SILENCE
By phill
- 385 reads
SILENCE
Oh God, what an awful mess I am in!
I was due to go out with my colleagues from work - this week - so I
could try to forget about it all. It has been arranged since last pay
day, this coming Thursday was the plan. We were all going to go out for
a drink and sit by the river in the sun. But I have just found out that
she intends to be there!
My friend told me that he had been speaking to her on Tuesday. She had
asked him if he were going out on pay day - he had replied that he was,
that he was going out with me. He remarked that she had fallen silent
upon hearing that, and he had ventured that for the briefest of moments
she had appeared very thoughtful. But he was unable to hazard even a
guess as to what might have passed through her mind. Then she had asked
which pub he intended to start at and he had told her all our
arrangements.
"What did she say to that?" I had asked, trying desperately to sound
calmly indifferent to it all.
"She said that's where she would go as well," he replied.
"What, is that it? Did she say why she wanted to go there
particularly?"
"No, that was all she said before she went off to use the fax
machine."
"Oh."
What does she mean by it? Is it the news I've been hoping for? We
haven't spoken for at least five weeks you see, ever since I told her
that it was time she decided who she really wanted to be with, me or
him. I had to do it, I had to be tough and set things straight. We have
been having this elicit affair for almost six months now, so I think
she has had sufficient time to get to know me and work out what she
wants to do. But she has been with him for nigh on seven years, am I
really so deluded as to believe I can possibly threaten such a firmly
established relationship?
Putting pressure upon her certainly felt like the right thing to do at
the time, but now I'm not sure, I can't seem to think straight any
more. The only thing that is clear to me at the moment is the dreadful
pain. It is at times, as sharp and as traumatic as a swipe from a
surgeon's scalpel, but it never fades below a dull ache, a desperate
longing for her that only leaves my side whilst I am asleep. I feel as
if I have lost something terribly important, something that I must have
if I am to be expected to function correctly. Yet I can't find it for
the life of me. It's almost as if someone stole into my room whilst I
was sleeping and removed my arm then hid it from view. It terrifies me
that I feel this way about someone after only six months. Yet the six
months we spent together have been amongst the happiest of my life, I
have never known such contentment or felt so totally at ease with
another human being. But now all that is left is this wretched
silence.
I don't think I could stand the tension of being in the same pub with
her on Thursday, yet I need desperately to talk to her; this silence is
tearing me apart. I want to hear her say that it is me that she wants;
I want to see her eyes fill with tears as she tells me that she has
been such a fool to have left me dangling for so long. But will she do
that? What if she ignores me? What if we are skillfully shepherded
together in a well meaning but ill-conceived gesture by those
colleagues who are aware of the relationship and she refuses to talk to
me? Everyone will suddenly become crimson faced and will look down and
around and into their glasses and it will all be very embarrassing.
Then she'll quickly slip back to her clutch of friends and I to mine,
and then I will know for sure that it is over. I simply couldn't bare
that.
So I can't win can I? There is only one thing I want to hear from her
but to do so I run the risk of being told something else - I'm really
not sure exactly what my reaction to that might be. No I simply have to
know! This silence has me bound up so tightly that I'm finding it hard
to breath, I can't stand another day of it! But yet if I were to be
completely honest with myself, I am acutely aware that not having being
told it is over between us is the only thing that has truly sustained
me over these five weeks of misery
I sense with bitter irony that I may actually be using her silence as a
kind of protection. When I'm in company, I rant and rave about how all
I want from her, is to know what she intends to do, but deep down I am
a coward. If a friend of hers came marching up to my floor armed with
information on the subject, I think I would dive for cover as if she
were brandishing a loaded rifle. I would probably go haring into the
toilets, skitting across the tiled floor in my panic to lock myself in
one of the cubicles. Through my singular fear of losing her, I've
intensified this misery by allowing the silence to perpetuate.
And yet has she ever actually been mine to lose?
I've been cowering, like a child curled up tightly behind a door when a
storm is raging. I've been such a fool No, no that is harsh; anyone
would have done the same, because there is a certain security to be
found within the silence. Without any final words from her to the
contrary, it can mean anything. It could mean that she wants to spend a
little time without me so that she can guage just how much she really
needs me. It could mean that she is wrapping up her affairs with him
and doesn't want to involve me in all that ugliness.
And yet it could simply mean that she has decided to stay with him and
hasn't got the guts to tell me that herself.
My parents say that the easiest thing I can do now is to put her out of
my mind and move on. Easy? It might be easy if I didn't have to see her
every single day at work. I think I could cope, if I could only shed
the lingering memory of waking up so closely beside her, that my face
lay buried beneath her silken hair, and I could feel her sleeping
breath playing warmly upon my lips. Perhaps I could recover, if she
hadn't always had that delightful way of taking hold of me around the
waist whenever she had something wonderful to share with me. But I
can't forget her because she told me that she loved me.
Oh how I soared that day, when we were together alone in the park,
walking hand in hand amongst the trees, chatting as we always did about
everything and about nothing. I don't recall a single moment when we
weren't entirely comfortable together. And then she had stopped walking
and tugged upon my arm, until I had turned, somewhat bewildered towards
her and she had slid her hands upon my hips, her eyes gleaming brightly
and said, "Do you know that I love you?"
I don't recall exactly what I did but I must have smiled, yes I surely
smiled so very widely, and my heart beat that little bit faster and my
breathing probably faltered just for a second and then...., and then we
just continued to walk in a wonderfully contented silence for a while
as the birds hollered in the late afternoon.
I felt sure then that that was it. That I had witnessed the defining
moment; that she had finally made up her mind and was ready to cast him
aside and begin a new life with me. But she didn't. She returned to him
that night and I waited patiently for a call asking me to come and pick
her up and help her remove all her things, but it never came. Oh, she
rang the very next day, but it was only to inquire if I wanted to see
her at the weekend. I accepted in a moment.
When we met up and went out for the afternoon, we chatted effortlessly
as always, we shared at least a dozen passionate kisses and ate a
sumptuous lunch at a country pub. During the meal, she told me as had
become commonplace, of all his latest misdemeanors. Of how he had been
reluctant to take her out during the week; of how he had stayed out all
night with his friends without telling her, not returning until the
following day, and how he would sit waiting in scarcely concealed
impatience for her to prepare his tea, even whilst as a result of his
recent unemployment he had been lounging at home whilst she had been
working. I remember thinking at the time, that if she were mine, I
would never take her for granted, that I would never allow a single day
to pass where I didn't take her in my arms and be so grateful that she
was mine. But on the subject of her leaving him that day, there was
nothing.
We continued to see each other like this for another two months, and I
must confess that if anything, it was even more exhilarating than the
four previous months we had been together. So much so, that I suppose I
decided to quit waiting for her to say he was history, and decided that
I must make it happen myself. I would concentrate on bolstering my own
position, I would show her all that I was, and by the very love I felt
for her, I would make her see that the life she was leading with him
was a pale reflection of what she might enjoy with me. Those two months
were almost a blur. We laughed, we danced, we flirted outrageously in
the office, we held each other tenderly during peaceful moments and
released each other in feverish exhaustion during passionate ones. She
told me again and again that she loved me, but not simply in the
throwaway arena of lovemaking where heightened passions can hear those
words pass between two people who have been stranger's only hours
before. Hers came also in the quiet moments, genuine and unsolicited
when we shared coffee's outside her favorite cafe, or whilst we ate ice
cream by the sea. These are the moments I cherish the most.
Always she continued to complain about how thoughtless he was, and how
I was so much more considerate than he. But when she told me that I
started fires within her that inflamed her soul such as she had never
experienced with him, well I...., well I'm sure you must appreciate how
such a compliment made me feel.
But yet when our all too brief moments together drew to an end, it was
always to him that she continued to return, to the flat that they had
shared together for the past three years. But this didn't trouble me
unduly, for all the time I was confident that with every moment I spent
with her we became stronger, whilst his already tenuous bonds were
perishing like strips of old leather left out in the sun.
On reflection, I suspect perhaps that I may have gone on like this
indefinitely such was my contentment at the time, but it took a single
incident to plant the seed of doubt in my mind. As each weekend would
fast approach, she would invariably ask if I were free on the Saturday
or the Sunday, and as I seldom had plans, the opportunity to be with
her suited me just fine. But on this one particular occasion, I
remember, it was a Friday and I was talking to her at work whilst we
were stood by the coffee machine. Feeling particularly happy and bold
that morning, and in the absence of her having asked me the question
herself up until that point, I decided to take the bull by the
horns.
"So are you free to see me this weekend?" I had asked.
She had looked surprised by my taking the lead but she most certainly
appeared happy that I had.
"Well I didn't think I would be," she replied, "which was why I have
not asked you your plans before now. But now it looks like I will be
available."
"Oh how's that?"
"Well me and him were supposed to be going away for the weekend but
suddenly he doesn't want to take me."
At that moment I recall that I was just about to make a joke about how
that didn't seem like him, at which I know she would have laughed, but
I hesitated. In that single moment I saw something that turned
everything upon its head. It was the tiniest thing, but it was there,
and it was unmistakable for I am very perceptive of these things. She
was looking at me as she spoke and was smiling in a fashion, but it was
her eyes that betrayed her. As the words "he doesn't want to take me'
fell from her lips, I saw that for an instant they became glassy and
unfocused, until she might have been gazing at something through my
face that was far behind me. In that moment I saw something die. Deep
down within the centre of her dark eyes, I witnessed the spark just
falter for an instant, as though a single breath had passed across it.
My heart skipped a beat, everything seemed to stand still and the ever
present buzz of people chatting, telephones ringing and keyboards
clacking simply faded away - and then just as quickly there was
re-ignition and a flickering back to life, and her focus fell back upon
me once more. It was over in an instant, nothing much at all really,
but to me it felt like someone had clasped hold of my head with both
hands and screamed into my ear, "Don't you see what is happening here?"
The truth was I hadn't up until that point, but all at once it was made
painfully clear to me. She might just as well have collapsed in tears
upon the floor.
It had been a look of great sadness, of heartfelt disappointment, and I
realised in a stomach turning revelation, that contrary to what I had
believed, she was not falling out of love with him. No, she was still
very much in love with him and what I had witnessed was a woman in
mourning. A woman yearning for days past, when this man she no longer
recognized used to smile in her presence, who once had held her tightly
throughout the night, and who would shiver at the sensual track of her
fingers. In that instant my face turned sallow, and I heard myself just
rolling out the words, "Anyway I must dash I'm terribly busy at the
moment," and as I rushed away, I said "We'll sort something out for the
weekend later eh?" And then I was off, fleeing down the corridor and up
the stairs to my own floor.
I got a call from her later that afternoon, it came as no
surprise.
"Is everything ok? You seemed a little off with me earlier on."
"No it's not actually" I replied.
"Why what's wrong?"
"Well to be perfectly honest, I think your just using me. I think your
just taking from me, those things that you are not getting from
him."
Silence, then a slightly choked response.
"No I'm not, really I'm not. I love you..." her voice dropped to no
more than a whisper at this point, there are a lot of ear wiggers in a
big office. "I love you for you, not for things he doesn't give me.
What's brought this on?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does matter, it absolutely does."
"You know I think your still in love with him. I think your so
desperate for him to be something he perhaps used to be, that I'm sure
the moment he shows any sign that he might recall how to treat you
properly, I'll be dropped."
She didn't immediately answer, all I could hear down the phone was a
series of sniffs.
"What are you saying?' her voice was now strained with tears.
"I don't know, I just don't know."
She remained silent.
"I think I need to stop doing this now" I said. 'In the early days it
didn't bother me too much that you were seeing someone, but lately it's
begun to tug at me. It was gentle at first, but now its gotten hold,
and it's savaging me every time I think about it. Do you have any idea
how it feels, to know that you are returning to someone else's bed the
moment you have sprung out of mine?"
Now I could hear tears, heavy tears, the kind that won't easily stop,
the kind that can't be disguised with a quick wipe of the hand, and I
heard the background chatter fade out as people sitting near her became
aware of her distress. At that point my heart felt as heavy as a sharp
sided rock digging painfully into my chest.
"I'm sorry Kim, but I think you've got to decide who you want. You know
how I feel about you, but I don't think you'll ever make the decision
whilst I'm still available to you."
I heard her take a sharp intake of air as though she had been punched
in the stomach.
"I....I can't talk right now" her voice was drying up like someone was
squeezing her throat. "I'm....I don't know what to say, I... no I can't
talk, too upset..... I'll be in touch, please don't....no I can't do
this I...," then I heard a wail and the phone rang off and there was
silence. That was the last I heard from her. That was five weeks
ago.
Now I'm dying inside. I can't sit still for more than five minutes, my
appetite has long since deserted me, my brain refuses to stop trying to
evaluate her motives and I am desperately weary through the stress of
it all alternating almost hourly between fearful rage then shattering
sadness, I swear I can not go on like this for much longer.
What does it mean? I just want to scream out "Please someone, tell me
what she is thinking? Explain the silence to me, what is she going to
do? How do I deal with this?" But no one can tell me, and believe me I
have asked enough people. Christ, I must have been so incredibly
transparent these last few weeks, always slyly questioning my friends,
seeking their opinions on the matter, riding high with the ones whose
answers were favourable, and plunging into the darkest despair with
those who told me things I didn't want to hear.
But the worst of it is hearing them all discussing me when they think I
can't hear them. They gather together in little huddles and say, "Did
you ever have any idea? Surely it's just a phase she's going through, I
mean who is this Kim anyway? It's really quite vile even just thinking
about it. Men never used to bother her like this, goodness knows she's
had enough of them hasn't she? Whenever she got dumped she used to just
pick herself up and be chatting someone else up within a fortnight. She
was always a rock, do you remember? It was really quite amazing how she
did it, no one ever seemed to get under her skin."
My dearest friends, you have no idea who I really am have you? Of the
depth of the love I am capable of, and how upset and bad and scared I
have been, all of the time, behind this smile that I fix into place
every morning. Is my disguise really so convincing?
Well you won't have to put up with me much longer, for it will all be
over on Thursday. One way or another, it will all soon be over.
- Log in to post comments