CATERINA AND THE WAVES (3)

Brian had gone of course, leaving the usual chaotic remains of a hasty breakfast in his wake. He’d also left the TV on in the kitchen, and so she was ironically now face to face with one of those wretched girls, flapping her arms around provocatively in front of the changing cloudscape and warning triangles.

Caterina stuck her tongue out at her and grabbed the remote control from where Brian had left it and blasted her into darkness. A small victory, she knew, but one that brought a momentary smile of satisfaction to her lips.

She looked around. Brian’s presence, even though it was usually just at the weekends, tended to leave more than its fair share of devastation in their home. She would patiently spend much of her lonely week returning all of it to something resembling order, only for his return to cause everything to cascade into this kind of madness again.

She tended to blame his mother. Brian had been the light of her life and he had never been able to do anything wrong as far as she had been concerned. For years she’d cleared up after him, cooked all his meals and washed all his clothes and, after he’d married Caterina, he’d been rather surprised to find that she was less than enthused at the prospect of doing the same for him. She often asked herself why she hadn’t noticed this aspect of his personality before she’d married him, but she supposed that as they say, “love is blind” and that perhaps Brian’s mother had been very good at hiding such annoyances as he might have from her. Maybe she’d realised that nobody else was likely to be stupid enough to take him off her hands and if she was ever going to be rid of the little parasite, her best bet was to show him in the brightest of lights to his fiancée at least.

She did wonder whether it had been Brian’s shortcomings and general lack of charm that had caused all of her friends to slowly fade out of her life over the last few years. Maybe they’d all seen him for what he was long before she did but felt that they couldn’t, or shouldn’t interfere. Or maybe they’d just all disliked his beer-soaked attentions and flirtations that used to always seem to surface whenever they’d gone to a restaurant with anyone else. Anyone under the age of thirty and who had breasts was fair game, it seemed, whether it was just a waitress, a receptionist or sometimes even the cab driver on their way there. She’d tried to tell him how upset this used to make her feel, but he’d always dismiss it as “just a bit of a laugh” an excuse, she always felt, for some of the worst humiliations in history.

He’d improved a little once they’d moved here of course. It had only been fifteen miles or so from where they’d both grown up, but as far as her friends were concerned, she might as well have moved to the moon. One or two of them had made the journey over shortly after they’d moved in, mostly just to have a look at the house she presumed now when she looked back, but they’d soon stopped coming. There was a nice enough little pub in the village that did decent meals, and a café just up the hill that had pretensions to gastronomic excellence when it transformed into a bistro during the evenings, so if they ever went out these days, that’s where they tended to go. As they knew pretty much everyone who went in there, and it was a pretty small village, even Brian wasn’t stupid enough to try anything on with the people there.

Of course now, when she thought about it properly, Brian’s life during the week was something that she really should have her suspicions about. Maybe her cosy little life in her lovely little cottage wasn’t really all that secure after all. Not that she really knew what she could do about it, apart from agreeing to the move, of course. She occasionally had considered getting on a train and making a surprise visit to Brian one week, and bringing things to a head, but she wasn’t completely sure that, deep down, she really wanted to know what he was up to. She also knew it would only annoy him if she did do it, and cause another row, even if she dressed it up as some kind of romantic gesture they’d both have seen through that lie very quickly.

Brian’s mum was still alive of course, and still making a nuisance of herself whilst living back in town. Once a week Caterina was expected to take that endless bus ride and do her shopping for her. That was what she’d been doing when she’d met Sara that day of course, and probably why she’d felt so pleased about it after another endless afternoon of criticism and being told how hard Brian was working and what a shame it was she didn’t have any grandchildren yet.

She started to clear away Brian’s breakfast dishes and the image of the starfish popped into her head again, only this time it was Brian and his mother tearing at her instead of the gulls.

CATERINA AND THE WAVES (2)

She sat in silence for a moment, pondering on that revelation. She supposed it wasn’t even a ‘revelation’ as such anyway, more just something she’d always known but hadn’t been able to quite pin down.

She yawned, a huge, deep chasm of a yawn that completely took her by surprise. Yes, of course she’d been up half the night, if not more, but to suddenly feel so tired really did shock her. She was used to the constant feeling she had of being utterly fatigued, but to be this weary so very early in the day was something of a new sensation.

Judging by the ever increasing light she knew it was just after dawn, but she realised she didn’t quite know what time the sun actually rose at this time of year. She’d long given up wearing her wristwatch when the batteries had worn out and she’d found that she never quite got around to getting any replacements. After a while, she’d found it quite liberating to not be constantly looking at her wrist and being a “slave to time” as she’d tried to put it when she was attempting to explain it away to Brian.

Brian, of course, had grumbled something about always having to wait for her and how she was never on time anyway so it would hardly make any difference anyway and they’d had another of their silent mealtimes.

She stood up, took a deep breath and stepped forward so that she was standing right on the edge, where the land fell steeply away to the black pointed rocks below. The seabirds were now starting their day’s activities, pecking and digging at the pools of water and abandoned kale and seaweed. One gull worried at a gap between two of the larger rocks until it victoriously dug out a large and juicy looking starfish, which immediately triggered a tussle between it and two other nearby gulls who sensed an opportunity for an easy meal.

Caterina saw all this and found that her empathies were siding with the starfish in the midst of the resulting melee. She thought that was strange. It wasn’t as if there were three different factions fighting over her or her time, but the image of that starfish, just minding its own business and getting on with its life only to be torn apart by things beyond its control, would stay with her throughout the day.

She paused, wondering for just one sad little moment quite what would happen if she just stepped forward off the cliff top, and whether it would really matter to anyone if she did, and then turned and set off back down the path towards the village and the little house she shared, or at least lived in with Brian.

Just for a few seconds she convinced herself that she might be able to slip back into bed without him ever even noticing that she wasn’t there, but then she remembered that it was already Monday morning and Brian would have been up and off well before dawn and wouldn’t be back until Friday evening. This cheered her up slightly. She could stay up here with the Alderman all day if she chose to, and not only that, it meant that another argument had been avoided or, at the very least deferred, until the weekend.

Having realised that she had all the day to herself, she considered for a guilty moment heading back to the Alderman for a little longer, but a glance at the sky rather put her off. The crisp, clear morning she’d predicted had already started to become a less likely prospect. Dark clouds had appeared from over the horizon and were beginning to tumble inland. There were already a few drops of moisture in the air and the breeze was becoming stronger.

“It’s a good job I’m not a weather forecaster,” she muttered to herself as the first light drops of rain of the day started to fall and she gathered the cardigan around her once more. Not, she realised, that there was any hope of her ever being one. Images of all those bright young girls that the “Met. Office” insisted in plastering across her TV screen all the time popped into her head and did little to improve her mood or her view of herself. Brian always seemed to be very distracted by them whenever they popped up after the news or on the “Berkfest” programmes (as he insisted on calling them) that he sometimes watched before heading out in the morning, which, of course, always made her feel just wonderful, especially as one or other of them always seemed to be visibly pregnant and flaunting her happiness to the nation.

Funnily enough, studying meteorology had been one of the things she’d thought about doing after she’d left school, but it hadn’t quite happened for her. Her exam results hadn’t quite lived up to the expectations put upon her and she’d quietly had to accept that she might want to consider some other options. She still loved looking at the clouds though, and being able to look out to sea and see so much weather every day was one of the reasons she’d refused to change her mind about which house she and Brian were going to buy. He’d wanted something much more modern on an estate somewhere, but she’d preferred the old fishing cottage they now had, and for once, she’d got her own way.

Of course, there had been a cost. With Brian there always was. He was forever complaining about how difficult it was to drill those solid stone walls, or worrying about the state of the horsehair plasterwork, or the fact that none of the walls were flat. Either that or else he’d be fretting about the damp or the cold. He would constantly go on and on about how they wouldn’t have had any of these problems in a new house, and, even now, he was pestering her almost daily about putting the cottage up for sale and moving nearer to his job. She was beginning to think he’d only taken that wretched job because he thought it would mean they would have to move house eventually, but she wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

Or was she? She really felt that, when it came down to it, she didn’t actually have that much fight left in her. Brian was living away from her for most of the week nowadays in a nice modern little flat he was renting. She’d started thinking he actually preferred it there because he always seemed in a much better mood when he came home (did he still think of the cottage as home?) on Friday evenings and always seemed to be in a foul temper when he headed off on Monday mornings. In her darker moments, she convinced herself that he was living some complete other life during the week, with another woman who probably was younger and prettier than her and looked just like one of those weather girls. For all she knew, maybe it was one of those weather girls he was seeing, someone who’d be able to have lots of babies as well, she presumed. Maybe, sometime soon, on one of those dark Friday evenings, Brian might just not bother to come back at all and just prefer to spend the weekend under the duvet with his celebrity conquest…

Caterina pondered on this. She wondered whether she would really mind if he left her on her own to spend her weekends chatting to the Alderman and getting all those sympathetic looks from the walkers and the tourists and the locals who used to pass by whilst she was doing so. She realised that she wasn’t sure that she’d mind too much, so long as he didn’t want to sell the cottage to pay for his new life. That came as a bit of a surprise, she thought when she realised quite what it was she’d actually been thinking. She’d probably miss the cottage more than she’d miss Brian.

She reached the bottom of the path and came to the gate where it joined the pavement. There, not a hundred yards away, standing where it had proudly stood for more than a century-and-a-half, was the cottage itself. She stopped for a moment and just stared at it. The cladding was looking a bit filthy and it was flaking a little in places, but it was still a lovely little house and she knew this morning that she absolutely adored it. In fact and today it was even better than usual because Brian wouldn’t be indoors to spoil it for her.

“How could he even consider selling this place?” she thought, “Just so he could run off and make babies with some glamour girl?”

She realised that she’d probably already answered her own question and her spirits fell again. She tried to convince herself that there was no “other woman”, and reminded herself that he kept saying “we” should move nearer to his job, not “I”. Plural. Both of them. Sadly, despite all those thoughts, she still didn’t really convince herself, and she was feeling quite gloomy as she strolled round to the back door and let herself in out of the increasing drizzle.

CATERINA AND THE WAVES (1)

Sometimes trying to create a character can take you by surprise.  I’d been thinking about trying to write about someone with a lot of internal emotional turmoil, and sitting down to write about her – however inadequately - seemed as good a way as any of finding her, but when Caterina first sits down on her bench, I only had the last line as my own lighthouse to tell me where I was heading. Sara, Geoff, Brian and Jeremy - and even the Alderman - all arrived rather unexpectedly later on, and suddenly I’ve got a back-story to play with. This also explores similar ground (once again) to a couple of previous pieces I’ve done recently, but as the man said, “we all have just a few beans in our tin”. I haven’t yet got the foggiest where this will end up going, if it goes anywhere at all. Whilst this isn’t a “fun” piece, it was fun meeting them all.

CATERINA AND THE WAVES (1)

Caterina shivered slightly and pulled the woollen cardigan more tightly around her shoulders. She hadn’t felt at all cold when the night sky had been pitch black, just a few short minutes earlier. Now though, the first fingers of daylight were feeling their way tentatively across the early morning sky, and soft greys and purples were beginning to seep into the black silhouettes of the headland to give them a depth and a form and a substance that they hadn’t had even just moments ago, and she felt a sudden, unexpected chill. She started to wonder quite what she was doing out here keeping the Alderman company on what had all the air of becoming such a very drab day.

The bench was usually her favourite spot, overlooking the bay as it did with a direct line of sight to where the reassuring blink of the lighthouse on the headland slowly ticked the night away. Its regular hypnotic and fleeting flashes of light picked her out every few seconds before returning her to the shadows and her thoughts. A loving someone had paid to have the bench placed there quite some years ago and carved into its robust woodwork was a dedication to the memory of the Alderman, a Mr. John Pennington, a man whom she’d never met but in whose company she now chose to regularly spend her time, quietly admiring the view. Sometimes she would talk to him, and she found his comfortable, unresponsive silence reassuring. If the Alderman ever did start talking to her, then she’d know she was really in trouble.

Below her, the waves lapped comfortingly against the rocky shoreline where the first sounds of the seabirds awakening started to disturb the stillness of the morning. She found the sound of the waves calming and soothing and they helped to distract her from the chaos of thought which had kept her awake for much of the night and which had eventually brought her up here, stumbling along the dark and rocky pathway at some ridiculously early hour, to try and make some sense of it all.

Things had not been going well lately. She had struggled for years with her own sense of self-loathing and lack of self-worth. It was nobody else’s fault, she felt, it was just the way she’d been put together, like somehow there was a piece missing. It was very like that time when they’d somehow ended up with a part left over after they’d finished putting their wardrobe together. They had never really got to the bottom of where it was supposed to go. They’d carefully set that extra little piece aside but after a while, they’d forgotten all about it, and the wardrobe managed to hold itself together for years quite successfully without it. It was only when they’d been having a clearout that they’d found it again and wondered once more what it was for.

“A piece missing…” “Holding itself together…” Christ! She’d sunk so low that she was relating to flat-pack furniture now.

She sniffed the air. It looked like it was going to turn out to be a crisp, autumnal morning. In the normal scheme of things this would have lifted her spirits and she would have felt good, but today it did nothing for her. She knew it should have made her feel better, and it troubled her that it didn’t.

She sighed. She’d been really trying recently, really making an effort, and yet she still felt that she always got it slightly wrong. Every time she got enthused or encouraged about something, or tried to lift herself up with some positive thinking by trying to convince herself that something pleasant might be just around the corner, life had a nasty habit of putting her back in her place, or pulling the rug from under her and sending her crashing back down to where her inner voices told her she really belonged.

Three weeks ago Caterina had just happened to meet Sara again as she was walking across the supermarket car park. She’d been just returning her empty trolley before heading back to her car – Sara just would have to be able to drive - and it had been Sara who had recognised her, not the other way around. After her years of self-imposed isolation, Caterina had been fairly surprised that anyone should greet her in such a way and with such obvious enthusiasm. Sara had been in a hurry that day, something to do with the school run or some other excuse, but they’d exchanged phone numbers and promised to try to meet up soon, and Caterina had got on the bus with her shopping bags half an hour or so later feeling quite optimistic for once at the prospect of reacquainting herself with an old friend when she knew she had so few of them anyway.

She’d phoned Sara that same evening and a man who said he was called Geoff had answered and said something about a parent’s evening but that he’d tell Sara she’d called. Caterina had wondered why Geoff wasn’t at the parent’s evening himself, but decided that too many years had gone by since she’d last met Sara for that to really be any of her business.

She’d tried again the following night, and Geoff had said much the same again about telling Sara she’d rung, so she decided she’d better leave it until Sara called her back and, rather disappointingly, she never had.

Finally, last night, she’d decided to swallow her pride and rang up again, despite having totally convinced herself that it was completely the wrong thing to do and that Sara had obviously just been being polite and actually didn’t really want to have anything at all to do with someone so very wretched as she so obviously was.

This time Geoff had been quite brusque with her. He’d told her that Sara didn’t live there any more. Told her that if she wanted to talk to Sara she’d better ring “That bloody so-and-so Jeremy!” and put the phone down on her. Well, after that she could hardly call him back and ask for Jeremy’s number now, could she?

On top of that, of course, Brian had then pitched in, wondering why she kept ringing up this Geoff “bloke” as he’d called him, and nothing she could say or do for the rest of the evening seemed to be able to calm him down. He’d taken a couple of bottles of beer out of the fridge, drunk them angrily and eventually gone to bed without her.

She looked out across the water and sighed again. “Waves” she thought “everything just comes in waves…” How on Earth had things come to this? She wasn’t a stupid person. At school they’d considered her to be one of the brighter ones and assumed that she was bound to do well for herself. Somehow things had never quite worked out like that. Dreams had become nightmares, hopes had turned to ashes and then, well, she’d met Brian and she’d fallen into a kind of isolated domesticity that she’d never really planned for, and after all that somehow she felt… What? What was it that she felt?

She glanced again at the vast, wide-open, empty expanse of the ocean in front of her.

“Empty” she thought. That’s the word for it. “I feel empty”.