HEART BREAK

A WOMAN AND HER LOSS OF BABY AND LOVER.

There’s not a day goes by that a heart doesn’t get broken, her grandmother said. Lilly could hear the words; they battered at her ears like small bats. There’s plenty of fish in the sea; never let a man see he’s hurt you or he’ll always be doing it, her grandmother added, putting a hand on Lilly’s back. Lilly’s hands covered her face, her elbows on her knees as she sat on the old stone wall of the harbour. Len had said he’d be back, said the trip out was nothing out of the ordinary, men took trips out to sea in all weathers. It’s just as well your Jack wasn’t on that ship that went missing yesterday, her grandmother said. Lilly wished he had, instead of Len. No, Jack was where he was most days: in the drink house drinking himself silly; waiting, he said, for his boat to come in. Women she knew had lost their husbands and grieved heavy over it. Her husband was safe and sound. More’s the pity she said to herself, peering through her fingers at the stony ground. She’d lost Len and yet couldn’t grieve openly because he was her secret lover and not her husband. The sun had gone down. The evening chill touched her as she sat. Best be getting you home, Lilly. Don’t let that husband of yours see he’s made you tearful or he’ll be thinking you’re easy prey to his will and bad ways. She wished Len was beside her now; wished it was his hand on her back rubbing. She could hear the sea behind her, smell the saltiness. Len had that smell of the sea on him. She loved that of him. Loved it when he put his arms around her and kissed her cheek. Sea smell, salt taste. She wanted to have him again, to feel him, touch him, sense his body on her, the movement of him making love to her. You’ll get a chill, her grandmother said, drawing her hand from Lilly’s back. You need to pull yourself together; think on those poor women whose men have perished. The voice droned on. The wind carried it off. Thank Christ. Lilly breathed in deeply; sensed the salt hit her throat. She didn’t care if she stayed sitting on the wall all night; didn’t care if she froze and died. Go home, Lilly. Your man will be home soon and will want you there waiting for him, her grandmother said. If she went home it would be to an empty house. Jack’d not be home for hours. The baby’s cot would haunt her with its emptiness. The baby had been gone some months now. Len’s baby, not jack’s. Had his eyes, although Jack didn’t know, didn’t care to look. Baby Betty a small bundle of laughter and joy; then a silent corpse white and blue, laying there in the small hours with a bright moon falling on the dead face. I’ll walk you home, her grandmother said, can’t leave you here to sit and mope. Lilly sighed. No, you go; I want to sit for a while and think things through. Well, don’t be long, her grandmother said, the night air will give you a chill. She wandered off muttering to herself. Lilly looked through her fingers. The old woman had gone. Just the wind and sea and sea air and a moon stretching itself across the waters and maybe ghostly Len with Betty in his arms will sit beside her and bring her warmth and love. When Jack had sex with her and entered into her, she imagined it was Len, but without Jack’s brutalness or short sharp thrusts. She pretended it was Len’s arms around her, his lips on hers, his finger moving down her spine. And sitting by the cold stone wall she remembered the first time she and Len had made love. It was so sudden, so unexpected; like being born again, being brought back into the land of the living, she for the first time actually feeling feelings, sensing sensations that ran though her whole body until the final thrust and Len kissing her lips into a blessedness and peacefulness. Now nothing. Just Jack and his ways and his drunkenness and his second rate love making and his crude jokes and lustful pokes. Nothing now. No baby, no lover, no sense of purpose, nothing except this chill night and cold air and salt and sea and the moon shining, Lilly whispered, on broken me.