STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four                                                                                                                Part nine








                     Inside my prison I filled my life with the belief that I loved my husband, I devoted myself to him.  I smiled and my eyes always shone.  I dressed and looked as he bade me.  I flirted and caressed him as I knew he wanted me to.  I doted on him.  His losses were my losses, his gains were my gains.  His hates were my hates, his loves were my loves.  I charmed away his tantrums and sang praises to his feats.  I lived my life as an extension of his, so that he no longer fought for supremacy and I no longer searched for a self.
                           Only in the deepest pockets of my soul did I keep my secrets and only in the dead of night and the privacy of sleep would I unlock them and gaze at them like precious jewels.  There I found countless dreams that showed me my fear and desolation and how in the future all my strength that had lain weak and dormant on sterile ground would find new unfurrowed  fields where it would burst and flourish and reap from its own fertile crops and green pastures.  And visions of George passed through my thoughts as I slept.  I would see his blue eyes and the look they held.  I would hear the woman's voice calling out his name and then hear my own voice calling him.  I would feel the touch of his fingers on the palm of my hand and I would see the apricot stone that I still treasured.  I would stand in the woods and wait forever to hear his voice but I never did.
                 In the waking hours visions and dreams were safely locked away where secrets of the night could never be read by the light of the day, and hidden away with them was the rising tide of tears.  My daylight life never dared reach deep inside for fear that just one gentle touch would open the gates and release the flood and it would all be too soon and I would be drowned.  I needed time to find a way to ride the waters.  And while time passed my only comfort was a hat box in the attic.
                          When I moved into number seven Devonshire Street I asked that a large, round hat box be stored somewhere, safely.  I explained that it contained something dear to me that had ben left to me by my grandmother.  My husband thought nothing of my little whim and was only too pleased to oblige me as part of his show of welcome to his household and neither did his man in grey suspect my endearing lies as he carried the tan leather drum off to the attic.  Inside the hat box was my only piece of truth and although the secret was a disloyalty to my husband it was the only loyalty that I still held for myself.  It was a hope, a reason for everything and it was mine, I owned it.  The blue and white willow pattern punch bowl was inside that hat box, it was filled with brown earth as in its centre my treasured apricot stone was still buried.
                    So I lived my life as a wife.  It was a pauper's life, ragged and starving.  I owned nothing but a necklace of pearl strung tears, an apricot seed and the hope that one day they would make my life rich.
                  It was a solitary life.  I was parted from myself, my past, my future, the girl I had been and the woman I wanted to be.
                I socialised at tea parties given by the wives of my husband's colleagues.  I would listen to their chat, their laughter and their talk of the terrible war.  But their voices were always distant and neither could I hear my own words as I spoke them  I feared these women and I cowered from them.  They always asked after my health and used their mock concern to pry into things I did not understand myself and when my answers could not satisfy their questions they would smile pityingly and ask if there was any sign of s newcomer yet.  I would feel put out to sea on a raft, the slow shaking of my head would drift back towards them but never would I admit to my barreness while they stood so firmly along the seashore, each on their own grey, slab of rock.  Then their eyes would turn from me and their pity would turn to dismissal and while their gossip was directed elsewhere I would enter a place where I believed I was happy, where I believed myself to be a lucky woman and my life to be a charmed life.  I would sit and enjoy the scene, the sophistication of my companions, the elegance of their dresses and fashionable hats, the pictures on the walls, the furniture and the finery and the delicacy of the thin, china cups from which I drank the finest of china tea.
                      It was the same at dinners and dances.  When my fears of the world and its people could no longer be born, my mind's vision would turn and see a paradise of champagne and waltzing, chandeliers and orchestras, ball gowns and jewels of great beauty and gentlemen of learning and charm.  The most learned and the most charming of all was my husband.  I would watch him while society's soft, eloquent whisperings hummed gently past my ears.  I would watch him charm the ladies and cruelly chide their men, his words always masked with a smile.  I would watch him holding court to captive audiences, his sharp edges melting over them and sticking like glue, leaving every one of them as oppressed and ineffective as my whole life had become.  He bore no words of wisdom, it was his voice that penetrated and buried its seeds of malice deep inside his victims so that they were influenced and subdued.  His insidious charisma left many paths of destruction.  He spilt blood that would never be seen.  He was a cruel and clever murderer.  He murdered spirits great and small, shy and strong.  Beliefs and confidence were killed and souls were slain.  Not one of them could see from where it came.  They thought that it was some fault of their's, something from within.  Indeed their killer had already convinced them so.  And his victim would smile at him gratefully as they died.  Then their lives were suddenly empty spaces where they would laugh and drink to their assassin, so that their deaths would be forgotten .  I witnessed all of this and believed it not.  For I was his wife, his good wife, and I along with the rest believed his every word, his every move, his every attentive gesture, his every witticism.  I believed his insincerity to be his sincerity.  I believed his demoralising and belittling of others to be small talk and teasing and I believed his self obsession to be his sublime authority.
                  Only in the deep, dark chambers of sleep would these truths be untangled, where my dreams persisted and tried to show me that truths were lies and lies were truth.  But I would awake to my empty space  that I filled with imagined perfection while fear was pushed aside.  But fear kept creeping in , no walls or locked doors could keep it from my existence, so that soon my imagined world was overrun.
                       Then one summer's day the news came that we were to move to the country, to Wiltshire.  There was important work there for my husband, experiments and research that were important to the winning of the war.  I was overjoyed.  To move was to escape.  There were no people to fear in Wiltshire, just green fields and hills where I would be free and happy.  We were to move in two days.  My empty space was filled with rejoicing and childish excitement.  I wanted to pack and prepare, but of course I was forbidden.  So I stood by and watched as the maid and the grey valet solemnly placed books in tea chests and clothes in trunks.  I was glad that I would be rid of these two humourless characters and their staunch hostility.  For they were to stay and see to the smooth and ordered running of the London house in readiness for our eventual return , while my husband and I were to rent a small furnished cottage and we were to live there alone.
                   On the last morning I walked up the Broadwalk  in Regent's Park as I had so many times through its seasons of white frosts to pink blossoms and green leaves to gold.  I paid homage to the Park for all the joy and tranquillity it had bestowed upon me when all else had appeared so dark.  The spirits in the trees had always filled me as I walked through their kingdom of peace and light, like a lantern being held at the end of a long, black tunnel to show me that there was an end to be reached and that joy lay beyond.  I bid them farewell and shed a tear knowing that the last two years had been my tunnel and now I was nearing its end.  Then I remembered the hat box and I ran like a wild hare to retrieve it.
                      The maid was out, the grey man was away in the car and the cook was far back in the house, confined to the scullery.  I ran softly up through the house to the topmost narrow stair of he topmost narrow staircase.  I was breathless and flushed, my heart beat fast and my red cheeks tingled.  I pushed open the small attic door and stooped to go inside.  The air was musty, the eaves sloped steeply and there was a small window to the sky through which a sun-ray fell and the dust danced in its slanting path.  The sun-ray fell to the floor behind a pile of crates and old pieces of furniture.  I looked behind this dark, shadowed pile and there on the floor in the sun-ray's circle of light was my hat box.  I lifted the faded, cobwebbed tan leather drum and I felt the life it held inside, it flowed into the palms of my hands and through my body.  I stood awhile and let its energy beat alongside my heart.  Then I ran softly down into the study where the packing of my husband's books had not yet been completed.  I placed the hat box gently in the bottom of the wooden chest and I covered it with three layers of heavy books.  I breathed freely and my soul smiled, my task was done and my escape made ready.