Eleanor Roosevelt woke up in Paris. Hillary
Clinton wore an autumn jacket, bright
beads, and addressed the Press about
the new Libyan No Fly Zone. Hillary’s
campaign faux pearls - as big and
innocent as Jackie Kennedy’s - were gone:
replaced by those semi-precious beads
in elegant earth colours, just
as Eleanor would have worn
herself. Hillary, however, did not
mention that this day in Bahrain
fifty demonstrators were shot, the Saudi
Army had moved in to savagely protect
the Government, with the glowing
Pearl Roundabout monument destroyed
because the protestors had employed
it as a gathering symbol. Eleanor
remembered the thirty-year-old statue
as being indeed quite as lovely
as a star turn at the jewellers,
the giant luna pearl enclasped
high up in petal-claws. Maybe
because she was old, she thought,
she increasingly loved the pretty.
Hillary was actually
even prettier each day, but
the best she could attempt on Bahrain
was to recommend social order, the sacred
schoolday, workday. Eleanor had been
to school in France two centuries ago, the
headmistress a very nice American
Lesbian whose name she forgot, but
she did recall reading the Medieval
poem 'Pearl' on the pearl maiden lost
by her father as a child, reappearing as
an angelic young woman reproaching him
for not being a 'gentle jeweller', since
he mourned her inconsolably. We also,
Eleanor reflected, continue to grow
after death. Hillary at one point scratched
her head and visibly thought this would not
look so good and stopped. She often
scratched it absently, luxuriantly, as
women do, when she discussed her plans
with Eleanor. She could do anything in front
of her, she smiled with sugar, pretended it
was to the Press (some of whom suddenly
looked puzzled at her delicious fondness),
told all who were staying to enjoy
their night in Paris teasingly, then left.
Her cute march out of the room, smile
were as self-consciously naughty as a moppet
in the movies, so relaxed
because Eleanor was there. As soon
as they were in the hotel room, she knew
as useful as the Seine, she'd hear
'But, now, about Bahrain, my dear ...'
and thankfully it would not let her be.
Copyright © Jennifer Maiden 2012
