Estelle: Novelist

This is published in response to recent posts by Throne of Salt, A Most Majestic Fly Whisk and The Furtive Goblin's Burrow. Unlike those posts, this is not a collection of fictional books, but is instead a silly short story about an imaginary novelist that I wrote many years ago. Gameable content is low in this one, so I'll draw a line right now for those casually browsing.

Estelle: Novelist

It was sunset and Estelle was perched upon a chez longue a lackey had dragged out to the veranda. In her silk dressing gown and smoking a pungent cigarillo in ebony holder, Estelle's apparent  air of louche disinterest was in fact as meticulously constructed as her entire oeuvre. "It takes a lot of effort for things to appear effortless," is a quote oft attributed to her, but in fact had been stolen from her mother.

Forgivable, maybe, for thoughts to to return to that long-dead woman on this day, it being Estelle's birthday, but they did not. Instead her attention rested on the black column descending upon her estate: her own children, each to present their annual tribute, as had become customary.

Son number one... a nameless no-one. Conceived in a youthful passion—all innocence and unguardedness—he was not remembered fondly. In his big, dead grey eyes Estelle perceived the same naivety that had led to his creation. He was a magic mirror, staring back at her with her own silly young visage, a continual source of embarrassment. She had loved him once, but as she hardened with age that love turned to hate him and he never adjusted well. Simple, unsophisticated and ignored by all but Estelle's most fervent followers, son-number-one was the family joke.

Son number two—Maurice—was confident and assured and used to the kind of life son number one would never know. He offered his mother his hand by way of greeting. First, that hand was slapped. Then his face. He cried like a baby to his entourage: they made a show of their anger, shouting and cursing and shaking fists in the air... but ultimately allowed Estelle's handlers to push them aside while Maurice continued to sob.

Estelle was sick of the sight of hm. When he was a baby, everyone had told her how perfect he was. Swollen with pride, her belly swollen with child, and out popped a third, Vincent. Though still held in high regard, he was never regarded with quite the same reverence as Maurice, though Estelle had loved him just as much.

"Look what happens to them..." she said, throwing the single rose her son proffered back at him. He allowed a slow smirk to spread as he regarded the red blood on Estelle's hand, drawn by its thorns. He'd turned out to be a clever bastard.

As a young woman with two sons attracting high praise, it was only natural that Estelle should want to try for a girl. She felt ready, but contemporaries discouraged her: "For why? when you have such fine sons!" Heedlessly she proceeded.

The pregnancy was... tricky. Cramps and nausea and anxious moments, but some carried for sufficient duration... the birth was unpleasant. First, the midwife was called. Then the physician. Then the surgeon: they had to cut the baby out. Lightweight and gasping for air, she nearly didn't make it. Behind mother's back, as the infant stumbled through her early years, there were many whispers that it may have been better if she hadn't.

Happily hopping forward, wretched little Macey laid a few lilies, a chicken kebab and some copper coins at her feet.

"Happy birthday, mother."

Estelle spat in her face. The invalid smiled: it was more than she could have hoped for.

Then came Bruno. Heavy set and good-natured, he was born a number of years after the daughter. 

After that trauma of her daughter, it was a long time before Estelle went back to the bedroom with anything but sleep on her mind, and people whispered her fire might have gone out. But time passed and, eventually she met a kind man ( sensible, money-minded) and he managed to coax that desire back out of her. Bruno was the result of that prosiac union: not in any way the equal of his elder brothers, he was still held up as a perfectly decent figure of manhood. 

With alarming regularity he was joined by a homogeneous sequence of younger brothers. One by one they marched up to kiss their mother and offer her their precious tokens. Each one produced a bag of gold coins, though of steadily decreasing size. She could not remember their names.

The presentation complete, she turned to address her eldest sons once more.

""What do you bring me, eldest son"

"Some weeds."

"And you, second born?"

Maurice was still smarting from the slap and did not meet her eye as he handed over the deeds to the villa in Andalusia, the chalet in the alps, the cottage by Loch Lomond and the flat in Knightsbridge.

"My third-born. What do you have for me?"

Vincent protested that he'd paid all the servants and the legal bills and the gambling debts in Monte Carlo. Estelle sneered. With an angry wave of her right hand, the servants swiftly descended upon her brood, and they were led off the grounds. 

As she watched them trudge towards the gates and the setting sun beyond, Estelle felt a sudden pang of guilt: did she not owe her offspring her love? She was swift to forgive herself: she had given them everything, life itself! No matter what they gave to her, she would never regain the youth they had taken.

Estelle sighed before pulling herself together. She knocked back a tumbler of pastis and rang the bell for service.

"Bring me my baby!"

Estelle's maid  curtsied and scurried from the veranda like a little grey mouse. She sighed again. The moors were beautiful at sunset, especially with pastis and fine cigars and piles of gold coins. After her last husband died—that sensible, money-minded man—there were no Brunos left in her. She fled into the comforting embrace of obscurity. Estelle withdrew from society. Her old friends and colleagues conversed with her only through her children, and they never had anything new to say.

Estelle had always longed for a daughter. Doctors and midwives and physicians warned her she was too old, that she didn't have it in her.

"Besides!" they would explain, "you have a daughter- Macey! Okay, she's... different... but she's yours! And remember her birth- would you really want to go through all that again?"

Estelle had been firm:

"I know what I did wrong last time."

A little grey mouse pushed a silver cross into the red glare before scuttling back into the shadows, all frantic and anxious. Estelle embraced her newborn, wrapped in Egyptian cotton, regarding her face:

"You won't get old. You're as well as can be. You're brothers and sister came out fully formed. Why should you be any different?"

Estelle's heart melted when her child's wooden lips mouthed "mama!" and- brushing the wire wool back from the little one's scalp- she drew the child to her breast.

"Mama!" It yelped, excitedly, before suckling at Estelle's wrinkled teat. Estelle watched her child proudly. So much had gone into her creation. Every single detail was perfect. Her critics might remark at how contrived she was, fashioned from teak not flesh. They might sneer that only a mother could love her. But as Estelle stared into the fine-set emeralds surrounding her baby's pupils, Estelle felt that love, truly, and for the first time. The gloaming light was fading, the stars were out, the other children were long gone and no-one stirred.

"I'm not going to share you with anyone else."

~

This was first posted on myspace, 11th April 2008. The archived version was posted 23rd July 2011, and can be viewed at this link:
https://psychocartography.blogspot.com/2011/07/estelle-novelist.html