The Widower
THE WIDOWER


Published ‘Among The Ruins’ 1997


I was convinced she would one day marry a brutish good-for-nothing if she didn’t become my wife. So, for her sake, in a moment of selflessness, I asked for her hand. Indeed, I began to love her more than I could love any other, but could it be the true love that many said to have experienced? Yesterday not only did everybody in the street have their thumb and index finger as far apart as possible, but even domes seemed to be pyramids and the tops of chimneys were sunk to the waist in brick bubbles. But last night she returned to haunt me. I should never have started thinking about her again, because such thoughts made me guilty of resurrecting her.

For months I slept alone in the double bed we had once shared, recalling the way she had slid the sheet’s lip up and down, playing peeky-boo with me and rubbing my feet with hers. Even in the pitch darkness which we both had cherished during many a sleepless hour together, I had managed to discern her half of the bed rising up in even pitchier, sootier darkness. I had never allowed her to untwirl my pyjama cord and the fly had already been sewn up. Love for me then was simple cuddling. She had never complained, only rubbed harder with her feet.

Ona was her name. She told me of a father who never said anything, only grunted, having once interfered with her. The psychology was beyond me, but it confirmed my belief that marriage to anybody else but me would have been her ultimate nightmare, worse than any possible father with doubtful leanings, but, on the other hand, wasn’t a spouse merely an idealized reflection of the respective parent?

So, last night, Ona returned. In the darkness, I saw the tossing shape beside me, making tears come to my eyes - real tears, not the ones I used to wet my face with in the en suite bathroom. The deepest agony was finding no night smile. Yet, how could any credence be placed in ghosts, especially those that pretended to exist by kicking up bedcovers at the dead of night? They were the worst kind of ghost, because existence was a foul crime if such existence was impossible. My only weapon against ghosts was the disbelief in ghosts. Giving them the sense of satisfaction in your belief in their existence would make them into monsters far worse than ghosts could ever become. With this logical response, I ignored Ona’s pleas for my acknowledgment of her presence. I simply turned over in the bed as I often did following marital squabbles in the early days. My wrenching sobs soon petered out and, upon turning back, I discovered there was nothing in which to disbelieve, in any case.

Today, I reconciled for the first time the exact circumstances of Ona’s death. I must have always known that I would eventually reach such a crunch point. After all, a crunch was what it was. An amazing coincidence of converging misfortunes, her being in the street, slipping the Yale key into our front door, when the chimneystack collapsed upon her with no prior warning. There wasn’t even any wind. Paradoxically, those sort of accidents made belief in God’s existence easier, which in itself was a farfetched idea at the best of times. Indeed the act of existence itself implied He must be a bad God.

I heard Ona’s single scream, cut off in half blast. I was in the front room, channel-hopping on the T.V. and I literally felt the place shudder, followed by the scream less than a split second later. I know the feeling will stay with me forever, that loathsome cataclysmic sickness, because I must have loved her after all. So, hindsight get thee hence! My earlier presumption of it being for her sake that I took her from the emotional catchment area of other men was all very well, but fundamentally I loved her madly. To hear her stifled scream and then be faced with the red-tinged splinters poking through the low denier tights, henbones that the rubble had pushed down from the ribcage via the belly, made me love her even more - if that were possible. I knelt in prayer and kissed the feet that had once rubbed so tenderly against mine, ignoring pointblank all the moon-eyed bastard bystanders, none of whom had thought of calling the ambulance men.

In my heart, I knew she was dead. I blamed the Building Society surveyor. Madness often struck at times like that. I felt like going round to his high faluting house in the suburbs (if I’d known the correct address) and doing him the direst mischief imaginable. If not him, the people who palmed the house off on us. Or the Estate Agent himself, who was a greasy spiv. The way he showed us the photograph of the house back in his office - yuk! He had it at an angle, holding it between thumb and index finger. Pointing to the chimney stacks. Ona said he probably tricked his wife out of the housekeeping he allowed her. Yet, reliving that day did some good. The thing masquerading as my dead wife failed to return for ages - and soon my thoughts petered out - much as they petered in.

I must have needed to admit to myself the cruel details of the accident. Accident? I still believed someone pushed the chimney off the roof. Perhaps the husband she would have married if it had not been for me pre-empting. Whereas she had never told me if her father was still alive, I had always assumed he was dead and I did not push her into giving me any gory details of her past with him as a father. The word “interfere” seemed to cover a multitude of sins.

So, yes, she returned last night. Ona for real this time, complete with night smile. The guise of ghost was not even viable for someone as dead as she. I untwirled the cord voluntarily, even before she had the chance to ask me. Much easier with her dead. She my widow, because I was the widowing one, a widower being one who widowed, like a winnower was one who winnowed. And so much better to believe in the dead being able to return than having wet dreams on one’s own. Ona’d come again, given half the chance, dressed as a chimneysweep, so I wouldn’t see her, bar the spiky darkness. And my Ona would become more than a mere faith called Onanism.

Remote controls could channel-hop solo, its pure remoteness tantamount to autonomy. I even had thoughts that the damn thing could take clawhold on the TV aerials, perched so haphazardly on the chimneys. The central heating began to hum all night now with the onset of cold weather. I couldn’t bear too many bedcovers - gave me a case of Russian-doll claustrophobia. Petering in and out could never be complete. Not even death was dreamless. A corpse tossing.