WISTFUL THINKING
By
Suzanne Readsmith
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Suzanne Readsmith on Smashwords
Copyright © 2012 Suzanne Readsmith
Thank you for downloading this story. It follows a number of stories that I have uploaded for readers to enjoy free of charge, which include:
‘Letting Him Stay’
‘Caught on the Hop’
‘The Girl with No Name’
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Kate was awake but most reluctant to open her eyes. She tried to get back to sleep but her efforts were fruitless as her brain was already in fifth gear. She ought to arise and face up to life but she really didn’t want to. Today was going to be a bad day. She propped herself up onto her elbow to study the back of her husband’s head. He slept so far away from her these days it would be just as well if the kids were young again and sleeping between them. If he were to place himself any nearer to the edge of the bed he might fall out. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. After twenty seven years of marriage he might try to be a little less obvious in his rejection of her, which had been going on for a few months now. It would appear she was still wanted in one way, as a wife who brought home a decent salary perhaps. Yet as a lover, not at all! She felt like yoghurt that had reached its sell by date.
Like a moth drawn to light she slipped quietly out of bed and made for the window. There was a recognisable white light emanating through the curtains. Shivering she collected her dressing gown on the way across to the window. It could only mean snow. Drawing back the curtain slightly she was proved right. A long beam of light blinded her for a few seconds until her eyes became accustomed to the swirling whiteness. Snow had blanketed the lane by night. It was seven days to Christmas and this arrival of snow set a dramatic backdrop to the scene which was about to out play itself. Ordinarily she would have felt happy about the change in weather, which presented a picture fit for a Christmas card. Instead she felt saddened because come Christmas Day she would no longer live here.
Downstairs in her lovely warm kitchen she popped the kettle onto the Aga to boil, and then lifted the Venetian blinds. Sipping Earl Grey tea she settled onto a kitchen stool and warmed her toes on the bottom oven. She began reminiscing about past Christmases and how much Christmas meant to her family. It was a special time, not a time to end marriages. This year the spirit of Christmas had passed her by. Ordinarily she’d have visited Harrods this week to see their new decorations and to marvel at the expansive displays of handbags, jewellery and perfumes. She felt her heart to be blackened and her mood to be flat. By this time she was usually methodically ticking off a present list, waiting for the postman to deliver on-line bargains. She would have spent hours trudging the never-ending aisles of shopping centres feeling quite certain of herself in her traditional forage for presents. This year she had felt disinclined to look at sparkling cut glassware and highly polished silver as they reflected their shards of rainbow coloured light over shoppers. Irish linen napkins, gloves, boots and scarves were all types of things she appreciated and yet they had remained unnoticed.
She hadn’t met up with her girlfriends this year either for their traditional champagne lunch. Lately she had avoided looking into mirrors as her self esteem was at zero level. Why face the terrible truth? Her reflection only self-validated that she was no longer a loved and desired wife. Despite thinking in this pessimistic way she still felt that there was nowhere else in the world today that could match the streets of Britain and how they looked at Christmas. When a saxophone player had struck up a haunting carol, echoing around the cold streets as she had made her way to the bank to set up a separate account for herself, she had found herself seated on a wet wooden bench and crying. Later still watching people passing by her she had wondered about the women scurrying so madly around. She imagined that they would be searching for glamorous outfits to wear at Christmas, which was usually a concern of her own.
The men seemed more amiable and could be witnessed hanging around lingerie shops waiting for wives or girlfriends inside purchasing their own Christmas treat. The younger men and women held no qualms today about stepping into such shops with their partners to point out which outfit in particular they would like their loved one to wear. In a bemused way she had watched white collar city gents and blue collar professionals of the day mingling with construction workers still wearing their work gear as they searched for the right kind of present for their loved ones. Christmas parties would soon be in full swing. Suit wearing men would loosen their ties and open up their jackets at the eve of the working day to join in kindred spirit with persons they might normally avoid with the aim to party! Women would carry a change of clothing to work to use to transform themselves into fabulous divas by night. Should any work colleagues think that they didn’t have a life outside work, now was the time to show them!
Work teams would surge like shoals of fish from pub to pub in a traditional habitual way of starting off Christmas and in her own case all such plans had been in place as usual this year, except for one thing. There had been no rush and excitement on her part. No anguish and anxiety about pleasing people. No indecision or queuing and she hadn’t felt like attending her weekly Salsa class. She felt deadened! None of everything she loved about life was worth it if she didn’t have Jake beside her.
Kate pined for the husband who used to pick her up in front of all the family to twirl her around madly, spinning her as though they were some kind of American Swing dancers. And he would not stop, despite all her protestations, until she had agreed to kiss him. Her skirt could have been flying, her decency at risk, yet his carefree spirit always caused her heart to burst with love for him. Where had it all gone? Why had it changed? She couldn’t be a deserted wife; she had never envisaged that for herself! She had sensed something was wrong this summer. Everyone faced the consequences of a threatened recession. For Jake it had meant dipping sales figures and having to ‘let go’ of some of his best and most trusted work colleagues.
It had been a fleeting moment when she had caught from the corner of her eye Jake making a nervous glance towards one of his female colleagues. She and Jake had attended a ‘work do’ together, which was a rare thing these days. A level of intuitive suspicion had risen in her when she perceived Jake’s lack of surety around everyone. It was as though he was apprehensive and on his guard. His best behaviour in fact. Something was going on although just what she hadn’t a clue about. It wasn’t desire she had seen in Jake’s glance towards Barbara. It was rather that he’d shot her a warning look for her to stop talking. Barbara had started to say something which was dropping him right in it because she’d mentioned the dates in August that Jake had away in Bahrain and this didn’t correspond with how many days he had actually been away from home which was for a longer period. Jake had remained nonplussed and stated quite confidently, that as usual Barbara was utterly useless about getting dates right. He’d corrected her stating that she’d made a mistake. Barbara had seemed relieved to be rescued from her blunder, which would have repercussions beyond what she could have imagined at that moment. She had agreed with Jake that she had been confused.
Jake usually kept in daily contact with her whenever he was working away and she had felt that the Bahrain trip had involved him making the most haphazard and spasmodic efforts of communication with her, which he had put down to the lack of satellite signals. Initially she hadn’t questioned or felt there was anything untoward about this because until that point in their marriage there hadn’t been anything in their lives to cause her to think otherwise, nor to doubt anything Jake either said or did. In reflection it was after that trip that Jake had started to withdraw from her. Deep inside she had felt something was amiss, that things were slightly wrong between them and she had purposely pushed aside all feelings of misgiving.
The checks she began to make went against the grain of her own values and principles. It wasn’t her style to even be concerned about Jakes receipts or text messages let alone begin looking at them and at first she had found nothing obvious. They didn’t touch each others post and she held too busy a work life to tune into such trivialities, usually. It was in this period of checking that she had noticed an email on his Blackberry. It was from a recruitment agency, which was strange. Jake wasn’t looking for a job, far from it. Perhaps he was trying to help one of the lads from the firm that he’d had to make redundant. There was a series of emails from a woman called ‘Bea’ which she had presumed was short for the name Beatrice. Within some the woman’s messages the manner had changed to encompass light hearted banter in a veer away from an initial professional stance. It had extended to her making the comment ‘how about lunch?’ After that no further e-mail's had been exchanged between the two of them.
So what? Lunch! It was nothing. If she’d had a nervous breakdown about every successful and attractive female business associate that Jake met up with in life her own life wouldn’t have been worth living. At that moment her anger had been towards Barbara the untoward messenger. Like a cat she had placed a ‘kill’ at my feet, which forced me somehow to have to deal with it, and at that moment in time she didn’t want to.
In the end it was the scent of the beautiful Bea that had insidiously kept wafting her way. It seemed corny in this day and age of technology that the ‘good old things’ give unfaithful beings away. It was in his hair! It smelled different, sweet and musky conjuring images of harems and winding spirals of smoke dispelling from brass implements. Taking notice of Jake in such detail caused her to feel disgraceful. She had then seen a scratch on his back, a small one. It was broken up like a track and such a strange shape, like a snake. It was as though it had been gouged on him while he was moving. He obviously didn’t know it was there and as he showed me so much of his back lately it was as though the ‘Beautiful Bea’ as she had internalised her to be, had scored it onto Jake’s skin to send a particular message to his wife. ‘Seek and thou shall find, for he is mine now,” it seemed to say. The Bea had marked some kind of territory on him, which meant only one thing. She felt Jake to be hers.
Her thoughts returned to the hub of her kitchen, which was her world. Jake wouldn’t be able to get the car out of the garage, nor down the lane even if he could. It was the downside of living so far out of the village and away from the city. His efforts to get to his new love would be hampered. The snow couldn’t interfere with her own plans as her bags had already been packed and she had dropped them off at Penny’s days ago. When she decided to leave she could go on foot. His forbidden fruit however might have to wait.
Jake sauntered nonchalantly into the kitchen and smiled at her lovingly, which still served to confuse her. She did know for sure that Jake was having an affair with the woman Bea because she had followed him to their love nest hotel and even waited downstairs in the lobby until it was over, their deed! It had taken them two hours. Strangely in that period she had become quite numb to everything. She had disassociated herself from her body and flown up to the ceiling to watch the hotel receptionist go about his work in his brown uniform with turquoise stitching. He was graceful and had the fingers of a pianist. His manners seemed sincere and he looked quite unloved. She couldn’t allow herself to think about what was going on between Jake and the woman somewhere in a room high above because that caused pain to surge through her at an excruciating level. Her heart and soul could not take it. It was enough that she had found the strength to carry this sortie out. Eventually they had passed her on their way out without so much as a cursory glance towards her as they had been so wrapped in each other. They probably wouldn’t have noticed a riot. She thought of herself sitting there in disguise wearing Penny’s glasses and a wig in an outfit she wouldn’t be seen dead in. It was ridiculous, funny even, fit for a comedy sketch, but yes she had lowered herself to this act because she had needed to know for sure.
As her thoughts came back to the present, Jake reached across to kiss her briefly on the lips in his usual morning hello. And she had responded quite naturally for a second, her heart missing a beat. He could still do that to her and she could understand someone else loving him. People did. Jake was easy to love, he was handsome and uncomplicated. He was a self-made man and a millionaire twice over. They had started off together with nothing money wise and the small empire they had built up meant even less in comparison to her feelings and marriage. It was Jake that mattered. He had gone from her a way that they had been one and now he had introduced a threat to their relationship. Their relationship was now flawed, like a priceless antique plate, chipped and damaged. They were no longer a unit. They were … what?
Her chin was low seeking refuge near her chest and stupidly she thought of how that might make her look in his eyes, which was pathetic. Oh God, when could a woman relax? Vanity was the deadliest of sins and now the world was infected with it. It was hard to keep ‘trim’ when Jake insisted on a good table and good wines but somehow she had managed it. She had all the equipment, an exercise bike, dumb bells, and membership to an exclusive gym but although one might, perhaps at a pinch, compete with youth, no one could compete with newness. What everyone craved in an affair was for something to be different; to conduct a chase and create a new beginning. Some might even crave the difficult endings that affairs often created. Whatever twisted surge of excitement it did give for others there was one thing she knew for sure, she didn’t need it, because in Jake, her children and her life she was content. As boring as though that appeared even to herself, there was a twist, because deep within herself she had often felt a little smug which was a feeling, when it surfaced, that she had always pushed right back down, ashamed of herself. She had lucky meeting and marrying Jake whom she loved fiercely. They had settled down quickly and had three children who had grown and left the nest. They now had two grandchildren, Jessica and Agatha, identical twins and beloved by the whole family. Jake lived for them. For some people love at first sight did happen and for others it didn’t. People make mistakes sometimes choosing the wrong partner initially. What does that lead to? That they should covet what lives in another couple’s relationship and seek to destroy it in order to have a slice of that kind of love or themselves! In a non-virtuous way she had carried three children, which had taken its toll on her. She didn’t wish to become a discarded shell of a woman!
“Hey daydreamer come back to earth. Have you seen the snow? It’s going to be a six-footer. Fantastic! Fancy a snowball fight?” Jake was in high spirits.
She did of course, although stones would have been her preferable weapon of choice. One thing was for sure she could never get Jake right, because he wasn’t irritated about the snow at all, he seemed thrilled. He was excited and rubbing his hands together with glee like the small boy she had always seen in him. He was fifty-one years of age yet he looked about forty. She smiled at him wistfully forgetting all their troubles for a moment. Well her own troubles really because Jake hadn’t a clue that she had discovered his secret and she held in wonderment his ability to be so joyous in his domestic life when he was so obviously happy in his mysterious life too. How had he managed to split himself that way? He was putting on his wellies. “I’ll be late tonight Kate, I’m going for the tree”.
Last year she would have thought to herself at this point, he’s going shopping for my present because he always left hers to the last minute, the tree an excuse. Today his words felt cruel and she felt mocked. All this charade about Christmas! She marvelled at his joy. She didn’t know what was real anymore. Was it that he felt so pleased at having his cake and eating it because so obviously he wasn’t in angst? He was still in the thralls of it all. He didn’t know how things would go, he wasn’t thinking that far ahead. She had always sorted things out for him and now she felt obligated to sort out the new mess he had created which was the worst mess of his life. It was certainly the end of his life, as he knew it today!
“What’s up love?” Suddenly he had sensed something wasn’t right. The northern accent he’d lost after four years at university and twenty years in London returned as it always did when he was frightened or upset. She hated him for what he was doing. For what he had done! He’d had everything. Why had he wanted more? Why did he want to destroy all that was theirs? She felt babyish thinking this way but she couldn’t help it. She loved him so much and he was no longer hers. Startled suddenly by Jake she jumped out of her wits as he stated in a raised voice “I’m talking to my bloody self here!” Now that was anger. His mood had turned. Suddenly they were in ‘no mans land’. She didn’t feel sure-footed.
“I won’t be here tonight.” She said.
It was a simple statement and she knew he hadn’t understood the implication of her words. He had taken it that she was going out and wouldn’t be home by the time he came back. Going late night shopping or something. This would mean that she wouldn’t be in when he dragged the tree past the Aga as though he’d travelled to Scandinavia to chop it down personally and carried it home on his back. How she had nurtured his ego, his manliness, how they had played to their roles in their marriage. Me Tarzan, you Jane! Who was he now and who was she? Which stance should she now adopt? The whimpering dog waiting for her master to return to the manor? No, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t!
“Special Delivery!” Those were the words he always chanted when he brought home the tree. Many times she had fancied having a smaller tree, an artificial one, more contemporary. She had never challenged the traditions he had imposed, and in reflection he had never considered any she might wish to introduce. Jake came first. In the main he was selfish, yet she had cultured their co-dependency, suppressing her own will. Where were the cribs she had known as a child and midnight mass? Suddenly she wished she were a child again. Jake had a neat jigsaw puzzle of a life. Only this year a piece would be missing! Instead he’d have an odd piece from a different box that he’d have to squash into place to make it fit. A young woman with a young child of her own and a husband she was about to break the heart of, whom she knew to work in a major department store she frequented. She had watched him from behind curtain material looking across to menswear and feeling crazy. He had no clue his life was to be shattered into a million pieces. He seemed happy. She hadn’t needed to become 'Miss Marples' to locate him. It turned out that Penny her own best friend, knew someone who also knew Beatrice Beresford, as she was called - proving that a rat is only ever two feet away from us at any one time. Also that social network pages sometimes come into their own. The Beresford’s had been married for five years. Kate could gather from surface facts alone that they might not be big earners. Their child was a boy and a toddler. This was all that she knew about them. Apart from the insight into what the wonderful and all enticing Beatrice Beresford looked like, which was stunning. Oh, and the fact that she was twenty years exactly, younger than her. Because guess what? Her birthday was on the same date as her own. Life had a strange way of twisting the knife.
Kate wasn’t leaving Jake at Christmas time to be spiteful or vindictive. She just couldn’t take the pain any longer. If she severed their relationship cleanly on such an important day, she could honour this as the marker to their breakdown, and not Jakes infidelity. Let Christmas day with all its melancholy spirit be what it took to pull them apart. Now this Christmas would become that Christmas! There would be no party smiles in the future and no drawn out parental togetherness for the family. This lump in her throat needed unblocking. She needed to breathe again, properly. Her heart beat in a new rhythm now, which was erratic and her head pounded. She craved normality and if she had to enter further into the abyss, then bring it on! She had never been one to delay pain. She was the patient who needed the truth, which had forced her detective work in the first instance and now that she had clarified all that was true she had to act upon it, as most people did. There was no alternative, was there?
She remembered a film she had seen about a man left behind to die on a mountain and she could identify with him because she felt so alone she could hear music in her head. It was the song Jake and she had danced to on their wedding day. It wouldn’t leave her. Yesterday her eighty year old mother had had to try to console her as she’d curled on the sofa crying so inconsolably. Once Jake had been devoted to her and she couldn’t accept anything less from him now could she? She couldn’t become someone who shares a man. By nature she was a one man woman. In marriage they had become one. It wasn’t that she had lost her identity in this process; it was that she felt Jake to be a part of her. If she had been a plant she would have been a perennial faithfully weathering the elements.
She realised that Jake was staring at her unable to make sense of her mood and her words. “God, where are you Kate? When you say you’re not here tonight, what do you mean?” It would appear that instinctively Jake was becoming wary about whether all in his life was all right. It wasn’t and a chink of worry was beginning to show on his face.
“I’m leaving you Jake. You’ll be free to go to Beatrice! You’re breaking up your own marriage and you’re also breaking up hers. I’ve rented a flat nearer to the city. I don’t have much more to say to you than that. I hadn’t wanted to say anything until after Christmas Day dinner with the children, but I can’t help myself. I've realised that I can’t rescue someone who can only rescue them self and you don’t appear to be in any kind of pain, unlike me. I’m in a great deal of pain Jake and you haven’t even noticed. It isn’t you that needs saving it’s me.”
She didn’t cry. Besides which she was beyond tears. The kitchen was warm, too warm and she felt flushed and suddenly acutely self conscious. It reminded her of her menopausal symptoms, which in turn made her feel like a waste of space. She never used the word ‘hormone’ because she had never thought about herself in bodily terms alone. She was acutely in tune with her sense of spirituality and soul. Her very being and existence did matter, but when life boiled down to whether one had a ‘jolly good hump’ then in these terms she could only think of herself as unwanted.
Jake didn’t seem able to speak. His eyes were furtive with fear and his pallor had become white. She didn’t want to look at him now because she had been trying over these past weeks to slowly wean herself off him, to get used to not seeing him, because now he would be out of her life. It was something she hadn’t managed to achieve because she couldn’t imagine life without Jake. He must surely have imagined her out of his life because his favourite saying was ‘the piper has to be paid’.
She turned to leave the kitchen and he grabbed hold of her, spinning her around to face him. This wasn’t Salsa! As though attack was his best form of defence he was suddenly pulling her about, or was it she who was grappling with him and pushing him away? She screamed for him to leave her alone, which he did. He was panting and so far he hadn’t even tried to defend his position. Even though she knew it was true she would have preferred him to have made some sort of a denial, to give her something to hold onto if only for a few seconds, but he offered nothing. The silence between them was deafening. She was facing him and holding his gaze. They were like combatants placed in an amphitheatre caldron surrounded by the icy coldness of the winter wonderland.
“It’s over with her.” He uttered these few words weakly as though sad about the fact. He was sad about it. She had been wrong when she had said he wasn’t in pain. He was, and it wasn’t for her. It wasn’t about them. His pain was connected to her! To see her man grieving for another woman made her desire to be dead the most important wish in the world. As his dropped his head to his chest and begin to cry she pushed him. It was enough for him to have to try catch himself and to drop into a chair, which toppled over and he fell to the floor. He curled pathetically into a foetal position and between sobs he pleaded with her not to leave him. She stared at his back, his Wellington boots shiny and black. She listened keenly to his excuses, at least those she could decipher.
“It’s finished. I didn’t mean it to happen. It was a stupid thing to do! Please?”
He said all this without looking at her. He couldn’t.
As he whimpered and mumbled twisting about on the floor the desperation in his voice assured her of nothing. She could only believe that it hadn’t ended between the woman and him as he had stated just now. He had said that instinctively to buy himself time. She perceived that his grief was connected to the thought of having to end it now. Now that he had been found out. She felt nothing for him in this moment only hardness and anger. She stood leaning against the central island enjoying the cold feeling of the granite work surface. She felt detached from Jake and he must have felt this because suddenly he became silent and unwinding himself he stood up to face her, his face crumpled. He tried again.
“It is over Kate”
“Between us it is, yes.” She stated. He gulped.
“I meant with ….”
“I know whom you were referring to. I’m thinking about us, something you stopped doing many months ago.”
She sensed he was too weary to battle with her in a war of words. The game was up and when this happens there is one of two things to do. Celebrate or commiserate. She had backed him into a tight corner. What could he do or say? She had accused, tried and sentenced him and now he was a man sent to the gallows. He seemed suddenly to accept the inevitability of his fate. She wanted to talk to him, yet couldn’t bear the thought of hearing anything that could hurt her. She wanted to tell him how she felt and for him to hold her. He had been her only source of comfort for almost all of her life. Who else could help her to carry this huge burden of pain if not Jake? Could she hold onto her dignity when she felt so alone? What did other people do in her situation? The questions were too many and she wished she had a list of rules. Should she reach out and forgive him, to seek guidance and if so from whom? Seek counselling support, to hear him say what?
His position was clear. He desired another. That he had desired another was something he had then acted upon. He had drawn a new boundary line for himself and maintained a new position. She had never felt as though she owned Jake but she had never worried about him leaving her. Had she been complacent? It would seem so. By nature she wasn’t an arrogant person. Should everyone build into their lives the fact that nothing is forever? Marriages fail because they taunt the rule of death. Nothing is forever. By nature she would need to become more selfish and this seems perverse to the philosophy behind the creation of life.
Jake walked wearily away, defeated. He mumbled something about packing and that he would leave and that she didn’t need to. There was something he had seen in her face that had told him it was futile to think there was any way back in their relationship. In Kate’s mind she considered that Jake hadn’t put up much of a fight for her. She busied herself making fresh coffee, which she intended to lace with brandy and then there was the clear sound of a shovel scraping against the drive’s rough surface. Jake was clearing his path away from her. This went on for a while and gave her time to watch him through the curtain. He seemed arduous in his task, purposeful, a man with somewhere to go. The car was halfway up the drive and he had left the engine running as he created tracks for himself ahead of it. He threw grit into the snow like a man possessed. His face was ruddy and angry. It seemed strange this situation they were in. He was going away from her forever into a new life beyond their comfortable old farmhouse and she was observing him as though from high above in the clear blue sky. They were like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, the grit serving as a path to highlight a way forward and not a way to return. She wasn’t beside him in this journey and there would be no coming back. The witch had played a cunning game enticing Jake towards her. She pushed her thoughts of terror aside, the kind she couldn’t allow herself to think about. To survive she would have to keep them in the dark cellars of her mind.
He tried to inch the car forward, his stupid low slung sports car. It slipped all over the place getting nowhere, the snow was too deep and ice had formed beneath it. He revved the car up high in his angry state and then tore himself from it leaving the door open and the engine running, heading indoors. A neighbour suddenly appeared, walking past on his way into the village. She heard the pleasantries they exchanged as he turned the charm on, slipping into the façade of being Mister ‘I’m on Top of Things’. She felt alarmed at how easily he had composed himself and then wondered why, because he had become so practiced in his lying recently. She no longer knew what was true about her life. Her body felt weak and her movement slow. She had been looking forward to their second-honeymoon now the kids had flown the nest. In the time they had together they could be more free. God knows they had craved private space for themselves to try express themselves sexually. Yet he had jumped the gun, gone ahead without her into a new exciting life with someone else. Now she would have to find a new partner. Which she would. There would be no pathetic love-lorn ending for her. No way! There was someone she had in mind right now, perhaps. May be not. She couldn’t imagine herself with anyone other than Jake.
Here she was now giving him up to a woman younger than herself. She was handing him over to her without a fight, because of what, the fact that she couldn’t possibly win over youth and beauty? She chided herself thinking that she was a beautiful person too. Therapy had taught her to think that about herself. And she was, because Jake made her feel that way. Through his love she had grown, and so too had he flourished through hers. She didn’t have to give him up so easily to another person – this stranger. To allow her to take him so easily from her own loving arms would be stupid. This woman! This so-called ‘Bea’, hadn’t put any amount of dedication and loyalty into her own marriage let alone the momentous amount she had put into hers with Jake. She had a toddler son for God’s sake. Jake might choose to give himself away to the woman - she had no control over that. However, it would never diminish all that she and Jake had been through together up to this point of their lives. Their marriage, their children and grandchildren could never be negated by anyone!
A younger version of herself might have had more spirit to fight, but this battle weary self didn’t. She sensed that Jake was standing close to her, behind her. When she turned he was dripping and his trousers were wet through to the waist as though he had fallen into the snow and laid in it. Perhaps if she had concentrated more on what was in his trousers than the state of them life would have worked out differently for her. It was where she had gone wrong! She had planned to, they both had. She’d intended to make more effort in their love making lately because of her new lack of desire, to make more of a fuss with him, but she’d felt so tired lately. Besides, for her life had to be more about life itself than sex alone. Dear God, were people cursed into making an eternal quest for the orgasmic state? Had he spent seven days building Planet Erotica? No, of course not! Who would build wells for water? How trite of Jake to succumb to the old adage of thinking that the world rests on the axel of making money and having sex, which seems to be true. Why should any of us bother philosophising about life? In Kate’s eyes it had become an utter waste of time. She suddenly became aware of Jake again standing so forlornly.
“Kate, please …. I don’t want to go. I love you. It was a crazy thing, madness and now I’ve destroyed us. I want to die. I can’t live without you”
He seemed sincere. He was being sincere. She knew Jake enough to know he was telling the truth. It didn’t alleviate any of the pain she was feeling but his words were real. It was crazy all of this. His voice was desperate and he was at breaking point.
“You found another playmate.” She said.
At the bottom of things something was entirely relevant. She loved Jake and always would. Getting past this was similar to having to get over the sudden death of a loved one. It didn’t happen. In this situation there was a second chance of life at least. She had been forced to take on the position of becoming a second best person in Jakes eyes, something she had never wanted to become. Did she feel rejected? Yes. Jake wasn’t rejecting her now. He wanted her for all the reasons she had just been thinking about. Because they were a couple, they were married and had three children together and because they loved each other. To live with the fact that he had the ability to feel sexual excitement for another woman and perhaps even love her was hard. To know he had the capability to be unfaithful to her was something she had to measure against whether or not to sever herself from him, which would by like cleaving her heart in two. It was a big decision and it didn’t have to be so. It seemed as though she had to consider whether they could move forward in life together with this affair between them. Could they? Who knew? His arms were outstretched.
“Kate, I need you so much.”
“You had me,” was all she could reply. He dropped his hands to his sides. They were in a no win situation.
“Look Kate, I will go. The home is yours”
“It’s too big for me and I don’t want it anyway.” She quipped.
She didn’t want to go and live in that pokey flat she had picked out for herself. She’d planned her big exit and now he was offering to leave. Who stayed or who left mattered less than the fact that their marriage was over. Here she was arguing with someone she loved about something they both didn’t want. At least he appeared not to want her to leave. They were both exhausted.
“Why Jake?” She found herself asking. We have always been okay haven’t we. The good bits made up for the boring bits surely. I genuinely don’t understand.”
“There isn’t an answer I can give that’s worth you having Kate. Please don’t leave me, I’m begging you. This might be the wrong thing to say, but I won’t be going to her, I’m not asking you not to go as if it is a choice between you or her. That was never the case. I separated her from you in my mind. I blocked you out and packed you into a parcel, which I didn’t care to look at while I went through it. I didn’t and wouldn’t let the two worlds meet.”
“She was a world then?”
“Please don’t play on words.”
Her heart was broken. She despised her own weakness. If she stayed with him, in everyone’s eyes she would be pathetic and her status would be lost. What she had to consider now was whether status mattered more to her than her love for him, which it didn’t. It kept coming back to something quite simple. She loved him. She had remained faithful to him throughout their marriage. If ‘Mrs Bea Pants’ wanted him then she would have to come and drag him out of her arms.
She didn’t allow him to hug her. She made a gruff accenting nod, which was an indication on her part that he could stay. She felt ugly making this gesture, despising herself. She was too tired to start a new life, at least in the fast lane that he had been driving in lately. She went over to the sink and threw away her coffee. He was behind her in an instant wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head on the back of her shoulder. She remained stiff and unresponsive. This would have to do for now. He knew enough not to push his luck and he pulled away from her. There would be no new address, no new car, no giving up her rights, her home or her husband! Their world would continue somehow and things would be different from now on. Forgiveness wouldn’t come so soon, she knew that, nor would she find it easy to forget what he had done. Accept it? Perhaps never! She now lived on ‘Planet Unsure’, which was a new unsafe place to live in. He had taken off his wellies and now his sodden pants which he placed over the back of a chair to dry in front of the Aga. As usual he was ever comfortable around her. In his stupid black briefs he looked like a old wrestler and lost. She couldn’t bring herself to touch him yet she wanted to so much.
On Christmas morning Kate unravelled herself from Jake’s arms. He’d clung to her for days now. Once again she peeked out from behind her curtains to check that the snow’s whiteness, although almost melted away, was still there. By tonight, her whole family would be sleeping under this roof. Jake was leaning under the bed to pull out a small golden wrapped present for her. She didn’t want it somehow because she still felt cheap. He gestured her to come back to bed. “Look what I’ve got for you” he whispered, squeezing the wrapped cube a little too desperately into her hands. He’d bought her a two carat diamond ring in an ostentatious way. In was nice and white like a sparkly message that she would always be his number one. She made all the right responses slipping into the usual stance of never disappointing Jake, always giving him what he wanted. He felt happy enough to kiss her on the nose and to leave the bedroom humming a Christmas tune. He didn’t expect sex. Her acceptance of the ring served only to further reassure him they she would always be there for him. So therefore she would wear it. He was behaving as though a crisis had been averted and that all was back on-track in his life. It wasn’t of course and they both knew that deep down.
Later that afternoon, all turkey full and tipsy, Kate caught the eye of her eldest son who had been watching her carefully all day. Did he know something? He raised his glass to her silently. He was a bachelor, a loner and a deep thinker. He seemed to have guessed that something big had occurred. She raised her glass back to him in a salute. They were like each other, stoic. She smiled her love towards him and his grin stretched into a bashful look of happiness. She lived and breathed for her family and he was a special joy to her. They had nearly lost him at birth, all touch and go with his long limbs stretched out in the incubator, a shock of black hair on his head and closed eyes waiting to see the world a little later thank you.
The fire in Kate and Jake’s sitting room was banked high, burning low and her father-in-law was asleep. Her mother was in the kitchen baking mince pies. The others were engaged in a loud game of charades and the little ones were playing behind the settee ignoring the TV, which was on mute. Jake was mixing drinks and he seemed happy enough. She looked at the new ring on her finger and marvelled at the fact that Jake’s father had actually said when he’d seen it. “What’s he done then?” She had played the game and laughed along with the joke.
As Christmas day settled into Christmas night another woman looked out into the strange white darkness. She too loved the snow, which was diminishing. She wasn’t alone but she felt alone. Jake had told her it was over. He’d been as adamant about this as he had about the fact that he would never leave Kate. He’d had the nerve to suggest that she should stay with her husband and be happy and that what they’d been through together was craziness. She could cope with this because she knew that Jake loved her. In fact they loved each other, madly so and now proof of their love, perhaps was growing inside her.
Her husband called her away from the window to come and eat the dinner he had lovingly prepared. In Beatrice’s eyes Jake was just having a blip. He needed her just as she needed him. Her husband lit up the candles creating a warm amber light. She thought to herself that the news she had for them both could wait until the New Year was in. He scooped his son into one of his arms and with the other he raised a toast to his wife and their love. He felt as though his life was so complete. He felt blessed.
“To our future”.
End
Did you enjoy reading this story? You can read more …
‘Letting Him Stay’
The angst of a woman who learns about the precarious state of her marriage.
‘The Girl with No Name’
Is it all fair in love and war?
‘Caught on the Hop’
What can a woman do but fight back when the concept of her marriage is blown wide apart?
Writers like to know what their reader is thinking! By now you will know that I am very interested and intrigued about the twists and turns of life. Contact me at Twitter or directly review my work at the site you have chosen to download from. Alternatively via my email address at: suzanne.readsmith@virginmedia.com