by Jack Dylan
Steve was used to uncertainties and unresolved wishes. He watched the others and envied the relative straightforwardness of their issues. He experienced an amused impatience with James and Sinead. He longed to shout at them, “Get on with it for goodness sake!” But he didn’t. He watched the way William’s eyes followed Lavinia, and saw the flickering twitches of smiles as William allowed himself his undeclared fantasies. Just like his reaction to the book, William preferred the world of pleasing dreams and possibilities to the harsh concrete of the declared affection and the spurned advance.
But what of Steve himself? He was learning to more truly value each day and the enjoyment it brought. His illness had at one time given him a short life-expectancy. At that point he had managed to climb beyond the despair and depression that rode on the back of the feelings of unfairness and persecution. He had achieved a philosophical stasis where the mundane was very truly just that. Conversely the pleasures of friendships, and the disproportionate elation at little daily successes, achieved a colour and value that injected an unexpected quota of humour and joy into his life. The horizon had gradually gained distance, so now he was adjusting to the complexity of seeing a longer life again, and puzzling with the questions of how it was going to be filled. His hard-won philosophical foundation gave him a wry, un-fussed relaxation about the future. After coping with the lack of a future, he was hardly going to let its reinstatement prove negative. So he watched himself with something of the air of a benevolently amused spectator. His lightness could be misinterpreted by others as superficiality, but in reality it was a perspective that had emerged out of the worst of times and the deepest of despair.
Lavinia was puzzled. She loved the little group she had fostered – loved them collectively and individually. It was one of the liveliest symbols of her re-invented self. But she was experiencing a disturbing dissatisfaction in an unfocused and annoying way. She couldn’t find the reason for it, and she was unsuccessfully trying to pin it, like a cardboard donkey-tail at a children’s party, on each inappropriate theme that inhabited her mind.
She knew really that it wasn’t the group. They could be annoying, but they were also stimulating, helpful, challenging and amusing. Each of them brought a necessary facet to the group, and she didn’t want to change the mix at all. She had re-established an active relationship with Hermione, and they met more frequently than they had for years. Her photography was working well – more pleasing prints and more opportunities to submit them for competition and exhibition. She was even selling some.
The photographs took her mind back to the strip of negatives; the heart-sinking moment when she found Alex in the dark-room; and the exhilaration of the dinner in Delaney’s. Her little group had unassumingly blossomed into the most creative, dynamic and effective team that she could have imagined. She pictured it as something equivalent to the parental joy at seeing one’s children take off and excel in the world. It was probably the high spot of her life to have seen poor Alex taken in hand by her unlikely squad, and changed from a confused and defeated mess into a hopeful and positive agent in the affair. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps after the highs that they experienced in extracting the story from Alex, and then so unexpectedly finding a way out of the maze for him, the excitement could only be followed by an emotional low. It was probably the natural counter-swing in emotions after the incredible positives they felt when the contacts they made reacted helpfully, and Alex emerged with a way out of his hell.
The celebratory party last week had been exuberant, delightful, and deservedly self-congratulatory. Alex and Maggie had been so hugely grateful to them. He really meant it when he said they had saved his life, it wasn’t just the usual hyperbole. But why was she left feeling deflated? Why were even the memories of the warmth of that evening somewhat bitter-sweet? She dismissed as usual any possibility of feelings of romantic attraction. At first it was just the learned reaction that she had demonstrated countless times in her successfully solitary life. Almost immediately it was also the rational rejection of the possibility of a relationship, as Alex had even brought Maggie to the party – what greater evidence did she need?
Lavinia sighed; William dreamed; James squeezed Sinead’s hand; and Steve quietly smiled.
About The Author
Jack Dylan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Dylan is a reclusive Irish writer who hides his identity in order to protect his privacy. A career in business and psychology provided raw material for a library of books. The Turkish Trap (previously released as ‘Dolphins in the Bay’) is the first and will be followed quickly by more in the same style. Dylan plans a volume of short stories and a collection of poetry. Both will be available in Amazon books.
Keep up to date with Jack’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/JackDylanAuthor
and Jack's webiste
www.jackdylan.co.uk