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| Man and Wife | |
| By sam_duke | ||||||||||
| 06 April 2007 | ||||||||||
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When the leader goes home, and finds himself all but alone. A smattering of ideas hurled together a little inelegantly, but it makes a change from what I've posted on here so far in that people actually talk and something actually happens in it!! She was sat on the end of her bed, a pure white evening gown caressing her figure, the dress the same colour as the silken sheets on which she rested and the elegant paper that covered the walls. She was gazing at her reflection in the round, ornate crystal-framed mirror that was set straight facing, above the polished mahogany desk where her husband would sit and write some nights until the small hours. She just stared into the looking-glass, holding the length of her hair in one hand, and combing the locks with a brush in the other, her tresses golden like the rolling, swaying cornfields she used to skip through as a girl, and as soft as the pillow she rested her childlike head against back then. She’d taken a soak in the bath, the water blue and gentle like the lake of the dene she used to pass by and perch beside and watch flow all alone as she grew up. She’d dried her fair, soft sweet skin, then clothed her body in her garments, touched up her eyelashes and her cheeks with just a pinch of her maquillage, and now rested herself on the fleecy, comforting bedspread as she sat waiting for the night to begin. She had always been a kind girl, a charming, pleasant type who seemed ever content. But at last, so she had been thinking that day, now she truly was. As she gazed at her own image in peaceful silence, almost entranced by the motion of her rich and beauteous hair slipping through the graceful fingers of her delicate hand again and again, her mind seemed to wander back to those misty days long ago. Her sister had called her that very morning. Simon had been playing up again, falling into one of his moods, angry at her one moment, sullen with her the next. “Why don’t you come and stay with us for a while?” that woman sat there on the bed suggested. “Just for the time being, until he’s calmed down.” But her sister, older by only three years, but whether wiser no one could know, sighed. “No… no, I can’t. You’ve both done so much for me… for us. Besides, I’d only get in the way. I’d cause you too many problems.” She could try and plead, and she did. But it was a waste. When she was a girl, that woman perched on her marital bed, mature, grown-up, her hopes and dreams were only simple. She wanted a happy home, a loving husband, a family. And now, years later, she had all she’d desired, all she’d dreamt of, and all she’d deserved. But what good was that if her sister couldn’t have the same? What good was that if the rest of the world was left just as sorry as, beyond the walls and the doors of her happy home, it surely was? Suddenly the silence was broken, as she heard someone unlock a door and step into the lounge that connected to her bedroom. Her own door was open ajar, but from the entrance to the whole flat it looked as if the room was empty. But the woman didn’t stir, and simply carried on stroking her mane with the soothing touch of her brush. But the man who’d stepped on in was fuming, so maddened that he was silent, standing there in the doorway, his chest raised, his hands both clenched tight so that his knuckles were white, his face blood-red, his eyes welling with rage. “Damn it!” he exclaimed all of a sudden, smacking his thigh with a fist and hurling the door shut behind him. He walked over to the window, and glanced out to the garden and the high wall and the London streets beyond, his gaze penetrating, what with his downcast face, and his lips contorted to a frown. He turned back, fell onto the settee in the middle of the pleasant room, and shut his eyes, as if in a vain attempt to throw away the headache of frustration smacking at his brow. He slouched in the chair and raised his hands to his face, and felt as if he was almost weeping. “Good speech earlier,” the woman in the bedroom said, her voice flying through the air to his ears like the whisper of an angel. Suddenly he lifted his head and took his palms away from his face to reveal a pair of eyes that were instantly lightened, cheeks that were raised and lips that switched to the slightest of smiles, all as if the very sound of her pleasant alto was all it took to soothe his furious mind. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said, the anger of his voice drained to a breath. “Just getting ready for tonight,” she simply replied. “What’s the matter?” she asked just a moment later, though still concealed from his sight by the door. He stood once again and shook his head, though if she could see him it wouldn’t have convinced her. “Nothing,” he tried to say, though he could barely even whisper the word. It was never nothing. “Did you watch it?” he asked, ambling over to the counter in the far corner of the room atop which stood two glass tumblers and a bottle of something light. “Yeah,” she replied. “You were good.” She saw it all, the tough, brave man walking out onto the dais, declaring his bold vision the way he always would, his speech slow and almost mournful to begin with as he recited all the evils, all the fears, all the troubles he had to face up to, but then transforming to a visionary, messianic, idealistic glory come his final passages as he told his listeners what it was he was going to do to solve their problems, where he was going to lead them, and how they were going to get there. Whether it was education, or industry, or even the drainpipes down the avenue that needed fixing, this was always how it would go. He transformed a conference to a crusade, his vision of the future never faltering, his purpose always sure. Every face in the audience was thrown into raptures by the time he was done, every pair of hands locked in applause. But then he got back home. “What did the pundits say?” he asked, pouring a drink for himself, throwing off the jacket which covered his stocky frame, finding a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at the wetness of his forehead and his lips. She hesitated. “They liked it,” was all she could bring herself to say. He chuckled, but said nothing else. He knew exactly what they said. They said he was acting, or lying, or both; putting up a front, acting the strong man, performing just as he always would in front of a room full of people. “He has, of course, said nothing new in this latest speech on the issue. The opposition have been urging him to spell out more precisely his plans to solve the growing inequality in the system and ringfence a proportion of the upcoming Budget, but he was characteristically bombastic and full of nothing more than nice-sounding rhetoric,” someone on the television had been sneering. They all said the same thing though. But the man didn’t care especially, so rather than worry, he took a swig of whatever it was he’d filled his glass with, but no more, and set the tumbler back down on its plate before he walked over to the bedroom and pushed the door open, finally setting eyes on the woman he loved. “My God, you look stunning!” he murmured, his eyes wide open and his mouth left hanging by the splendid sight of her beauty. She smiled. At last she dropped her brush onto their bed, and stood up to stand before her man. She was almost a foot shorter than him, small and slim whilst he was far taller and well-built, like the perfect image of the strong man and the gentle woman. “What’s getting you down then?” she asked, raising her hand to flick back his tousled hair. He shrugged and shook his head, as if he didn’t know where to begin, or as if, perhaps, in that room, with that woman, it was nothing at all. “It’s just… it’s the futility of everything, the emptiness, the hopelessness, the wastage.” “What do you mean?” Yet again, he looked at a loss. “It’s the things they say, the way they snipe at me…” His words just tailed off. He fell into the wooden chair by the desk, and the woman sat herself back down on the end of their bed. And then some moment’s though came to him, all the words fell into place, and his mind began to understand. “Do you remember back in the campaign, when abortion came up? The first time in about fifty years that abortion has been a political issue in this country, and it just had to happen on my bloody watch!” He laughed a desperate laugh at his luck, and she nodded. “They asked me, right there on live television, whether I’m pro-life, pro-choice, or what. They just pushed me and pushed me and pushed me. I said that as a man, as a father, as me, I am against abortion. But then I said that I wouldn’t want to ban it because I think it should be safe, and not a practice pushed underground, carried out by sleazy wasters in backstreet clinics.” All of a sudden the man’s tone began to change, suddenly enlightened, suddenly uplifted. “But above all, I said back then, more than any of that, my dream is to build the kind of society where we all lead worthwhile lives, and enjoy fulfilling relationships and bring up children in a safe and comfortable, loving environment, the kind of society where abortion is no longer an issue of debate. ‘That’s what I want’ I said, I remember saying those very words.” She could too. She could remember everything he’d ever said. “But the reporter acted as if he was disgusted, as if he was dismayed, and just demanded in his mocking, whining voice, ‘I’m sorry sir, we’re out of time. We’ll try one last time, are you in favour of an amendment to the Abortion Act or not? It’s a very simple question!’” “And then he finished it all, brushing me off, putting his hand up to stop me speaking, ‘Okay, well, it seems the candidate still hasn’t made up his mind on abortion. We’ll be back in three minutes after these ads. Don’t go away.’” The man’s face was morose and downcast. It seemed ever thus when he was at work. “You get their voices right at least,” she said softly, trying her hand at a smile, just to see if she could lift even a weak chuckle from within the man. He smiled, closing his eyes once more for only a fleeting moment. “Oh, hell!” he exclaimed, in a high and weak voice. “I hate politics! I hate them! I mean, it’s as if nobody can ever understand me in this damn game! That’s my problem! It’s not that I’m worried I won’t get the right headline in The Times tomorrow. My fear is that they won’t understand me, and what I want, what I dream of for our world. It’s as if no one can understand.” The woman’s eyes stayed fixed on his face, as if trying to comprehend all the thoughts that were flying inside his mind. Her shining, golden hair softly wrapped the cheeks of her face, whilst the dress made her look as divine on the outside as she was within. And then she simply whispered, as gentle as the soothing air of a faraway plain, “I do.” The man raised his eyes, and seemed to brighten up along with his whole visage. He hauled himself from his seat, stepped over to his wife, and perched on the end of the bed beside her, their two faces hardly separated an inch. He cupped a hand and brushed her cheek, spellbound by the smoothness of her face as he always had been, left gazing into the sparkling blueness of her sapphire eyes, eyes that could somehow speak of hope and faith and love and yet never uttered a word. He tenderly caressed the skin of her neck, and then took her hair between his thick fingers and brushed every lock. But then he stopped. “You know, most men think me a modest man,” he suddenly began to say, glancing away once again. “That’s what they say of me. But in fact deep within I think of myself in grand terms – too-grand terms, perhaps. Or at least I see my ideas in too-grand terms. I’ve believed for a long time now that I have a mission in this world, a purpose. And I’ve always believed that you are the woman who would guide me, the one by my side, the light showing me the way through my darkness.” “Whenever I used to say that in the past, most just ignored me of course. Some laughed at me and mocked me. Some would hear me out, then tilt their head in a kind of sympathy and understanding, but deep down they probably thought inside it was yet another tale of the ugly kid with dreams far bigger than he would ever be. Some were scared of me, and said I was speaking the language of the madman, about hopes and dreams and glorious visions, and all the rest of it. Some marvelled at me, though not very many, but even they thought I was destined to fail.” “But you,” he said, his heart rising and his eyes fixed on hers, “you were the only one back then who stood up and said, ‘I believe in you’. Whenever you said that to me, those four words, I knew that I was doing something worthwhile in my life.” The quiet, pleasant woman pursed her lips, and looked down shyly at her lap. But he took her chin in his fingers and raised her eyes back up to his. “I’m a vain man sometimes, and arrogant too. I see myself and what I do in grand terms, I know that much. And it’s always been that drive, that hubris, that has pushed me, and made me the man I am. But all the same, I still know it as a certain truth that I love you, darling, more than any man has ever loved a woman before.” He placed a palm behind her neck, and brought his lips together with hers, the intensity of two lovers’ whole lives shared in a single moment.
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