The Journey of a Quiet Man, part one

                                         



                 
It's best I start with the many years of happiness I had with Janine and the home we created with love and shared respect. We had known each other through childhood and happy school years, into teen years of little turbulence.

We started going out together. Weekly, to the local picture house where we cuddled and kissed in the back row, far away from the piercing torch of the sour-faced Usherette.

Slow walks home, scarce lit by weak yellow lights along the streets. A quick peck on the cheek from her at her gate, a frantic last fumble from me with urgent hands. A promise to meet again next week at the Pictures to do the same again. So it went through lazy, bumblebee summers and crisp, russet autumns. Biting, windswept winters gave way to promising springs, burgeoning with new life.

A soft, contented courtship of gentle passion and knowledge that we would marry when I had completed my studies to be a solicitor. My nights were filled with dry books and articles, relieved by weekly evening delights with Janine.

Janine, working as a secretary, I as a junior solicitor in the firm I had trained in, were frugal; saving for our house and for our wedding. A small wedding and small house for us to live in. Punctuated with a week's honeymoon in Devon, touring in the little car I had bought. Staying in small, country inns perched upon the craggy coastline.

Janine and I,  arm in arm, laughing and loving our touch, our electricity. Walking along the cliff tops to gulls' cries as they swooped and swept around us. Janine laughing, rich auburn hair tossed about by the swirling winds risiing from cliffs below; her hand constantly sweeping fronds of hair away from her face, and mine so close to hers.

Our house was at Leighton, viewing down into the Stroud valley, where the pretty town carried on its busy Stroud ways. It was neither a new house nor a very old house, but it suited us and we set about at weekends, creating it into our own special home of love. Busy days of paint and nails. Of fixing pipes and cleaning drains. Tiring days of dirt and dust made sacred by warm tender nights with Janine.

She was happy when we had enough income from my solicitor's practice, to stay at home. She set about the tangled mess that was our garden, digging and cleaning away the years of neglect; stray locks of auburn hair around her neck. I would come home from the office to find her, dirty and weedy, in our garden. I would creep up behind her and gently lift her glorious hair and place gentle 'mouse' nibbles along her hairline. She would turn, enfold me in her love, and I would be home.

There were no children for us; our home had to be satisfied with just the two of us.

As time gathered in the years of our life together, we settled into an easy companionship, a sharing of minds and similar interests. Janine began writing, at first with a small diary, then a more complex journal. A catalogue of her daily life and the happenings around us.

This Christmas, I bought her a portable typewriter and remembered to bring home some typing paper. She was ecstatic and could barely wait to serve the Christmas dinner, so that she could settle down and try it out.

After our turkey, I quickly cleared an end of my table and set up the typewriter for her. I put some more coal on the dining room fire, kissed her gently on the cheek and sat her down in front of her typewriter. I retired to the dining table to finish a piece of urgent work. I watched her sit at the typewriter. She sat, hands in her lap, and looked at it. I saw her hand slowly reach out for a piece of paper, she inserted it into the machine, paused, then in a flurry of fingers she streamed the words onto the paper. I had no idea that she had missed her profession so badly. My throat tightened, my eyes teared, as I watched her, my own work forgotten. She was oblivious to me, caught up in her own world. Her face glowed, her eyes sparkled. Sometimes the tip of her tongue poked out between her teeth. She would pause only to change the paper, or to ponder a tiny point, returning quickly to her train of thought and the keys. I think I never loved her more than on that Christmas Day afternoon.

Janine died. Simply and quickly, in front of me. I reached her and lowered her gently to the floor, cradling her in my arms. No pulse. Nothing. She had come running to tell me that one of our hens, Victoria, was sitting on eggs. Her eyes were dancing at the thought of new life being started. Quite suddenly, the light went from her eyes and a look of surprise came briefly on her face; her hands reached out slowly to me and I responded. She died on the Fifth of January, Twelfth Night.

I do not know how I shall survive her funeral. I do not know how I have lived these many days since she died. I remember everything, every single second of that day of our lives with sharp and cruel clarity.

The house is empty. It is no longer a home. The fires are lit, but there is no warmth from the flames. The air sours with only my breath to move it. My footsteps echo and the sound pains me so much, I can hardly bear to hear myself go where Janine walked.

I am sitting at Janine's typewriter one hour before her funeral. My brother will come for me soon and I must be ready.

I think this is all I have to say, except that I have nowhere to go, for I no longer have a home.

James sat quietly, soft tears dampening his cheeks. He waited patiently for his brother. Vague thoughts fluttered through his mind, grey moths with no direction.

Unbidden, a quotation came, imperfect, yet meaningful.

"A house is not a home unless there is food for the soul as well as the body." James idly thought that it may have been a Benjamin Franklin quote. He didn't care whether it was accurate, he did know that it was true. Cruelly true.

The doorbell rang, James sighed gently and went to join his brother. Not only a farewell to Janine, but to his past. From today he must go on without her. He would, he was not without courage, it was in his nature to accept what must come.


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