by D J Wiseman
But action will cause reaction and something will happen. The leaf will be cast to the forest floor where it will lie anonymously turning to mould. Though a million feet were to walk right by it, none would pause to remark its presence. Even I would not be able to detect it. The future at once looks crystal clear and impenetrable. The calmness of the centre has flowed out to envelop me and all around is light and clarity but the horizon remains black and infinite. This I think is the world without her even though she sleeps a sleep through this last night. Check mate in the game. Mr Punch.
She silently cursed herself for having read the end before she had read the whole. It had a lyrical quality to it, but it was also dark and sinister. And ‘Mr Punch’? What was that about? Even as she worked on through the first dozen or so entries, she was aware of that final paragraph and resolved to strictly follow the sequence of the writer for the rest of the book. It was certainly more than notes for a novel, perhaps the novel itself. To make the whole thing readable, Lydia added a little punctuation where she felt it was essential, and gave numbers to each section as she detected a change in writing or the colour of the pen, otherwise she was faithful to her source. Where she came to words that defied her attempts at interpretation she left a space or put her best guess in brackets. At length she completed the first dozen or so entries, by far the easiest part of the job. It seemed to her that it would be something more suitable to read from the printed page than the computer screen, so she moved to her comfortable chair with a glass of wine from the previous evening’s bottle. The words were familiar to her, as if she had written them, invented them herself, but nonetheless she began at the beginning, through the strange list of words, the finger exercises, the view from the window, the wide mouthed girl and the odd use of initials to refer to the writer’s wife.
SDI entered my life at that moment and has been right there ever since. She should not have been, she should never have been, but she is. For how much longer I cannot now say because there is an end to this by some means. She has consumed me and devoured me, borne the child that we lost, transformed me and destroyed me. All this by carrying a cardboard box up some steps to her new flat. It doesn’t seem likely or possible now, writing it down in this dead notebook. Surely it was not me who asked her out for a drink on our first accidental meeting on the stairs a couple of days later for it is something I had only ever done that once. Surely I did not ask her again the next day having been turned down the first time in favour of her favourite TV programme? Surely she did not grudgingly accept the offer? Did she not have a boyfriend or a real life that would take precedence? What her reasoning was for accepting the casual offer I have never known.
A drink led of course to another and another. And drinks led to meals out and then meals out led to meals in and meals in led to bed. The sheer intensity of that first joining of our bodies still tightens my muscles in a spasm of anguish. And all the subsequent couplings, however rare, however good, bad or indifferent the actual experience, they also force a stifled moan at their recollection. It is not that she was unwilling, just that she never seemed fully engaged, never one hundred percent there with me in the little single bed tucked into the corner of her bedroom beside the window. Always it seemed there was a part, sometimes a very tiny part, that was somewhere else, worrying about the marking she needed to do, or paying the rent or cleaning the bath. How I longed, still long, for her to commit completely, to lose herself in love and emotion and sensual arousal. Did she, does she, think that nice girls don’t? I have never asked her, I never dared risk a word that could break the spell.
And then even when we married a few months later I never really knew if she was certain or really wanted to. Of course she said yes, eventually, when I asked her. And in the same breath said she still wanted to go away to a conference in the summer as it had been booked for ages and ages. Why did I not see the whole future there and then? Maybe I did not want to see it, maybe I believed in change, maybe I was in love, maybe I still am. And when we were to sleep together again the day after we agreed to marry, why did I not see the whole of my life stretching forward in every detail with every tiny agony like shards of metal in my eye? Why, when she said that she did not feel like it did I not say, ‘no, but then you never do’? All questions and not a single answer.
And here we are today, a good day as days go, thinking like the rest of the world of signs of spring and life starting up again. Winter being pushed back into memory. We were happy today, a walk round the park in bright sunshine between the showers, once even holding hands briefly till she said it was too uncomfortable to walk like that. Out of synch, always out of synch. It is already better for writing this.
2nd entry
It is late and I cannot get off to sleep. S let me know today that she does not like me seeing her in the shower. This was not news to me. I have known this since the first time I barged in and ever since have always tried to avoid doing so. But today I needed something in the bathroom so went in, carefully averted my eyes. Even without looking I knew that she had turned round in case I should glimpse her nakedness. And now I cannot sleep for thinking about it, thinking about being denied, refused, excluded. And thinking about whether it is intentional, even malicious, or just unthinking, just how she is.
It is just how she was on our wedding day, just how she was when we took the vows and the registrar said that we were married and that we could kiss if we wished. Just how she was when she accepted my lips and returned them with a pursed peck to satisfy the tiny audience. How I wanted a full public statement of a kiss, a kiss that said ‘I do’ more than the simple words could ever say. And then again later when our friends wanted those happy wedding snaps the kisses were just hollow poses, as meaningless as the photos themselves are now, collected in curling bundles in boxes at the back of wardrobes. Frozen slivers of Kodacolor time telling nothing of past or future.
It was wrong to say that she has never completely given of herself. It feels as if she has never but it is not true. There was once, just once, long ago I think there was a moment, maybe longer, maybe an hour or so when another S, a different, wonderful, free as air S gave herself to me. Knowing that time, feeling that moment right now as if it had just happened only makes the rest all the more excruciating. It was me in the shower and she there with me, fixing her hair or cleaning her teeth. I asked her to pass me some soap or gel or something, half hoping that it might lead to something else but ever mindful that it wouldn’t. Without speaking she came to me and started soaping me down and massaging my body. Surprise and pure pleasure rolled over me in waves. She was getting splashed and I saw that her underwear was getting wet. And she didn’t seem to care. That was what was so exciting, so blissful – she didn’t care. She should have been saying, no I’m half dressed, no, my hair will get messed up, no I have some shopping to do. But she didn’t and it was wonderful that she didn’t. S did not speak and we have neither of us spoken of it since. And it hasn‘t happened again.
Last time I wrote here it was better afterwards, so I’ll try sleep again. I will creep in beside her warmth and be as close as I can without touching for fear of her recoiling from me. She does this even when she is asleep. At least, when I think she is asleep.
3rd entry
Today I have worked late in the office, just as I have most evenings recently. There is plenty to do, but I don’t have to work in the evenings. It is not as if it is good work. I will probably have to go over the same ground again tomorrow. But it has kept me out of the way and out of her way. It has kept us apart and separate as she seems to want to be apart and separate. She is pre-occupied by school and writing reports and marking and planning her lessons. She also works in the evenings but doesn’t need to go over the same ground tomorrow. Tonight she has gone to bed a few minutes after I got home.
Perhaps I should have an affair. Perhaps I want to. Perhaps I want to have an affair with P. She is young, nearly blond, attractive in every sense, thoroughly liberated and frien
dly towards me. She seems to have no regular boyfriend and she works conveniently in the next set of offices to mine. But I probably don’t have the energy. We were with our good friends H and J at the weekend and the idea of having an affair came up. The general consensus was that it would be alright if your partner never found out and that it was not long lasting. In other words, it would be alright if nobody got hurt. Like taking drugs or speeding in a thirty limit. H declared that he didn’t know where people found the time to have an affair. He has previously confided to me that he regularly sleeps with his PA and that on his occasional trips abroad he never missed the opportunity to sample the local dishes, as he puts it. I didn’t remind him of this. I think J knows about H but chooses to pretend that she doesn’t.
Perhaps she should have an affair, perhaps she wants me to, perhaps she was telling me that it would be ok so long as she didn’t know about it, perhaps she wants me to leave her. Maybe I will. Perhaps she wants to leave me. But what do I know of what she really wants? I don’t have a clue. But if she doesn’t want me I wish she would say so, I wish she had said so on any one of the thousands of moments she has said nothing. The feeling of wanting to end this waiting, this hope, one way or another is getting stronger. I can feel it gnawing away towards some resolution.
4th entry
Sunday night, usually one of the worst nights, but now it is not. She is away for a whole week on a school trip. She left yesterday morning with scarcely a word, certainly not a kiss or any embrace or touch that in another life might be expected. So I have the house to myself, and this book does not need to be hidden away when I’m done. These two things have engendered in me a kind of elation. The immediate, in-your-face tension has gone with her out the door. Now I have begun to wonder if this is how it would be if we separated for good. Could we do it without speaking, without anger and recrimination and the opening up of all the past wounds and rejections? If I pack up now and was gone when she gets back then it could be that way. Inevitably I cannot do this even as revenge for all that I suffer because maybe just maybe she might still want me. Some tiny spark of hope remains and refuses to be extinguished. But even as I sit here knowing that I cannot leave now, I am closer to being able to leave than ever before. It is no longer inconceivable. The tiny spark blinks and is all but gone.
And another darker thought has skipped through my head. It came in slyly, masquerading as something quite different and while I wasn’t paying attention. What if she did not come back on Friday night, what if she was not on a school trip but was gone with a week’s grace before I noticed she was gone for good? And then again what if she was on the school trip but never came back because of some terrible accident? It seems that every year there is a fatal tragedy involving a school trip on a Belgian motorway or a group of children canoeing or a slip from some mountain path. I have sat here trying to imagine how I would really feel. Would I be distraught or ecstatically released from my cell? Horribly, I have concluded that I would be both, and once again trapped in the tension of diametrically opposed emotions. But even that might be better than I am now, feeling crushed under an infinite weight with life seeping slowly away.
When did we first cease any contact on meeting or parting, when did those always chaste pecks become mere approximations to kisses? And how long did it take for even those to fade away to muttered greetings half hidden for fear of underlining their insincerity. That lack of a parting kiss, that absent embrace, is another drop of acid rain slowly corroding my soul. I want to write love instead of soul but hesitated over the word. Is there love yet left? Confused by her absence, I have no equal and opposite force present to sustain my position. Maybe it is that which has allowed wandering thoughts of final separation to swim freely tonight.
5th entry
Long journeys yesterday and today and a long sleepless night ahead unless I can empty my head of some of the angst. A journey to a funeral is the worst of all long journeys. All the way to Cockermouth to stand in the grey Cumbrian drizzle beside a grave. She was determined to go and didn’t need me there beside her, after all I hardly knew the woman, her godmother, someone that S was deeply fond of. But I went, maybe I could at least have the role of sympathetic and understanding husband. So I’d booked us into a small hotel for the night, taken the time away from work and driven through the holiday traffic. A tiny room with cold beds, cold at the height of summer, at the back of the hotel where the sun never shines and the damp of winter lingers until autumn.
Eight people listened to the service and stood round the grave for the final words. How alone can a single woman of 80 odd be? How lonely a life can it be that brings but 8 people to your funeral? Perhaps it was all her own choice, perhaps she was entirely self sufficient. S was bearing up until the first handful of earth rattled onto the coffin lid. Then she wept a little and bit her lip. As the sad little group dispersed I couldn’t help put my arm round her shoulders. Even in her sadness, even in that vulnerable moment of softness, she stiffened a little and her neck stretched almost imperceptibly away from me. And I made as if I hadn’t noticed and waited a few moments before removing the useless arm. We drifted out of the church yard, she saying her goodbyes to people she did not know, me nodding with a dull smile in the background, thinking how much I wished I was not there, anywhere but there. Then an aimless wander round the streets where her B had lived, where S had walked and explored as a child when she stayed in the school holidays. I couldn’t help but ask if it was here with her precious B, her aunt or cousin or some such, that she had learnt her own independence, her own self sufficiency. I did not think it in a kind way, I thought it in a resentful, locked out way. Drip drip more acid.
And now we are back through the remorseless traffic, exhausted and with only 24 hours before we leave for France. And she is asleep and I am awake and my mind races over the horrible possibilities of the next week or so. We are thrown together with no excuse for escape, nothing to lessen the tension I feel and which she seems to feel not at all. And dread of dreads she will make some kind advance, some touch of skin to skin and I will think how marvellous it would be at the same time as thinking why only on holiday, why not all the year, every day, every minute. And I will be cast as the rejecter, the unwilling, the cold and disinterested.
I will not try and console her for her next loss.
6th entry
Little fragments of love, mere tokens of love tossed into my begging bowl are not love at all. They are not even charity, and serve only to hint at what was, what might have been. And this is the awful dilemma now. For so long I feel like the dying man, dying of thirst in a desert of loneliness, offered the hope of life with a few drops of precious liquid at the very moment when death seems closest. Am I to take the drops and drink, prolong the death throes into a shrivelled ageing, or decline and bring forward the final ending. There that is it in a sentence. All the thinking, all the sleepless nights, all the anger and hurt, all distilled into a few words. Holidays are good for you or so they say. Maybe this one has been good for me if I can turn it all into a sentence. Or maybe it is this writing it down, here for no one but me to read that enables insight.
As ever she chooses her moments for maximum effect. A long, long drive in hot French sun all the way down to the house at La Rochelle. An early start and a late arrival, bags into the house, all unpacked, all groceries stored, pizza cooked and eaten, bottle of wine consumed, all with barely a word, all I want to do is sleep for a week. But tonight S would turn toward me instead of away, tonight she would put her hand on my face, tonight she would want contact and lovemaking. I want so much to go to sleep, so much to turn away and pay her back for the countless times that she has silently made clear that she has no interest in closeness. Through the drowsiness and the wine my tiny devil will be laughing and saying what you going to do now then, whose fault will it be when she is like ice for the next six months? Not that she is ever like ice, if only she were.
I kissed her once, in a great [despairing] effor
t to shake her from her indifference. Months had passed, perhaps years I can’t remember, without the slightest token. I stood furious and desolate a few feet from her and could resist no longer. I took her head in my hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. In her shock her lips were still a little apart and I tasted the instantly recognisable sweetness of her mouth. Hard and long I kissed. As I pulled away a little she stood for a second and then turned and continued with the pruning of her rose bushes. There was no resistance, no pushing me away but there was no willingness, no release of tension, merely placid acceptance.
And so we continue, she apparently sailing serenely on, unmoved, unaffected by me or by us or our deadly embrace. Maybe she thinks that this is how it should be, how all marriages end up, maybe she has no expectation of any more, no hope of true intimacy. In the storm of confusion inside my head I wonder if it is I who have it all wrong, I who clings ridiculously to a Hollywood romance that never was and never will be.
7th entry
Again and again it is the dead of night when I write here. She never stirs when I leave the bed. Is she asleep? Sometimes I think she is awake, waiting for me to creep out. Sometimes when I lie there I think she is awake listening to me think, watching in the darkness for the tiniest movement, the smallest flicker, ever alert in case I should reach out a caressing hand. If she sleeps what does she dream of? These last few days have been harder than ever. Tonight a new quandary presented itself in my thoughts. What is it that she wants of me, wants of anything? To me she appears supremely self sufficient, I am completely irrelevant apart from bringing in some money and providing the husband badge. Is she waiting for the deserted badge, the separated badge or even the divorce badge? Is she looking forward to the widow badge? She may be trying to drive me completely out of my sanity. It is not possible for her to be unaware of the effect that this living death is having.