by Vincent Gray
Rationally I realized that I had to get out of this relationship. I now realized that she would destroy me, even if it was not her intention to destroy me or hurt me. We lay naked and entwined on her bed, she kissed and caressed me all over, and she was so affectionate, so loving and so kind. I did not have the heart to dump her. I ate my pride and reciprocated her affection by whispering that I loved her with all my heart. It was clear that I was now trapped, entangled and enmeshed in the web that she had spun so carefully and skilfully with the power and the glue and the stickiness of affection and loving kindness. And she also knew that her exceptional beauty and her magnificent body was a powerful and irresistible trap and she had used that trap to hold me as her prisoner. She knew that I did not want to leave her. Maybe in her mind she believed that I will never leave her no matter what. She believed that I would be the one reliable constant factor in her life. She believed that I would stick around no matter what. Sheldon had once said that she was very experienced when it came to relationships. When I asked him what he meant, he said she was very experienced with men. I could never fathom what he meant by the word ‘experienced’ until that moment when I had practically raped her like a wild animal. Since her high school days she had had a string of boyfriends and they were all top ranking males. For me this knowledge was bewildering given my own modest self-perception.
After this incident our love grew stronger and it appeared that there were no more male visitors in her life. There was no evidence that I had to worry about any real or imaginary male contenders. She appeared to be devoted to me. In a way we were made for each other, or that is what I thought. We enjoyed each other’s company, we made intense love whenever we could. Also I began to feel that the dark shadow of Sheldon had lifted from my relationship with Cheryl. I also did not feel any threatening dark shadows of other male contenders that could be looming menacingly on the margins of my life with Cheryl. I felt at home with myself. I felt comfortable with being the person that I was. I was even entertaining the possibility that I could make a life with Cheryl. The thought of marriage crossed my mind more than once. She made me feel wonderful, it seemed that unknowingly or inadvertently through no conscious intention or purpose on her part she had an amazing positive effect on me as a person. My self-confidence increased, my insecurities vanished, my feelings of inadequacy evaporated and my sense of self-worth became pleasantly inflated. She was good for me, there was no mistaking that. I committed my life into her hands, I was hers body, soul and mind, I supposed I would have died for her I loved her so much.
So is this story going to be one of those ‘they lived happily ever after fairy stories’, Mr Richard Cunningham?
Just wait, I am not yet finished Miss Virginia Penrose. The story has not quite ended yet, there is still going to be lots more to come.
I had finished my BA and was planning to do a BA honours in philosophy. The December vacation was over in flash and now the New Year had arrived. The organist in our church was single and was about twenty five years old. She wanted to go on holiday for a week in Cape Town in the New Year. The only problem was that she did not want go alone. She was good friends with Cheryl as she also sometimes gave Cheryl a lift to church. So Cheryl decided to go on holiday to Sea Point in Cape Town with the organist. They flew down and stayed in a hotel. Cheryl promised that she would write to me every day. And she did. While she was away I received a steady stream of long and interesting letters that had been sent by airmail.
When she got back she started working as a radiographer at the Johannesburg General Hospital. When she was working day shift we would catch the same train. She would board the train at Boksburg East and I would get on the train at Boksburg station. She would be standing in the non-smokers compartment waiting for me. In the afternoons we would meet at Park Station and travelled back to the East Rand together. I was into movies and theatre, and we would go out every weekend. We would go to a cinema noveau in Johannesburg to watch an art movie or we would go to theatre, especially the Market Theatre. We had almost become like a very affectionate old married couple who loved one another’s company. Life and love could not have been more perfect. Almost six months had passed since she had been on that January holiday with the church organist.
It was about this time when the organist confided in Sheldon that while they were on holiday in Cape Town a German, probably in his mid-thirties had befriended Cheryl. He asked her out for dinner and she did not return to her room that she was sharing with the organist until the next morning and she did this a number of times. They had a serious fallout over this and a tearful Cheryl pleaded with the organist not tell anyone about her infidelities especially me, pleading with the organist that she loved me with all her heart, and that if I got to hear about her German it will destroy me, it was even possible that I would commit suicide, so for my sake what happened in Cape Town must stay in Cape Town. The German had followed Cheryl to Johannesburg and they had been meeting secretly for a number of months. Of course the moment Sheldon heard about Cheryl’s infidelities he walked directly over to my house and dropped the bomb. He stood there in my room in 3 Everton Avenue Comet waiting for me to breakdown so that he could pick up all the pieces. I was shocked beyond belief. I could not get my mind round her inexplicable behaviour and her outrageous infidelities, it was beyond me. But I did not break down, even though I was emotionally and psychology shattered and torn apart. I stayed icy calm. It was Saturday afternoon and I had booked movies tickets for Roman Polanski’s Chinatown at a movie theatre in Benoni.
When I picked Cheryl up I felt emotionally cold and she sensed it immediately. There was a fearful flicker of disturbing pathos in her eyes. We were slightly early for the movie, so after parking I said we had to talk. I told her that Sheldon had informed me about her Cape Town holiday escapades. I asked if she had slept with the German. She kept quiet. I asked again if she had slept with the German. She began to cry. I said: ‘I can’t hear.’ She whispered ‘yes’. At that moment it felt like a bullet had gone straight through my heart. I felt crushed. I was stunned beyond belief. I asked her: ‘How many times?’ She whispered that she did not know. I asked her again: ‘How many times?’ She started to sob in the car. I then suddenly felt sorry for her and put my arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. Her makeup was a mess. She took some tissues out of her hand bag and wiped her tear stained face, using the tears to remove all the makeup from her face. After she had stopped weeping we took our seats in the movie theatre. I glanced at her face. The makeup was gone and her face was white. But there was still smudged black mascara around her eyes which gave her face a stark death like appearance. Her demeanour had become a mask of tragedy. We took our seats in the cinema. She snuggled close against me; she held my hand tightly, squeezing it, caressing it. I could not respond. I felt emotionally cold and dead inside. I had nothing left in me. I felt anger towards her and the anger would not abate. I felt the unbearable hurt of betrayal. I could not understand what she had done; it was beyond reason, logic and rationality. It was callous, cruel and inhuman. With regard to the movie I watched it without seeing anything. As the reel rolled I found myself becoming entangled in a titanic struggle with my emotions, especially with my seething anger. In fact I was surprised at the intensity of my own anger, and not only that I felt humiliated. I felt that she had played the fool with me, that she had abused me, that she had injured my dignity and that she had harmed me psychologically and emotionally. The long list of everything that she had done to me, through her unspeakable infidelities, in terms of the injury and harm that she had inflicted on me, raged like a violent torrent in my mind and heart. At the same time I was also struggling against all kinds of doubts and emotional conflicts, doubts which spoke to my heart, mind and soul telling me to forgive, telling me to forgive the person that was clinging so desperately to me, telling me to take back the person into my heart, the person who was now holding my hand so tightly that it had become numb and sweaty. The doubts and emotional conflicts began to act
on my conscience telling me that maybe I was overreacting. Deep down I was also struggling with not wanting to let her go. The thought of what it would feel like to be without her flashed through my mind. What about the pain of loneliness that I would most certainly experience? What about the pain of unbearable grief that I would have to endure for hours, days, weeks, month and possibly even years if I left her. And what about the pain of recurring regrets that I would have to face in the future. With the passing of time I would most certainly and eventually begin to see things differently in a more sober light? Therefore I should not be hasty in my decisions. With the onset of old age we do most certainly become more forgiving, more understanding, we begin to see things differently with the bright unimpeded light of hindsight. This thought also crossed my mind. So many thoughts were racing through my mind; so many emotions were being stirred up within me. I began to feel bewildered. I felt confused. I asked myself: What would be the mental, emotional and spiritual
