I Can't Betray Anyone

I Can’t Betray Anyone

Life just seems too difficult sometimes. I really don’t know what to do. There’s no one that I trust enough to talk to and then again I would feel guilty telling anyone else what I know.

Right now I want the world to swallow me up, a big hollow black hole to appear and just as I go to cross the road when the little green man appears overhead, I’m gone. I want to have a stroke and lose my power of speech (Of course I will get well and then be able to talk again) I don’t want to have my faculties and be able to reason and think and decide. It’s a burden to know things and to want to share them but to feel that it is wrong to tell someone else. I’m now starting to feel angry that I’ve been put into this terrible situation. I wish last week never happened. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ my Gran used to say. I never understood that as I child when the only things wished for were that all the teachers at school to be ill on the same day or that it rained chocolate instead of water. But if by chance this wish today came true, and last week could be wiped out from life, then everything would go back to normal – my thoughts would be of getting my hair done after work and what’s on for the weekend?  Not this.

At work they can tell something is bothering me. “Why the long face?” my work colleague asked, (I thought he would then tell me, for the umpteenth time, the joke about the horse at the bar) “You look right down in the dumps”. He was always cheerful – the guy who would leave funny messages on your desk or ring your phone and then speak to you in one of the many accents he had perfected – so in the end you always seemed to shout really loud into the mouthpiece to try and make yourself understood. Meanwhile the rest of the office was stifling their laughter, listening, and watching sneakily from their desk.

“No there’s nothing wrong Richard. I’m having car problems – the clutch or the timing chain and it’s so annoying” I lied, hoping that what I said made a tiny bit of sense! (I remembered when my brother had his mates over and they would have the bonnet of his car open and would be trying to fix something…and the words timing chain and clutch would be bandied around). But this lie just popped out of my mouth as if I did it all the time. I didn’t lie all the time – not much at all really. I used to lie to my mum when I said I was going around to my friend Gloria’s house to do homework and then we would sneak out of her front door and meet the boys from Lynforth High School, chatting and smoking – us girls giggling and acting coy while the boys told their highly exaggerated stories and swore a lot to impress us. But that was a long time ago. Lying then was a necessity.

The idea of confronting anyone leaves me in a cold sweat. I’ve never been any good at it.  My last attempt at ‘having it out, clearing the air and getting to the bottom of things’ didn’t end well. I’d been seriously thinking about what I was actually going to do – how I would be confronting and intimidating but in the end I thought ‘I will just just open the door, confidently stride in and say my piece’. Well, alright in theory but….I went to open the door and it was locked. Knocking on the door and all the while looking around, nervously expecting to hear a booming voice say “What do you want?” I waited. The door opened and a white haired, little old lady stood next to it. “Hello dear” she said in a soft voice. Well this wasn’t a good start – I expected my ex-fiancée to be standing there. I was wondering who she was?

“Umm hello. I’ve come to see Johnathon” I replied, hoping that when she called him, and the big money owing brute came to the door, she would leave. I really didn’t want her delicate little ears hearing what I was going to say to him!

“Oh I’m sorry my dear but Johnathon is in hospital. I’m just here to feed the cat for him. Can I help you at all?”

“Hospital” I asked quite shocked. “What’s wrong with him?” Not that I actually cared what was wrong with him – the worse he felt, the better as far as I was concerned. I wondered why he had a cat – he hated them!

“Would you like to come inside – it’s rather cold standing out here” her sweet little face crinkled at the corners of her light blue eyes and soft cream coloured skin fell into little folds. I could see as the sunlight shone on her face the tiny hairs on her chin.

“I’m actually running late for an appointment and just thought I would catch Johnathon at home on the way” (I wanted to add ‘as I heard he wasn’t working AGAIN’).

“No dear he won’t be home for a long time. He came off his motor bike. I do believe he has broken lots of bones”. And with that last piece of information the shivering little lady closed the door.

I wanted to not care but it just wasn’t in me. I tried to think ‘serves him right the self-centred, cheating…….. But what was actually going through my mind was ‘I’ll find out if he is allowed visitors and what he can actually eat before I go and see him’.

I rang my brother Ron to tell him the news about David and the motor bike accident. They used to be good mates before David and I split up and I thought he would like to know. We had met through my brother. “How bad is it?” Ron asked. I knew he would go in and visit him. My brother was just that sort of guy. No matter what had happened in the past, he wouldn’t let anything stop his kind nature from emerging and taking action.

“I don’t know. The old lady at his house just said he had broken a few bones. And did you know he has a cat?”

Did you say a cat? He hates cats”. Then after a long pause, added. “I guess people can change”.

It was Wednesday night and I always went over to my brother’s house for dinner on a Wednesday. I had thought about not going tonight until Ron said at the end of our phone conversation, “The girls have a performance to show you tonight when you come over. They’ve made up a show – all singing and dancing and stuff. I was tortured last night with it – you’ll probably love it but for goodness sake don’t let it go on for too long – no encores!”

“Will Pauline be there tonight? “I asked, hoping that the answer would be ‘no’.  It wasn’t ‘no’- it was “Not sure, she said she would let me know if she has to work back” from my brother.  

It’s not that I don’t like Pauline. I do. I love her like a sister. I was drawn to her sunny personality from the first time I met her. She is so funny, and has a positive outlook on everything. We can go out for a coffee together and have the best time – talking and laughing.  For someone who works in the emergency department of a big hospital and has two kids, she really is a bundle of energy.  But I’m just not sure that I can keep my emotions in check if Pauline is near me at the moment. I need more time to think about what I’m going to do. It’s all about loyalty – but how can you be loyal to both parties? You can’t. A choice has to be made.

I stood on the terracotta door step and listened while ‘we wish you a merry Christmas’ played after I had pressed the buzzer. Ron was meant to change the doorbell tune back to the original but told me he couldn’t see the point when Christmas would be back soon enough, and apart from Jehovah Witnesses and the man delivering parcels, no one else really rang the bell.

The door opened but not before I heard chatter and laughter coming from the other side. “Hello Aunty Von” my nieces chorused. They both ran up to me at the same time, their soft skinned arms hugging me as I bent down. I ended up lying on the hall runner, all three of us giggling as we fell over, tangled up in each other.

“Girls, be careful with Aunty Von. You know she’s old!” my brother joked as he closed the front door.

He took my bag from me and hung it on a brass hook - one of five perfectly spaced in a row on a solid length of oak , taking pride of place on the cream coloured brick wall. Ron had made this at high school – the start of his love of wood and producing many beautiful handmade pieces of furniture for himself and others. I checked myself out in the ornate oval mirror overhead. It was carved from Bassswood – apparently one of the best for carving – that’s what Richard told me! He made it for his and Pauline’s fifth wedding anniversary and thus the reason for all the ornate heart shapes around the edge of it.  

I remembered that I needed to get something out of my bag. I could sense two little people hovering around my legs – waiting for the usual treat - I felt in the side pocket and found the two packets of jelly beans I had brought, “these are for after dinner you two”. I told them as warm little hands reached up to grab them.

We walked along the wide wooden hallway. Family photos adorned both sides of the walls and in the centre of the high ceiling hung a chandelier – a brass branched ornamental light fitting, suspended on a linked chain, and at the end of each ‘branch’ sat a small globe. Underneath hung rainbow crystals that sparkled and threw off coloured light, bouncing delicately on the plain walls when the light was switched on. Ron, who had an eye for a bargain, had picked up this Victorian ornamental light very cheaply at a ‘bring and buy’ sale a few years ago.

“Something smells rather nice” I mentioned as the mouth-watering smell of a roast travelled around the kitchen and onto my taste buds and set them off dancing in anticipation of salty soft beef and crispy roast potatoes.

“You really are a good husband and Dad you know Richard” I commented, looking around at the tidy room, two bathed little girls in their PJ’s and tantalizing smells wafting from the oven. Pauline is a very lucky lady. I hope she appreciates you”. I wanted to say more but couldn’t.

“It works both ways. I’m lucky too. I have a very hard working wife, who’s a great mother. She often works double shifts and that’s no mean feat in that environment – especially on weekend nights. The ED is awful. Some of the stories she tells me…..but she has always been passionate about nursing – you know that Von. Anyway she’ll get a much need break soon. We’re all off to Scotland to visit her family in a few weeks.

My head was thumping. It was getting too much now. Here I was sitting at the dinner table with my brother and two nieces knowing that my sister-in-law was having an affair or flings or whatever the heck they are called because I saw her a few weekends ago passionately kissing some man outside a house, and then walking in through the front door with him, arms around each other, her happy infectious laugh echoing out into the street but it’s still ‘happy families’?

I do believe in fate. Was I meant to see Pauline that night? I had never been to that street before but after an evening out with friends I was giving one of them a lift home. Philip, who was in my car, had probably wondered why I couldn’t take my eyes off the couple smooching. He had asked me if I knew them and then suddenly yelled “Hey Von, watch the parked car”. I had swerved out, narrowly missing it.

I felt sick then and I was starting to feel sick now.

“Aren’t you hungry Von? Or is it the cooking?” Ron laughed.

“I actually had such a big lunch – Chinese banquet with the gang from work”…’Why did you say that? I asked myself. You could have just said ‘No I’m not very hungry tonight’. I just told another lie. I felt as if I was losing my grip on everything.

“I might just watch the amazing song and dance show that I have been waiting for all day, and then call it a night”.

Two little faces, bright as sunbeams, sang nursery rhymes and danced, arms flailing with gusto, tutus with stiff nylon skirts that were put on over pyjamas bouncing up and down and the twirling and jumping seemed to go on for ever with such enthusiasm!

“Ok girls, time for teeth cleaning and bed”.

I told the girls how happy their ‘show’ had made me feel, and that was true. The simplicity and innocence of children shone through with their giggling and excitement. There is no pretence with children at this age, no embarrassment. You can fall over, get your words all wrong, dance like you have work boots on, and it doesn’t matter. It is just fun.  I needed it.

I sat up in my bed. I could think here, reason and make decisions. I loved coming home to my bed. It was the most relaxing place for me – I could see out of my window without craning my neck at all. The moon was high, an almost perfect yellow circle in a black sky. ‘Not good for fishing’ I thought and it took me back momentarily to thoughts of my childhood and being in the dinghy with dad.

As I looked to the right of the moon but much lower down, and I could see the solar lights still flashing on next doors Chinese Maple tree – the thought went through my mind that there must be lots of people who don’t ‘take things down’ after Christmas. I grabbed my cup of tea from next to me on the table and sat, mesmerised, watching the alternating green, blue, red flashing of the lights – and thinking.

I had made up my mind. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about it.

If it had of been my brother Ron who had told me about Richard cheating, then I think I would have resented him, always. I would have asked myself why a brother would want to tell his sister something that would change her life for ever. (As it was, my fiancée was such a self-centred, self-absorbed narcissist that he flaunted it and no one had to tell me). I couldn’t stand it if my only brother disliked me for the rest of my life because I told him about his wife cheating.

On the other hand, if I confronted Pauline, then that could go one of two ways….she could be honest with me, (and not too honest as I really wouldn’t want to know the intricacies) and tell me it is over, or she could vehemently deny it, and then I would know for the rest of my life that she was a liar.

I have never been known for interfering in other people’s business and I don’t want to start now. I just can’t tell either of them. I wouldn’t want to hurt Pauline or Ron.

There could be many reasons why someone strays from a marriage. I really hope that with Pauline it is a ‘one off’, a stressful time that led her to do something completely out of character, a brain fade, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t know what the future holds but I don’t want to be the one to split up a family. I thought of the concert my nieces put on for me and the joy that surrounded them – I want that to continue.

I have to face the truth, sometimes I can lie, but I could never betray anyone.