STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
chapter four                                                                                                                 part eight








                       Through dinner silence was absolute but for the loud ring of cutlery on china.  I had no hunger but I ate to avoid his eyes.  I chewed and swallowed but tasted nothing.  The weight of fear and panic pulled me down so that the sheer effort to stay sitting in the chair and pretend that all was well, shook my body like the straining of a bough and tremor of leaves on a tree that cannot run so it stands, waiting to be uprooted , while the hurricane blows from all directions.
               We sat far away from each other at either end of the long dining table.  His silence said everything.  I felt his malevolence shining from his eyes and filling the room.  He could not supress his pride, his victory and insight. As though the insight was his own and not an offering he had stumbled upon.  As though there had been no discovery, no dream written and found.  Only my weakness, my transparency, only me imprisoned in my own humiliation, left helpless and pathetic behind bars of my own making.
                   He spoke, his voice came down at me from a great height,
                                                                                                                 "This self indulgence must stop, " he said "I never envisaged such selfishness.  It's time you behaved as a wife should behave.  Do something about the way you look ! Look at your hair for Christ's sake !"
                  I looked up like a frightened child and suddenly he was smiling and his voice changed from the vile rebuke to a gentler tone, a pretence of kindness.
                " Now do as you're told or the crocodile will et you !" He laughed long and loud.  He insisted it was a joke and asked while I was so sullen, why would I not be teased, why could I not laugh with him.  I did not laugh with him because his laughter was not kind but vindictive, his mirth was  not to tease but to destroy.  While his laughter continued I recalled my whole life, my years of growing with my family and I could find no memory of the word 'selfish' ever having been used towards me, neither could I remember any emotions or sensations of selfishness.  At the same time as knowing that I was not selfish my husband had convinced me that I was.  I now believed myself to be selfish.  The emptiness, the darkness and the numbness was now complete.  I had fallen so far there was nowhere lower to go and somehow I no longer cared, instead I felt relieved that I wouldn't have to fight anymore.  The battle was over, though lost, and so the key was turned and the padlock locked.
 

                                             STARSHINE , THE SEA AND THE UNICORN.
Chapter Four                                                                                                           Part six




                ..........White marshland of wet, chalk mud and pale reeds that rattled like dry bones in a soft breeze.  Through the marsh ran a great river, slow and wide, its water clouded white like thin milk.  I saw a figure swimming down the centre of the wide river and seeing that the figure was me I then became the swimmer.  I stopped swimming and looked around me, gently treading the warm, fetid water.  My dress and petticoats billow up around my shoulders while my underwear dragged at my body.  The air was moist and heavy to breath.  The sun, though hidden in the bright white of the sky, scorched my face and a hot wind rippled the surface of the milky water.
                    I saw I was the same distance from each far shore.  I had to choose, but the more I tried the more a choice escaped me.  The harder I tried to think the more vacant my head became.  My mind emptied and numbed.  Time slowed and distorted, long minutes stretched by before I moved and when I did it was fear that chose my direction.  My powers of mind and spirit had been paralysed and taken from me, in their place was fear.  Fear filled me, it poured itself into me and weighed me down.  I sensed evil in the water.  I swam towards the marshes.  I swam hard and fast though my fear pulled me down and the water thickened.  The whiteness of the river concealed the evil, I was blind to its whereabouts and in my panic I sensed it to be all around me and beneath me, gaining on me all the time.  I swam with an insane strength in a frenzied attempt to escape it, though I held no belief    that I could.
                    I turned my head quickly to look back and I saw the crocodile in the middle of the river where I had been treading water, before fear had pushed me on.  I was paralysed by its cold, reptilian stare.  I knew the crocodile to be the bearer of my husbands soul.  The crocodile and my husband were one and the same.  Its vast body darkened the water, only its wicked eyes and long nose stood out above the surface and I knew that beneath the water it was grinning as it faced me.  Its stillness was absolute and so was mine.
                     After my panicked swim there was some distance between the crocodile and myself, but I was scared to continue my race for the marshes because if I moved so would the crocodile and as soon as my back was turned, in two flicks of its massive tail I would be its victim, snapped and crushed in its jaws.  Although I could already see my blood spilling and turning the white water pink as I died, fear again chose for me and I did turn and swim for the marshes.  With every stroke my body became heavier and the water thicker, but still I swam with a speed that came from madness.  I dared not look behind me for I knew the crocodile to be swimming slowly at my heels to prolong my agony, to tease my futile desperation and to ridicule my need to survive.
                   Exhausted I reached the marshes.  I clutched a the reeds and slid from the mud.  I scrabbled and I screamed, waiting for my legs to be torn from my body.
                   Time escaped me and without knowing how or why, my body was still whole and my legs were standing on firm ground.  Only then did I look back and see that the crocodile had not moved from its spot in the middle of the river.  Its evil eyes and ugly grin still faced me.  I stared back.  My fear turned to rage and my rage filled my body and made it strong.  I tore off my wet silk and lace and stood naked before the crocodile and when it saw that my naked body was a strong body it sank beneath the white water and when its dark shape disappeared the water cleared and reflected the sun in a cloudless sky.  I looked down and saw that the earth beneath my bare feet was dark brown while the reeds bore leaves of vivid green............. 


























 
























    
























  

ew           house                                  STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four                                                                                                                 Part five






                    After our honeymoon I moved into my husband's town house, number seven Devonshire Street, off Portland Place.  It felt grand to live there.  It felt grand to walk up Portland Place, so wide and regal, lined on either side with a long terrace of solid, regal houses, tall and proud, deep and spacious, each containing its stairways and airy rooms of luxury and comfort.  I would hold my head and spirits high as I walked to the door of one of the same, as lady and mistress of such a house.  And it was so, that I walked to the door after each outing, whether I had been to a lady's for lunch or a friend's for tea, to a department store, a jewellers, a milliners, a furriers or a dress shop, I always walked proud and happy back to the door of number seven Devonshire Street.  Pride and happiness were appearances for myself, not for others, they were beliefs I carried right to the door and even beyond, where it was dark and I was humble, and nothing was mine.  The furniture was not mine, the food I ate was not mine, the clothes I wore were not mine, all were gifts for which I had to constantly show my gratitude.  The thoughts I thought and the words I spoke were not mine and for those too I had to be grateful and I was always in great debt to my husband for his guidance.  I thanked him, I honoured him and I obeyed him, but the debt was never paid and I was always humbled.  I fought every instinct and voice that cried inside me, I battled to stay numb and empty, so that I could continue to smile, to sparkle and to love and I succeeded with my hard held beliefs of pride and happiness.  My beliefs deadened truths and killed mistakes.  My beliefs locked and barred me, and condemned me to serve long years of pain and penance.  I suffered those years and was emptied and broken before truths were resurrected and mistakes came back to haunt.
                      It was dark inside my husband's house.  The ceilings, walls and carpets were all deep shades of brown.  The chairs were darkly upholstered and tables and cabinets were of the darkest woods.  If ever the sun managed to slant its way through the window the maid would quickly draw the curtains to keep all the darkness from fading.  The nights were sullen. I moved from one low gas glow to another, from the dimness of the drawing room to the darkened dining room where we ate our evening meals at a table, dimly lit with two small candles.  After dinner my husband would often go to his study and leave me alone as I had been left all day.  A strip of intense yellow light would shine out from beneath the study door, but I was locked out.  Sometimes I would wait a while in case I was invited in, but I never was, so I would retire to bed and each night in the pitch black hallway I would pass the mirror and think I was passing a ghost at the foot of the stairs.
                  The days passed and sometimes I felt like a hidden child whose existence was so secret that even her presence in a room was ignored, she could stand or sit or lie down and only ever be space and air. My husband had no need of me as the tall, grey man, his chauffeur and valet attended to his every need.  The grey man would sweep past me in the house, without a look or a word.  Only once did he look in my direction and I looked back at his grey uniform, grey skin and grey hair and I smiled , but he did not see because he was looking at the hat stand that stood behind me.
                            Every morning at nine o'clock sharp the grey man would start up the motor car and drive my husband to the university.  My husband was an important man of science, a doctor of chemistry and he led the way in important research.  I knew no more than that, all I knew was that every day I lost him to his laboratory and that I was left alone with the cook and the maid.
                      The cook was fat and ugly and the maid was thin and sharp.  I was frightened of them both.  They ran the house with no help from me.  My help was forbidden. Sometimes I would battle against my fears and summon up the courage to request a certain dish be served at dinner or that a vase be placed elsewhere and each time they would quickly turn aside and not hear me.  Like the grey man they had no voices and went about their tasks in silence.  Every meal was served to the minute, breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve and dinner at nine.  There was no tarnished silver and no speck of dust.  The house was perfect, ordered and exact.  Every picture, every ornament and every piece of furniture, everything had its place but me.
                   I was a loose end, a misfit.  I grew pale and anguished and would often take to my bed with sickness and fever.  I would think I was pregnant and in spite of my illness I would eagerly await the doctor's prognosis.  I longed to have children to nurse and to love, so that they could love me and know my worth.  I had failed as a wife and was desperate to prove myself as a mother.  But each time the doctor's prognosis was otherwise and on the last of his many visits he took my hand in his and told me gently that I would never bare a child.  His voice trembled and his words seemed to  cause as much pain in him as they did in me.  He was a plump man with a kind, ageing face and lots of fluffy white hair on his head and down the sides of his face.  His sad, dark eyes looked into me through my own as I wept and begged him not to tell my husband.  He read me as I could not read myself and there were tears in his eyes.  It was not clear to me why my husband's knowing of my sterility should terrify me so, but it was clear to the good doctor.  He left me to weep, I cried into the pillows, tears streamed and my heart screamed at my hopelessness and my failure.  I could hear
through the bedroom door as the two men met on the stairs.  They stopped and talked, my husband's voice was loud and confident, his spirits seemed high.  The doctor was terse with him as he spoke of my nervous disposition.  He told my husband that I was suffering from a severe melancholia and needed plenty of rest, but he kept his word and said no more.  I heard the front door close as the doctor left.  I was still weeping when my husband knocked at my door and then entered without being bidden.  His smile was broad, he sat on the bed and patted my hand, he seemed to be in ecstasy.  My stomach turned at his obscenity, but once again I pushed my intuition to the bottom of the well where it was lost deep in the darkness and I hated myself for having such cruel thoughts towards him when all he was trying to do was to lift up my spirits with a show of happiness and warmth.
                        Through my illness he lavished me with gifts and caresses.  He would sit in my room with his wide smile on his face and he would talk to me as though I was a five year old child.  I listened to banalities he thought I wished to hear and I listened to his servile flattery.  Then when I was tired he would tuck the sheets tight beneath my chin and kiss me on the forehead, before leaving me to sleep.  His obsequious warmth left me cold, but still I believed that to be no fault of his but the fault of my illness, and my illness was me.
                       I blamed my illness on my infertility, but it was my whole being that was barren.  Many weeks I lay in bed, stupefied, too scared to look inside or out.  Inside was black and hollow and outside was the empty life I had led, both were sterile. I would lie with my eyes wide open and staring, petrified like a creature of the forest so trapped by a predator I became senseless and unable to absorb my own danger as it rushed towards me.  My wide eyes would see my sickroom, but see nothing and sometimes they would glance inside down the deep, dark well but quickly look away again when memories of a past happiness would echo upwards from far down where it was black and sightless and out of reach.  Dark sensations rushed at me while my body lay ossified, turned to white stone.  My thoughts became wordless and my mouth became dumb.
                    A doctor was called, a young sallow faced man with thin brown hair and half moon glasses.  He was solemn and unmoved, he parted my lips and administered a tonic and he told me to buck up my ideas.  I immediately obeyed without question and seeing my obedience the doctor immediately left, leaving my husband at my bedside.  He stood over me, victorious.  His face quivered between a sneer and a smile.  I saw how tempted he was to lift the mask and reveal my defeat, but he was too wise, he knew the campaign must continue a while before his final victory was certain.  He masked his contempt with the sweetest of smiles.  I was overwhelmed by his ugliness, just as I had been once before, across a restaurant table in Paris.  I was not afraid of an ugly face, for an ugly face can be full of goodness.  It was my husband's soul that was ugly and he carried his soul on his face.  There was a darkness that shone from him, there was a menacing light in his eyes and each expression was a false contortion.  His trickery, his malice, his disdain and his dark wizardry were carried on his face, always, for all to see, but I chose not to look.  Once again I banished all traces of his ugliness from my thoughts because I had made a choice of acceptance and defeat.  I now accepted my life, its sterility, its emptiness and its defeat.   My acceptance and my defeat were official, they had been witnessed by both my husband and the young doctor.
               My husband sat on the bed and took my hand.  I could see nothing but kindness and caring in his wide smile.  He waited for me to speak, I could think of nothing so I broke my silence by asking why the old doctor had not been able to come.  He explained patiently that the old doctor was a fool and the younger one was the man that would cure me, had that not just been proved.  He tucked me up and kissed my forehead.  He told me to sleep tight as in the morning I would leave my sickbed and breakfast with him.  He turned out the lights and left me in blackness.
                            Exhaustion flooded me.  My head sank through the pillows while my body was so weak it seemed to float.  As I drifted towards sleep, faint echoes from inside me cried out at my folly and I knew I had done wrong.  I had let the young doctor dissuade me from a journey I should have faced.  A journey that would have led me through thick forests and dark floods, down slopes and valleys, across mountains and plains, much  climbing and falling and all in the deepest black of starless, moonless night and always stumbling and crawling under my heart's heavy burden of sorrow, horror and shame.  And then at my journey's end I would have found what I had lost and finding myself destitute, starving and mad I would accept my humiliation and therefore align myself  with the truth and step through the doorway of bright light.  But I knew nothing of  this, for my husband was too clever, the doctor too terse and I, too weak.  I had been recalled from the dark road and the terrors it held for me and there would be many dark nights with no moonlight or starlight to guide me, before I would again embark and complete the journey.  All I knew was that I wished sleep would wash over me and then drown me in the depths from where I would never wake and never breakfast with my husband.
                  I did wake.  It was in the early hours when night fades into a dull, leaden grey, heavy and oppressive.  I awoke from a dream, I was gripped in its urgency and there were long minutes while I struggled to separate the vision from the coming dawn.  The dream and the dawn would not be parted.  The feint echoes from deep inside had sent me a message in a dream.  I knew the message was of great import and must be kept at all cost, though its meaning was not yet clear.  I had not been released from the dream state and it was my subconscious that controlled my sleep-walking body as I wandered through the house in my nightgown, like a white ghost, in search of pen and paper.  The drawing room was dark grey with black shapes for furniture.  I sat the black shape that was the writing   desk and I turned the key.  I drew a sheet of white paper from a pile, dipped a pen in ink and began to write.  My hand and mind flowed with the vision but in the gloom my eyes were blind to the words I had written.