She Sections

Kindness

It wasn’t like me to interfere, especially as they could have turned their hawkish bullying my way.  I’d had no experience of handling teenagers, to my regret.  Yet, there was something about the way his old body sank into itself; a jack-in-the-box retreating.  Cowards.  I urged the driver to stop and shooed them off the bus like pigeons.  One spat at me but they all obeyed my pied-piper in reverse.  Sitting down, I noticed they had peppered his hair and coat in a purple sticky substance.  Blueberries.  No child of mine, had I been granted the right, would have done such a deed. 

“That was kind of you”, he smiled. Within the expected shakiness of his voice I detected the respectability of a true English gent. 

   

“Do you live near here?  I’ll help you home”.  I had no desire to reach my destination quickly. 

   

I would have left him at his door, once he had fumbled his key into the lock.  It was a pleasant mid-terrace with a small yard overflowing with beautiful, unruly flowers, unlike our barren detached. 

   

“Come in, dear, for a cup of tea”.

   

He stuttered past a darkened front-room, encumbered with heavy mahogany furniture.  We entered a homely middle room with crotchet throws spread over chair-backs.  An ornate table-cloth exerted the superiority of an over-size doily on a sideboard.  Well-worn scatter-rugs adorned the floor whilst dimpled copper ornaments surrounded the fireplace.  He carried on into the kitchen and I smelt the familiar incense from the match used to light the hob for the kettle. 

   

“Are these photographs of your daughter?”  Two framed images of a striking girl flanked a proud carriage-clock on the mantelpiece. 

   

“Daughter? No, we never had a daughter”.  He reappeared, loosely holding a tin crammed with Viscounts, in the old packaging.  I politely declined and gestured towards the photographs.  “Oh, Emily, my wife”. 

   

He sat down, gingerly at first and then with a thump when the safety of his cushion could be sensed beneath.  We waited for the water to boil.  Wisps of white hair and moist, blue eyes succeeded in softening his corrugated facial features.  It was difficult to pin an age on him, perhaps eighties?  He was entranced by Emily’s picture.  This was a kind, loving man.  My husband could learn so much. 

   

“Is she...” I wasn’t sure how to ask. 

   

“She passed away ten years ago.  For the second time”.

   

Using the chair’s generous arms he started to heave himself up as the kettle whistled. 

   

“No, please, let me” I urged him back down and approached the kitchen. 

   

Every cup was filthy.  A layer of house-dust and bugs had gathered.  I filled the bowl and washed each one.  It mattered not if I stayed here all day.  Here was warmth. 

   

We soon sat cupping our drinks.  I had to ask. 

   

“You said she passed away...for a second time?”       

   

He nodded.“Deranged for forty years. I first lost Emily when she was thirty-six”. His fingertips gently stroked his cup. “That’s when she changed”.  The words provided facts but his tenderness remained.  There were no photographs of an older Emily in sight. 

“Did she have to be looked after somewhere else?”

   

“I looked after her here”.  Then, as if to explain, he added “We were married”.

   

His fingers struggled to remove the foil from his biscuit so I helped.

   

“Are you married, dear?”  He wanted me to be happy.  I couldn’t disappoint.  I was married, yes, I smiled.  What I did not say was that I had tried to smile on our wedding day, on honeymoon, on many public occasions.  Our early photographs reveal the effort.  At the beginning, his smile was genuine.  We don’t have many pictures after the first year.  His prying aunts and cousins made their snide remarks.  He was wealthy and I was greedy.  I’d married for money and security.  It was untrue.  I had married him for children.  Wasn’t that what marriage was for?  Peter thought we should have romance, cultural trips, indulgence.  He’s stopped all that hedonistic nonsense now but he still won’t grant me my one desire.  What a selfish, unkind husband, when this gentleman so loved his wife that he sacrificed forty years of his life to her needs. 

****************

Some stains are stubborn.  I take their resistance personally, knowing they cling to the surface to mock my efforts as I scrub.  I was determined to lift the edge off this one today for Alf.  We’d exchanged names when I came back for the third day.  I couldn’t see how he was coping by himself.  Why should he?  Such a kind man.  It was only a matter of a few hours after work for me.  I’d brought him a decent leg of lamb for tea tonight.  We could have it together. 

 

“Is your husband out this evening?” he called into the kitchen as both my elbows now worked the stain. 

   

“Yes, he’ll be working late” I lied.  He’d be opening a tin wondering about my whereabouts.  Well, if he will accuse me of being unable to control my emotions just because of one pathetic mug, my disappearance is his punishment.  We didn’t even like the damned mug.  It had missed him by a hair, apparently.  I’d replied, sarcastically, that I’d have to try harder next time.  It was a joke. 

   

I’d pledged to help Alf get his place clean.  It can’t be good for him to have all these germs around.  Anyway, I found cleaning therapeutic.  Idle hands and all that.

****************

I’d been coming for two weeks now but Alf wasn’t himself today.  He was quiet and fragile, asking me questions and then getting distracted during my answers.  We hadn’t known each other long and already I could see a decline.  His breathing was poor.  This house was so stuffy.  When I finally managed to force open his back door, the kitchen gratefully swallowed a huge gulp of fresh air.  I brushed leaves from the step into the back yard.  I paused, thinking I’d heard a baby’s cry, but it could have been an animal.  The vague fantasy of happening upon a baby bundled in a basket in the yard made me smile and then, as I looked up, I locked eyes with her.  A wiry, clenched nosey-parker, about my age, early forties, peered over the wall.  I couldn’t imagine she’d have children either.  I didn’t suppose she would have the sufficient hip-size with which I was cruelly blessed, although I could only see her head and shoulders.  She wasn’t smiling, so I dropped mine. 

“He does have relatives.  Nieces”.  Her tone chastised me.  “They’ll be here alright, when it happens.  You might want to think about that”.  A magpie landed on the back-gate of Alf’s yard, distracting us as it dropped a shiny foil lid on the ground.  We looked back at each other.  “Vermin”, she declared and marched indoors, slamming her door.   

****************

That same magpie returned for days, tapping at Alf’s window.  Alf made quite a friend of him.  One day, we noticed his left wing was broken and he was struggling to hop about.  Alf, despite his frailty, managed to finish him off with one whack of a shovel.  “He was beyond hope”, he explained.  “Only fair to put him out of his misery”. 

****************

Despite his ailing sight, Alf still noticed the bandage on my hand. 

“Have you fallen?” he asked, through heavy breath.  Something bothered his neck so he cocked his head to one side, causing a permanent look of concern.

   

“It’s a sprain”, I said truthfully.  “Badminton” I lied.  When would I have time for badminton?  I was either at work or here at Alf’s.  The scant time I spent at home was when I had suffered my injury.  We’d got into such a row.  He accused me of having an affair!  How self-centred to think I would need a reason as strong as that to abandon him.  Was it not enough that his presence irritated me?  He even had the gall to suggest I was trying to get pregnant.  He can’t deny being aware of my needs.  You know, it had occurred to me.  One evening as Alf sat resting in his chair, his head slumped towards his left shoulder, I imagined what he used to look like.  There were no photographs of him.  I wondered about his former vitality....and what might be left.  How easy would it be?  I was attractive.  There were similarities between Emily and me.  Would it still be possible?  His trousers sunk around his crotch, as if there was little there.  Could he even remember what was there?  I caught myself and this silliness and carried on dusting.   

   

  Of course, last night’s row at home had developed and he’d driven me to the edge again.  He shouldn’t have stood so close to the oven.  He caused the rage that forced me to slam his head into the still hot, hard metal, straining my wrist in the process. 

“That’s why we can’t have children”, he’d whimpered through a bloody nose.  “I’m being kind to us, to them”.

“No”, I’d screamed back, “That’s why a child is what I need”. 

****************

 

  Alf is dying.  I know.  I’ve seen it before when my grandmother lay in her hospital bed.  My mother put wet swabs on her tongue as her throat made a clicking noise.  Then she clamped shut and refused.  He was lying on the couch when I arrived.  I stroked the wisps of hair that licked his sweaty forehead.

“Tell me - your husband”, he asked.  So I did.  His lack of desire for a child.  My anger.  His premonition of a violent mother.  The failed marriage.  I think Alf appreciated the truth. 

“Could he”, he began.  I held his head up so he could sip some water.  “Could he be right?”  Of course.  My temper scared the hell out of me too.  But was it selfish to want a child? 

  Alf looked straight at me.  “So kind”.  His cerulean eyes showed gratitude.  “One more kind deed?”  He felt for the cushion under his arm and offered it to me.  “I need to go”, he pleaded. 

I couldn’t do it.  Not to Alf, not to anyone.  I told him so.

“Not hard”, he said, coughing.  “Sometimes”, he breathed heavily, “right thing to do.  Put me out of my misery”.

I didn’t need to refuse any more.  Gradually, his face closed down, the corrugated lines relaxed and Alf expired. 

I sat and looked at what used to be Alf, a dear friend I had made and lost in two months.  I held his limp, skimmed-milk hand whilst minutes and half-hours seeped by.    

****************

It was months later when the police came.  The female officer referred to the incident as ‘historic’, but she wanted to know what I’d seen.  Well, as I never ventured upstairs in Alf’s house, I couldn’t help them.   

The remains were found in a shoe-box, lying under a pristine cot.  The body was severely decayed but they could still tell that the baby had been hours old when he was smothered. 

It’s none of my business, I know.  I read the local papers tentatively as more lurid speculation about events from the 1970s poured out.  Someone had come forward.  Emily had confided in her about the baby’s deformity and Alf’s misdeed.  He’d called it a mercy killing, to put it out of its misery.  A kindness.  Emily was never the same again. 

They called it a nursery, this room that had sat above my head as I had variously cleaned, chatted to Alf and then stroked his forehead as he died.  They said it was a room of purity and hope, coated in cream linen, with baby clothes strewn over the bars of a perfectly made-up crib. 

****************

I can’t talk about it at home.  We don’t talk about much these days.  We seem to have naturally portioned the house into his areas and mine, without saying a word.  It’s the spare, non-functional rooms that we go to, separately.  In an optimistically purchased four-bedroom house, there’s plenty of choice, and enough distance between the two of us, to imagine a completely different reality. 

---