Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors

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