Read Online The Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien - Free Book Online
Authors: Edna O’Brien
Tags: Fiction
Ads: Link
unkempt crop of hair.
Nothing but rules. Rule the first: no callers at the front door. Rule the second: no callers at the back door. Rule the third: no going out after dark. The six dusters had to be washed each evening and accounted for. She took me on a tour of the house, blowing about everything, Chesterfield this and Chesterfield that, the grand piano that was never played in all the time I was there, the Ormolu clock, the terracotta busts, the jasper veinings in the marble fireplace, a cellarette with decanters of port and sherry and, most prized of all, her secretaire, a Napoleon III desk, full of nooks and crannies and pigeonholes, where she and I and Mr. would have our battle one day.
After that it was into the dining room to point to the din-
ner set, to have me count it, white plates with birds on swinging boughs, soup plates, starter plates, dinner plates, gravy boats, platters, her saying that if one got broken there would be hell to pay. She said maids were notorious for breaking things. She read from a newspaper clipping that she kept in the cutlery box: “Does your maid waste food spilling and dropping, do mop and broom in her hands do their task slightingly, does your treasured china slip through her fingers, is she a genius at chipping the edges of your beautiful cut glasses?”
By the time I was finished I had furniture and ornaments coming out of my ears, rosewood, tulip wood, apple wood, burnt elm, the swan neck pediment, the foliate dragon, and a brass eagle that I must remember to dust religiously.
Boasting and bluffing and still she counted the biscuits in the tin in case Solveig and I touched one.
Solveig was higher up than me. She had a white apron. She was the cook. Sieving and singing hymns that her pastor in Sweden had taught her. Her eyes were the beautiful twinkling blue of a sleeping doll. She had a wooden box for her shoes and her shoe polish and was allowed out to a language school three afternoons a week. She cooked dishes I’d never heard of, lobster in aspic and shoestring potatoes for the lunch parties that the missus had for her girlfriends. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice. They were forever saying each other’s names. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice, all the size of her, boasting about the presents their husbands gave them for their birthdays and their anniversaries. The missus would point to the big white box of flowers on the hall table that her husband had sent, every single flower in a snood of tissue paper, the box left there for them to see and for her to say, “Oh, how he spoils me, that man of mine.”
After the lunch the card table would be moved closer to the fire for their bridge game. They nibbled bonbons and truffles and sometimes they bickered over the cards.
My work was rougher than Solveig’s, cleaning the ashes, laying the three fires, polishing the grates, then the silver, then all the dusting, the cornices, the moldings, the legs and paws of the several chairs and her heaps of ornaments: shepherds, shepherdesses, jugs, vases, rose bowls, powder bowls, and the big brass eagle that had a venomous look.
The carpet in the sitting room was gorgeous. It was like sand, the various colors that sand can be, sand that water had seeped into and sand that water had drained out of, patterns of roses and rose blood, spatters where a rose had bled and elsewhere clusters of rosebuds, dangling.
About a month after I began, I was down on my knees with a nailbrush, getting the stains out of it, when Mr. came in, gave me the fright of my life. Was I saying the Angelus he wondered and knelt down beside me.
“Your hair, your hair,” he kept saying, asking did other people remark on my hair, the red-gold halo all around it, asking how long it took to brush, morning and night, said what a ray of sunshine I was to the house.
* * *
Dear Dilly,
A reign of terror has started up. Once more our fields are Calvary. On the day of the annual horse fair
Nothing but rules. Rule the first: no callers at the front door. Rule the second: no callers at the back door. Rule the third: no going out after dark. The six dusters had to be washed each evening and accounted for. She took me on a tour of the house, blowing about everything, Chesterfield this and Chesterfield that, the grand piano that was never played in all the time I was there, the Ormolu clock, the terracotta busts, the jasper veinings in the marble fireplace, a cellarette with decanters of port and sherry and, most prized of all, her secretaire, a Napoleon III desk, full of nooks and crannies and pigeonholes, where she and I and Mr. would have our battle one day.
After that it was into the dining room to point to the din-
ner set, to have me count it, white plates with birds on swinging boughs, soup plates, starter plates, dinner plates, gravy boats, platters, her saying that if one got broken there would be hell to pay. She said maids were notorious for breaking things. She read from a newspaper clipping that she kept in the cutlery box: “Does your maid waste food spilling and dropping, do mop and broom in her hands do their task slightingly, does your treasured china slip through her fingers, is she a genius at chipping the edges of your beautiful cut glasses?”
By the time I was finished I had furniture and ornaments coming out of my ears, rosewood, tulip wood, apple wood, burnt elm, the swan neck pediment, the foliate dragon, and a brass eagle that I must remember to dust religiously.
Boasting and bluffing and still she counted the biscuits in the tin in case Solveig and I touched one.
Solveig was higher up than me. She had a white apron. She was the cook. Sieving and singing hymns that her pastor in Sweden had taught her. Her eyes were the beautiful twinkling blue of a sleeping doll. She had a wooden box for her shoes and her shoe polish and was allowed out to a language school three afternoons a week. She cooked dishes I’d never heard of, lobster in aspic and shoestring potatoes for the lunch parties that the missus had for her girlfriends. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice. They were forever saying each other’s names. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice, all the size of her, boasting about the presents their husbands gave them for their birthdays and their anniversaries. The missus would point to the big white box of flowers on the hall table that her husband had sent, every single flower in a snood of tissue paper, the box left there for them to see and for her to say, “Oh, how he spoils me, that man of mine.”
After the lunch the card table would be moved closer to the fire for their bridge game. They nibbled bonbons and truffles and sometimes they bickered over the cards.
My work was rougher than Solveig’s, cleaning the ashes, laying the three fires, polishing the grates, then the silver, then all the dusting, the cornices, the moldings, the legs and paws of the several chairs and her heaps of ornaments: shepherds, shepherdesses, jugs, vases, rose bowls, powder bowls, and the big brass eagle that had a venomous look.
The carpet in the sitting room was gorgeous. It was like sand, the various colors that sand can be, sand that water had seeped into and sand that water had drained out of, patterns of roses and rose blood, spatters where a rose had bled and elsewhere clusters of rosebuds, dangling.
About a month after I began, I was down on my knees with a nailbrush, getting the stains out of it, when Mr. came in, gave me the fright of my life. Was I saying the Angelus he wondered and knelt down beside me.
“Your hair, your hair,” he kept saying, asking did other people remark on my hair, the red-gold halo all around it, asking how long it took to brush, morning and night, said what a ray of sunshine I was to the house.
* * *
Dear Dilly,
A reign of terror has started up. Once more our fields are Calvary. On the day of the annual horse fair
Similar Books
