For months, we saw each other whenever we could, never once going to a dance. When  we were together, our hearts were wrapped in each other's voice and touch. For hours we'd sit in Mam's newly furnished front room listening to romantic music, kissing and cuddling in the dark. If  Jean was late, I would walk anxiously around the room, from chair to window, unsure of our relationship.  It was like loving someone who was dying.  It was ending with every loving moment.

Occasionally, we spent an evening with Jean's parents, at her home a few miles away. They were poor and honest people, but there was a vague sadness about them. After supper, we waited in the silence of the dimly lit street for the last bus. Sometimes, the bus would travel along that lonely road of small terraced houses, stop, and go by while we were caught in an embrace. The street lights would go out, and I would walk home in the darkness as though it were daylight     Jean still fresh in my mind.

During that two-mile trek home, my thoughts alternated between the following day's work and my longing to be with Jean again. For months, these feelings went undiminished, until for no apparent reason, she broke off our relationship:

"It's my fault.  It's nothing to do with you,"  she said, giving no explanation.

For the next few months I felt despondent whenever I thought of her. Gradually, her influence over me diminished, and I began to enjoy the company of my mates again. We continued the endless round of pubs, dances, snooker, and table tennis. My wounded feelings restored, my rehabilitation would once again be shattered when Jean made another sudden and unexpected appearance. She  offered no reasons for her sudden disappearances or revisits. But although she rekindled my feelings for her all over again, I never understood her mysterious and dispiriting absences. Although she was aware of my need to know, I didn't press her for an explanation in case I lost her again.  I only felt that there was something odd about it, something I was unable to fathom or do anything about.

The long absences were unsettling, and over the three years grew more and more dispiriting. Of one thing I was sure, we were not fitting into a premarital relationship. Neither Jean nor I had been tested as to our fitness for marriage. Our relationship was just one long round of kiss and cuddle.

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