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.