Tony: the argument

[set in January 2002 – Rushton is 77]

There was little Rushton had to say that morning.  Late January, with frost on the grass.  Pamela seemed to be disturbed by something – the weather, was it?  Cold and grey, as usual.  He sat down to breakfast, fed the dog some chocolates, and leafed through the morning paper.

“I just looked in the cupboard under the stairs.”  Pamela came into the room, carrying some old magazines.  “There’s so much in there.  I can’t see how we’re ever going to sort everything out.  I mean everything that isn’t needed.”

He was not happy.  Sorting out was all too much on his mind.  What was needed, when it came to it?  He lowered his newspaper, and spoke sourly –

“As if there wasn’t enough to do already.”

Pamela looked hurt, but seemed minded to go on.

“But, well ...  who will do it, all our stuff, when we’re ...”  She paused, significantly.

This was too close to the bone, and at this time of the day, especially.  Rushton slapped the newspaper on the table.  The dog leapt up from her bed, with an alarmed barking.

“I’ve just about had enough!”  Why was he saying this, he asked himself?  “You go on and on these days, about tidying up and sorting out - moaning about this, moaning about that!”

There were tears in her eyes, though she was stung, also, by his words.

“That’s unkind, John.”

But he seemed committed, at whatever cost, to having his say.

“There’s no peace here anymore – I always seem to be under your feet ...”  He swept his hand over his face and looked at the table, laid ready for breakfast.  “I’ll just have to go away ... stay somewhere else ...”

She could scarcely believe his words.  After all that she had done to help him, almost to nurse him through the worst days of his depression ...  Now he was threatening her with something she feared more than anything else – to be left alone.

“Why?  Why are you saying this?”  She looked at him, expecting to find his face a mask of anger.  But no, he sat still now, his eyes gazing vaguely ahead, his face white and haggard.  The dog was licking his hand – he looked down.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured eventually.  Was he in tears?  Perhaps, yet in the trembling of his hand, as she watched him absently fondling the dog’s ears, there was something beyond tears, something beyond life itself.  He seemed lost in a private desolation.

The “sub-text” here is that Rushton knows he is dying, but does not want to alarm his wife, who nevertheless wonders at the cause of his excessive anger.