[2003] LOSS & PORPHYRY the novels  

0090 – Part 12 - Sunday at Home

With the digital radio alarm switched off, I didn't wake until 8 o'clock. Even then I didn't know what woke me. But every Sunday I woke at this time; long before any other member of the family deigned to give up their own slumbers. For a few moments I just lay there, looking at the ceiling as I waited for all my senses to come alive. In the meantime I simply stared at the patterns of light seeping around the curtains to run over the stippled ceiling.

Slowly I turned to look at Pat, lying alongside me in our double bed, the bedclothes kicked off in the warmth of the summer morning. Her breasts under the cotton nightgown gently rose and fell. I looked around me, once more establishing my bearings in the world. It was not a spacious room, though it was larger than normal for a modern house on an estate. That was why, a decade earlier, we had chosen this particular style; even though it only had three bedrooms. The main bedroom was only ten feet wide, but it was sixteen feet long.

By now, though, the room had filled up with the clutter of the years. It was a room that was lived in. The chests of drawers and the dressing table from the bedroom suite, that matched the bed's headboard, were relics of the mid nineteen sixties when we had married. Hung on the long wall, opposite the foot of the bed where they constricted my movement to a barely negotiable sidle, were shelves laden with books, and cupboards packed with stationery and remnants of hobbies. The shelves had come from Habitat, for we were true children of our time. Somehow there was even a desk squeezed into the corner near the window. It was at this desk that I studied my Open University courses; though the distraction of the colour television that Pat invariably watched, just inches away, made my study difficult.

I rolled over, making sure not to disturb Pat, and made my way down the staircase. Crossing the hall, I picked up the copies of the Sunday Times and the Observer which would occupy much of my morning. Through the dining room, and I entered the kitchen, pouring out my muesli which I religiously took with skimmed milk; in a forlorn attempt to reduce my weight. I added boiling water, from the Russell Hobbs kettle, to my decaffeinated, instant coffee. Then, sitting in solitary splendour at the dining table, I accompanied my uninspiring breakfast with a perusal of the headlines from the Sunday Times. The ritual, that had developed over the years, demanded that the Observer took second place, though even then I found its political stance more sympathetic.

Breakfast complete, I climbed the stairs to run the water for the bath. The noise of this at last woke Pat, who appeared at the bedroom door yawning and clutching her wrap around her. As she went down to snatch her own quick breakfast of coffee and biscuits, I returned to look after the bath. The children, as was their wont, still remained dead to the world.

I eased myself into the hot bath, relishing the softness of the foam. Within a few moments the door opened and Pat slipped into the other end of the bath. It was a tight fit, and very intimate; but we liked to relax in this way, and often spent hours sharing our experiences over the past days. Sharing a bath had been one of the most exotic of sexual activities when we first married; in the early nineteen sixties, when the 'permissive society' was in its infancy. Now, though, the contact was verbal rather then physical; though it was still impossible to ignore the latter aspect.

'I think Sarah enjoyed herself yesterday.' Pat, as always, was thinking of her children. Yesterday had been the open-day at Miles' school, the local middle-school. But, as Pat was suggesting, it had really been Sarah's day. She too had been a pupil at the school; until the end of the previous school year, when she had graduated to the nearby girls' grammar school. As the star ex-pupil, she had unexpectedly been seized on to help hand out the prizes. She had risen to the occasion with obvious relish; sharing a degree of confidence, indeed aplomb, way beyond her years. Both of us had been proud of her.

'Even so, I am not certain that Miles was as impressed. After all, it should have been his day rather then hers.' I was always conscious that Miles saw himself as overshadowed by his older sister. I had been aware that Miles had resented his sister's presence at an event at the school which was now his rather than her's. He had been even more resentful when she had taken over playing the piano with the trio which was providing the musical accompaniment to the fate. Sarah's playing was something less than professional, though it proved to be better than that of the pensioner who was the normal pianist with the trio, but again we had both been proud of her composure. Miles, on the other hand, had been quietly livid at his sister's unwanted intrusion. His friends at the school, who looked up to Sarah and were dutifully impressed at her sang-froid, once more were neglecting him in favour of his sister; and that hurt.

'Oh I don't think it was a problem. The important thing was how confident Sarah was.' Pat's rejoinder dismissed my comment and I recognised my caution was unwelcome. She always liked to look on the bright side, and I had been trapped into too many arguments by disagreeing on such matters. So, as usual, I held my peace.

'Did I tell you what Jenny said?' Pat had moved them onto safe ground again, and the next half hour was dedicated to an exchange of gossip about our neighbours and friends. Or rather it was a monologue, with Pat unleashing a torrent of stories to me as her suitably attentive audience.

Eventually, as the bathwater became uncomfortably cool, Pat hauled herself out of the bath and, having carefully cleaned her teeth at the washbasin, returned to the bedroom. I in turn completed my own toilet, carefully shaving myself, using soap and water since electric razors had proved no match for my heavy stubble, cleaning my teeth with my electric toothbrush, which was the only guarantee that such cleaning would be thorough, and dutifully deodorising and perfuming myself under my arms, as Pat insisted.

[back]    [home]

hits