Lamentably Defective

This one is totally different from normal stuff I write.  But a change is good they say now and then!

Lamentably Defective

“Look at you, for God’s sake!”  His wife snorted, in disbelief.

Harold looked in the mirror and tried to see what upset his wife in the reflection there.  He had dressed in his usual clothes ready for work, tired worn dark suit, whitish shirt, safe dark mottled tie.  He had put on a lot of weight, he observed, and the suit was pulled around the middle by his spreading paunch.  His feet looked tiny, his head looked small and his middle looked barrel shaped.  He did look ridiculous, he reckoned.  He tapped his stomach and admitted, “I have put on quite a bit of weight recently”. He looked apologetically at his wife.  She replied in harsh tones, “You’ve gone to seed, Harold.  I see you; I mean I really see what you are now.  Can’t you?” She tapped the mirror in front of them. “You’re a fat failure, and the only thing I am asking myself is why I didn’t see it twenty years ago.”  Harold turned and grabbed his briefcase. Time to go to work before things turned nasty.  Her tone now was vindictive, “That’s it. Run rabbit run.”  The TV was blaring in their front room and the news announcer was bringing breaking news of another suicide bombing in the capital.  Harold’s heart sank. Not another one.  He drew closer to the TV to hear more.  The announcer was saying that a suicide bomber had tried to explode a bomb on the seventh floor of a conference centre packed with people.  Irene began clearing the table, clicking her teeth in annoyance at him.  It seemed a permanent backdrop to their lives, like the TV blasting in the corner.  Harold heard the broadcaster explain that deaths had been reduced because one of the counter terrorist movement agents of a group called Engaged had grabbed the terrorist and plunged out a nearby window, saving many lives.  A grainy photograph of the agent who had died with the terrorist clasped in her arms showed a bulky middle aged woman smiling at the camera.

There followed a discussion panel about this new group, their aims and members.  One specialist said they had started operating after the Olympic bombing.  After four hundred people died in a plaza, there had been much evidence that the loss of life could have been curtailed greatly, had security agents tackled the bombers instantly, instead of negotiating or hesitating.   There had now been fourteen occasions when bombers had been foiled by Engage in their attempts, and every time more theories had grown up over this group.  Did they have training camps, who funded them?  What nationality, to whom were they loyal?   How did they manage to be in the right place at the right time, when national Special Forces couldn’t.  How did they know where the terrorist would strike?  Harold had to go to work or Mr Johnston would be furious.  His life seemed penned in by either his wife’s anger or his boss’s.  Grabbing his bag, he hurried to the door. “Goodbye Irene”, he shouted as he fled.   She replied with a dismissive grunt.

He raced down the stairwell and into the street, moving quite fast for a large man.  As he rounded the corner, the bus was just pulling into the stop and he had to put on another burst of speed to catch it.  Hauling himself on board he could feel the sweat already.  The bus conductor smiled, “Well Harold, another day another dollar?” as he took Harold’s monthly ticket and stamped it.  Harold smiled back, “Yes, though I saw a hawk this weekend.”  The conductor was interested; he shared Harold’s interest in bird watching and replied, “That’s brilliant, it always gives me a lift to see something so beautiful.” Harold nodded and they looked at each other with warmth and understanding - a shared hobby that brought both so much pleasure. Harold listened as the bus conductor talked of his weekend.  Just a few words and then he was on to get others’ tickets, but the kindness fuelled them both.  Harold began to relax; he didn’t need much to get through the day.  Just the odd civil exchange made him feel okay about himself again, despite Irene’s barbs.  As he sat relaxing on the long journey to London city centre, he noticed a young man clamber onto the bus.  He looked anxious and was sweating more than Harold.  Harold knew instantly.  He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.  This was a bomber.  Drawing himself to his feet, Harold approached the young man from behind.  Squeezing past the bus conductor, Harold drew closer.  Sensing danger, the young man looked nervously in Harold’s direction.  Immediately, he reached under his vest and began to pull a cord attached to packages there.  Harold threw his considerable weight on top of the young man and hugged him close in a huge embrace, as if he were holding the most precious package in the world.  The young man wriggled to get free but Harold had him firmly pinned to the ground and was calling out in a loud voice, “Engaged, Engaged.”  The rest of the bus erupted in screams and there was a surge to the exits.  But barely half had left the bus before the bomb detonated.  The young baby in the pushchair three seats behind Harold survived, against the odds.  As did an elderly woman, unable to get to her feet in time to escape.  There were four casualties apart from the terrorist and Harold, but the death toll would have been much, much higher. 

That night there was more speculation as to the roots of this effective organisation Engaged, and a tearful Irene was interviewed on TV.  Distraught, she described her husband as a wonderful man, who would not hurt a fly.  When pushed as to his connection to the anti terrorist group Engaged, she professed ignorance.  At one point the interviewer said, “But you must have suspected something?”  To this Irene replied, “He just seemed ordinary, I never saw anything special.”  When the interviewer pointed out how many lives had been saved by her husband’s actions, Irene looked at him - perplexed and sullen- shrugged her shoulders and muttered, “He was just ordinary. Fat and ordinary.”  Two tears ran down her thin bitter face.

Brother Maurice

I always change the names of people in my stories.  Out of respect, really I have no intention to hurt anyone unintentionally and I have been really amazed that friends have been able to see past the name changes and spot exactly who is who in these stories.  Scary really!  But there have been a few that I did not change.  Here is one example of that.  Thankfully there are so few who read my blog, I tell myself he will not mind!

 

The Maurice

Maurice was always fair.  It’s hard to be unbiased when talking about your own brother but in my eyes he was bigger than most people.  Not in a physical way, but inside.  I remember when he was young him telling me that when people brushed past him they could sense his secret power.  He meant in a Spiderman, Superman kind of way and coming from such a scrawny fellow it was laughable!  Despite his weights and chest expanders his basic shape remained lean and unimpressive.  As a rather overweight younger sister, I used to joke, “imagine how puny he would be without the exercising!” 

But there was always something special about Maurice.  People told him things, people respected him and in all the years I knew him I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.  It was as if he was a big sponge soaking up all the badness that life threw and yet never allowing one drop of that acid to seep out or to corrode his own soul.  Maurice didn’t get into fights.  People liked him; you couldn’t really help yourself.  I liked him and it was mostly his quietness.  I’ve read that excess of speech is a deadly poison and can believe it.  Perhaps a lot of Maurice’s character came from his silent observations.  Mind you he was talkative at times like when playing you at table tennis.  Then he’d pretend to be the commentator and would crack you with his psychological ploys, “She’s looking tired!” or “It seems as if she is losing her stride in this game”, and sure enough these tones would gradually wear away at you and reduce your ability to play against him.  Of course my contact with him was limited.  First there was the age gap and then to compound matters I was a girl.  My brothers, Maurice and Karl, were close in age and were a team and I howled my loneliness all through my childhood.  Those two were close in a way that no one else could comprehend.  Football, card games, conversations, jokes - they shared confidences, experiences that I was not a party to.  They were never alone.  They always had each other.  I felt like a spectator watching on, always wanting to be a part of their relationship but never quite making the grade.  But from my vantage point I could see Maurice was an honourable person.  Such an old fashioned phrase but so apt. 

As the years have passed and I’ve travelled and lived abroad in foreign climes and met so many people from so many different places,  I’ll have to admit I’ve never met anyone who came close to Maurice.  Our lives had led quite separate paths and gone in completely different directions so that conversation between us is sometimes awkward.  I no longer know his life, what’s important to him, his experiences, his tests.  How he thinks, what is his view of life – all these are a blank to me.  It used to be that when I would visit home from abroad I would be full of goals to really link up with my brother again.  Touch base, get through the stilted chat and know him once more.  But with every passing year it would get progressively harder until somehow I felt we were on ships sailing far, far away from each other, gradually reduced to basic semaphore to communicate anything.  But when I close my eyes and think of Maurice, still to this day I feel a sweet sadness and rare privilege that he is my brother.  An honourable man in a world full of mire that somehow never managed to pollute him.  In all our family photos he always struck a ridiculous pose, shoulders raised really high as if impersonating someone bigger.  We all teased him about it.  But he has always stood tall.  Much taller than he appears. 

Now his gentle weariness worries me and makes me want to ask, “Are you happy?”  But we will not have such conversations in this life.  Communicating with flags has its limitations and anyway he would dismiss it with an anal comment and laugh.  So how shall I end this?  In life things are rarely what they seem.  We sometimes build people up only to knock them down.  I would not have that happen so I’ll not throw small stones under the feet of someone in order to watch them fall.  Sometimes our compliments are just that -  designed to bring a fall to those we feel have gotten higher than ourselves.  So I’ll finish with his faults just to protect him.  He suffers from gas and farts indescribably awful, “slow and silent deadly ones.”  He has to lie down after he eats – something to do with his stomach.  He isn’t a good conversationalist; it’s akin to wringing a quilt getting words out of him.  He’s always tired to the bone and tends to look disappointed with life and the hand he has been dealt.  His anal complex is a constant irritation and his nose is invariably blocked.  He will not throw away anything, letting old cars fall to dust rather than be parted from them.  He hates change profoundly and even changing wallpaper is a perceived threat.  Now do you want to meet him?  Well, I hope you’re lucky and do.  Everyone deserves to meet the Maurice.

Why do Dogs Eat Shit?

Basically there are four main reasons dog eat shit. 

1.      It can be a vitamin deficiency and by giving them supplements they stop. 

2.      It is a learned behaviour, they see others do it and then try it. 

3.      They grow accustomed to the taste and like it. 

4.      It can be an attention seeking device as they know their owners get really worked up when they see them eat shit. 

You can see that this behaviour can spill from one reason to another.  i.e. a dog sees other dogs do it and tries it, then grows accustomed to the taste and begins to like it. 
I feel there are parallels here with backbiting and gossiping.

1.      People have something missing in their own life so they focus on things they don't like in others

2.      They often listen to others gossiping and they assume that it is normal

3.      They do it so often it becomes a habit hard to stop – they enjoy it too much

4.      It often gets them extra attention from others so it has its rewards

Just as dogs don't eat their own shit, people don't like dealing with their own problems

But this backbiting and gossiping is toxic for those who are its focus and its effects can spread out and have long lasting unforeseen consequences. 

Sam and Noleen

The more of my stuff I put up the more I notice how dark so much of it is.  But then life has it all, the laughs the tears the losses the gains.  I suppose writing is a bit of therapy for me, so no apologies for the darker regions then.

 

Sam and Noleen

Soon it would be all over, he told himself.  Life was ebbing away, moving out.  He could feel less and less, physically, with every passing hour, but strangely his mental alertness was profoundly intense.  It was perverse.  Here he lay unable to move even an eyelid, with the morphine being pumped rhythmically into his body, and yet the distress of his wife Noleen, who sobbed beside him, was raw and painful.  He could hear her harsh sobs and occasional wheezes, her asthma catching her.

He felt her heart contract with pain and his own seemed to flutter in unison.  He wished he could reach out and stroke her hand, reassure her, but it was just that -  a wish.  He had no more time left to do all the undone things.  That page had turned.  She had been a lovely, loving wife.  No regrets there.  So many friends had suffered with bad humour, coldness and demands, whereas Noleen had been a joy from beginning to end.  Even now, as life drained away, the thought struck him that there was no one in the world he would rather have had with him at this moment.  Even her sadness soothed him confirmed that bond they had.  She rang true even at this late hour and Sam thanked the fates that had brought them together.

A nurse came in and he felt her check his morphine injector at his side, his bag of pee and his drip.  These things had been a source of annoyance - things attached that he longed to be free of but no more.  He was past that.  His world was contracting and physical things were way out there beyond him. Emotions swept around him and he was surprised he could feel them - like a fragrance.  The nurse’s was a sharp annoyance - metallic and tangy with a cold undercurrent, like dislike just barely hidden.  She was speaking to Noleen in clipped tones,

“Would you like a cup of tea? There’s a family room on the other wing.”

Noleen responded politely, but in tear filled shyness,

“No, thank you. Tell me… he’s not in pain is he?  He’s not suffering?”  Her voice rose in fear with each stuttering word.  There was fear in that last line and the nurse spoke factually,

“No, Mrs MacAllister, the morphine injections take care of that.  He is not in pain, just getting weaker.”  The nurse glanced at the blood pressure reading and ticked the chart at the end of the bed.

Noleen nodded and stroked his hand which she held gently.

“Yes, I can feel that.” Noleen whispered so low the nurse hardly heard.  But Sam did and the ocean of her loss surged across between them in the tiny kneading, stroking movements against his unresponsive hand.

The nurse asked, “How long have you been sitting here?”

Noleen answered, “I don’t really know.”

The nurse fussed around the sheets and pillows and Sam wanted her to go. She had an air of importance that intruded between him and Noleen.  So strange to be bothered by that now.  As if any of it mattered.

She was speaking now in knowing terms, “These things can take a long time, you know. Do you want to go and lie down?  There is a family room.  It’s nice and quite nearby.”  The nurse spoke confidently, in practiced tones.  But Sam felt his heart contract with fear at Noleen’s possible departure.  Just having her here in this room, holding his hand, eased the knot of fear that nestled inside him somewhere.  Noleen answered - apology in her gentle tone.

“No, it’s alright. Really. I’d rather just be here, if you don’t mind.”

The nurse spoke with her voice pitched in a ringing long-suffering tone, as if Noleen had forced the whole issue into confrontation with her stubbornness.

“Well, we don’t really like family being on the main ward with patients at night.  It is a matter of security and it can bother the other patients.  I’m so sorry; you’ll have to move to the family room.  If anything happens, I’ll call you,  if you like.” Her tone was confident and business like and he could feel Noleen quailing at her obvious authority.  But Noleen was trying to stay put and apologetically pleaded,

“Can’t I just stay here? I’ll be ever so quiet.”

The nurse was relentless and insistent,

“Well, you can imagine, the ward would be filled with family if we didn’t have rules.  I’ll have to ask you to go to the family room.  I’ll show you the way.”  There was a long awkward pause and then he heard Noleen get to her feet and move away, reluctantly stroking his hand in goodbye.

Noleen had always been polite.  It was the gentleness of her that had first attracted him.  That quiet stillness that made her seem untouched by the world.  He had wanted to protect her from all that would hurt her, help her keep that deep calm at her centre that no one could touch.  He’d been allowed to share that calmness all these years and he wanted to hug and thank her for each and every second they’d had.  He heard Noleen respond, “Of course.” She gathered her handbag and coat to go with the nurse, and he wanted her to stay so much.

The nurse was pulling back the curtains round the bed and moving away, talking about the facilitaties the family room had - the bed, the shower, etc.  Bloody woman, delighted now she had her way.  Their voices began to fade and Sam felt his fear begin to grow.  He was alone, Noleen was gone.  The silence of the ward stretched out like a cold vicious lover and its foreignness embraced him - the sounds of coughs and bed squeaks, the groan of a patient, three beds away.  The fear that had lay like a pet inside started to become agitated and growled.  He would die alone, then.  He remembered this fear like an old enemy, could taste it in his mouth, feel his stomach contract.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. Nothing to ease the awful constricting fear. He was alone again, always alone.   He remembered the night he had met death before.  His mother had just laughed at something; he couldn’t remember what.  But her laugh was full bodied and infectious - as if the entire world was a great joke and you’d suddenly discovered the punch line.  Then she’d crumpled to the floor like a dishcloth and was blue in the face.  He’d screamed and screamed and his brothers and father came running but she had gone.  He’d seen, knew the very moment when life had ebbed away.  Knew it was his mother’s body lying there, but not her.  Just a husk.  Death had reached into his life and stolen its heart and nothing would ever be the same.  He remembered the images of the funeral, the tears, the empty house.  And he remembered hugging her old apron; the smell of her was in its pockets.  The laughter was gone and no one could fix it.  He took to collecting car numbers.  Hundreds and thousands of car number plates.  What the hell had that been about?  Death did that.  It robbed you of all purpose and direction and left you with a husk. Just meaningless routines that you followed for no reason.  He could see her face, still - the laughter changing to fear and that fear .. the presence of death in the room.  Stealing in and striking unawares, making a pretence of all that was valued in this stupid world.  Now it was here for him.  Noleen’s hand suddenly lifted his and squeezed.  He could tell her hands anywhere, so calloused and bony with huge arthritic knuckles.  She’d come back, she was with him, and he was not alone.  He heard her lean forward across the stiff sheets and whisper in his ear,

“I’ll have to be quiet, I’m not supposed to be here, Sam.”

Then she stroked his cheek and leant back, settling in the plastic chair beside him.  His heart filled with gratitude.  She was here, had filled his empty fear filled world, just as she had his whole life.  To be really alone is like being on a wild, wild sea and that was where he had been as a child, as a young man.  Then he had found her.  She didn’t have to speak. He could feel her love surround him and the fear fell away.  Death wasn’t so bad.  He and Noleen together in the darkness of the ward.  He knew he would not see the morning.  He could feel a floaty sensation beginning in his chest.  Difficult to describe but not unpleasant.  Then a sinking feeling, like when you fall when sleeping, but not frightening.  Like falling into something soft. And he knew to relax into it, not to fight it.  The sensation was becoming heavier.  He relaxed all his muscles, felt the strain of breathing, and stopped.  It was so good to stop. It felt right and then he wanted to laugh.  It was so simple - dying so easy, so natural. And he was so very grateful.