Postcards From Within
By
Michael J Phillips
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Michael J Phillips
on Smashwords
Postcards From Within
Copyright © 2011 by Michael J Phillips
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Holding Doors
Wild China
Saffir’s Tale
The Book
Holding Doors
It had got too late for the Bars and Clubs now. In fact it was early morning, and sunrise was approaching. I made my way home through the City streets after another errant night of emptiness. I didn’t feel guilt at my behaviour; drinking, gambling, and smiling at the Eye Candy were all part of the criteria for any well respected wannabe playboy. I could always blame my waywardness on the bad company I was keeping anyway. The guys from work were alright, but after a few drinks they could get feisty to say the least. There had been occasions when I had to take a step back from the madness, and find myself a corner to wallow in. However, tonight I had been happy enough to indulge myself in their braggadocio, laughing at their tasteless jokes and insipid amusement. I needed to be one of the boys you see, I needed to forget everything and enjoy myself, however boorish I was required to be. That’s what men did when they were hurting wasn’t it? I’d seen it in the movies, but none of it made me feel any better, the chasm was still within me. As I walked home I got angry with myself again, because deep down I knew that it was my fault. Any pain or heartache I felt was ultimately my doing, because I had gotten lazy in love.
I first met Ellen in the Summer of 2002. It was at the Big Weekend festival in the centre of the City. I had just finished watching Kinks front-man Ray Davies performing some new songs, and as I turned to leave I spotted her. She was leaning against a metal fence chatting with some friends, or at least I assumed they were. She was swallowed up by a large anorak, protecting her against the night’s rain. Her hair was locked away under her anorak hood, she held a cigarette in one hand whilst expressing herself animatedly with the other. Her face was of an olive complexion, and her lips cherry red. I remember how I hung around sheepishly, trying to catch her eye, and then she saw me and smiled. We got talking soon after that, it was always easy to talk to people at Concerts, you had no real barriers to break down because everyone was there for the same reason, the music. That made an easy starting point for conversation with any stranger. We began seeing each other, I never knew or felt anything like it before, I had fallen totally in love with her almost overnight. And that first kiss, I swear she could have shattered a winter sky with a single burning kiss from those beautiful lips. She made me feel so good, I felt like I could dance on volcanoes. But that was then. Now all I felt was sorrow, like I had been swallowed up by those very same volcanoes, and it was the worst feeling ever.
I wondered through the suburbs of the City, the early morning air wrapping itself around my face. The numbness it brought didn’t change anything, and as the alcohol wore off the pain began to seep back into my body. Everyone was sleeping now, not a noise was being made at all, except by Milkmen, stray dogs, and me. The closer I got to home the less I wanted to be there, I knew she would be waiting for me. I knew she would have been crying all night, she cried most nights lately. I also knew I’d trade everything to have her near again, but it all seemed too late now. We were both wading through the flotsam. I couldn’t help but wonder how it all got like this, but then again maybe I knew all along?
In all fairness I had known about him for a while. When I say him, I mean ‘the Other Man’ as they say, whoever they are. She had started behaving slightly differently. There were little things, like wearing different clothes to work, taking more time to get ready in the mornings. In fact she took more time to get ready for work than she did for a night out with me. But then nights out with me had become something of a rarity I suppose. My suspicions were pretty well calculated, but I chose to ignore it and just hoped it would all go away. But my enforced obliviousness didn’t stop the onset of the pain, the constant ache in the pit of my stomach. On bad days I would analyse everything and the more I thought about it the more I realised I’d stopped doing the little things and those little things played their part. Little things like starting and ending our day with a kiss, holding hands as we slept, little things like holding doors open for her and pulling chairs out for her in restaurants. I had forgotten how to do that, or was it more that I couldn’t be bothered anymore. And so the little things had a major starring role in the downfall of what was once such a beautiful thing.
As home came into view the sun started to rise. My hand fumbled for the door-keys in my pocket. It was a pity they weren’t the keys to happier times, the keys to a better day in the past. It was all my fault though. I realised that I was responsible, or more to the point irresponsible. I hadn’t behaved like I should, I hadn’t behaved like I loved her, but I did. I loved her more than ever. If I didn’t love her I wouldn’t be feeling the pain. Yes, I loved her, and I knew I always would. Yet the betrayal was a stumbling block to all this, I still had moments when I imagined him touching her, kissing her, and ultimately making love to her. I hated everything when I had those moments. It tore me up inside, as if there were some sort of incendiary device in my stomach that had been detonated by his hand. Yes, it was the betrayal that was the issue.
As I reached the front door the sun began to come up. The broken wind chimes hung in front of the door; they rang in time with the light sunny breeze. I gently put the key in the lock, entered, and then closed the door quietly behind me. The place was awash with silence, a silence of the awkward kind. The rooms all seemed so empty, they whole house seemed cold, it seemed so completely sad. I went upstairs to the bedroom. There was a ray of gentle sunlight coming through the bedroom blinds, its tender warmth lapping at Ellen’s face as she lay sleeping. She was hanging on to her pillow as if her life depended on it. I remember crying when she first told me about her indiscretion, and as her words spilled out, so the shards of deceit poured from her. They pierced my soul like broken glass. But now, in hindsight, it was probably my fault in the first place. I forgot the little things you see, like telling her I loved her at funny, inopportune moments, taking her to the movies, walking on cold wintery beaches and yes, holding doors and pulling out chairs in restaurants. She stirred and opened her eyes, ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘Beating myself up in Bars and Nightclubs’, I pathetically replied.
She held out her hand for mine. I weakly responded. I wondered if we could make this right again? She rubbed her eyes, ‘I’m so sorry, I never meant to hurt you, you must know that? If I have to spend the rest of my days saying sorry then I will‘.
I shrugged my shoulders like a little schoolboy, stood up and left for the Kitchen. I began to make coffee, trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out if we could ever be as we once were. I remembered how a friend once told me how I always managed to screw things up eventually. I was told I had a ruinous personality whatever the hell that was, that everything I touched turned to a perverse wreckage given time. But I really wasn’t the bad person in all this was I? It wasn’t me who had the affair, it wasn’t me relishing in the excitement of it all, whilst fighting off the accompanying deceit. For a second I wished I could go back into the City and carry on drinking, gambling, forgetting, drowning out the confusion and the pain of it all. I wished I was listening to vacuous laughter amid the hordes of revellers, but I wasn’t. I was here facing decisions, decisions on whether to rebuild something that once was good, or to walk away from the wreckage. As I stirred the coffee Ellen came into the kitchen. She was wrapped up in her night-gown, she looked tired, tired of the drama. The bad cop in me thought that she looked exhausted by guilt, the good cop thought she was drained by worry, and the thought that it may all be over between us. I hoped the good cop was right. She looked me straight in the eye, as if she was seeking my forgiveness, for me to grant her some divine absolution from it all. But I didn’t know if I would ever be ready to do that, I just didn’t know. We went to sit at opposite sides of the table, and as we went to do so I pulled out her chair for her. She smiled, took her seat, and then smiled at me as I took my seat, ‘Good night was it?’ she asked.
‘If you call losing £200 on Blackjack and drinking my way through several bottles of wine, then yes, it was a good night’.
I didn’t want to see her next expression, but there was no stopping it, it was definitely coming my way. It was pity, pure pity for me. I had never felt more pathetic at that point.
‘It didn’t mean anything’, she offered, ‘I was lonely, even though you were always here. We stopped talking, we stopped communicating, there was a growing emptiness within us’.
She was doing her best, I knew that. And I was just burying my head in the sand again.
I decided to speak up, ‘I know, I realise that now’. She looked a bit taken aback at my response, I continued, ‘but it’s the forgiving that I find hard. I wish it was an easy thing for me to walk out of this, to leave behind all of the clothes I wore when I was with you, all of the photographs, and the memories’, her stare became intense, I continued,
‘I wish I could just steal away through that front door and stroll past those broken wind chimes out into the morning, and go and put myself on a bus, a train, even a plane to somewhere and anywhere.’
I felt the tears well up inside, but I couldn’t stop now, she began to cry also. I stood up and walked to the kitchen sink. I now had my back to her, but there was no point in trying to hide any emotion now. I carried on talking, I couldn’t stop, ‘do you think it would be that easy to leave?, never to kiss your lips again, never to share laughter with you, never to create new memories, do you think it would be that easy for me to just say goodbye to you here and now?, because even though my heart is breaking, I still love you, and as long as there is breath in my body I always will’.
I heard her chair scrape on the floor as she got up. The next thing I knew she was holding me from behind, she placed her head between my shoulder blades. I could almost feel her tears burning through my shirt into my back, as if she were branding me with them. I didn’t resist, it felt like home, it felt like everything. She held me, and I knew it was more than a gesture, it was one of those little things, little things that were important. And it was then that I thought of the times we smiled, the special moments when we laughed at stupid things, the places we had been to together. And then I turned to face her, and fell into those beautiful eyes. The betrayal still nagged at me, could I ever put it behind me? I still wasn’t sure. I released her grip and went to the bedroom. As I entered, I noticed the empty suitcase on the top of the wardrobe. I glanced back at Ellen, and then the empty bed. I looked at her side all ruffled, and my side untouched. She was holding on tightly to the bedroom door, holding it half open, her countenance so lost. I kicked off my shoes and closed the bedroom blinds.
Wild China
The elderly woman over the road was painting her front door green. I thought it a bit
stupid as it was trying to rain. But I admired her determination and obvious optimism
that the rain wouldn’t come to much. She had carefully placed an old sheet on the
pavement to protect it and had precariously perched a mug with a hot drink in it on
the windowsill. She was known to the neighbours as a bit of a firebrand. ‘Never cross
Mrs Watts!’ I was kindly warned when I first moved in. She seemed to have a
doggedness in her manner as she went about her business.
I thought of you as I watched her struggle with her paintbrush. It was so long
since I had heard from you. I struggled to remember how long. I sat at the Kitchen
table, whilst the Kettle boiled. I started slowly picking at the label on the coffee jar. I