Free The Love Object by Edna O’Brien Page A

morning, and handed it to your youngster there.’ He nodded at me.
    ‘Oh, that,’ Mama said, a little stunned by the news that the postman had given information about it. Then a ray of hope, or a ray of lunacy, must have struck her, because she asked what colour of rug he was inquiring about.
    ‘A black sheepskin,’ he said.
    There could be no more doubt about it. Her whole being drooped-shoulders, stomach, voice, everything.
    ‘It’s here,’ she said absently, and she went through the hall into the sitting-room.
    ‘Being namesakes and that, the postman got us mixed up,’ he said stupidly to me.
    She had winked at me to stay there and see he did not follow her, because she did not want him to know that we had been using it.
    It was rolled and had a piece of cord around the middle when she handed it to him. As she watched him go down the avenue she wept, not so much for the loss – though the loss was enormous – as for her own foolishness in thinking that someone had wanted to do her a kindness at last.
    ‘We live and learn,’ she said, as she undid her apron strings, out of habit, and then retied them slowly and methodically, making a tighter knot.

The Mouth of the Cave
    T HERE WERE TWO ROUTES to the village. I chose the rougher one to be beside the mountain rather than the sea. It is a dusty ill-defined stretch of road littered with rocks. The rocks that have fallen from the cliff are a menacing shade of red once they have split open. On the surface the cliff appears to be grey. Here and there on its grey-and-red face there are small clumps of trees. Parched in summer, tormented by winds in winter they nevertheless survive, getting no larger or no smaller.
    In one such clump of green, just underneath the cliff, I saw a girl stand up. She began to tie her suspenders slowly. She had bad balance because when drawing her knickers on she lost her footing more than once. She put her skirt on by bringing it over her head and lastly her cardigan which appeared to have several buttons. As I came closer she walked away. A young girl in a maroon cardigan and a black skirt. She was twenty or thereabouts. Suddenly and without anticipating it I turned towards home so as to give the impression that I’d simply been having a stroll. The ridiculousness of this hit me soon after and I turned round again and walked towards the scene of her secret. I was trembling, but these journeys have got to be accomplished.
    What a shock to find that nothing lurked there, no man, no animal. The bushes had not risen from the weight of her body. I reckoned that she must have been lying for quite a time. Then I saw that she, too, was returning. Had she forgotten something? Did she want to ask me a favour? Why was she hurrying? I could not see her face, her head was down. I turned and this time I ran towards the private road that led to my rented house. I thought, Why am I running, why am I trembling, why am I afraid? Because she is a woman and so am I. Because, because? I did not know.
    When I got to the courtyard I asked the servant who had been fanning herself to unchain the dog. Then I sat out of doors and waited. The flowering tree looked particularly dramatic, its petals richly pink, its scent oppressively sweet. The only tree in flower. My servant had warned me about those particular flowers; she had even taken the trouble to get the dictionary to impress the word upon me – Venodno, poison, poison petals. Nevertheless I had the table moved in order to be nearer that tree and we steadied it by putting folded cigarette cartons under two of its legs. I told the servant to lay a place for two. I also decided what we would eat, though normally I don’t, in order to give the days some element of surprise. I asked that both wines be put on table, and also those long, sugar-coated biscuits that can be dipped in white wine and sucked until the sweetness is drained from them and re-dipped and re-sucked, indefinitely.
    She would like the house.