At the end of the year, Liz and her husband will celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.
Twenty-five years.
What she finds difficult is the thought of twenty-five more. At least her growing family have been able to cushion her against the realities of living with someone she does not love. Now only one of her two children is left at home and that, she suspects, will not be for long.
She envies them the way they deal with the world that surrounds them. Not for them the naivety that was hers, even when she married.
She should never have married, of course. Or, to put it more truthfully, she should never have married Mike. She didn’t know what being in love was like. Assumed that what she had with him was ‘it’. After all, there had been no one with whom to compare.
She should have listened to the voices hammering in her head on the morning of her wedding day.
Her image, cloudy behind the veil, floats before her eyes. She is staring at herself in the mirror above the fireplace. People enter and leave the room.
‘Oh God. What have I done? What am I about to do? Can I back out of it?’ There is nothing she wants to do more. ‘Impossible,’ she goes on. ‘What would my mother say? His parents? Him? I can’t do that to them.’ She has to go along with this thing that she has allowed to happen. It is too late to stop now.
And perhaps this is all it is about. Maybe there is nothing more than this.
It is only when real love comes along that everything that has been before is shown up in its real light.
And it sometimes needs the catalyst of real love to set in motion the reaction to feelings that have lain dormant for years.
*
The night-time is worst. After they have gone to bed. He has let down his guard… turned to her in his need. But now he is sleeping and there is nothing else to do but think.
Liz resents this need because it is his only need. Or the only one he demonstrates. The rest of the day he is efficient, hard-working, firm and, above all, undemonstrative.
She doesn’t resent how he is really. It is no different from how he has always been. Even as his new girlfriend in a city of students, he wouldn’t hold her hand in public and she felt as though he were ashamed of her.
Almost from the beginning the future was settled. The speed with which he took her to bed made it so. A good Christian girl didn’t go to bed before marriage. And, if she did, she couldn’t then look elsewhere. She must be his for life.
So many times, so many years, she has lain awake in the night, wondering how long she can stay in this relationship, so devoid of emotion, so lacking in the freedom to give or receive.
She has got involved in church life, even going as far as to join the three-year course to become a lay preacher in the church. He has made no objection, encouraged her even, though on one memorable holiday he challenged her by saying that she will eventually leave him. It was a difficult course, three years, with lectures most weekends and a monthly tutorial with a nearby priest. But it was an eye-opener and she enjoyed it. Since finishing the course she has worked more in the church, taking services and visiting the sick and elderly in the community, activities that have provided the fulfilment lacking in her relationship with Mike.
Only two obstacles stop her from taking drastic action in her marriage. But they are big obstacles. The first is her children. She cannot bear the thought of hurting them. The second is her standing in the community – her wider family, her job, the village, the church. When it comes to it, these things matter more than she ever thought. But she has seen enough of life to know that such upsets are a nine days’ wonder. People forget. Life moves on.
She no longer believes that she should stay in a marriage without love. She will wait until her daughter has moved out and then she will decide.
But eventually her unhappiness becomes palpable, even to Mike. They make attempts. He agrees to be at home at the weekend, rather than go to his work. They go shopping together and she does enjoy doing what they have so seldom done. They plan a holiday – the first ever abroad and the first without their children.
The Greek Islands are out of this world. She falls in love with the vibrant colours, the bearded priests in flowing black, the clear blue of the sky, the bright reds and pinks of the blossom. She savours the sun’s heat, the warm evening winds on her face. In the daytime, they walk over the hillsides, avoiding the unforgiving, needle-sharp plants which are all that the poor soil and dry heat will support. They hire a car and she sits in the back seat, her eyes shut against the precipitous drop to one side of her. She can feel every swerve as they climb the mountainsides, every zigzag down to the next valley or beach. In the evening, they dine in a nearby taverna. Sunshades flap lazily over their heads and the sun drops into the sea.
She tries hard, but the dead weight of misery that she carries around with her fails to lift.