened very soon after and got up. He was quite a while in the bathroom. Then he emerged, dressed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she said, half out of bed now.

  ‘To get a toothbrush,’ he said.

  ‘Use mine.’ She would run down the corridor in his silk bathrobe and get one.

  ‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘My mouth’s full of shit.’ He went out.

  She put it down to the remorse of the puritan, to hangover, to moodiness, to exhaustion, but an hour later when he was not back she began to fret. She got up and went out and searched for him on the beach and along the other beaches and in the bars and she asked barmen but none of them had seen him.

  ‘Last night, widtha lady,’ one man said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. He obviously didn’t recognize her as the white-frocked creature of sanctity from the night before. At noon when she learnt that Bobby had settled his hotel bill, she took a car to Sidney’s house. It was well into the mountains and the car got covered in dust. She kept looking at the dusty yellow chrome, as she stood at the hall door and waited. Antonio came and told her that Mr Bobby was not there and neither were any of the other guests. She asked where Mr Bobby might be. Antonio did not know. He asked if she would like coffee but she said no.

  ‘Back to the hotel,’ she said to the driver. It took about half an hour. They had an argument over the fare when they got back. He had quoted one price and asked for another.

  ‘Crook,’ she said. Luckily he didn’t understand.

  Chapter Sixteen

  TWO DAYS LATER SHE found out. Too late to locate him, and anyhow, how could she be sure? It was a new situation and she was unfamiliar with the ethics. She reckoned that there was some sort of risk about accusing someone of having it, like there is in accusing someone of theft. She ground her teeth when she thought of him looking at the rim of dirt on his shirt-sleeve and saying ‘Disgusting’, and she thought if she had a good brother or a good male friend she would ask that good friend to go and kill him. But then again she remembered his reluctance and the shadow that came between them when she begged him to love her. Many of his jokes made sense now, and her anger was not that he had blemished her but that he had fled. He had not trusted her enough to stay. She thought, fondly for a minute, how they could get cured together. Do another joint thing. How long had he had it? Perhaps he didn’t know himself. Perhaps it was contracted from Denise. At any rate it must have come to him from a woman and he gave it back to another woman: the perfect circuit of revenge. And at the same time she tried to dismiss it until that was no longer possible.

  On the second day when she was lying on the mattress she felt a hot, burning pain. Hotter than the sun had ever made her. Putting her head between her knees, pretending to do a drawing on the sand, she sought out and confirmed the smell. It had been like that all night between her legs. Not the stealthy damp of nice desire but a scalding, unpleasant one. She took out a Cologne stick and touched her pulse and the back of her knees and her legs, and she thought, ‘This will take it away, this cool anointment,’ and she lay back and told herself it was all delusion, or the result of guilt. But by evening it felt worse and she hurried from the beach and put a chair to her bedroom door and took off her bathing suit to examine herself. There was no doubt. Something had infected her. The dark mesh of hair had a blight. She looked at it, smelt it, a nest of sobs now with ugly yellowing tears, and she damped the cake of soap and washed herself roughly as if by hurting herself she would take away her sin and her shame. Then she dried herself with her pants and wrapped them up in the English paper and put them on the bed until such time as she went out and could throw them in the sea. She foresaw herself contaminating the entire hotel, being found out, being asked to leave, a public scandal, the violinist running along behind her asking for compensation, with his notebook out also, getting the word and the symptoms. And then again she thought it could not be true. Perhaps it was the sun, or the salt water, or the pine cone she’d brought to bed the two nights since he left. The calm she thought she’d stored up from the five days with him had vanished. Even before she knew about the disease she had a desperate longing to be with him again. Down on the beach the sun no longer sustained her and she thought of everything he’d said and done, his jokes, his carelessness with money, the things he taught her and finally of his loving her, and she thought, ‘I must hold something, someone, or I will die,’ and she cradled her own body in her own arms. Then she saw the huge cone on the beach beside a coloured ball and she went over and picked it up. Its wings were opened and its colour grey from being continually washed by the sea. She held it and then brought it up to her room and put it on the chair beside her bed, and then she got so that she could not be still unless she held it, between her hands, between her legs, between the hollow of her breasts, in the folds of her arm, anywhere. Could this pine cone have done it, she thought, and looked again at the disgraced part where she’d just washed and knew with certainty that it would not stay dry and sweet-smelling for long. Already, despite the talcum, the smell was back in her nostrils, and taking the chair away from the door she put her hand on the service bell and waited with a wrap around her.

  ‘I fear I have mislaid my T.C.P.,’ she said when Maurice came.

  ‘Madame,’ he said beaming.

  ‘For cuts,’ she said, pointing to her wrist, where there were no cuts. She thought he sniffed. She drew back from him, petrified. She stood between him and the chair in the wrap, shivering. He thought she was merely cold.

  ‘Soon is the time for lighting fires,’ he said.
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  ‘Medicine,’ she said frantically, and he grinned knowingly and said ‘Oui,’ and disappeared. He was back in a matter of minutes with a bottle of sweetened cascara and she almost threw it at him. Finally she escorted him to the room where the medical things were kept and she found some disinfectant and came back and put some on a pad and went out smelling of many different things, convinced that she would find a nice English doctor in whom she could confide.

  ‘It’s not a crime, it’s not a crime, it’s not a crime,’ she kept saying, arranging her footsteps to tune in with that one sentence. ‘It’s not a crime,’ she said again as she went through the hall and thought the manager looked very suspiciously at her. But even as she was saying it was not a crime she thought back to herself as a student nurse drawing away from the rich men who put their hands out to touch her black-stockinged knee that was on a level with the bed. How unsoiled she was then. The only one she indulged was the forester with the broken leg, who gave her gifts of pennies wrapped in paper. These he threw down when she went by the window to the nurses’ quarters, to wash her hair and write a letter home, the ivory girl in her tower of gold. Would they recognize her now? It was as though she had fallen into a sewer. And yet she was able to look outside of herself, like a person going by, and say, ‘This is not happening to me, it is all nightmare.’