Free Night by Edna O’Brien Page B

my perch. My perch was a tea-chest on which I had to sit lotus wise. Fecund in its prickles, surpassing even the old horsehair sofa – the discomfort of it. To lift the epidermis in one place was only to invite a bevy of nips in another. The Jesusing that I had to suppress. I still feel that there are numerous splinters in my arse and no Good Samaritan to weevil them out.
    â€œOpen up Sunshine.” I kept looking at my clothes over in the corner, a ridiculous heap with my scarf spread over them for seemliness’ sake. Seemly! I was like a polyp without my robes and my decoys. He kicked me with his corduroy slipper. The owner of the studio winked, probably her way of saying “poor you”. I’d hate to see her undressed as she was in a very commodious garment and still bloated. There were no refreshments, just some bottles on a tray to grig me. I came to the conclusion that the thieves were a brother and sister team. Incestuous thieves. A power of good knowing that did me. There were a couple of hours when I thought one or other of them would come back with restitution. I thought it would be he.
    I was already thinking what I’d do with the remuneration go to the Drake café and have a feed and then sit in a corner, mulling. They know me there and call me a Mick.
    I was subjected to very highfaluting drivel about spatial conception and contours, my contours. They seemed to omit the fact that I could overhear. I was afraid I’d either get collywobbles or sweat, and that my talcum powder would flake, even wriggle. It had lost its initial gardenia smell. My pubes were like an old furze, tangled. I amused myself with thoughts of the gorse flowers, the yellow vistas and then the gorse fires on St John’s eve, the night we call Bonfire Night. I thought how the lad would laugh, condone. First time he saw me in a pair of clandestine arms, he paused, said “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”. It was Moriarty’s arms. There was no knowing what sort of spectacle I presented, face blazing, muscles fibulating, skin white and the knees a deep purple from my sanctimonious days. I was longing for a swig from his whisky glass, what with the sweating and at the same time the shivers. Their voices were very hushed as if they were in chapel. They took ages over setting up their easels and appointing the light and getting the perspective. Their charcoal made different sounds, different impacts on the sheets of paper, some silken, some more like a squiggle, and there was I, avid to know how I was turning out but not able to preen or not able to smile in case of disturbing the pose. I knew I’d get cramp. A bunch of amateurs they were, judging by what they said, because alas, I never saw the finished effects, dueto a rude interception. He stood behind a lady called Hester and started to taunt her. It seems she concentrated on the outer edges of me, my hip bone, my elbows, the boundaries.
    â€œBut last time you said the perimeter was sacrosanct,” she said.
    â€œPerimeter my arse”, he said. And then he told them to move in on me, to look at me, to inhale me, to smell me, to internalise.
    â€œValue for money, Sunshine,” he said, giving my pelvic bone a bit of a jolt. The one called Joseph was peering into my nipple so that it must have been reflected in the pupil of his small eye. He knelt and crouched and did everything to mock me.
    â€œGet that arse open, get those hams out,” the Prussian said to me. Suddenly I could smell senna and the brews that Lil used to give us on Saturday, to be cleansed within and without for the Sabbath day. I had no idea how I was behaving and I longed to open my flapjack to see my reflection in the mirror, but even my handbag had been removed from near me. The tea-chest would squeak as I moved from one haunch to the other. He stood beside each person and then let lash. Thelma’s was not fit to line a birdcage with. But