Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

It seemed that people wanted nothing more than to enjoy themselves during the convulsion of war. It was the spring of 1918 and people everywhere were sick of attrition.

There was nothing wrong with having a good time as long as she didn’t have to have one herself.

At no point in the war or after, including the Armistice and the Peace, did Niven ever think anyone had won. He no longer had the patience for people’s foibles. No patience for people at all. No time for religion, no time for scruples, no time for feelings. Niven’s heart appeared adamantine, fired in the crucible of the war.

Gwendolen’s mother had been a foolish woman, inclined to believe any passing nonsense. Of such people were patriots made, in Gwendolen’s opinion. More’s the pity.

“Gossip,” Mr. Pollock called it dismissively, but Gwendolen thought that was the word men gave to women’s conversation. Men talked in order to convey information or to ruminate on cricket scores and campaign statistics. Women, on the other hand, talked in an effort to understand the foibles of human behaviour. If men were to “gossip,” the world might be a better place. There would certainly be fewer wars.

Betty was very hard-nosed yet occasionally mawkishly sentimental, a combination shared with her mother and many dictators both before and since.

Lying came easily to Niven, he thought of it as a means of protecting the truth.

Life was for absorbing, not recording. And in the end, it was all just paper that someone would have to dispose of after you were gone. Perhaps, after all, one’s purpose in this world was to be forgotten, not remembered.

Some people were complete in themselves, as if born from the earth or the ocean, like some of the gods. Which was not a compliment. The gods were ruthlessly indifferent to humanity.

A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.