Jonathan Watkins' Fugue

On the plane he felt breathless with the enormity of what he’d done.  Until that moment when he’d said goodbye to the cat Cleo and trundled his suitcase down the street he had never truly believed he’d have the nerve. Years of an acquiescent life with Stella had leached all initiative out of him.  At least, he supposed, he went out to shop in the market, every morning, unlike Cleo who was kept indoors from some real or imagined fear of the streets. Sometimes he fantasised a life of bachelordom, untrammelled by women. He saw himself rushing through the night on trains carrying him to Switzerland, France and Italy. He daydreamed of getting drunk in late-night bars, missing lunch to sit in the park with a sandwich and watch the young women in their sporty outfits pass by.

‘I’m sorry to tell you you’re a wimp,’ Stephen, his friend of many years, told him when he had shaken his head at the offer of a trip to Georgia to watch their home team play. ‘I’ve spoken to you on several occasions about not letting women get the upper hand. It’s wimps like you who allow it.’

It was all very well for Stephen who still lived with a mother who agreed with him the male was a superior being and saw off any predatory woman. He didn’t know Stella.

‘That ticket it gold dust, I can’t believe you’re turning it down.’ Stephen drained his pint and thumped down the glass. ‘I’m sorry, old man, I’ve tried and tried to help you step out of the rut…I give up, you’re a lost cause.’

      Georgia! He saw himself wandering the cobblestones of the old town, losing himself in its wealth of fine architecture – all those Eastern Orthodox churches, Art Nouveau and Soviet Modernist buildings. Above all, he heard himself shouting and cheering on their home team, seated in the Tbilisi stadium. Was he really the wimp his friend accused him of being?

‘Please,’ he had pleaded ‘Give me a few days. Just let me talk to her.’

‘Georgia!’  Stella exploded. All those rowdy football fans! What a ridiculous idea, I’d never have a moment’s peace.’

‘Just this once, Stella, I’ve never asked to do anything like this before.’

‘Certainly not.’

As he stood in the kitchen, washing up, he remembered his friend’s scorn: wimp! Some exterior force seemed to take hold, disassociating him from his present surroundings. He saw himself in twenty years time locked in certain inertia.  He heard a voice in his head: Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. He drained his surreptitious glass of wine and carried the coffee into the living room. He had made up his mind

                                                ***

Stephen was talking to the air steward and ordering a bottle of champagne. ‘We’d better start as we mean to go on,’ he said. 

True to his word, the week in Georgia was non-stop, with Stephen rushing him from one attraction to another, showing off his insider knowledge of Tbilisi. After a day’s hectic sightseeing, he’d been allowed an hour’s respite at the hotel before his friend launched them into an evening of sampling the city’s restaurants and bars. Stephen had been to Georgia several times and knew all the best places to eat…and drink.  They sampled a lot of stews and something called kinkali, a kind of dumpling stuffed with meat. His friend vaunted a Georgian classic, cheese bread, but it seemed to Jonathan a bit like pizza. Seated in the Dublin among a mix of young Georgians and raucous expats, sipping yet another glass of wine, he had experienced a twinge of nostalgia for the Brighton apartment, fish and chips and a one-way conversation with Cleo.

‘It was great,’ Jonathan told Stella a few days later. He sat on the sofa with a dry martini, shaken not stirred before him. ‘Stephen really showed me the sights.’

‘That’s nice,’ Stella said, fussing round her husband as if he were a guest. His warmed slippers had been waiting for him and there were little dishes of nibbles on the coffee table.

 ‘And the match?’

‘Oh, the match.’ Recalling the English defeat made Jonathan realise how very tired he was. Of course, he would never admit that to Stella who, it seemed to him, was behaving most oddly. Even her voice seemed to have changed, become softer, a pitch lower.

‘We lost, two–zero to Georgia.’

‘Oh dear.’ Stella refilled his glass. ‘Never mind, at least you’ve had a nice break.’

Jonathan thought of his hotel room, of the comfortable bed beckoning him after yet another hectic day with Stephen, and his consuming desire to slip under the covers and go to sleep.

‘That’s true,’ he said.

***

The welcome home roast chicken was a triumph, glistening golden, yielding delicious juices. Tonight there was also a considerable cheese board. Jonathan, who had revived a little after a shower and a change of clothes, tucked in. He was evaluating the trip and decided, exhaustion apart, it had been well worthwhile if it produced results like this. They’d shared a bottle of sparkling wine and while Stella was making coffee, he relaxed on the sofa with Cleo. The cat, after an initial snub, seemed to have pardoned him for his desertion. 

      Jonathan, stroking the tabby fur, met the inscrutable gaze of Cleo as she raised her head to look at him. ‘Tell me, my friend just what has been going on? Did I give your Mother a bit of a shake up?’ he murmured.

Stella was there, setting coffee and amaretto biscuits on the table. He thought, she isn’t only behaving or speaking differently but she looks different. She is like the dark-haired, affectionate woman I fell in love with and married nearly thirty years ago. He patted the sofa. ‘Come here, dear’

She sat beside him and they drank their coffee in companionable silence. Well, he said silently to Cleo, it looks as if you and I are in for the long haul. But damn it, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. ENDS