Previously...
“Just leave her be. She has her period, so
she’s very touchy. And she doesn’t dress any differently to her friends. They
all…”
“I don’t care. She’s not going out of this
house looking like a whore.”
“The more you tell her not to do it the more
she’s going to. I know you feel…”
“You don’t know what the fuck I feel,” he
said, and fell silent, as if he himself didn’t quite know how he felt.
“Excuse me,” she said, and brushed past him
into the dining room where Joshua had vomited over the table.
“Oh God,” she said, going to his side. “Come
on, let’s get you to the bathroom.
And now...
Samuel hadn’t known what to expect from
marriage. He hadn’t actually given any thought to having children until they
began arriving, so he was ill prepared for the sleepless nights and worrisome
days that took over his life. Apart from the strain of having to find enough
money to support them, having a family seemed to be an endless round of crisis
management. And now that the kids were growing up it was even worse. Most times
he felt like a stranger in his own home. No one seemed to listen to him. No one
valued his opinion.
‘You have to follow the rules’ he kept
telling them. ‘That’s what keeps you safe.’ Especially Beulah. He worried for
her. She didn’t know about boys and their dirty tricks.
He sat down in his chair and opened up his
newspaper, but the smell of vomit was so overpowering that he had to move to
the lounge to escape it. No-one was usually allowed in there, even on Sundays. It was
reserved for visitors who somehow never came. The curtains were always closed;
to protect the furniture from fading, and also because the window looked out
onto the brick wall of the house next door not four feet away. He sat down in
the musty armchair and opened his paper. But this didn’t feel comfortable so he
got up and went into the kitchen.
Once again he opened the paper but couldn’t
seem to concentrate. The dog came and laid his head on Samuel’s knee and whined
softly.
“Hello boy, you wanna go out?”
The dog looked at him with sad expectant
eyes. At least he didn’t hate him. He was a toothless old thing: fed on
soft food which made him fart all day long, half blind, his fur falling out,
and incontinent…which was why he had to be let out several times a day. He had
belonged to one of the old prison inmates who had died and Samuel hadn’t had
the heart to have him put down.
“Come on then,” he said, getting up.
He opened the back door and both of them
stood staring out at the rainy night.
“Rather you than me, boy.” He had to give
the dog a nudge from behind before he would venture out, and then he closed the
door and sat down again.
If truth be told, the only fun he had left
in life was going to work, out there amongst his compadres, chatting and having
a bit of a laugh. Even the prisoners were friendlier to him than his family.
There, everyone understood the rules and the consequences. But he couldn’t
enforce prison policy on his family, though he had tried without much success. Being
a father and husband didn’t come naturally to him. His heart did not thrive in
this environment. It brought out all the wrong qualities in him. He wasn’t made
for this. He overreacted to everything. Every situation made him panic and
shout. And the more he shouted, the less they listened. He felt too
responsible.
He stared blindly at his paper for a while
and listened to the soft voices filtering down from upstairs. Then the front
doorbell rang and simultaneously he heard Beulah’s fast footsteps flying down
the stairs. Before he’d even got off his chair, the front door had opened and
closed and silence reigned once more. Samuel hurried to the front window in
time to see Beulah get into a strange car and drive off. Carefully and deliberately he
walked back to his chair in the kitchen and sat down. His mind was a blank. He
had no idea how to play this one.
After a while Clara came down the stairs and
sat down opposite him with a sigh.
They had nothing to say to each other.
“Tea?” she asked.
“Yes.” After which Samuel pretended to read
his newspaper.
Clara stirred her cup and took the
opportunity to look at him. He was a short, thickset man with dark hair and
sallow skin. He had a heavy beard that made him look unshaven all the time, and
dark ominous eyebrows. He rarely smiled. Not anymore anyway. What had she been
thinking? Escape from her mother was what she had been thinking: anything to
get her out of that woman’s house. Samuel was the first eligible lifebuoy to
come along…with a job that could keep them afloat. And he liked her. What more
could a woman want? As it turns out…a lot more. They had never dreamed together;
just got down to business. No déjà vu. No love at first sight. Just two people
who washed up against each other on the edge of town, where the stars fall down
way out of reach.
She ran her hand over the smooth plastic
tablecloth. It felt cool but her skin felt like dry parchment. She understood
Beulah’s dilemma. She didn’t want to drive her away like her mother had done,
but Samuel was making things very difficult. He always felt like he had to be
in charge. There was no notion of compromise in him. She couldn’t wait for him to go back on the nightshift again. Then
they could all get on with their lives with no interference.
‘What a way to live,’ she thought to
herself. ‘If this is living.’
At ten o’ clock they heard the front door
close very quietly and a pair of padded feet fly up the stairs. Samuel didn’t
even look up from his paper and Clara breathed a soft sigh of relief. But her
relief was to be short lived. Samuel wasn’t a fool. He knew he wasn’t going to
catch Beulah tonight. Even if he went up now she wouldn’t let him in, saying she
was undressed or some other excuse. No. He was carefully biding his time.
“Might as well go to bed then,” he said, and
stood up. Clara watched him suspiciously as he let the dog in and locked up for
the night. Yes. She also knew this wasn’t over.
The next morning Beulah breezed into the
kitchen with an artificial cheerfulness that could have iced a cake. Samuel sat
staring at his paper, studiously ignoring her, waiting for the perfect moment.
Beulah sat down, poured herself a plate of Cheerios, and started jabbering on
about her life, wall to wall, leaving no opening for the recriminations she
knew were coming. Joshua stared into his empty plate and Clara busied herself
getting their breakfast; with one eye on Samuel, ready to jump in the moment he
launched off.
‘Respect – that’s what it was all about,’
Samuel thought to himself. ‘Even my prisoners have respect for me.’ But that
was because he had respect for them. His daughter had no respect for him simply
because he had none for her.
“So,” he announced loudly, clattering his
knife on his plate for effect. “So you decided to disobey me?”
Clara snuck a look at Beulah and didn’t like
what she saw. Far from being cowed or scared, Beulah’s face was hard-set and
determined.
‘Oh, oh,’ she thought.
Beulah ignored her father to his face. She
had never been that brazen before, and it made her heart beat a little
faster.
“Pass the milk please, Joshua.”
And that’s where Samuels’s patience snapped.
He smashed his fist down on the table and the plates jumped into the air.
“You will answer me when I talk to you!” he
roared at her.
Beulah threw him a hate-filled look and ran
from the room.
“You come back here young lady,” he shouted
after her.
Joshua was in tears now, making a continuous
whining sound to try and blot out the noise. Samuel threw his chair back and
stormed after Beulah. But she hadn’t gone up to her room. She’d made a run for
it...out the front door and down the street before Samuel realized his mistake.
Clara scooped a distraught Joshua off his
chair and bundled him upstairs into his room. She closed the door and sat the
two of them on the bed, hugging him tightly to her. Samuel had never gone this
far before. She’d never seen him this out of control. They were breaking new
ground and no-one quite knew how to deal with the situation.
After a while she heard her husband come
upstairs and stop outside their door.
“Clara?”
She didn’t want to talk to him but she realized
she had to say something if she didn’t want to make things worse. He’d probably
kick the door in, the mood he was in.
“What?” She wasn’t giving him anything.
Swine.
Silence.
“Never mind.”
She and Joshua listened as he got himself
ready for work and finally left, slamming the front door behind him. At that
moment she almost felt sorry for him. She hoped he wasn’t losing it. She had
often thought that she was the one who would have the nervous breakdown.
Turns out she was stronger than she thought.
