Devil's Choice

by Graham Wilson

  She realised he was too drunk to follow quickly. So she called out thanks for the meal and skipped away, leaving him sitting there looking half dazed but annoyed. Before he moved she turned the corner and was out of sight. In five minutes she was home, glad she got away so easily.

  She knew she would not be accepting any more dinner invitations from Richard; he was not really her type. Her Dad always said that people showed what they were really like when they got drunk and she decided then that she did not like Richard very much, drunk or sober.

  Tremors

  One Tuesday night in February Ella rang her and said she was feeling sick and asked her if she could manage the shift alone, with Mathew working on the books in the back room available for backup. Tuesday nights of late had been very quiet and it barely needed them both there. So she said, “Yes, no worries I am sure I can manage.”

  Mathew was at the bar when she came in and smiled in pleasure at seeing her, saying he was so glad she could cover on her own, it was a big help to him not to have to get someone else in.

  She smiled back brightly, feeling pleased to see him alone for a minute. Perhaps, at the end of the night, she would get a chance to seek his advice about what he was best for her to study. She had made up her mind on the day and lodged the form but still felt uncertain about her choice.

  She also wanted to ask him what he thought about her continuing to work, perhaps two nights a week once university started. Her Mum and Dad had offered to support her by paying the extra expenses while she went through University and she knew they were giving her Gran money to cover her living expenses, as well as a generous allowance to her to cover her clothes, going out and other things she did. However she had more than covered all her expenses from her wages since she had started work and could well afford to skip the allowance. She could even afford to pay her Gran directly for food and other living expenses though she knew it would be hard to get her to take the money. The few times she had tried her Gran had just given it back saying she should keep her money, she was young and should enjoy life and if she did not need it all right now she should just save it as one day she surely would need it. She it had gone into her bank account, steadily building up so now there was a good balance.

  Catherine liked the idea of being self supporting, after all her mother had managed totally on her own since just after she had turned fifteen, three years younger than Catherine was now. So she wanted to ask Mathew whether he thought it was feasible for her to keep doing at least two shifts a week once she went back to Uni, knowing she might have to swap them around a bit once she got her timetable. That way she could largely pay for her own living expenses and get her parents to stop their allowance to her.

  So she was pleased that tonight she might get the chance to talk to Mathew one on one about these things. But tonight Mathew looked really tired and gaunt, like he had a month with almost no sleep, so perhaps it was not be the right night to bother him with her minor worries. Well she would just have to see.

  She settled into work and Mathew went off to his office out the back. She worked away steadily and the night passed. About half past nine the last drinkers left and then it was just her tidying up. She was a bit surprised she had not seen Mathew in over three hours; he had called in briefly to check she was OK just after six pm and he looked pretty terrible. He did not look like he had been drinking but it seemed like there was something wrong and she felt worried for him. She wondered if it would be rude or too nosy to ask him what was wrong, there was surely some problem.

  When all the tidying was done it was about five to ten, and he still had not appeared which was unlike him. He usually came down for the last ten or fifteen minutes and gave a hand with the final tidying and counting the money, getting ready to lock up. Now she still had all the money in the till. She decided to lock the front doors a bit early and go and check what Mathew was doing. She could not leave the money unattended and go out the back and she felt worried that he had not come in. Plus no one was likely to come for a last drink five minutes before closing. She walked out to his office. The door was closed so she knocked. There was no answer. He must still be in there because he could not leave without coming through the bar and she would have seen him.

  She knocked again, still no answer. She tried the door. It opened in silently. Now she could hear a faint noise, it almost sounded like crying though that did not make sense. She looked inside. At first she could see nothing, then she made out a shadow in the corner on the floor. She realised there was a body lying on the floor.

  Suddenly she realised that the shape was Mathew, his body lying stretched out face down on the floor, pushed into a corner, his legs half pulled up towards his body. She felt panic.

  The way he was lying was not natural, he would not sleep in that position, it looked too uncomfortable. Please God let him not be dead.

  Then she realised a sound was coming from him, something between a groan and a sob.

  Without thinking more she went over and put her arms around him, feeling his thin broad shoulders shaking underneath her like a leaf. She hugged her body to him and stroked his hair, seeking to give him comfort and reassurance, as if a mother to a baby. She wrapped her body fully round his and lay there with him stroking and crooning to him, “There, there it will be alright, I am here now. I will look after you.” She did not know why she chose these words but they seemed right.

  He continued to shake like a leaf for a few minutes and then it was as if he started drawing comfort for her and slowly his sobbing and groaning subsided and then it was just the shaking of his body against hers. She stayed as she was, trying to feed him comfort. Slowly the shaking subsided too. Suddenly he shook himself as if to clear his head. He pushed himself off the floor, half pushing her backwards as he rose. She struggled to maintain her balance and not fall to the side, as her feet were not fully under her.

  He turned his face towards her with puzzlement, as is trying to understand what was happening. He saw her wobbling to hold her balance and reached out to steady her, a firm arm grasping her elbow. “My God, Catherine, what are you doing here?” His eyes flashed; something between confusion, embarrassment and anger that someone had seen him in this state.

  She looked back steadily, determined not to be cowed. She said, “It is OK Mathew, you were lying half curled up in the corner shaking and moaning, seeming to be unconscious, as if you were having an awful dream. I stayed with you and held you until you came out of it. Please tell me what is wrong? I want to help.”

  He looked at her uncertain, as if trying to decide what to do, what to say.

  Catherine tried for a smile, it worked.

  She could see some of the tension leave his face as he relaxed, then he smiled back. There was a lounge to one side of his office, a three seater that someone could stretch out on for a sleep. He walked over to it, his body trembling slightly, and sat down. She could see he was making an effort to keep the trembling in check.

  She followed him, unbidden, and sat next to him. There was effort on his face now and the trembling was increasing, as if whatever devil was there was returning. Without asking she put her arms around him again and pulled his face against her breast, stroking his hair. The trembling grew worse and worse until his whole body was shaking.

  She just held him and kept whispering words of comfort, waiting for it to pass. It went on and on, but after what seemed like a long time she could feel it ease. She sensed she could let him go now, that he was back under control, but she was determined not to. It was as if a primordial instinct told her that the best way to comfort him was with her own body, with touch; stroking and holding, the way a mother would a child. In a way she could not explain she knew that his needing her and her giving him comfort was the most satisfying and fulfilling thing she had ever done, it felt so right.

  Finally, when his body was almost still she heard him whisper, head still against her chest. “Thank you, thank you, I have not been held like that for such a l
ong time. You have no idea just how good it felt, just to be held and safe.

  She whispered back, “It felt good to me too. I think, since the day I met you I have wanted to hold you like this, to feel your breath against my cheek. I am glad I have been able to give you comfort. I would give you more if I knew how. I want to help you, please tell me what I can do to help you?

  It seemed to her as if those words broke the spell of togetherness for enough for him to sit up. Slowly he straightened his body until he was sitting straight beside her. He took her hand in his and held it to his face. She felt the roughened stubble and felt a huge desire to caress his face. She rested her hand where he held it and then brought her other hand to his face on the opposite side, running it through his hair then caressing his cheek. With his free hand he reached behind her neck and brought her face to his until their noses were almost touching. Then, light as down, he kissed her on her lips. Her lips sought his out and she kissed him back. Now their mouths were joined in an incredibly tender kiss.

  Finally he pulled back, looked at her, eyes bright as if with tears. He pulled her face onto his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and she wrapped hers around him and for a long time there sat there in wordless embrace, each drawing comfort from the other touching body.

  She did not know how long had passed, minutes, hours, an unknown quantity. Finally she straightened, knowing the next step was hers to take.

  She said, “I choose to stay with you tonight, to sleep with your body holding mine. But first I would have you tell me what is this thing which troubles you so. It is something I need to know this if am to share your life, as if I were your wife.”

  He looked at her, incredulous. “What is it you are saying?”

  She replied; it was so simple in her mind. “I think we should married; that is if you want me.”

  He said, “Of course I want you, I wanted you since the day you came into my bar and asked for a job, the forward, tipsy, but oh so beautiful girl in the school dress. When you came back the next day in that floral dress, I thought you were the loveliest sight I had ever seen.

  “But I cannot understand why you would want me. Me, a broken down wreck of a man; a man of tortured dreams and flashbacks, which haunt my days and destroy my nights. Why would you, a fresh and lovely rose of eighteen, want me, a worn out man who is almost twice your age?

  She put a finger to his lips, then lay her head back against his chest. I don’t know what it is that makes me want you, to be near you, to touch you like this. But it is what I want, it is right for me and it is right for you. We can both make each other happy and strong. That is much more than good.

  So Catherine stayed with him that night. They lay together on the couch, just holding each other and talking, sometimes sleeping, then waking and talking some more.

  He told her the story of his life, his going to Vietnam and the horrors there, now the flashbacks and the nights when he relived it endlessly. He also told how of how the Americans had sprayed the forest to kill the leaves and how he had got sprayed too several times, his clothing drenched with foul smelling chemical, and how after one time he had got really sick, lying in bed and shaking for more than a week before he could walk again. They now said that some batches of the chemical were contaminated with a thing called dioxin which was much worse than the Agent Orange. He did not know if it was the effect of the chemicals or just all the horrors he had seen, little kids blown apart, women with pregnant bellies lying dead in the water, whole families huddled together in their huts killed when the shells struck, and his own best mate suddenly dead when a snipers bullet ripped into him. Most especially he told her of a small Vietnamese girl an orphan who had become his friend, an itinerant in their camp, how several times she had saved his life and those of his friends by giving him information that protected them. Then how one day they had found her awfully mutilated body tied to the camp perimeter. It was clear they had tortured her in an awful way before she had died, they must have found she was an informer who helped him. Now her face and small mutilated body visited him in sleep and dreams along with the other horrors, though until recently he thought it was going away.

  He had been only twenty when he went to war and only there for three years before he was discharged as medically unfit, he had taken a piece of shrapnel in the hip, which gave him a limp, but really it was the shakes which finished him. They would come over him at times and no one could tell him the cause.

  So he had come back to Sydney after his medical discharge and the army helped him to get an engineering degree and then a job in the Middle East and where he made really good money. He lived in an oil camp where his life was easy, all meals provided, just work he could do and which kept him occupied and that helped.

  He had learned how to mostly live with the terrors and the shakes, though sometimes he had to stay in bed for a couple days until they passed. But he had thought he was getting better, and when he had come home to his mother he had known he did not want to go back to a solitary life in an oil camp. While his mother lived and helped him things were better, though it had been terrible when she died and he was on his own again.

  But after she had died he had pulled himself together and bought the hotel. As well as the money from his former work his mother had given him a modest inheritance and a house, so the house was security and the inheritance and other money paid the deposit for the hotel and the bank lent the rest, though he had to agree to take on the debts owed to various businesses around the area. He would not have wanted it any other way as most of them were people he knew who had advanced services and supplies in good faith, but it added to the burden of the loan.

  He was gradually paying back the bank and the other businesses though it took half his takings, and the rest went to pay staff and buy the food and beer. But all had been going well except since Christmas when the shakes and terrors had returned in a big way. Now he was barely able to work and keep the books. So it was all going backwards which was another worry; the money was now getting pretty wobbly again. Ella sort of knew and covered for him, not all the details, but a couple times she had found him shaking and had put an arm around his shoulders and made him a cup of tea, and that had helped. But it had never been as bad before as tonight when Catherine found him.

  So he was not much of a catch, a broken man with a broken business which would shortly go back to the bank along with his house if he could not keep paying. Not that there was anything wrong with the business, just that the work and debt was slowly eating him up and it was beyond him to work if he could not sleep without dreaming nightmares, and then when he woke his body shook so much he could barely walk.

  Catherine told him about her own life, her mother getting pregnant after being raped when fifteen, going first to Melbourne so that baby Catherine would not be taken away, then her mother having to work as a prostitute to feed them both, then having to run away again when the authorities in Melbourne wanted to take away her daughter. She told how her mother ran away again and came to Broome, of her being a little girl in Broome and being really happy with just her Mum and her friends as her mother made a success of her life, then the awful time when her Mum had run away again to the desert, how her car had broken down and they would have died of thirst until her childhood friend Sophie, whose room she stayed in now had come and rescued them. She told of her life with the aborigines, then of her new father Robbie, how he and her Mum had really rescued each other from themselves and the loneliness and of how happy they now were together.

  She even told him about going out with Richard the two times last week and then of what her Grandmother had said after, “It is good to know what is not right, then you will know when the right one comes along.”

  So now she knew that she and Mathew were right together and that was all that mattered. Together they would make the business work. She told him that she had wanted to ask him about what course she should study and whether she could work part time to support herself, but now none
of that mattered, maybe she would go to University one day, but for now she would just work with him in the business until they got on top of their debts.

  So by the end of the night it was agreed. They would get married as soon as it could be arranged and she would stay on with her Gran until then. After that they would live together in the house or maybe sell the house and fix up a room in the pub for a new home, it would be easier just to live there until it was making plenty of money.

  In the early dawn they both fell into a deep sleep, and were only awoken when Ella came in to unlock for the day at ten o’clock. There heard her banging around out in the front, so Mathew went out to talk to her, to say he had fallen asleep on the couch.

  As he came out Mathew saw Ella holding Catherine’s handbag and pointing to a till full of money, with her eyes raised in a question. He found himself laughing, he could not keep a secret from her direct stare and he was too happy to lie.

  He said, “Catherine is sleeping on the lounge. She found me out the back last night, curled up and shaking. She stayed with me for the night. She is the loveliest girl and we are going to get married.”

  Ella said, “Wow, that was fast. I could tell you both liked each other, but I would never have guessed that it would only take one day when it was just the two of you together before it happened. Still I am glad, really glad for you both.

  I have sometimes thought I should go into partnership with you in the pub, together I know we could make it work. But my boyfriend would be too jealous and never agree. So I am really pleased she is the one. I think together you can make it work and I hope you will be happy together.

  As she said this a bleary eyed Catherine walked out and came and put her arms around Mathew. Ella came over and together they had a group hug.