She never forgot the first time she saw him striding along the road in the opposite direction, facing her as she drove towards him through the city traffic. She was sure she had never seen such a handsome man. His image stayed with her, followed her, haunted her, and beguiled her. Beth was spellbound by a man she had never met, nor did she have any prospect of so doing.
She had seen him with his astoundingly good looks only briefly, a face to face encounter, just another vehicle-driver and a pedestrian exchanging impersonal glances as they went about their day.
His hair was short, black and crisply curly, tight, springy curls that matched the coloring of his dark eyes. Later she was to realize just how alert and discerning these midnight eyes could be and to learn of the sheer force of his interesting and compassionate personality.
He was tall and very straight, carrying himself with all the dignity of his army training, she was to discover in time to come. But that was many years ago, long, busy years for both of them.
When she saw him it was a late autumn day where everything seemed transfixed, waiting for the next change to take place in the small city, the trees all standing still with brightly colored leaves gently falling to the pavements in anticipation of the winter which would soon follow. The pine trees stood darkly and majestically around the edges of the park at the center of the city, tall and prepossessing in the still air.
Beth was in her mid-twenties, a woman of moderation who had gone from a bright, breezy young girl to having a certain restraint about her. Her hair was auburn with brighter red touches in it when the light hit it from different angles. Her blue eyes looked out from a face that had a fair skin with a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She had been married to a man who preferred the company of other men to hers. Not that he was homosexual, (not that there’s anything wrong with that). He was just blokey and sporty and anybody’s drinking mate, loath to go home when commonsense prevailed amongst the rest of the group, taking them home to their families.
Eric seemed to find going home to Beth to be as dull as dishwater, thus he lingered whenever or wherever he could, maybe in the hope that she would be asleep by the time he reached the house, consumed his dinner from the oven and slipped noisily into bed beside her. He often knew she was awake by the pattern of her breathing, but neither said a word to the other and Eric was soon snoring fit to wake the dead. Beth, alone all day and hardly tired enough to fall to sleep easily, stared into the darkness, watching the flicker of car headlights as they drove by in the little street where their house was situated, surrounded by wattle trees with citrus trees in the back yard and a few fowls up in the far corner, six hens and a rooster of monstrous self-importance and inflated ego.
Eric was blocky and muscular with a tawny, crewcut hair style and darting gray eyes, forever glancing around to see what was going on and what advantage could be taken of it. Perhaps because of this trait in his nature his eyebrows seemed arched in perpetual inquiry as if there were matters happening within his world that he wished to participate in if he could find out what they were.
He spoke in a loud, nasal drawl and made a direct appeal to his mates’ crude sense of humor whenever possible, thinking to make himself popular in the process. The latter was something Beth had not been subjected to before marriage and which soon began to reduce the attraction of Eric in her eyes.
Finding she was pregnant at twenty, Beth and Eric had married quickly. Beth had experienced enormous happiness at expecting to become a mother only to miscarry in her second trimester. She had tripped and fallen, not hurting herself but jolting her abdomen and losing her child.
Beth was of the generation where the womenfolk did not go out to work after marriage, which led to much loneliness for women who did not have children, close companions or extended family in the medium-sized rural city just south of the Queensland border. She wasn’t able to get past the pain of her loss as rapidly as Eric expected, being inclined to mope and feel sad that she had been told she would not be able to have any more babies.
She decided to ignore this conclusion and go ahead, trying for another child against all odds. Even though she was a trifle disenchanted with Eric, she was committed to him, married to him for life for better or worse.
As time drifted on with no apparent resolution to her desires for motherhood, Eric preferred to go out in the evenings, to breast the bar with his drinking pals. She withdrew into herself and Eric could not read her moods any more so he ceased trying and for a while they lived as two strangers under the same roof.
As she started to recover, her loneliness grew to an unacceptable state and she wondered what to do with her evenings after spending her days alone, so joined the tennis club which met on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday nights to play social tennis. Beth didn’t consider herself a candidate for fixtures, just an uncomplicated social game for the fun of it. The courts were in walking distance of her house in Bedford Street, which was just as well as she had no vehicle to drive. Eric had command of the only car, an ancient Ford Coupe with one tail light rusted out and a dint in the bumper bar where he had run into a stray cow going out to his parents’ place at Highgrove Downs.
Life rolled on and occasionally she wondered about the mysterious stranger she had seen walking the in the street just once, but asked no one, as she was a married woman and that kind of behavior would be frowned upon. It absolutely wasn’t done, to show an interest in any man that wasn’t one’s husband. Eric was not a man to be trifled with and he would have been outraged had he known she had admired any other male that walked the earth.
The childless couple, Beth and Eric Dowling, seemed set in a pattern that could last the rest of their lives. After two years another conception had not occurred, nor was it likely to, Beth was only too well aware. Again upon inquiring as to the possibility of conception they were informed that, following the complications of the miscarriage, Beth would be unable to conceive another child. Finally, she bit the bullet and accepted her fate.
While she had been inclined to cling to a false hope for an unreasonably long time, she put all idea of motherhood behind her and with the acceptance, she became more settled. Eric was very definite in his stance against adoption or fostering other peoples’ children, telling her the parents could be any type of undesirables from murderers to swindlers and the children (who would doubtless be born illegitimate, making them suspect from the word go), could follow in their footsteps. She must live out her days doing housework and baking, seeing to her parents, gardening and joining such women’s clubs as Eric approved of, which were very limited.
Dismayed when the shine of acceptance wore off, she continued to make the best of the deal. In the 1960s the few married women who went out to work were nurses or teachers or widows, not clerks as Beth had been. So, with all hopes of motherhood out of her head, she spent her days polishing floors in their neat little home, making jams and pickles and knitting sweaters for stocky Eric to wear to his job in the grocery store. He wore them with great dignity, his double chin almost disappearing into the polo neck collars she knitted to keep him warm. Certain young women eyed him with pure delight, admiring the fair isle pattern of his vests and the cables down the front of his manly cardigans, captivated by the charm of him in his hand knitted garments.
If not happy, nor even content, Beth was living her life according to the prescribed manner of the times. There were days, though, when she felt a knot in her gut almost palpable in its urgency, a sense that there should be more than this, more for her in the Summer of her life. She tried to be the embodiment of the ideal wife but her heart simply wasn’t in it. Lonely and bored, she passed the time away as best she could, a stack of library books always nearby to fill any gaps that arose in her thinking.
Good sense informed her that the idea of separation was unrealistic and speculation would lead to trouble. As far as she knew she did not have any grounds for divorce -cruelty, adultery or separation. She was set to confor
m to the same paradigms as her mother and sisters and the few friends she was allowed to have.
Beth did not even know what this mystical ‘something’ consisted of or where to find it. She had the cleanest house in the street. Eric had the most meticulously pressed clothes in the shopping center. As well, she took care of both her garden and her aged parents’ garden, she continued to play tennis and was a member of St Rupert’s Ladies’ Choir. While not actively unhappy, she was far from content, almost subconsciously searching for a way out of her predicament.
Eric, also, was neither happy nor unhappy, but was more determined than Beth to find fulfillment. After being married to Beth for four years he had found what could perhaps pass for happiness, but was in need of a little more sexual stimulation as the marriage was proving to be unexciting and repetitive. The relationship had gone stale after four years.
In this dearth of excitement he was obliged by the cashier from the office of the store. She was a pretty little blonde cutie with eager, impressionable eyes and a perky bosom and was willing to take the chance on an affair with a married man.
In the course of time Sheila confronted Beth and told her that Beth’s husband now belonged to her, Sheila, as she was carrying his child. Beth was unreasonably grateful to Sheila for allowing her to smell the scent of freedom on the winds of change.
So, little more than bored with the whole scene, she packed Eric’s bags for him after telling him she wished him and Sheila a wonderful future together with their child. Feeling utterly drained and completely at a loss as to what she would do with the rest of her life, she placed the house on the market.
Once the little chamfer-on-brick was sold, she and Eric shared the proceeds with Eric being awarded the lion’s share, as was seen as a fair deal at the time, he being the bread-winner and she only the stay-at-home wife. She was, as a single woman, quite legitimately a candidate for the workforce again.
She started to take a different view of the world, as with a surge of optimism she realized she was her own woman again and set about making a new life. Perhaps she would now be able to change her limited outlook and find some answers to all the unformed questions in her mind.
Beth moved into a small apartment in another suburb, obtained employment as a legal secretary, and continued playing tennis twice a week, but at a new club in her suburb.
When settled into her new life, she decided to resume attending church. Eric had not approved of religious practices, claiming they were merely a lot of silly hocus pocus, but now she was drawn strongly back to her childhood faith, seeking sustenance for her lonely soul. Once or twice she saw the handsome stranger in the large congregation at her new church but was never close enough to speak to him even if she had known what to say.
Before many weeks were out, the dark-haired stranger appeared one night at the tennis club. They were soon acquainted, which later led to long conversations. She learned his name, Matthew Prentice, and the fact that he was married with several grown children. He was much older than Beth, more of an age with her parents and had gone to the second World War at about the same time as Beth’s father.
Between them there was a definite magnetism that must be ignored. Beth had been extremely disappointed to hear that Matthew was committed elsewhere, but accepted the fact. She was satisfied to be friends with him, to play tennis with him, to chat, (perhaps just a shade more confidentially than she would have with any other man). His wife, a small, silver-haired, frail woman, was not a well person and did not participate in sport, nor did she ever accompany him to tennis and rarely to church.
Matthew, a business man, had a rich, sonorous voice and sometimes read the lesson at church on Sundays. Although aware he was out of reach, Beth continued to admire him enormously and adored the sound of his voice. She sat with her head bent as she listened to the words of the Bible, transfixed with Matthew’s manner of delivering the Scriptures.
One morning after Holy Communion, she returned to her place and knelt down to pray. As she lifted her head to assume a sitting position, Matthew was walking down the aisle to his pew. As their eyes met they smiled at each other, the smile of two people who liked each other, an innocent enough smile. But the effect of the glance and its brief moment of revelation was immediate.
The swift exchange was noted with horror by Matthew’s wife who was attending church with him that morning and flushed to the roots of her hair at the deplorable sight of the smiles. Mrs. Matthew Prentice had not taken Holy Communion but had waited for Matthew further toward the rear of the church and had caught the smile between Matthew and Beth. Aghast at the thought of another woman smiling at her husband and him smiling at another woman, Mrs. Prentice was furious and could not be reassured at any cost.
Cynthia Prentice could not be consoled no matter how hard Matthew tried to convince her there was nothing between himself and Beth. The Uniting Church minister called on Beth to interview her. The minister’s wife called on Beth next to discuss the matter with her. All parties concerned were distraught and Cynthia Prentice refused to be mollified.
Beth, caught up in the distress caused by the incident, went completely to pieces for a time, as did the married couple. Gradually the troubled time was forgotten by all concerned. Matthew retired and took care of his wife, who was as ill and frail as ever.
Beth’s life also proceeded with the joining of another tennis club and church. She dated for a year or so, grew disillusioned with the dating scene, then spent the following year or two alone. Again, she was neither actively happy nor unhappy, but had come to terms with her life.
With a shock, she saw Cynthia Prentice’s death notice in the newspaper. She sent a sympathy card and thought little more about the episode, except for remembering from time to time how much she had admired Matthew and how much she hoped his life was an agreeable one.
At this juncture, she had several girlfriends with whom she attended the social evenings at the Ridge Way Golf Club on the second Saturday of each month. A man named Gordon Doherty had taken it into his head to pursue her. Gordon was a widower of her own age with a highly excitable nature, busy eyes and a head of prickly blond hair. He had turned up alone at the club one night and had stood leaning against the bar for a couple of hours, summing up the situation.
Gordon was of medium height with a disagreeable desire to hog the whole dance floor, making him an object of scorn to other men who were trying to lead their dancing partners safely around the available space. He had an eager glance and was apparently waiting for his life to begin again.
Eventually, he focused on Beth, and then danced with her for the balance of the evening, inviting himself to join her party at their table. His conversation abounded with pithy adages and his tone was more than a touch professorial. He sported a bow tie and had light eyes the color of tap water. He was passably presentable but far too egocentric for Beth’s taste.
So she was not particularly interested in him, finding him to be rather charmless, but he began to court her with determination, having expensive, exotic arrangements of flowers delivered to her home each Friday afternoon after obtaining her address from one of her girlfriends.
Later in the evening, he would front up clutching a box of costly, hand-made chocolates. In spite of all her objections to the contrary, the pattern continued for weeks.
Eventually Beth thought it was churlish not to invite him into the house for a cup of tea and equally uncivilized not to accept his invitation to the town’s most expensive restaurant.
Even though his mannerisms were already tedious to her taste, she capitulated and agreed to go out with him. As he polished his spectacles for the umpteenth time that evening, he ordered the most expensive items on the menu and tried to blind her with stories in which he featured as the hero of the event. Although bored beyond anything she had ever imagined herself capable of being, she continued to go out with him with the intention to escape as soon as she found a good excuse.
Missing the magic of romance that
she still, deep down in her heart, wished to experience, she allowed him under protest to court her, adore her and admire her excessively. Finally rewarding his persistence, one Friday night she agreed to share his bed, thinking that he was the best man offering and that he idolized her, so would in the long term take good care of her. She did not return his love to a similar degree but had grown used to having him around doting on her.
Like many people both before and since, she found it difficult not to return affection to someone who obviously loved her so profoundly. Nor did she realize that he now considered he owned her body and soul.
Even with the lights out in his house he remained slightly pompous-sounding, and as the conversation lapsed, then failed, Beth lay with her eyes opened but unfocused, wondering what she had done and how to undo it. She was haunted by a vague sense of unease at being in a relationship with a man whom she suspected of being volatile and highly unpredictable and a new kind of loneliness visited her after she had returned home.
But the die was cast. She had made the physical commitment and the unspoken emotional commitment to Gordon to try to form an everlasting bond. If for a moment a fire had burned in her eyes at the thought of being Gordon’s wife, the fire had very definitely gone out within a few short weeks of being his companion. Gordon had an unfortunate manner of trying to take control of every situation and conversation. He had eyes that bulged unattractively and was prone to indulging in antisocial acts such as placing his gawky arms and legs in the way of other patrons at the Ridge Way Golf Club.
The very next night after their sortie into lovemaking was the monthly social at the Golf Club. The newly paired couple attended, along with a group of Beth’s friends who were all, by this time, forming partnerships with people they had met at the socials.
Eloquent Silence Page 38
