Interludes: A Married Woman
"We all knew that Liz wanted more than anything to be married. Simply to be ‘a married woman’. The problem was that she had no social life at all, and no chance of meeting anyone, and she was on the wrong side of thirty, as they say. There seemed to be little chance of her dream becoming reality.'' But then she meets Tom the plumber... Sylvia West tells of a woman who finds a kind of happiness.
Whenever I pass the house, I think of Liz’s wedding. It was such a pretty wedding: everything was in shades of peach and apricot. Even the groom’s tie was pale apricot, just a shade lighter than Liz’s dress. All the flowers in the church followed the same subtle theme, and with the cool autumn sun glinting through the windows, it couldn’t have been more beautiful.
The reception was at the house, in the big garden at the back. That is why I always think of Liz when I pass that way, for her mother doesn’t live there any more, and I can see that the garden is neglected now. The roses are running wild, like everything else, and I stand at the gate and picture the marquee and the guests wandering everywhere, and Liz in her beautiful apricot wedding dress, hobbling on her invisible club foot.
I had known Liz for a long time, on and off. After her sister married and left home she seemed reluctant to go anywhere or do anything much. She was thrown more or less into the company of her mother, for her father had died long before. She had a job in a small factory where she could sit down for part of the time, because her foot gave her trouble sometimes. We all knew that Liz wanted more than anything to be married. Simply to be ‘a married woman’. The problem was that she had no social life at all, and no chance of meeting anyone, and she was on the wrong side of thirty, as they say. There seemed to be little chance of her dream becoming reality.
One day in the winter, after a particularly hard frost, the pipes froze and burst and a plumber was needed at Liz’s house. He was needed two or three times, and so the hand of fate delivered a middle-aged widower to Liz, someone new for her to talk to: it didn’t matter that Liz had a club foot, because Tom had a hump. He was older, too, with a son in Australia, and a liking for playing darts in the pub. He was quite a handyman, so after the pipes had been put to rights, Liz’s mother found something else that needed attention and so there were teatimes and lunchtimes when Tom could talk to Liz about darts and she could sit and listen. Then he asked her one day if she wanted to go with him for a game in the evening: not ‘would you like to’, but did she want to. Liz said ‘yes’ with no hesitation, and so you might say that some sort of liaison had begun.
Liz wasn’t any good at darts, and sometimes Tom laughed none too kindly at her, preferring the company of his usual cronies. Liz would sit quietly with an orange juice until he took her home, rather like a dog waiting for its master. It would hardly seem to be the right soil for the seeds of romance, you might say, and perhaps there were none, but Liz’s mum could see that perhaps here was the answer to Liz’s prayer. She could be married to Tom, could she not? Something, somehow could be arranged.
No-one knew what went on or how the matter was settled, until we received an invitation to the wedding. Liz’s mum was doing the best thing possible for her daughter, we thought, and on their wedding day, as the hunchback and the cripple made their way up the apricot aisle, everyone said an extra prayer for Tom and Liz.
I didn’t see anything of either Liz or her mother for over a year. Then I began to see her walking alone near her mother’s new house, and it seemed strange that there was never any sign of Tom. I would stand back out of sight and watch her: she looked different, a little sad, as if she didn’t belong to anybody. After the third or fourth time I decided to say something.
“Hello, Liz ! How are you now ?” I asked, looking up under her bent head, trying to make her look at me, for she was hobbling along with her eyes fixed on the ground just in front of her feet.
“Hello,” she said. She looked at me, recognising me but giving nothing away by her expression. And that was all: the briefest pause, and then she went on. She didn’t smile, she didn’t look back, she didn’t anything. Just hobbled on down the road.
It was some months before I saw her again, and then she was out shopping with her mother. She looked better, as if some trauma had passed. We were all enjoying the spring sunshine, and it was the kind of day when people love to stand and exchange news and turn their faces up to the warmth of the sky. We stood on the pavement and they told me what had happened to Tom. Liz just listened while her mother did the talking. Tom had died of a heart attack, but first he had persuaded Liz to sign too many cheques for too many things; for the bookies, mainly, but for debts in the casino too. There was money for Liz from her father, as Tom knew, but unfortunately not any more. The heart attack came when Liz’s mum found out.
“Oh, we’re all right now,” said Liz’s mum as we moved our feet to show that the day was not over yet and there was more to be done.
“Liz lives with me now, and all the neighbours are very friendly. She’s company for me, you know.” For the first time since we had been talking, a smile and a really happy look came on Liz’s face.
“Yes,” she said. “You see I’ve got a little dog now. He’s lovely, and, you know, I’ve called him Tom as well. It’s much better now than being married.”
