Chapter Nineteen #5
‘Speaking for myself, it has always been rooted in love. Loving those that love me a bit too much and not loving myself enough, I guess.’ This the truth that caused her tears to form.
‘Not, not a conscious thing, at all. More a slow erosion of myself, until I stopped considering what I wanted or needed to thrive and kind of... went with the flow. Then when Jonathan died,’ she took a moment to gather herself, ‘I sat very still for some time, it seemed like the best option to just sit and wait until the world stopped spinning. And in that stillness, I realised that the sun had disappeared, and the birds were quiet, the air had grown cool, and the moon was high, the sky dark. That’s what happened to my life!
That’s what happened to me. I was twenty-one and the next time I looked up I was fifty-one, at that moment when day becomes night – you can’t rage against it, can’t turn clocks back or go outside and howl at the sky for one more minute of it.
You can’t because it’s gone, and you are at the mercy of it.
It was just like that. It is just like that.
I just have to find a way to live with the new shape of me. I have to figure out who I am.’
‘This, thing we shared, albeit briefly,’ he paused, ‘it felt like a marvellous opportunity, a chance.’
‘Yes.’ This too she couldn’t deny, noting with conflicting sorrow how he spoke in the past tense.
‘I should go.’
Reaching for his phone, which he deposited in his pocket, and grabbing his keys, which he held, she stood to see him out.
Torn between wanting him to go immediately, to put them both out of the misery of this closeness, and not wanting him to go at all, picturing them on the sofa, her feet on his lap, chatting and happy.
Happy . . .
There were no words, as he walked quickly around to her side of the table and, with an urgency to his actions, took her in his arms. In that moment, she was the opposite of invisible.
How she loved her husband, loved him so very deeply, but my God, caring for him and losing him had taken its toll.
She fell into him then, fell into him heavily, landing hard with all her weight in his arms, her head against his chest. It felt wonderful to let someone hold her for a while, to take up the slack.
Someone who wasn’t weakened by illness or too frail to do the job or too sick to care, or too understandably preoccupied to notice that she needed to stay here a while.
Someone solid and vital and present who held her upright, stopped her from falling down and slipping through the cracks, and where, in that moment, she wanted to stay forever.
.. forever, as if she had finally found a place to rest.
There was no kiss, no progression, no harnessing of the physical energy that sparked around them, no discussion, no plan, no goodbye, for none were needed.
Instead, after some minutes, he slowly released her from his fierce yet tender embrace, until eventually, still with the shape of him against her skin and the scent of him lingering, she opened her eyes at the sound of the front door closing.
It would have been hard for her to describe her feeling of abject sorrow, the silence taunting her.
She ran her fingers over the front of her clothes, as if touching the tiny particles of him that might still remain.
As she stood in the silence, her limbs shaking, and Dominic left the cottage via the front, she felt a breeze whip through the kitchen.
It swirled around the room and out of the open French doors, disturbing the muslin drapes and rustling the blooms of the pale-headed tea-coloured roses that grouped around the arbour.
Rushing to the lounge, she stared at the sofa and the chairs, before heading upstairs to the bedroom, scanning the room and checking the small study area on the landing, then standing at the bathroom sink to look in the mirror.
She even opened the front door, Dominic thankfully nowhere to be seen, as she stared at her little car. All of which were empty.
Back in the kitchen she whispered his name, softly, ‘Jonathan?’
A futile call into the echoing quiet. She knew, knew that he had gone, could feel it.
Understanding how impossible it would be to witness him in the arms of another, no matter that it was a gesture of goodbye, aware that any old fool would have been able to feel the emotion in it, to see the exquisite and all-consuming pain in their parting.
Jonathan, however, was not and never had been any old fool.
It was almost instinctive, as if at some deeper level she recognised that to be alone was the last thing she needed.
Talking so openly to Dominic had reminded her of the unbearable silence of loss and she couldn’t face it right now, couldn’t face it at all.
It was as if the scab that had formed over her grief had been ripped off, leaving her loss on her skin like a fresh wound, gaping, and the pain just as acute.
She grabbed her phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Angela.’
‘What is it, love, what’s happened?’
‘Can you, can you come over, please. Can you... can you just come here?’
There were no further questions. No discussion of time or plan or logistics. No debate over whether the need to disrupt her evening was necessary or frivolous. Her sister responded in the way Enya knew she would, and her heart was glad of it.
‘I’m on my way, Ens. Hang on, doll. I’m on my way...’