A normal day at work....take this...load that....fit the other....yknow....same S£$t different Saturday.so i go to Mrs H's...the jobs not important...Mrs H...she's 85'ish,5'2"....4 stone wet through!..silver white hair...that matches her silver white skin,which is pulled taunt over her forehead and her cheekbone's...a complete contrast to the hanging jowls of loose flesh under her chin,waving like they are about to fall to the floor at any minute..she's talking to me about something..."the last chair was too big...not enough space" but i cant concentrate fully on her words...i find my self transfixed by her eye's and her expressions,her body language....gesturing with open hands...palms up...moving in incomplete outward circles...gives the feeling of....being sorry...like she feels she is a burden...even to me....a two time delivery man who doesn't know her from Adam....or eve for that matter.
..so I'm trying to listen...but taking in more visually,I'm 5'6"...a shorty myself but Mrs h...she 5' 5'2" maybe,she looks so....dwarfed..... by everything around her... me....this room....her house.....her clothes...everything...and like i said i was fixed by her eyes...no real reason i guess...how many old dears do you see on the "day to day"...there eyes usually looking watery from the cold,sunken...burst red capillaries giving a pinky look to the formerly white....milky fog clouding the iris....and here is the difference...not Mrs H....her whites are white....DAZ white,no fog,no cloud....Mrs H holds you...cuts into you with intensely gray slate eyes..hard...but not cold...the kind of gray that is mixed with an intangible amount of....purple...almost like the slate to be found up on the rolling peaks of skiddaw in the lake district....truly gods back garden...but she looks at you like she's seen and known a thing or two about life...more than you'd like to know and definitely more than you want to ask about...so you listen and you watch...like your about the hear a revelation that never quite reaches your ears..
..apart from her eye's she's so frail...a skeleton wrapped in low quality tissue paper...the kind you used to find at school that never even came close to drying your hands before ripping apart seemingly at the mere threat of a drop of water....,Mrs H....her shoulders and collar bones seeming to stick out from beneath her knitted cream cardigan with it's fake pearl buttons....and it's "it almost fits appearance"....she walk toward you slowly...shuffling little footsteps...shuffling little feet..."i don't go out these days" she tells you..."haven't been out for years"..."not since my husband died,2 years back"..."just me ...me and my son now"...and the penny drops...loss...that's what she seems full of...loss...and you snap back...hearing her word for what feels like the first time.
..she seems despondent...like she gave up...years ago ..her hands still palm up..still those small outward circles like she could stir her life back to the way it might once have been....her son,is sat behind her,crammed into a corner that is too small for a man of his stature,well the stature he may once have had...he may be 30 years her junior or he looks just as neglectfully decrepit but in the kind of way that a once formally great castle grows into ruin and ends up looking like it's about to crumble at any minute..
..full of sorrow and regret at past glory's and more recent defeats Mrs H say "we weren't always like this you know" in a soft voice that shatters the room around you like bullets through glass and brings you right back to the here and now "we didn't always live like this" her voice trembles...full of heartbreak now...she looks around like the walls are about to break open and a ton of sordid lies are about to smother her in her own personal deceit...you get the feeling she's about to tell you something that she's wanted to tell for years...to tell someone...anyone that would listen....held it in for so Long that its killed her from the inside out...all but her eyes!!!,
"no we didn't always live like this....we used to be posh y'know,we used to have money...and plenty of it...but things change"...."everyone has been so kind to us"....her son shifts uneasily in his chair...like he's heard all this before but is uncomfortable with it being divulged to a once in a lifetime stranger who have no business knowing his business...or his mothers...she seems to sense that she has stepped over some invisible line....said a trifle to much...and she comes to her sense's...makes a full blooded but painful looking attempt to straighten up ....to unfurl years of tension from a weak and twisted spine that hasn't the bonds or will that it once did...
..i find myself thinking "is this it...is this all we have to look forward to....spending our last penny's that a close loved one left us on there departure from the mortal coil...to spend it on a new chair to ease our chronic spinal curvature that deforms us and twists us into a shuffling bag of broken will and bitter disappointment at life unjust way"....but i look again into her slate gray's....what's left to discover...that spark....it's hope and fortitude....from god only knows were....but thats what it is....how many time has life knocked this woman down...how many times has she clawed and clambered her way back up....and from what?.............maybe it's good that she stopped speaking...........good that the creak from her son's strained leather chair was so loud....under the load of excess weight on a frame designed to take much less....good that she....maybe for the last time....stopped those walls from breaking and devouring her and her secrets....maybe?....was she always like this?.....was her past before her secrets different?.....can i imagine her 60years younger at some ball?....the gents all suited and booted,drinking and smoking to the hearts content while all the time eyeing the opposition ....the lady's....shy but hopeful that somewhere in the throng and evening that lay before them there was a mister right to make everything.....right????....can i see Mrs H asked by a suited someone for a dance....turning the night away to sound of the time..high on the moment...happy to be whisked from pillar to post in the name of romance and love...or lust...which ever was socially easier....not right in the day but easier and more fulfilling in the moment?...yes i think i can......
"please Mrs H may i have this dance"
No comments:
Post a Comment