Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Sarah’s three and a half at the birth of her sister in January 1970. She hears whispers and the house feels like Christmas.
She hears Mommy screaming but Daddy comes to hug her and takes her to her bedroom away from the screams. He smoothes her hair.
Two years later, Sarah stands with her sister at their pink-chequered curtained bedroom window. Their daddy draws them to his sides. They watch as their flame-haired mom walks away from her family.
Mommy walks along the road. One white-knuckled hand grips a suitcase. Chin high she rounds the corner. Without a wave or a glance.
Sarah's long golden blonde hair and green-grey almond-shaped eyes mirror her father’s features. The two-year-old, Sharon, with orange curls and hazel eyes, would forever remind him of the woman who just left.
All three of them weep. Their father clutches his little girls close to his sides for the longest while until their sobs subside and exhaustion takes over.
He lays them on their beds in their pink bedroom, covers them with their pink sheets and pink wool blankets, and closes the curtains.
He goes downstairs to the orange and brown lounge where he sits on the chocolate brown corduroy family sofa. He places his head in his hands as the tears track down his crumpled face.
Several hours later, he awakens hot and sticky and with a crick in his neck caused by the high arm on the sofa.
In a silent house, he creeps up the brown-carpeted stairs to check on his cherubs and manages to avoid most of the creaks.
Sarah hasn’t moved but Sharon’s limbs sprawl every which way across her bunk. He covers her and brushes her curls off her face.
He returns to the lounge but continues through it, into the kitchen. They have missed lunch. He never learnt to cook; he hadn’t needed to. His mother took care of him, then his wife.
Miles and Frances married when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two. They went from a life with their parents to man and wife in their rented countryside cottage.
Their first year of marriage had been a heady mixture of lust and love. Frances was a conscientious housewife; she took care of his home and his needs.
She was also everything he imagined in the bedroom. The figure of her tall, lithe body, flat belly and a firm bosom that pushed through her full-length white-nylon nightie springs into his thoughts.
Miles worked as an installer for the gas company; Frances kept house. He drove her to the shops. She cooked.
At night, they had made love. She had enticed him to new and wondrous pleasures. Both virgins, they had taken care and pleasure to fill their senses with each other.
Shy at first, then growing more assured of each other, of the responses elicited from a touch, light as a feather, the delight and the arousal initiated in turn.
Desire sated for the day, they would collapse into an endorphin-drugged slumber.
He shakes his head to clear his memory. He must focus on some food for the girls. Beans on toast, he reckons he could manage that.
He clatters around in the kitchen, locates a saucepan and wooden spoon and the all-important tin of baked beans.
“Daddy.”
Sarah stands in the kitchen doorway her eyes on him. He smiles and asks, “are you hungry?”
She nods, with a small shy smile.
“Fetch your sister will you please?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she replies as she turns and goes back through the lounge to the stairs.
A few minutes later she returns with her younger sister. Tummies rumble at the smell of toast and beans.
“Sit at the table girls. Sarah, help your sister up, please.”
Sarah crouches to pick up her little sister, places her hands in Sharon’s armpits and puts her in her special high chair. She tries to do the strap up across the younger girl’s tummy but her small fingers fumble.
Her father comes through from the kitchen to the dining table, a plate in each hand. He places them on the table and pulls Sharon’s chair closer to him, does up her strap, then loads her spoon with bite-size portions of buttered toast and baked beans. He blows on each spoonful with gusto, before the delighted toddler opens wide.
Sarah chases her beans with her fork but none make it to her mouth.
“Eat up, Sarah, you must be hungry,” he says.
“Why did Mommy leave, Daddy?” she asks in a whisper.
Tears rush to his eyes. He battles to keep them from falling.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why she’d want to leave us. I tried to make her stay but she said she had to go. Maybe she will come back to us.”
“Will she come back to tuck us in and kiss us goodnight?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s just us three tonight. Come on and help me with the dishes.”
The little girl takes her plate to the kitchen and leaves it on the side. Her father brings his and Sharon waves her spoon at him. Happy in her own little world.
He washes and rinses the plates and cutlery, hands each item to Sarah for her to dry and put them on the side for him to put in the cupboards afterwards.
As they finish, the youngest howls. Miles dries his hands and goes over to her chair to scoop her up into a hug. He folds his arms around her and squeezes as tight as he dares, before he shifts her over to one side to free up an arm to scoop up Sarah, too.
He runs through the lounge and up the stairs, he jiggles the little girls as he goes causing squeals and giggles of glee.
On his knees, he places both of them on their feet, on the floor of their room. Then he settles Sharon with her fluffy-haired troll and the colourful plastic ball with shapes cut out. She tries to force the troll into the round hole.
Sarah goes to her favourite Tiny Tears doll to give her a bottle. He sits on the lower bunk bed and watches without seeing for a while, then joins them on the floor.
It’s late at night and the girls are asleep in their bunk beds. He’d read The Very Hungry Caterpillar three times to them before their eyelids fell closed.
Lying in his bed with his eyes closed, Miles replays the words Frances spat at him before she left, repeating over and over and over, like a 45-rpm record with groove lock.