Free August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien Page A

She had no idea it was going to be like that. She thought of the fox tail again but felt happier now.
    ‘I love it,’ he said. ‘It’s like a woman.’ They were very close and secretive, and she watched, ignoring the singing all round them as he made incisions with the sharp end of his penknife, nicking the hairs all round the base of the heart.
    ‘They get in the back of your neck and you know it,’ he said as she watched and held her breath while he slit the cap of hair right off and exposed the grey-white heart underneath. She felt as if he had been doing it to her.
    ‘Ma’am,’ he said, pushing the plate in front of her.
    ‘But it’s yours,’ she said, remembering how he said it was like a woman.
    ‘You have it,’ he said, ‘and I’ll whip you later.’ He watched while she tasted it. It may have been the ritual attached, or his company, or the three drinks, but it seemed to be the most subtle thing she had ever tasted.
    ‘I love anything that is trouble to get,’ she said, chewing, pretending to like it even more than she did, although the flavour was good and it had a strange texture.
    ‘I know you do,’ he said as he prepared the second one for her. She could see a man looking at her from another table. He wore dark glasses and had dark bushy hair. When he caught her eye he lowered the glasses a little on to his nose and beamed at her. The room-service boy. She burst out laughing. He thought it an invitation and stood up to come over.…
    ‘The room-boy from the hotel,’ she said to Bobby, ‘is following me around.’
    ‘So?’ he said.
    ‘He raped me this evening,’ she said, wanting to make a story out of it now.
    ‘How was it?’ He could be aloof and sarcastic quicker than anyone she ever met.
    ‘Not as good as this,’ she said, biting into the second heart.
    ‘Front or back?’
    ‘Side,’ she said, wanting to be as bright and brittle as all the other people. Some of the party were standing and some were objecting about having to go and Denise kept saying, ‘I’m damned if I’m going to be twenty-five in this position,’ and Bobby said to bring it with her and she went out chewing the last of the artichoke. The room-boy positioned himself near the door but she pretended not to see him. Mosquitoes like particles of dust were moving around the outside lights and people were walking around as if it were the middle of the day.
    ‘Same cars as last time,’ Sidney said.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Ellen asked Bobby, linking them both so that she could raise herself off the ground, just the way her son did when he was happy.
    ‘How are you doing?’ Bobby said.
    ‘She’s doing fine,’ Sidney said. ‘Like an eight-year-old.’ She was as breathless and as buoyant as she ever remembered having been. Happiness was surely pending.

Chapter Nine
    T HEY DROVE OUT OF the town and along by the coast, through Cannes. Someone pointed out a tall hotel with a white decorative front and it reminded her of tier upon tier of wedding cake. Then they took a narrow road and began to climb. It was hot. All the windows were down. Now and then at bends in the road she felt that an oncoming car had just shaved them and she was vaguely nervous but not frightened enough to protest. The driver had been drinking with them. Through the open window she watched the clouds slip between her and the moon and thought, This is living at last. A little drunk. Sidney’s arm around her neck. Bobby, though he was in front, took the trouble to stretch his elbow back and rest it on her knee. Reassurance. And an instant of danger from another passing car. The narrow steep road, the gears constantly grinding, the climb, the moon through the window and the fields twined with vines running down to meet the road. Sometimes there were walls and sometimes not.
    ‘How are you doing?’ Bobby often said, turning round. He was in front with Denise.
    ‘Give my love to the pilchards,’ Ellen said. Up to then she had struggled