Leftoverlifetokill4

                                    Caitlin Thomas - Leftover Life to Kill - Chapter 4
     Dylan was always about three jumps ahead of me, and had already put the argument backwards, inside out, and upside down, by the time I had got it eventually standing up straight. And this trick of always demolishing, with the invaluable aid of ridicule, a perfectly adequate work, or, just as soom, a masterpiece, then rebuilding it in his own freakish fashion, used to make me hopping cross; presumably because I was out of my depths. And he insisted, though I never agreed, that women have no sense of fun: verbal fun I think he meant; and were a spewing mass of generalizations and clicks (as our high-brow poetess in Laugharne calls cliches), only fit for the bed and the kitchen.
     When I wake in the morning, when it is still dark, before even the bells or hullabaloo below has started, with the tears streaming, uncalled for, down my face, and Colm sleeping so small and reminiscently against me; and remember who I am, and where I am; and pine, as keenly as a sick cow for its calf just removed, for the feel of him, the smell of him; and go on daftly half waiting for him to come back, when I know he cannot; but it is not a bit of good for reason to tell me that, it cannot stop the wanting so badly, reasonable or not; and where can I put it, what can I do with it? It is not a chasm, it is an enormous fruit cake, of wanting: I am invaded with a stream of incessant babbling, jingly, jangling; oh, why can't it stop for a minute? yesterdays. And the tomorrows stretch in somnolent torpor, paying no attention to my gnawing and prodding behind the shutters.
     I go to the glass, look into the pin-pointed, criss-crossed holes which contain, a thousand fathoms back, my ensnared reproachful eyes; and think, 'This is not the Rock Caitlin that Dylan loved: this damp, bedraggled string of seaweed.' And he would flood me with a contempt of words; there is no fury like the weak, against the weak; and he knew how to use words insultingly, as well as poetically. But because of his own Welsh hypochondrias he hated to see any sign of them in others and had no patience with any nervous ailments or manifestations inhis children, because they came from him; though prepared to nurse his own, or preferably be nursed if that were forthcoming, with loving care, and wealth of descriptive detail.
     He was never his proper self till there was something wrong with him; and, if ever there was a danger of him becoming 'whole', which was very remote, he would crack another of his chicken bones, without delay, and wander happily round in his sling, piling up plates with cucumber, pickled onions, tins of cod's roe, boiled sweets; to push into his mouth with an unseeing hand, as they came, while he went on solidly reading his trash. His passion for lies was congenital: more a practice in invention than a lie. He would tell quite unnecessary ones, which did not in any way improve his situation: such as, when he had been to one cinema, saying it was another, and making up the film that was on: and the obvious ones, that only his mother pretended not to see through, like being carted off the bus and into his home, and saying he had been having coffee, in a cafe, with a friend.
     The reason we got along so well in the house was because of our mutually organic - meaning the organs were functioning but not much else - natures when off parade. The home was to Dylan, more especially, a private sanctum, where for once he was not compelled, by himself admittedly, to put on an act, to be amusing, to perpetuate the myth of the Enfant Terrible: one of the most damaging myths, and a curse to grow out of. We lived almost separate lives, though physically close, and passed each other with a detached phrase on strictly practical matters; as though we were no more than familiar landmarks, in the furniture of our minds. Excluding the times, more frequent at night, when the house rattled, and banged, and thudded, and groaned with our murder of each other.
     But these fights, which were anessential part of our everyday life, and became fiercer and more deadly at each onslaught, so that you could have sworn no two people reviled each other more; and could never, under any fabulous change of circumstances, come together again: were almost worth-while because, when the reconciliation did take place, according to how long we could stick it out, it was so doubly, trebly, quadruply sweet, and we could never have ventured to conceive of such a thing happening again.
     As far as the waiting game was concerned, I was the millimetre of an inch more adept than Dylan: owing to more false pride, and, as I sadly see now, more time to play around, so that it was he who nearly always made the first move back to normality, while I was reluctantly persuaded. And thinking back now, I see he was in a great hurry to fit in so many things; and could not be bothered with the extra spade work that to most people is compulsory. And many afternoons he wanted me to go to bed with him, and I would not because of some ridiculous Upright principle that I chose to presume guided me. (God has some queer twists up His sleeve and, by whatever means you try to outwit or anticipate Him, He will nip you just where you least expect it.)
     Jesus, he even kept saying he would die before me: would never reach forty: and I would be a flighty widow dancing on his grave. And I laughed, completely unmoved; for all the impression it made on me, he might as well have been talking to an elephant. And other things, to my discredit, come back to me: how he used to pursue me with the latest version of a poem in progress; and only ask me to stand still and let him read it to me; and how I would wriggle, do evrything in my power to escape, blockmy ears ( I hope without showing it), till in the end, he could not but notice my surly unwillingness, and swore never to read to me again, but always did. And this behaviour I find plain unforgivable, no two ways about it, and I can't account for my reaction, because I always had faith in Dylan as a poet: and even helped over choosing alternative words and on small points of preference; and he had a touching belief in my judgement. Putting it on the kindest level, I can say, I must have subconsciously felt I had something of my own worth preserving, and did not want to be influenced by Dylan's highly disturbing stuff. On the unkindest: that I was spitefully jealous, and resented, like any typical, man-swallowing woman, such a powerful rival to myself, But this I will not, and do not believe, even now. And I did all I could to make him work, at his own special work, and not public money-making work. And it was only with our kind of purely vegetable background, which entailed months on end of isolated, stodgy dullness and drudgery for me, that he was flattened out enough to be able to concentrate.
     One of the most remarkable things about him, to me, was his singular gift for adapting himself to every kind of different, basically opposed, person and place. With no visible transition he would settle down among the new set, as though he had been there all his life. And with equal ease cut off the old like dead leaves: though retaining surprising loyalties to old buddies, and motherly bodies overlapping and spilling with fistfuls of fat: one of our favorite kill-times in Laugharne was to sit in the window of the Brown's, and imagine these Colossi (with which Laugharne was well stocked) walking, ten abreats, up the street, stark naked. And calculate how much money we would give to see such an impressive sight: nearly all we had.
     So he was much better than me at contenting himself with the very simple, I might justly say moronic, life. Because, there is no other possible explanation, he lived in a world of his own: 'out of this world', as they so succinctly put it in America. Thus: the best part of the morning in the kitchen of this same high class establishment, putting bets on horses, listening, yes, actually listening for once, open mouthed, to local gossip and scandal, while drinking slow consecutive pints of disgustingly flat, cold-tea, bitter beer. Muzzily back to late lunch, of one of our rich fatty brews, always eaten alone, apart from the children; and I can't blame him for that, as there is nothing worse than brawling children's meals. He went so far, like a respectable Victorian father, as not travelling in the same carriage with them, though it was not often we went anywhere en masse, and I cannot blame him for that either. Then, blown up with muck and somnolence, up to his humble shed, nesting high above the estruary; and bang into intensive scribbling, muttering, whispering, intoning, bellowing and juggling of words; till seven o'clock prompt.
     Then straight back to one of the alternative dumps: we had long discussions as to which was the deadliest; to spend the rest of the evening in 'brilliant repartee.' That was a sample day with all the innards and lights taken out.