A CLASH OF WILLS
My dear Aunt (let’s call her Edith) married not for love but because she was pressured by her older sisters and hurried along by her parents. Their reasons were unshakable as stone:
No matter how much a young filly prances, the harness awaits her in the end. Or do you, Edith, mean to braid yourself a grey plait and die a spinster? Weve no old maids in our family! Who will hand you a glass of water in your dotage?
Edith, having watched her fathera hopeless drunkwaste away, swore as a young girl never to marry. She meant to devote her life to her career and independence. But on her twenty-eighth birthday, after enduring an endless stream of advice, admonitions and marriage wishes from her relatives, she finally decided to settle down.
The groom, Thomas, appeared almost at once. No doubt her entire family had been preparing him for the role. Within two weeks of courtship, Thomas asked for Ediths hand. She agreed without ceremonya mere shrug, thinking perhaps affection would bloom with time.
Thomas, set in his ways and already thirty-three, had a nature as stubborn as hers. They had a hasty wedding, one memory standing out: the toastmaster raised his glass and said, If you love, down the aisle you go, if not, back to your fathers house! Edith, in time, would come to fully appreciate the wisdom of that old saying.
The days quickly grew bleak. Within a month, Edith considered divorce. She found no happiness and only disappointment bloomed within her. Her husband was irritable, dull, and far too inflexible. He held firm to his principles and would not change. Edith too was born unyielding. This marriage was, as they say, an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.
After a year, their family grew; the stork brought a sonshe named him Henry. Edith poured herself into motherhood, all but ignoring her husband and sending him off to sleep on the camp bed, claiming exhaustion and sleepless nights. Youre neither use nor ornament, she told him plainly.
That summer, Edith took Henry to the countryside to stay with her parents. Tearful, she confessed her unhappiness to her mother.
Mum, I want a divorce. Ill raise the boy on my own. Married lifes not for me! Sometimes I want to close my eyes and vanish, I feel Ill never fit within the four walls of marriage. I already loathe Thomas. Why should I drag this out?
Her mother replied, Stay here with us awhile. You might find your heart growing fonder with distancedont you dare speak of divorce! Put up with it, as you must. Man and wife are like water and floureasy to mix, impossible to unmix.
Edith expected nothing new from her mother. Yet she could not see the point in enduring an affectionless marriage. Henry witnessed the absence of love between his parents, and one day hed see the truth of itwhat lesson would he learn from such a family?
Her mother had spent her life enduring a husband who drank himself into oblivion, eternally sprawled on the settle moaning, while she was up at dawn milking the cow, feeding the pigs, scything grass, or hoeing potatoes, before a shift at the local dairy. Only in winter, after feeding the animals, stoking the fire and cooking for the family, could she rest for a moment. There was always work in the country.
All three daughters had run away to London, craving a life free of farm toils. Only their brother, Ediths younger sibling, remained with their parents. He suffered from a feeble mind, and Edith never understood her mothers decision to have a fourth child with such a father. When she asked, her mother always answered calmly, Your father wanted a son. Wed daughters aplenty.
Her parents cared for him all their lives. After they died, Ediths brother didnt last longhe followed them into the grave at sixty, never having learned, nor wished, to care for himself.
After much thought, Edith resolved not to break her mothers heart and returned home to her husband.
Two years later, a second son arrivedPercy. Edith had hoped the arrival of another boy would mend the cracks in their family, but she was mistaken. Thomas ignored Percy altogether, declaring the boy was the image of his drunken grandfather.
Edith swallowed her hurt but never once regretted her sons. All the love I have will go to them, she pledged, No more for my husband.
And so they drifted on.
As Henry and Percy grew into young men, trouble began: drink, cigarettes, insolence. Worse, the boys sided with Thomas against Edith. She had imagined them obedient and gentle. How wrong she was.
Her husband took to drinking with the lads. The family unraveled before her. Edith found herself helpless to do anything about her three men.
Her patience spent, Edith went back to care for her now-aged parents. They welcomed her kindly. Her mother, ever quick with a consoling word, said, Edith, you look older than I do. Lifes roughed you up all the wrong way. Ah, men
Edith would scold her mother for pampering her brother, Why do you fuss over him like a babe? Be firm with him, or hell be climbing on your back!
But her mother always defended her son, Oh, Edith, his wits were always shaky, so what? Hes blood, and you cant cast out your own. Ill be with him to my dying day.
Edith loved her brother little, though she knew his weakness wasnt his own fault. Could a healthy child be born of a man chronic on the drink? Edith and her sisters had been lucky, for their father hadnt always been lost to the bottle when they were born.
A year later, Percy visited and broke the news: their father had died, his drinking finally bested him.
Edith shed no tears, only sighed wearily, It was bound to happen. We plan for a lifetime, yet live only a handful of years. Let Thomas rest in peace
Upon returning to the city, Edith, now fed up with her grown sons, bought herself a little cottage on the edge of town. She craved peace and a quiet old age. Henry and Percy stayed behind in the family flat.
Henry soon married, and in time Edith became a grandmother. But something went wrong: after a year, Henry divorced. Percy moved in with Edith after a frightful quarrel with his brotherapparently over Percys drinking, which Henry refused to tolerate. After beating his brother, Henry evicted him, and Percy remained with their mother.
Time passed
Henry married a second time. In five years, he too was left alone. His wife ran away. Marrying is like skating on thin ice, he would say.
His third marriage fared no betterat first, there was love and fire, but heartbreak struck suddenly when at forty, his wife died from a clot. Death is like a draft, slipping in unseen, Henry lamented. Afterwards he decided, No more marriage. Im tired of these endless unions. Ill live on my own.
Edith now visits Henry to tidy his flat and cook his meals. Percy remains single, drinking whatever can be poured. Sometimes he disappears, and Edith, at seventy-five, scours the neighbourhood with a photo of her son, waving it at all wholl look: Have you seen my boy?
Locals know the drill. Within a month or two, the prodigal Percy resurfaces unharmed. Edith scrubs him clean, repairs his battered boots and mends his worn clothesoften the undershirts are beyond saving and go straight in the bin. Where have you been? shell ask, and hell only mumbleyet for Edith, seeing him alive is enough.
Everyone except Edith knows where Percy spends his timewith a woman who drank more liqueur than any man could. She always had a place for Percy, and between them there was a kind of intoxicating affair. When another suitor emerged, Percy would be sent back to Edith until his turn came round again.
Edith supported her son on a scant pension. Any job she found for him was lost the moment he received the first weeks pay, at which point he vanished for days, money gone. On his return it was Feed your son, mother.
Edith would reflect bitterly on her own mother, lost to the same sorrows. Only now could she truly understand a mothers heartache. Blood of your bloodyou cant cast it out.
Well, joy is never shared evenly in life.
Looking back over her long years, Edith saw how her hasty wedding and its hopeful tunes had never been worth the price.
