Cheap Decorative Candles.

She had the type of face that you half caught, half missed on buses, that raced passed you in the street. You would pause momentarily and consider, not knowing for sure but carrying a suspicion around with you; it was a pretty face. Yet as with things that pass too swiftly you let it go. She had her back to me, glaring slyly out of the window. I glaring out of the window assumed she could have been smiling, but somehow I always pictured her glaring. I could not see her face yet I pictured it wide with a smug wry grin. Victories are precarious things, its easy to win but very difficult to be victorious. The two never share the same bed, gladly.

When I was young I would win at chess, gloating in cackling disrespect, mocking my defeated foe for I had won, yet this is not victorious. So I stood at the door watching her watching something outside. I could have spoken, but did not, she could have left but did not. Nights are feral instigators of human moods, the very nature of the bleak night ahead produces the greatest wrath and sensitivity in us. Either we persecute for fear of spending the night alone and the morning in tears, or we congratulate in tender reminiscences so as to avert that greatest of all calamities; a lonely chill night in a warm bed.

It was not raining although it was late at night. I often look back and remember rain, tumultuous thundering shuddering droplets of gloriously romantic rain; yet in truth I know it was a fine night with a full moon. Odd how the mind will win back for you the ground, your pride and selfishness lost so long ago. When the actual memory is not a win, the recollection can often be victorious. The mind will succour us from all things harmful especially from a lofty pride or a rising fall; so in my mind I hear rain and the scene is set. She turns sobbing, dropping a cigarette into the empty ashtray. I smile, handsome smile that she loves so much, begging in heavy regretful apologies she approaches me, I cast her aside fierce rich lover eyes pinning her shame to her breast.

Her eyes were fixed, what could have beguiled her in the small and cluttered garden I had no idea. Possibly the fat ginger cat that occasionally in curious mood would sit on the shed roof. What had that cat to say to her, that I could not? I had stood by the same window a thousand times before glaring at the dreadful rain in the long to nights. Her bible rested in pious immovability on the table, I thought about tossing it at the back of her mute skull. Looking back now I can only truly recall how delightful the omelette we had that night had been - delicious. Just a little over too many mushrooms and very little cheese, strange that the omelette smell should always waft across my olfactory senses as I cry immovable regrets onto my comfort pillow. I have often seen a girl similar to her in the street or at the library and suddenly been overwhelmed with a desperate urge for an omelette.

The light from next door pierced the room in broken half shadows, casting an accusing brightness on me and hiding her in a protective shroud. I have never been intimidated by silence, it was neither heavy nor imbued with a sense of purpose - it was simply the lack of any other audible disturbance. Silence not always damns the guilty, it lulls into regret. To say one regrets nothing, is to say nothing at all, what do we not regret?

I probably said something like

-Its late lets go to bed!

-Okay I love you. She probably said.

Although neither of those things were said, for we did not go to bed. We stood, uncomfortably. I was restless, tortured into losing. Yet her posture indicated to me that she could have persisted for some time. I wanted to weaken her resolve, say something hurtful so that the very pure emotion of pain would tire her muscles, exhaust her will to continue the skirmish into the long night.

-Have you forgotten Keswick, already! Accusing hurt tone, could have possibly won it for me.

-This means nothing, fuck you! Too wanton, abrasive and out of character she would suspect deceit.

-I’m going out, you’ve ruined my birthday. That would have been ideal, cutting yet with a vague sense of vulnerability, a sense that things could have gone differently, that the hostilities were not of my doing, a complete emotional landslide that I could ride all the way to sentimental bedtimes, however it was not my birthday.

I said nothing and she persisted by the window.

A rising fall - when it appears the victory is done now complete; the certainty that we revel too swift in the glories it shall permit us and in our abandonment of modest reason we dispel all notion of gratitude. That it should be at that moment, as we are blinded by the glow of our own mercurial halo that we trip and fall; no wings singed can escape the swift approaching ground. There are many ways to lose an argument, I have experienced them all; yet the weakest wall in the citadel of man is his mind. Minds will betray, especially at moments of intense insecurity, such is why the illogic of drunkenness will often more assuredly dismantle a women‘s impregnable ranks of stubborn ’you don’t know what you are talking about’ than a bible to the back of the head. Looking back now I should have said “I love you” a complete tactical out flanking, assuredly she would have turned and reciprocated, it was a fight from nothing going nowhere. Yet a man may not out manoeuvre his sweet pride, such is its gentle magnitude - or perceived gargantuan tenderness. Sad that men should look into mirrors and see heroes, when women look at men and see the grotesque, sinful hues of a painting gone rotten - glass in shards gone broken, hubristic tired old man too long admiring, too long glaring into the putrid pool.

Despite the sparsely decorated room I saw glimmers of the past twinkling with accusatory dust upon every old book or forgotten family game. It must have been the window that gave her so much strength. Glaring wildly out into the banal clutter of a little used back garden, she hid amongst the bins, used the broken front door of a long lost Ford Sierra as a shield. A feminine Spartan in the shadows, robed in such a will to win, gifted with a natural solemnity of passion, a reason too subtle to smash, a face too sweet to disfigure, a window into the night and the accusing moon making a bon fire of every foul deed and hurtful word my now tiring body had spewed. Now I know it was not the moonlight that brought my sins to the room, they had already long been there, a bad odour in every room I had ever entered.

The greatest defence she had that night, was the mutable distance of a full moon garden afforded her. I however had no such freedom, the cupboard with its winter coats that we bought from York, the boxes with their numerous books that we bought from a small family run book shop in Keswick, fleeing the rain we giggled our careless dance into the store and roamed for hours, the steam of our warming curiosity settling her heart on mine and mine on hers.

I turned to leave but remained, she lit another cigarette. The window and the cigarette, the dusty crimes and the dizzy strain of standing, this women could not be defeated with ease. No more a defeat than a subtle emollient surrending. I have been in a similar situation, with other women, some with less or more determination, yet not easily do young men capitulate. I would have offered her a cup of tea, that would have given me the opportunity to vanish downstairs. Take my time to fill the kettle, assemble the ingredients. I could sneak a bottle of beer, devour what was left of the omelettes, a perfect rest-bite, but we had no milk, or tea bags.

The night ended the bitterness did not. Waking up alone, feeling cold in a warm bed I went to make a cup of tea. Thundering down the stairs, the house was oddly quiet, no radio playing, no singing from the shower. So she had decided to continue the skirmish, thought I. A sense of ludicrous self righteousness swelled within my chest. I would not be pleasant to her today, I would play it silent, make her comprehend how bitterly hurt and wounded I was. Possibly around lunch time I would sneak out and bring her back her favourite sandwich, a passive attack, steeped in guilt. Once in the kitchen I noticed immediately that her collection of tea pots was missing from the kitchen side and we had no tea bags. Two mild disappointments in the mild morning.