TWENTY SILK CUT BLUE
When Louise Moriarty got a whiff of her
husband's philandering ways, she packed his clothes into black bin bag liners, delivered them to his work place, and in front of his colleagues told him to go to
Hell. She never once looked back, not even a cursory glance. Compared to Louise Norah felt like a watery shadow, someone who danced on the outer edges of life, not daring to alter its direction, even if it meant her liberation
In Norah's day, once you made your bed you had to lay on it. The church, who had made a virtue out of martyrdom, had added to her entrapment. " Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." If only this were true she should now be basking in God's grace but being meek had made Norah ineffectual, too accepting of her lot.
Norah recalled her golden days as a happy young girl. Only she didn't fully appreciate her life then. Aunt Gertrude had told her that she had been bred for the finer things in life, a good husband, a comfortable home, the joy of children. Aunt Gertrude, who had looked after Norah since her mother died, had a profound influence on Norah's life. She had never married but liked to see herself as an expert connoisseur of men. Aunt Gertrude's myopic worldview based a man's suitability as a husband on his state pensionable job and whether or not he owned his own house. So when Norah met Michael and he fulfilled the necessary criteria Aunt Gertrude immediately loved him. And Norah who had nobody else in her life to make her see sense choose security over love and agreed to marriage.
Once the novelty of being married and having her own home wore off Norah realised that she had made a dreadful mistake. She was forced to admit there had never been any real chemistry between her and Michael. Arctic chemistry if truth be told. Michael, a taciturn man was not one for affection and he certainly possessed little understanding of her needs.
Oh the disappointment with married life weighed heavily in those days. All she had was an arrangement, a mutual arrangement that they would cohabit as husband and wife and try to make the best of what each of them could offer. Norah shuddered as she recalled their early years together, those wretched fumblings in the dark, always in the dark as Michael grunted and rutted more like a beast than like a man. She quickly learned to disengage at will, detach herself from his attempts at making love. Hah, she almost laughed aloud, making love. How we sugar coat reality to make it more tolerable. It was too base to be called love, too primitive to be anything other than pure raw sex.
Michael's physical needs never matched her own but she felt duty bound to act as a wife was supposed to then. Nobody spoke about sex, not the way women discuss it freely today so there wasn't a single soul she could confide in about Michael. His appetite was not for her but for her body and for that he seemed insatiable. If she refused him Michael would go off in a huff and hold back her house keeping money. She had no choice but to be compliant.
Her first daughter arrived after Michael stopped using those condoms that scraped her insides and gave her periodic cystitis. He said it would be more pleasurable without them but although she had felt some mild relief Norah never felt any real pleasure. But then again women weren't supposed to take pleasure in sex, not in her day. Today women demanded and sought satisfaction from their men. She couldn't understand how but then again she only knew Michael's body and her lack of experience really left her in no position to judge.
Kay was a screaming effigy of Michael, whose physical demands sapped rather than sustained her. Some say that children are a blessing to a barren marriage but perhaps that's something the church also thought up as some sort of consolation. Both her daughters were of him, by him and looked like him. They remained forever on the periphery of her life, remote, distant, a constant reminder of the man she had to call her husband. She fed them, clothed them, did her duty and she tried very hard to love them. But children have amazing antennae for the truth and as soon as they were old enough they fled leaving a cold distant trail that she would follow whenever she wanted a break for herself in Dublin.
What Norah hated most about Michael was his meanness. Although worth a small fortune Michael guarded his money carefully, watching it treble in investments down the years. In order to add more money to his savings he regularly reduced her house keeping money so that now the amount he gave her could barely keep up with inflation. Invariably he demanded the richer juicier cuts of meat for himself, forcing her to cut corners wherever she could. Coal fires, once a necessity were now a rare luxury, at Christmas perhaps or when the temperature dropped so low that ice formed on the insides of the windows and her teeth would chatter indoors.
Acquaintances would tell her that what was his was also hers but Norah knew otherwise. His money was his own and she only received what he thought she deserved. With the girls gone, on her behest the fumblings ceased and they withdrew into separate rooms, remote worlds.
Consequently the money she received decreased as though she was no longer being paid for services rendered.
When Michael got his first heart attack and turned yellow and then grey Norah hesitated a few moments before she dialled 999 and in that hesitation she knew what she most wanted. She looked at Michael dispassionately as he clutched at his chest and struggled for breath. In the interval between his gasping for air and the arrival of the ambulance men Norah prayed most fervently that every breath would be his last. Behind pursed lips she silently worded her request to the heavens begging God to take him, to release her.
But Micheal's treble bypass was a resounding success so the surgeon said, it would add years to his life. Norah cursed God's spiteful betrayal. Her chance of widowhood dashed by the wonders of modern medicine. It seemed she had no choice but to live out her days with her small, fat, mean spirited husband.
To the rest of the community however Michael was a pillar, a rock that people could turn to in their hour of need. He played a prominent role in fundraising for the church or helping to organise the local town festival. Good ol' Michael they'd say to her as she secretly winced inside and thought if only they really knew.
Although to the outside world Norah appeared marinated in negativity and self pity there was a side to her that she guarded and treasured. Amidst the doom and gloom she had some pleasures and it was for these pleasures that she got up every morning and continued to live out her life.
She had her weekly visit to the library to look forward to, where for a few hours she could relax in the heat and loose herself in one of those thrillers whose suspense gripped her week after week. Norah also enjoyed her visits to the sick and elderly in the community. For these she would put on her red lipstick, a luxury she hid from Michael. Michael thought so many things were a waste and lipstick was one of them.
Norah loved gossip especially negative gossip as it made her feel she wasn't alone in her suffering. Mr Geary, one of the few elderly gentlemen left in the community, always said that God only gave crosses to those who could bear them but Norah silently disagreed. Like the lottery you either were lucky or unlucky. God simply didn't care.
Weekends found Norah huddled in one of the town's cafes nursing the proverbial cup of tea and smoking two of her silk cut blues, her babies, her friends. She lovingly anticipated the first puff as one would the sight and touch of a lover. Smoking was the only intimate relationship she had ever known and for that she was forever grateful. She failed to understand the anti smoking campaigners and their miserable warnings. Only a smoker could understand the seductive bond to cigarettes, how they can so easily replace ambition, sex and sometimes even love.
This morning when Michael suggested she give up smoking her heart momentarily stopped. He told her smoking was bad for her health and it was too costly. Had he really failed to observe how happy she was when she smoked? Michael began to rant about the dangers of passive smoking and that unless she stopped he would be forced to reduce her housekeeping money until she did. The grating manner in which he delivered that particular bombshell unleashed years of Norah's pent up hatred for Michael.
She had put up his parsimonious ways, years of feeling cold and miserable in her own home, years of shrunken pleasures, times when she herself had genuinely felt hungry. This was the end. The final brick in the wall. Michael wanted to deny her the very thing, the only thing that stood between her and the abyss. Her little white friends who had sustained her down through her marriage were about to be forcefully ousted from her life. He wanted her to give up the one thing that gave her the only real pleasure she had in her life.
Norah was cornered and she knew it and like any cornered animal she could only focus on escape. She had once memorised the recipe for raw nicotine from one of her novels. Today she would soak the tobacco from her little white babies and tomorrow would give the distilled potion to their enemy. It pleased her enormously to think it would only involve the sacrifice of four cigarettes.
One, two, three drops were sprinkled on his mashed potato and parsnip and placed alongside his final grilled steak, garnished with onions and mushrooms. Michael loved his food. She watched his jowls shake in anticipation of a very fine meal, one of her best in fact. She smiled at him but he scarcely noticed, so intent was he on filling his belly.
During his last supper Norah sat outside in the garden watching the blue puffs of smoke swirl around her. The book mentioned that it would take no longer than 5 minutes, rather like the effects if a lethal injection. A sense of calm descended on her. The hope that had lain dormant for aeons began to flutter in her breast as she slowly and luxuriously exhaled. Perhaps a prayer would be appropriate right now. In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Ghost. May he rest in peace. Amen.
© 2001 danmahony.com