Charlestonian Gentleman
A whiff of the Landing's prized camellias tickles his nostrils. Dragonflies flit over the twin butterfly lakes and the cattails swing in the salt-spray breeze.
They are calling him, calling him to come quickly so that they can begin the picnic. Rosemary with her bonnet tipped far back, defying the Sun and any imminent freckles. Mamma, graceful as always, even sitting on a blanket stretched on the grass. And Anne, smiling that shy, sweet bride-smile of hers even after four years of marriage. She has a lap-robe stretched carefully but it doesn't hide the swollen contours of her stomach. They make such a pretty picture.
He smiles and waves, quickening his pace, the picnic hamper swinging in rhythm to his pace. He has it all, the old ways and the old grace he'd yearned for. The dignity of the Charlestonian gentleman. Happiness - certainly he ought to be happy, with a wife like Anne, with a baby on the way too.
It is not enough.
Wicked
Melly tiptoes down the stairs and through the dark hall, sidestepping furniture and bric-a-brac carefully. Auntie's 'swoon bottle' is hidden in the kitchen. She feels wicked, very wicked - just like the time she'd taken the money from Miss er, no Mrs Watling - but she can't help it. She badly, badly needs a sip.
There... she takes a cautious sip, smacking her lips as the fiery liquid pours down her throat. Once, twice... there she feels better now. Quietly, she puts the brandy back. Then she sits at the kitchen table, resting her chin within her hands. She feels something kick inside her and smiles, but then the smile turns to tears. "Oh Ashley, Ashley," she whispers like a brokenhearted child. "What will become of you?"
Fiddle-de-dee
"Fiddle-de-dee!" she cries and her earbobs dance like her roguishly sparkling green eyes. "I won't believe a word of what you men say!" Poor Charlie Hamilton thinks he's never seen anyone so beautiful in his life.
"Fiddle-de-dee," she sighs, her eyelashes fluttering over her lovely green eyes. "Oh Mr Frank, what will become of poor little me?" Frank Kennedy's heart goes out to pretty, little Mrs Hamilton and he vows silently to do whatever he can for her.
"Fiddle-de-dee," she snaps, her brows drawn sharply together, her green eyes flashing indignantly. "Rhett, do be serious!"
"As always, my pet," he drawls and savors his Havana cigar, leaving her pouting.
Smells
Suellen smells. She smells of smells she's never before associated with a lady like herself - she smells like a field-hand! Stale sweat on her armpits and crusting blood on her underparts, grime and dust and clay. For the first time in her life, she doesn't feel like a lady.
She closes her eyes and daydreams in the hall, because Scarlett isn't around to screech. The faint fragrance of lemon verbana, the after-the-rain smell of wet clay, bacon sizzling int it's own fat, leather armchairs and crisp, lavender-scented handkerchiefs...
She smiles and totters weakly up the stairs, singing, "Just a few more days to tote this weary load..."
Last Kiss
It's Brent's last day at the County. Tomorrow his leave expires. Carreen walks him down the driveway at Tara, her arm around his. Ellen looks down from a window and smiles, thinking how much her baby has grown. Little Carreen is engaged.
When they're ensconed in the thick fir grove, far from the prying eyes at the big house, Brent draws her off the path. "Now, Sugar, I don't want you running away with any other boys," he tells her, half-laughing, her hands in his.
She looks up at him, her whole, loving heart in her eyes. "You know I wouldn't."
"And that's why you're my girl," he says. Tenderly, he brushes a dark curl from her forehead and bends down to kiss her. She throws her arms around his neck, and the salty tears mar the sweetness of his last kiss.
"You'll wait for me?" he whispers, still holding her. His callused fingers wipe away the tear-tracks.
"Always," she whispers back.
"That's my girl." He walks backwards, his eyes on hers. When he's almost out of sight, he suddenly cries, "Carreen O'Hara I'll be back for you!" And then with a war-whoop he dashes away.
The Father
Bonnie was fairer.
Cat is taller.
Bonnier had blue eyes.
Cat's are green.
Bonnie was a better rider.
Cat writes poetry. No, Bonnie was never old enough to write at all, let alone poetry...
He keeps a mental picture of his Bonnie and every year, as Cat grows taller and prettier, he readjusts it, constantly reimagining, reinventing Bonnie if she had ever reached her sister's age.
Ugly
"She's a plain enough baggage and that's certain. Never get her mother's looks, that's for sure."
Ella is used to those whispered conversations between ladies when they come to visit Auntie. They think she's too little to understand but she isn't. It ought to hurt - to be told that she'll never be beautiful, not like Mother - but oddly it doesn't. Mother was a cruel, unkind woman - not even a lady - and whenever Ella thinks of her, she always imagines her as the beautiful, wicked queen of fairytales.
Dara
She will never be her mother - magnolia-skinned Scarlett with her fragile, antebellum Southern grace and her ways so pretty and coquettish even when she's an old woman. She's moor-skinned with eyes that are often compared to a prowling cat's.
(She doesn't like the green eyes that look so distinctive on her mother's face. She's not mother, mother on whom everything looks beautiful.)
Cat, Mother and Daddy call her. Kitty, sometimes Kitten, the gossiping girlfriends and the beaux who flirt and tease and dance with her. Katie, Ella who's never known her says. None of them seem to fit.
(She remembers the cailleach at Ballyhara, even though she was only a mite of a child when she last saw her. Dara, she called her, and Dara is the name her heart secretly yearns for).
Ghosts
The sky erupts in flames again and he screams, his small limbs writhing and kicking out ineffectually. "Wade Hampton Hamilton," Mother grunts drowsily, "If I catch you..." She swats at him but she's already asleep and her arm falls, like a leaden weight, over his neck.
"Hush honey," a soft voice whispers. "You're safe now and the Yankees can't get you."
He snuggles against Aunt Melly's side, tears glimmering on his eyelashes.
Gotterdammerung
The faded roses, pressed within the leaves of a lady's album, matche the hollow, faded cheeks of the woman who opens it. Woman. It has been a long time since Cathleen Calvert has ceased to be a lady.
The bedroom is bare of all the ornamentation that had once enlivened gay, empty-headed 'Leen's room. Girls had giggled and gossiped and idled away once on the rose-silk divan, now a ramshackle nest for mice. Her mother's tapestries and her schoolgirl paintings - imperfectly executed, the drab, cheerless product of unprosperous hours frittered away at drawing lessons - had once hung on the peach-colored walls.
In their place are faded squares and peeling paint.
She clasps the album to her heart and her cornflower eyes are bright with tears. The sunlight gilds her thinning hair and for one brief moment it shimmers like an aureole of gold.
Corset
It's a day that comes in every girl's life. It's a day anticipated with bated breath by many, by fear by still many more.
Scarlett is eleven years old. "Hold on to the bedpost and suck in your breath," Ellen instructs. She smiles to reassure her daughter. "Don't worry, dear, it won't hurt. Much."
Mammy grunts. "Lis'n to her! It won' hurt... why Miss Ellen I remember the day I tied yo' lacin's fo' the first time, clear as spring-water! It won' hurt... bah. Don' pay heed to her, lamb, I mou' it'll hurt."
Her green eyes wide - reminding Ellen uncomfortably of a rabbit caught in a trap - Scarlett clings to the bedpost with all her strength. Mammy pulls the strings tight and the girl squeals in pain. Downstairs, ten-year-old Suellen hears and shivers, remembering that soon she too will be forced to don a corset for propriety's sake.
"There," Mammy says comfortably as Scarlett gasps, her head spinning dizzily, trying to catch her breath. "Ain' nobody got a wais' like mah lamb's."
Bonnet
"Package fo' you, Miss Scarlett."
"Thank you, Uncle Peter."
Pitty peeks curiously over the rim of her teacup. Melly chatters brightly about setting up a quilting circle, while shooting a covert glance at her sister-in-law. Scarlett undoes the ribbons and breathes in the soft, luscious new-bonnet smell of the hatbox. Her hands delve within layers of crumply paper and lace and bring out a bonnet, emerald green watered-silk overlaid by forest-green velvet.
For a moment there is silence. "How careless of the postman," Pitty cries. "It must be for someone else."
"No, Auntie," Scarlett says demurely. Her green eyes glitter as she ties the lacings in a perfect bow under her chin. Melly thinks she hasn't seen Scarlett look so pretty, so alive and vital, for a long time. "It's for me alright."
Old Maid
She is secretly glad when Scarlett takes Stu Tarleton off her hands. Poor dear, she knows everyone thinks. Jilted at the altar, and all for that red-lipped baggage! Far better, indeed, to be an old maid than a raccous, bumptious weathervane's wife. She has her books and her roses, her long afternoons of solitude and chamber-music and the quiet, sedate dignity of being mistress of Twelve Oaks. It suits her and she is happy.
It is only when Scarlett casts her cat-eyes at Ashley that India's heart hardens.
Three Little headstones
They stand together, all three in one neat row. Little marble mounds, unmarked save for the single epitaph 'Gerald O'Hara Jr', repeated on each.
She brings magnolia-blossoms in spring and scarlet roses, which adorn their sisters' bosoms at balls, in summer. In autumn, they are fringed by ferns, russet and gold. Overhead the saffron-bruised clouds cavort in a heathenly purple sky, beauty they never saw.
Heaven is more beautiful, Ellen thinks. She crosses herself, takes one last, long lingering glance and trudges slowly back to the house.
The girls will be wanting her.
Chalet
"Rhett, about our chalet-"
"Sha-ley, darling, not chalet."
"I meant what I said. C-h-a-l-e-t. Chalet."
"You are determined to imbue every syllable of that word with provincialism. Each to his own."
"Oh you are impossible!"
Vanity
The Butlers were spending the summer at Nice. Taking their coffee on the piazza, they were doing what they did best - namely, looking like fashion-plates who had stepped out of Harper's Weekly. Miss Katie nibbled a petit four and attempted to interpret the menu, looking for all the world like the epitome of all that was admirable in an elegant and accomplished young lady. The fact that her French was quite as deplorable as her mother's taste in houses did not enter the picture.
Mrs Butler smiled benignly on, fancying herself as young and pretty as her daughter. Had she not been, and would she not continue to be Scarlett O'Hara, belle of five counties, for eons?
"Charmante." A pair of dandies sauntered past, their eyes clearly on the ladies. Mrs Butler fluttered her eyelashes, and attempted to make her dimples dance.
Mr Butler emerged from behind the shelter of his newspaper. "No, my dear," he drawled. "They weren't for you." He nodded towards their daughter. "Katie, I think you've made a conquest."
Grandmothers
Like a multi-colored butterfly, little Solange Prudhomme darted from one end of the deck to another. "Oh isn't it just wonderful?" she squealed, eyes misting over at the rolling green beauty of the Irish coast. "I'm so glad you took us on this cruise, Papa, truly it's worth the sea-sickness!" Old Prudhomme smiled indulgently at his daughter, while his partner, Pierre Robillard, chuckled and patted the little girl's dark curls.
At the wharf, a little Irish peasant woman hold her three small sons close. Dublin was new to her and her boys - they were rowdy lads, aye, and merited watching. "There, tisn't it a lovely piece?" Katie Scarlett O'Hara asked her youngest, Gerald, pointing at the ship to distract him.
Gerald's eyes were riveted on the fairylike child in her fluttering gown of pink-and-white on the deck. "She be a princess, Mother?"
Katie Scarlett considered Solange from afar. "T'will be likely," she mused, "T'will be likely."
Fairytales
"...And they lived happily ever after. Did you like it, Auntie?"
"You read like an angel, Wade darling. Do you know, Cinderella's always been my favourite fairytale?"
"I'd have guessed it, Melanie. You remind one so of a coal-scuttle at times."
"Perhaps you're right, Scarlett - I suppose I am frightfully unkempt. But what was your favourite when you were a child, dear?"
"I fancy it was Snow White, Miss Melly."
"Fiddle-de-dee, Rhett, how you do run on!"
"But why not, my love? You remind one so of-"
"Yes, she is quite like Snow White isn't she, Captain Butler? Her skin, her hair, the sweetness and grace of disposition-"
"With due respect, Miss Melly, I meant the Queen. "
Colours
"Mummy, what's your favourite colour?"
"Why do you ask, child?"
"Indeed, I'm ashamed of you for asking your mother, Bonnie. Don't you know it couldn't be anything but the virulent green hue of her own eyes?"
"How right you are, Rhett! It certainly is green, but virulent-"
"But Daddy, what does virulent mean?"
"-Though virulent does have a poetic ring to it. What does it mean, Rhett?"
"Congratulations, my love. You have proved your vocabulary to be as comprehensive as that of a four-year-old."