LEAVING DENIS

Amanda is totally confused about whaty her marriage has failed.

   Amanda had had enough. Why, she thought, why should any girl have to put up with this? We’ve been married for just about twenty-odd years and he treats me as if I belonged to him and him alone, forgetting that I really belong to me!

It was time to make a break. For twenty years she’d put up with Denis and his toxic selfishness and endless demands of her. In the morning it was where did you put my keys because I can’t find them and I’d know exactly where they were if you hadn’t touched them? And after work it was, where’s my dinner and you’ve just got to have learned by now now, you stupid b***h, that I don’t like liver, and at bed time it was not to night, Mandy, you know I’m too tired after a day at work. Just let me stay on my own for once, and get some shut-eye…

There had been a time when the whole idea of him being too tired at bed time would have surprised her, maybe even been so unbelievable that she thought he might be ill, but then he moved into his own bedroom, a scrufffy little box room so that it would only take a single bed, and he, with his stomach, needed all of that for himself. How, she wondered, had his belly got to be so fat? After all, he never seemed to like what she prepared for his dinner, but if she failed to cook anything he’d go into one hell of a rage and maybe even slap her about a bit.

So she had had enough. What woman wouldn’t?

“I mean,” she asked her best friend Josephine, “it’s not a marriage that I’m in but a legalised cell for slavery!”

Josephine felt sorry for her, but then she was her best friend and best friends are there to emit sympathy when it’s needed. She’d do the same for her if the situation was the other way round and Josephine was fed up of her marriage. But Josephine wasn’t because she had a secret, and she intended to keep it a secret because that’s what secrets are for.

So, “Denis, I’m leaving you,” she said one evening when he csme in from work telling her he’d be much too tired for anything but going to bed on his own, and soon.

“Why would you want to anything like that?” he demanded, “we get on better than most married couples, don’t we? Take your friend Josephine… she’s always saying how her David is no husband at all…”

“She’s never told me anything of the sort, and anyway that doesn’t have anything to do with us. I’m leaving you, and that’s that.” she told him.

To say he was bemused was to understate the way he seemed to feel. I thought we were such a perfect couple… I was sure our marriage would last for ever… I wonder if she’s found someone else… went though his mind, and he latched on to that. So,

“It’s another man, I suppose,” he grunted, “And I’m not good enough for you… What’s he got that I haven’t? It’s not your friend’s husband, David is it? I’ll bet it is! Josephine was only telling me how she reckons he’s getting it somewhere else, in some other woman’d bed… so it’s in yours, is it? Is that why you shoved me into the boxroom where there’s hardly room enough for me and my gut!”

Of all the cheek, the thought raced round her brain, Josephine and David are nothing like us because they’re happy! And you went into that tiny room of your own accord so that you didn’t have to tell me every night just how tired you were and would I mind not doing anything until you’ve had a good night’s sleep…

“Haven’t you thought of going on a diet?” she asked, hoping it wasn’t spiteful of her bu the truth was he was too large for all that fat to be healthy.

He scowled at her. “If you’re calling me fat you’d better scarper and find a skinny bloke to share your bed with!” he spat at her. “Many another woman would be more than happy to curl up with me at night!”

“Even when you’re as tired as you always reckon to be?” she asked, “anyway, how do you get so tired? It’s not as if you had an exhausting job, driving hr Number seven bus out to Swanspottle and back twice a day? It’s not what I would call the kind of job that involves needing to grow an obscene stomach!”

“You watch your mouth, woman!” he snarled.

So that’s touched a chord, she thought, he knows he’s put on too much weight but won’t admit it!

“Maybe if you weren’t so tired at bed time and sneaked into my room unexpectedly, then you’d get more exercise,” she grumbled, “I might be fifty, you know, but I’m not a nun! A woman does like to be appreciated, but with you it’s all complaints and the odd proof that you’re a man with your slaps!”

“Josephine reckons that David’s having a ding-dong with another woman,” growled Denis, “she says it does their marriage the world of good.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about what Josephine does or does not think,” said Amanda, the germ of a suspicion forming in her mind.

Denis looked uncomfortable for a moment, then grinned. “I understand women,” he said boastfully.

“Then you might try understanding me,” snapped Amanda, “before I finally leave you, that is!”

“You wouldn’t sacrifice everything we’ve built up between us and leave me high and dry?” Denis looked unsure of himself for a moment. “come off it. Amanda, we’re a couple and it’s good that we are. It makes me happy.”

“”What? Having someone to boss around and punch if she doesn’t exactly please you?” snarled Amanda. “And the way you’re talking you make it sound that if anyone’s having a ding dong it’s you. With my best friend.”

“Me and Josephine? You’ve got to be on a bender! Not likely, my love. I wouldnlt touch her with a barge pole!”

“Then who is it?” demanded his wife, determined to stay where she was until she knew the whole truth. I’m sure he’s getting it somewhere and I must know where, she thought determinedly now that the whole question of their marriage was in the open.

“I’m not doing anything with any woman,” he sighed, “You couldn’t be further off the track if you were drunk!”

Then, the thought gleamed bright in her head, it must be a man! And if that’s the case then I don’t have to ask Josephine what her secret is, the one she mentioned when we talked about it, the secret of success in her marriage to David…

“That’s it, isn’t it, Denis? It’s another man you’ve fallen for, isn’t it? And that man’s the one who tells you everything that Josephine supposedly thinks, isn’t it? You’re in love with David, aren’t you?”

© Peter Rogerson, 02.05.23

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