Leftoverlifetokill2-2

afford tennis parties any more, and had stiff-jointedly outgrown them; with the last desert island survivals of decaying gentlewomen still tottering on their spindled herring-boned legs. There was ther Women's Institute of course, but such a riotous participation entailed a distinct lowering in the social tone. She might even be so rustically adventurous as to 'indulge' in breeding better class poultry; but there is no avoiding that in the snob's hobby order of precedence, kennels are more comme il faut than hens, which, whichever way you don't look at them, are not quite de rigueur.
     But, it was very odd, try as I would, I did not fit the role. There was something abnormally wrong with me. So instead I went to the opposite extreme, I did all the things a Lady should not do, and showed them, aggressively, just how unladylike a Lady can be. I gave myself up with selfless abandonment to being awful. I wallowed in excess; an excess of bodily surfeiting, to kill the critically carping maiden aunt of a mind that nagged the prostrate soul out of me. I sought filthily to purge the blood-thronging devils out of me by using the devils own filthier-still instruments.
     I stole their sons and husbands, doing violence to both our diversely raw feelings; violating purposefully my most precious holy vows to Dylan; saying his golden endearing word for me to them, making the same familiar sweet affectionate gestures; ruthlessly pillaging the long years of our woven heart together; inciting a deliberate sacrilege, a shameful sacrifice of our love that was too stubborn to be put out.
     And all this fervour of destruction, to no, not one, flickering twinge of improvement, curative effect in myburied, unremitting black burning world; the ridiculous reverse: an increase in my inescapable dedication to Dylan and a mutilated guilt-soaked, pride-stripped body.
     But the more they castigated, reviled and morally spat on me; they would gleefully have tarred and feathered me, and with screams of ecstacy, set light to me in the market square; the more I persisted in scandalizing them. Had they offered a grain of sympathy, a nod or a touch of understanding, it would have been my undoing: my tough, dissembling, distended-to-breaking-point guts, would have melted in a weak pool at their gracious feet. As it was, I managed to preserve, with admirable conviction; sometimes, I asked myself, was it true or was it not, because what one does with enough will, one may very well become; the impossible myth of the monstrous scarlet woman, till my eventual, bridge of wives, windily sighing with relief, departure.
     'If only,' they whispered, and hissed in kitchen corners and back room bars malignantly, their bridling better-than-thou-ness glowing reassuringly in their wilting bird-caged breasts; 'she could have waited a decent anonymity of years.'
     Years; did you hear that; how much time do they think I have, and how do they propose that I should kill that deposited squeamishly out-of-sight shelf of years? If I waited a million years, I could never forget Dylan: he will not come blundering down the path again, all misshapen, bulgy lumpy shapes, his loaded head rolling with old inforgettable poems and growing miracles of tomorrow singing, stifled, out of them; his pockets sagging with bottles and goodies, and bang at the door impatiently and shout, 'Cait, come down quick and let me in.' There will be nobody to bang at the door for he is in already.
     But though I claimed to despise the morons, yet I minded terribly their unfriendliness, and was dying for a dram of kindness. I had given so much of myself to this God-forsaken, Dylan-shared, vanishing dip in the hills; much more than Dylan, who was so good at containing himself; that their turning on me and, metaphorically, stoning me out, made me feel like the most unjustly abused martyr.
     The churchyard was always present to me, in that worst of awful periods, as an uncannily unbelievable place which, with all my elaborate deviations, I could never avoid landing up at; drawn by Dylan's rotting remains. And I would try to envisage how much was left of him; how much had started to crumble; and an impotent rage against the vile crudeness of nature daring to infringe on him, of all people, made me long to tear open that shoddy grey, speechless mound; ferret down to the long locked cold box, and burst it apart. There to press my headlong hot flesh into his, to mangle him with my strong bones, mingle, mutilate the two of us together, till the dead and the living would be desired One.
     But instead I stood immovable, as near as possible without being seen, for I was ashamed to show myself in that conventional abode of lawful grief, and wept invisibly. And 'they' said: 'It is too much trouble for her to put a jampot of flowers on the grave.'