The Writers' Circle

PHILANDERER

  By SCOTT BALLANTYNE

CHAPTER ONE


   "What time do you call this?" she greeted him. This, the opening line of an often performed play on the stage of his lounge, drew no surprised reaction from him   he had been expected at six thirty and it was now eleven twenty pm.
   "I'm damned if I'm going to get you anything to eat now."
   She continued the play with unchanging lines.
   "I'm not hungry." He said, playing his part. He never was hungry after having a drink or two   the alcohol numbing the sense of appetite.
   She noticed, not with a sense of disgust but with resignation, the aura of alcohol and smoke around his body but there was a melancholy which accompanied him. This was not in the script and a creeping, almost unnoticed sense tried to warn her that the play was not going to be played to its usual conclusion. She tried, however, to continue with the well rehearsed lines of Act One, "And if you want a coffee you can get it yourself. You know where the kitchen is as well as I do."
   Slowly, after a pause of several seconds he replied, "Yes, I think I will, do you want one?"
   "No thanks, I'm off to bed in a minute," she replied.
   "Don't go just yet," he asked, almost pleadingly, "I need to talk to you."
   "Yes   you always do   when you've had a drink," she said pointedly and all knowing, after all, she had had some eighteen years of experience of it. "And I hope you've got something to say   not one of your into the early hours, rambling, philosophical, what is the meaning of life chats. James, I just can't be bothered to listen to it tonight. I'm just not in the mood."
   "No, it's more important than that," he said gravely, "Much more important." He turned, left the lounge and went into the kitchen to make the coffee, knowing that the small curiosity he had raised in her mind would not allow her to go to bed.
   "Are you sure you don't want one?" he called as the kettle was about to boil.
   "How long is this chat going to take?" she replied.
   "It'll take a while, I think," he called back, slowly. 
   "Oh, okay then. Thanks."
   He returned to lounge with two mugs of coffee, placed them both on the coffee table situated between the settee and 'her' armchair, took out from his suit pocket a packet of cigarettes, extracted two and lit them placing one in between her lips. He started to sit down but changed his mind and stood in front of her, his six foot slim figure towering over her petite, five feet two, sitting pose. She looked up at him with a practiced, disinterested look, waiting for him to start his soliloquy.
   "I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, Kate," he started.
   "About the bank account, I hope," she jibed.
   "No, more important than that."
   "Oh yes? What can be more important than a £1,500 overdraft?"
   He looked at her sternly, "The rest of our lives, that's what more important."
   "Oh God," she replied, resigned to the rest of the play, "another one of your philosophical nights."
   "No, Kate, I promise you   not one of those."
   "I'm listening," she replied with a pretence of mild anger and boredom. He knew it was only a pretence, she knew it was a pretence but they played the Act through.
   "I can't..." he hesitated, took a deep suck of air and continued, "I can't stay here anymore." For effect and to ensure that he was being taken seriously he fixed his dark, brown eyes upon her green, and slightly averted eyes. She shot a glance at him and then away again. "I'm leaving you," he said, "and I mean it, and I mean   for good."
   It was not the first time that she had heard these words over the past eighteen years. She had probably heard them half a dozen or more times before and always after drink. So the shooting pain that hit the pit of her stomach the first time she heard those words didn't appear this time. She sighed, expecting a barrage of criticisms of herself, the house, the children, their lifestyle and their future which was the usual monologue that followed those lines.
   "It's not because of you I'm leaving but because of me. I don't like who I am, I don't like what I think I'm growing into and as long as I'm with you I don't think I'll ever change. I have to change."  He was speaking slowly, deeply and passionately making each single word sound as though it were very carefully chosen.  "I need so desperately to change," he continued, "and the only way I can do it is by leaving you."
   This was not in the script. A sudden panic hit her, just short, a millisecond, and then she sat back deeper into her armchair waiting for a different speech with nonetheless the same conclusion. He would talk slowly, steadily, build up in pitch and fever until whatever it was that was troubling him was off his mind. He would then take her hand, kiss her, profess his love and, eventually, they would go to bed, make love and in the morning all would be forgotten. That was always the way of it. She could not believe that this occasion was going to be any different. The panic, however, having subsided in those comforting, familiar thoughts would soon re emerge   not for a millisecond but for many, many hours.
   "What I have difficulty with," he announced, "is that I love you so very much. I have never denied that to you, nor to myself, nor has that love ever been betrayed   not in Love, but in loving you so much I am forced, because of it, to stay with you. That is destroying me." He stopped, waited for her to say something, anything, for a reaction but she sat, arms folded, cigarette in the ashtray, coffee untouched, waiting for him, still, to get the true troubles off his mind.
   "Remember when I left you," he started again after a few seconds without a response, "last October for a few days   just disappeared   you didn't know where I was? I'll bet you thought I was with another woman. Well, I wasn't."
   "I know, James," she said with a deep sigh, "you were at your father's."
His eyes flashed to hers. "How did she know?" he thought.
   She saw the look, "Your sister told me," answering his unasked question. He shrugged, not with his shoulders but with a quick and slight incline of his head   an acknowledgment of an issue not worth taking any further. More important things were on his mind than a betrayal by his sister.
   "Well, that was to shock you, to try to get you to realise... the rut, perhaps... oh, I don't know what it is. I do know. The life that we are leading is not right. I tried to explain when I came back. I begged you to change, to help me change. But you wouldn't, couldn't or didn't want to. That was six months ago. Oh yes, you changed for a week, might have even stretched into two but it's not enough. It can't go on like this. I can't go on. I've got to get out. Can't you see, Kate, I've got to get out?"
   Now she was starting to believe that this was a different play. He sounded as though he really meant what he was saying.
   "Oh yes? Get out to where, to what, to whom?" she quizzed in a mocking fashion.
   "I don't know. I haven't worked that out yet, haven't thought it through yet," he lied, "I just know what I've got to do."
   "So, all this deep thinking and you haven't even got anywhere to go," she chided.
   "I have enough friends," he defended himself.
   "And when are you going?" she asked, matter of factly, determined not to show any concern. There wasn't a great deal of concern at that moment but there was a niggle.
   "Tonight. Soon. This night," he said, "I won't be here in the morning. I won't be going to bed with you tonight. I just want to pack a few things and go."
   It was then that the next attack of panic made its entrance. She felt a tingle, a shiver, through the whole of her body and the familiar hollowness creeping into her abdomen. She felt her eyes tighten and a small tingling   a threat of a tear. "Oh, come on, James. Don't be ridiculous, you've been drinking. You know what you are like when you have been drinking." She meant it to sound matter of fact, not accusing, but it came out more of a pleading.
   "No, it's not the drink. Sure, I've had a couple of beers but I have been having a long chat and a long think. That's where I've been all night. If I don't do it now I'll never escape. I know that. I'll never escape. I must do it now, Kate, I must."
   "Chat? Chat to who?" she asked accusingly. "Who has been putting these things into you?" That was a foolish thing to say. She knew that he had a very strong mind and a strong will of his own. No one could determine him to do something he did not wish to do, nor deter him from doing something he did.
   "My sister," he answered.
   "Oh, and she approves of this, does she?"
   "Yes," he said proudly.
   "She changes sides like she changes the colour of her hair," Kate spat. Now it was her turn to feel betrayed by the sister. "Christ, it was only last week she was telling me what a pratt she thought YOU were."
   "Yea, well, perhaps she didn't fully understand everything then," he said defending his sister.
   "And now she does, I suppose, "Kate said sarcastically, "at least she knows YOUR side of things now that you've had a long, cosy chat."  An anger, born out of a panic, born out of her abdomen was welling inside her. It wasn't yet a fear, that was to come soon.
   "It has nothing to do with her," James said, "I was just..."
   "Oh, I know what you were doing," she interrupted, "getting her approval. After all, we couldn't go upsetting dear Pauline, could we?"
   "No," he answered simply. "She didn't like it. She thinks the world of you, but she has to know. It matters to me what she thinks but she is not the one that makes up my mind. You know  that."
   "So what does she think of this half baked plan of yours to leave with no where to go, nothing to go to, no one to go to?"
   He just stared at her, not offering an answer. Then the next wave of panic came upon her. This time, reaching to her back side so that the muscles tightened. "Or have you got some one to go to. I bet you have. You couldn't go anywhere without someone to go to, could you?"
   "I've always told you," he said, "that I would never, could never leave you for some one else. No one could ever be as good as you. I would never leave you for someone else." He was avoiding the direct answer of the direct question. She failed to see the subtle evasion in his answer. Her buttocks relaxed.
   "So where are you going to go?" she snapped. "Round to Pauline's, I suppose. Spend the night round there. Well, you'll be back in the morning when you've come to your senses or sobered up." The anger released her from her fears.
   "No. No, I'm not going to Pauline's and I won't be back in the morning." He turned and went out into the kitchen without an explanation.
   Kate sat, thinking over the last moments. Still not believing that he was leaving, that the play would come to the same final curtain, she convinced herself that all would end up as usual. There was something in her body, however, that was not as confidant   some spiritual presence that was not so sure and felt that all was not well. She, of course, did not understand this. Not then. She would, later, but not then. Her mind chose to ignore the messages, warning messages.
In the eighteen years they had been together, fifteen married, she knew that he had been unfaithful many times. He was very handsome, talented and sensitive, he appealed to women but never learned of their guiles in attracting him. She sometimes thought that he only never said, "No," to them because he didn't want to hurt their feelings. 'Unfaithful'  he had slept with other women but he never considered it a breaking of the love faith because, in his words, he never betrayed the love. He never loved anyone other than her. The sex act was merely an act at the conclusion of a performance. He had even said that it was an inevitability that he sometimes did not even look forward to, but carried out in an almost robotic way. Oh, he had a way with words, but it suited her to believe him   it was less painful that way and when she tried to think of a truth it confused her, it upset her, so she chose to put it away and accept his answers. After all, she knew that he loved her. He always came home to her. He was always there. No one else had been able to steal him away, to take him from her and she always believed that nobody would. 
   That night, she still believed, would end as the others. She picked up her half burned cigarette, took a sip of the coffee, gave a long yawn and thought, "One more cigarette, finish the coffee and I'll go to bed."
   He returned from the kitchen, via the dining room, a minute or two later. His handsome face was squinting in a pain not caused by the nervous system, more by the emotional. He blinked more frequently than normal. She could see that he was fighting back an uncharacteristic tear or two. 
He held in his hands two photographs. She recognised them even from their backs. They were the photographs of their two children, their two boys, aged ten and eight. He was staring at the photographs between the blinks and without looking up he said, "This is going to be the hardest part, telling them."
   The next, and major, panic wave hit her now. He had never done this before. She never thought he could leave the boys. 
   He looked up at her, "I'll take these, if you don't mind," he said gently. She didn't reply. Her head didn't move, her eyes fixed on the back of the photographs. She felt a heaving in her stomach, but it stopped at her ribs. Not the relief of vomit but the torture of the stomach in knots. She could not hold the tears back, as he was, but the stinging in her eyes had yet to release their salty symbols of unhappiness and fear.