A Snitch in Time

I’ve never regretted making that phone call. And I never regretted coming to this group. The people in it gave me hope. They gave me courage too.

How many times did I endure his rages, his rants, his humiliating me? I still remember the last time I put up with this on a short break we took. Thanks to his lifestyle, I had to scrimp and scrape to pay for everything. He paid for nothing but complained about everything.

On the first morning away, I was enjoying the rare luxury of a cup of loose-leaf tea in a pretty bone china cup while I read. I looked up from my book to see him surveying me with disgust. He did not like to be at the periphery of anyone’s attention.

“I’M TALKING TO YOU.”

Shouting at me more like, I thought. People looked around to see who he was talking to. There was no point in pretending that these words were thundered at anyone but me. It felt like every pore in my body was tightening. The heat of redness spread across my face and my ears.

“May I help you?” I asked. I set my cup of tea down on its saucer.

“Why aren’t you paying attention to me?” he demanded.

“I’m reading this,” I explained. I held up the book. I came here alone as he slept on and refused to get up.

“Put that away when I’m talking to you,” he snapped.

Wearily, I placed the bus ticket I was using as a bookmark between the page I reached and the next one. I put the book into my bag and faced He Who Must Be Obeyed, my husband. Loving and honouring him became non-existent ages ago. He didn’t cherish me either.

“Why aren’t we going anywhere today?”

I could tell the truth and say that my income only stretched to the weekend in Cork and that he said that he didn’t want to go anywhere when I asked him last night. But the truth wouldn’t set me free. If anything, it would set him off. My pain threshold wasn’t so high that I wanted to risk that again. I decided that perhaps discretion is the better part of valour. Silence may be golden but it’s not anger-proof.

“Answer me!”

I almost jumped out of my seat as he pounded his fist on the table at which we sat. The cup rattled in the saucer, causing the tea to slosh over the rim.

“We can’t afford to go anywhere else!”

I had had enough. I hated these public confrontations. It felt like there was a stone in my throat, and I was unable to swallow it down. I looked up at the ceiling, willing my tears to stay behind my eyes but they leaked out anyway. I expected him to tear strips off me. The other people decided that they too had had enough and rose from their seats.

A waiter walked briskly towards us.

“Is everything alright, folks?” he asked.

He too knew that nothing was alright and wouldn’t be until we took our leave. Truth be told, I didn’t want to be here anymore after this. The fist on the table saw to that. While I was relatively calm, Mr Krakatoa across from me glared at the waiter. The waiter backed off. Minutes later, he returned with the manager in tow.

“Sir, Madam, we need to clear this room to prepare for the evening service,” the manager told us.

“The evening service?” he sneered at the manager.

“Yes, sir,” the manager replied.

“We were about to go, Manager,” I said. My cup was half full and there was steam still rising from it, but I knew when it was time to go.

He nodded, looked at the waiter and they made for the entrance doors, waiting for us to follow. I knew that security and perhaps even the police would be called if there was any further escalation. I just wanted to have a cup of tea in The Orangery, on the ground floor of a Cork hotel. He didn’t, of course.

He glanced around the now-empty room as though it was riddled with damp, mould and woodworm.

“Pretentious spot,” he snapped.

Perhaps it was a bit odd to name a tearoom in southern Ireland after a place for cultivating oranges. If he were not with me, I could think about looking around and drinking in my surroundings. Instead, he wanted something to drink. He always chose the bar. No matter if I didn’t like the place, and I usually didn’t. He wasn’t going to be getting anything for me anyway. “That’s your lookout,” he usually said.

He had a head start on me leaving the building. I found some large coins in my purse and pressed them into the surprised waiter’s hand as I reached the doors. It wasn’t much and I wanted to thank him for his courteous service. It wasn’t his fault that he ended up dealing with the bully in my company. I was afraid to even thank him, not because I might get another earful from Himself but because I might burst into tears again. Of course, the rest of the weekend away involved me counting down the hours to getting home.

My family and friends can’t stand him and given his behaviour to strangers this weekend, who can blame them? I used to try and smooth things over whenever he confronted people. It’s been something of an uphill battle and I’m not winning. My efforts usually result in the people he insults turning on me for defending him.

“I’m very sorry” soon became my motto to my family, work colleagues, neighbours and even strangers. I have a lot to be sorry for – like staying in the same house as him and forcing our children to see and sometimes be on the receiving end of his rages and bouts of violence. I am sorry that I do not have the means to cut him from our lives.

#

Six months later, a work colleague approached me as she and I were leaving our place of work one night. We had worked a long shift. The younger staff disliked it, but I relished the prospect of having hours without his presence. You might say that it was my present to myself: two hours of not being falsely accused of things I never did and would never do. It doesn’t stop him ranting. Anything to control me: if he’s accusing me of these things in our own home, he might start accusing me, loudly, of these things in public places. No matter that people would just tut and eye him with disapproval, he is convinced that people will believe him. Who would want to be friends with a slut? That’s a regular one. Even that evening on my return home, he was probably going to accuse me of arranging assignations with the mainly elderly customers who frequent the shop during my shift.

“May I ask you something?” my colleague asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

I wondered where this was going. Earlier that week my supervisor had asked me if I was ok. As if constantly looking miserable and, on occasion, sporting a shiner, wasn’t proof that I was not. I usually said that I was. The supervisor didn’t really want to know.

“Have you ever considered going to a meeting of my support group?” my colleague continued. She handed me a newspaper cutting. It had the venue, evening and time of a local meeting.

That stopped me in my tracks.

“But that’s for people married to alcoholics,” I spluttered. I put his rages down to possessiveness and frustration with his life.

That was all I needed, being lumped with a group of people who are pitied and avoided. Though I know too well what it’s like to be avoided. Family members don’t ask me and the children to various family gatherings anymore because they know how he’ll behave after an hour or so. It’s hard on us but it’s easier for them to have an evening without his anger and accusations. It’s hard for me to accept that his problem is now also mine. My cousins’ children will grow up not knowing who mine are before I’m dead and we live within half an hour of their homes.

“Think about it. I go and my husband is just about still on the road,” she says. She knows that I know her husband only just passed a breath test recently. It was not his first time being breathalysed either.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his accusations of adultery against me, my husband will probably be seeing his latest floozie that night. It takes one to think you know one, I suppose. Two hours of not hearing him shouting at me sounds good to me.

“I will,” I say to her.

At the meeting later that week, I was surprised to see people, mainly women, who I thought would have no reason to be there. They looked too happy to be the spouses or other relatives of an alcoholic. Perhaps they came to give moral support to a family member who was nervous about coming tonight.

The meeting began and the one I thought looked unlikeliest to be there is asked if she would like to say something. She relates how things were for her during the week. The alcoholic relative has not changed his behaviour, but she has changed hers. In doing so, she feels happier. His mistakes are his alone. No longer is she going to try to help him avoid the consequences of his actions. Others recall their stories.

During a short break several women who welcomed me to the meeting earlier came up to chat. It was nice to have a cup of tea that didn’t inspire anger in someone else.

The time flew by and all too soon I heard the promise to keep the words said at the meeting at the meeting. I said that I’ll be back. And I was. I look forward to the meetings now. Sometimes I meet people from the meetings while I’m out walking. We smile and salute each other before continuing our separate ways.

Life at mine continued as normal – or abnormal. I remember his last date night – without me, of course. I smelt his breath as he snarled, “I’m going out.” Mouthwash mixed with whiskey – what a surprise.

He didn’t come back that night.

He blamed me, of course. For once he was right. On his way to meeting the lady, he hit a deserted bus shelter while trying to avoid a checkpoint. He failed the roadside breath test, of course. Arrested on the spot. For once I did something of which he accused me. I had to. At least there was nobody waiting at the bus shelter. He’ll never forgive me, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if he had killed someone. I’m glad that this will haunt him forever.