The Wintry Peacock
D. H. Lawrence2006

The short story, Wintry Peacock tells the story of an Englishwoman who has been left with her husband’s parents for the duration of the war. Shortly before her husband’s return, there is a letter addressed to her husband written in French. She asks a man she sees in passing to translate it, and though the letter details that her husband had an affair with a young woman while away at war, and that this woman had recently delivered a baby by him and plans to come to England, the man translating tells the woman instead that the baby is the young girl’s newborn brother and that her parents named the child after the soldier for having protected their family during the war. That evening the man finds the woman’s peacock in the cold and takes it in, returning it the following day to find that the husband has returned. When asked in private what the letter had said, the letter having since been burnt according to his wife, the translator tells the man both what the letter said, leaving out that the woman and her child are coming to England, and tells him also what he told the man’s wife. The husband laughs and jokingly berates the man for bringing the peacock home and suggests that, though his wife loves it very much, he will perhaps kill it. The two both laugh, seemingly at the misfortune of both the wife and the mistress, though the translator may be laughing as well at the husband himself.

Titre original : The Wintry Peacock (2006)