Free Night by Edna O’Brien Page A

vice versa. And when at last, and after much dally, in the full spall and frenzy of their capitulation, it was I who was most gratified, and it was my name they both uttered. Soon they were twain again. We resumed ourconversation, they cleared off the sandwiches and the cake. It was sugar and spice and all things nice. Presently he had to leave to take up his duties as a doorman. She lay on her stomach, warming herself by the fire, an offwhite fishnet shawl covering her hindparts. There we were, scarfed, together. She kissed me. She told me that her hair was dyed. She did it herself. She cried a little, said they had no privacy as he always had to have someone, a best friend or a worst friend or a gangster or most often a cripple. She said the gangsters were the softies, wanted marriage and kids. I said what about his big fat mamma and we fell about laughing and blowing our cheeks out and making our stomachs distend. It was all frolic, the fire flames leaping on the panelled door, her shawl, her bangles, then the toast we made, into which we pressed the strawberry jam, home-made jam that I had bought at a bazaar. I trained the lit candle on her face, on her chest, because by then the dark had descended. I pictured her wearing lynx, her hair blue-black, her eyebrows in an arch, a tiara on her head. Her smiles so young, so true, even her little smirks. I wanted to put diapers on her and gingham dresses and turn her into a little child again, give her back to herself. I must have been inebriated. I saw all her ages in her face, her very young ages, her sauciness, her very bitter expressions, the lines that had been added and the ones that would go on being added, and her various masks, lies, wisps, paper dreams, untruth. She said we would be friends for life, like sisters, and she came up with a glorious proposal. She was to open a little stall, a sort of bazaarand I could work with her, come in as partner. She listed the things we would stock, beads, chains, purses, bales of cloth, all from the Orient. She had contacts in Morocco. I helped her to dress, even held her boot while she got her balance and lunged her foot into it. I laced them for her, they came above the knees. I kissed her then on both knees. She said she would love a horse, a bugie-wugie. We made a plan for Wednesday.
    “Fell was the frush,” as they say, when Troy fell. Robbed. Under my very nose. I opened my bag to make an entry in my diary, to give thanks to God and the galaxies for such an interlude, when lo and behold, missing, my brown wallet, the utilitarian one that Lil cut and thonged for me. Most of my month’s salary in it. Buggered.
     

Two nights later I was sitting starkers…
    Two nights later I was sitting starkers, on a tea-chest, with seven people sketching me. They all had sheets of white paper and I was sad to envisage any mark, any trace of charcoal going on them. After the flight of the thieves I set out for the High Street, to scrutinise cards in windows, where I had already seen offers of jobs. I put some system into it. I studied all the cards on one side of the street first, then retraced my steps and studied all the ones in the opposite direction. It was there I saw about the missing black cat, the nursing mother; and various sofas for sale and people house-swopping and soliciting. Some of the windows were lit up and even had twirls of coloured paper that moved in a swirl, but one was in darkness altogether,inside a porch and I despaired of finding anything. Still I got the Ally Daly of a job – it said, “Wanted, artist’s model, Teutonic, modest rates, evenings”. I felt anything but teutonic when I pressed the luminous bell. A Coose numbskull. They had already foregathered, five women and three men with their various accoutrements and brushes. Dabblers except for the leader who said he was an academy man. Definitely a Prussian.
    â€œOpen up, Sunshine,” he said to me as soon as I got undressed and got on