Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

pleasing and harmonious, I pity such young women as do not have

a fortune, for — ’

The nineteenth-century Dorothea abruptly left the sofa, tossing her

curls and pouting her lips. ‘Why, I should be ashamed to look at a husband, unless I could bring him dowry enough — there! And I declare that this lady’ (indicating Bellamode) ‘is right, positively, and men are

dissembling horrid monsters (though I’m sure I don’t know what they

can have to dissemble, or anything about it) — there!

And, goodness, I shall be any hundred of times more dutiful and

adoring and unselfish, good gracious! than dollish, ridiculous wretches!’

Here she positively stamped her foot at Clarinda, who so greatly outshone, for beauty, every other creature. And a lady doesn’t “woman”

other ladies — boo!

And, oh, dear,’ Dorothea burst forth suddenly, ‘I am so absolutely

ill today!’ She actually dissolved into tears, only to wipe them bravely

away, and appeal to the room: ‘Oh, if you only knew, though, the

downright, earnest little thing I am! And how I mean to cherish every

single aspidistra and muffin-tray and loo-table, and have the house­

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Yvonne Rousseau

keeping keys always under my eye — no one shall ever call me an un satisfactory wife!’ She went off into half-hysterics.

Evadne’s body stirred uneasily. ‘I knew a man once — ah, what the

heck.’ She began pacing about the room, almost ungracefully: ‘Cap-

parids, capparids; haven’t we got any capparids?’ Next moment she

froze, her face masked with tobacco-smoke (at some time she had lit

what seemed a very small cigar): ‘The street is like a great river:’

(broodingly) ‘One can walk it, and be nourished by it, and forget one’s

dreams and the sea.’

I stared aghast, as she turned to pitch her cigar through the

window; her intellect appeared utterly alienated! She turned to the

room again, warmly laughing, and holding all eyes with her incendiary hair: ‘I guess I’m just a neurotic, really . . . or a woman.’ Her jaw slackened slightly, her fingers caressing her furs, fastening on her

diamond bracelet. ‘I guess that what I really need is a good man — or

so.’ She frowned, curled herself up on the window-sill, and began to

lisp a baby’s song, wrenching the pearls from her necklace, one by one,

and tossing them after the butterflies.

Francis made another abrupt movement, and Bellamode’s

rejoinder was quite inaudible to me, though I saw her lips moving

animatedly.

‘Yes, but they are fictional.’ Francis’s querulous m uttering was

apparently directed to himself. ‘I may have been misleading myself;

perhaps it’s only an artistic evolution, an artistic perversion. Perhaps

Nature doesn’t imitate Art; perhaps we’re little changed, no m atter

how we’re seen or see ourselves . . . ’

So he maundered on; and as he lapsed further into his preoccupation, my own natural good sense reasserted itself. Francis, and his talk of computers and fictional characters, ceased to impose upon me; I

looked into the other room and saw Clarinda, set among four women,

one of whom was undoubtedly mad, while the others were no fit companions for her. Clearly, it was my duty to offer her my protection.

‘I’ll see your master,’ I informed Francis: ‘The gentleman of the

house.’

His insane response was delivered in a preoccupied tone: ‘I’m my

own mistress, M r Lockwood.’

No immediate chance of applying to a better class of person! I’d act

alone, then. I was out of the room, and had unbolted the right door,

before Francis could come up with me, crying, ‘Don’t be a fool,

Lockwood!’ I easily put him aside, stepped through, and smartly

closed the door between us.

M r Lockwood’s narrative

73

‘Why, Elmer!’ exclaimed Evadne: ‘I thought you were the filming

crew!’ — Bellamode put up the oval mask she held in her hand: ‘Lard,

it’s M r Bangwell!’ cried she; and Dorothea tittered and tossed her curls

and dimpled: ‘M r Dominickel, I declare!’ At the same instant, Anne

came forward frankly: ‘Welcome, Antonio!’ —* Clarinda blushed

divinely: ‘Why, it is M r Cantworthy,’ said she.

Never was poor gentleman in so undeserved a predicament! Each

of the women instantly suspected her lover of falsehood: Anne wept

most piteously, and sank down as if her heart were broken; Clarinda

gave me a flaming glance, and turned to Anne’s assistance. ‘So, M r

Bangwell,’ Bellamode hissed — but her anger, like Dorothea’s, seemed

to hover between her sisters and myself. Evadne approached, wrested

the book from my nerveless grasp, and began deliberately to rip it up,

page by page, her gentle eyes fixed enigmatically upon my face. And

never had I felt Clarinda more desirable than at this moment, when

she seemed unattainable! I moved towards her, to explain.

‘My true name is Lockwood, Clarinda,’ I began. Her eyes lightened.

‘You have been disguised? You are really Lord Lockwood?’ she

breathed, wholly enchanted.

But alas! I had demonstrated a preference! No longer able to confide in the superiority of their own charms, Bellamode, Dorothea and Evadne furiously resented the slight: I saw that Evadne dropped the

book, and was swinging her remaining pearls like a riding-whip —

then Dorothea fell upon me, pummeling, while the frantic Bellamode

turned towards Clarinda.

Buffeted