The Regrets Of A Lonely Man

The regrets of a Lonely Man

Pulling down the blind Jack looked out at the fading light. Another lonely night lay ahead of him. The nights were the worst. Somehow, he got through the days but the silence of the house at night always unnerved him. He went around the house switching on the lights; trying to dispel the gloom that was like a living thing in his mind.

He stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment. Then slowly he began to haul his bulky frame upwards. He counted as he had done since he was a child. Step one, two, three, pause. Step four, five…He never made it to step six these days without stopping. Regret assailed him. Why had he let himself go so badly? Had that been one of the reasons Ruth had found comfort in his best friend’s bed. There was a time when I was a brilliant dancer. When all the girls, including Ruth, quarrelled amongst themselves to be the next one to be whirled and jived, he mused struggling up the last few steps to the landing.

He forced himself past the boys’ bedroom. His every instinct to fling open the door and embrace the usual chaos of briefly worn discarded clothes, mangled bedclothes and the smell of sweaty feet. He knew it was pointless but he turned anyway and curled his fingers around the handle. It felt cold to his touch as if it too knew life no longer existed in that room. Like picking at an old sore he pushed the door inwards and let the pain of loss wash through him.

The lead of a games’ machine dangled as if abandoned. The slight draft from open door caused it to move slightly. The shelves above the bed were littered with bits of old broken toys – presents from past Christmases and birthdays – “The cause of many a wrestling fight and childish punch-up,” he mused. Everything was still there. But the feeling of the boys was gone. “Ruth seen to that,” he murmured backing out the room without bothering to close the bedroom door.

He stood for a while the silence of the house pressing oppressively in on him.

How he regretted the times he had thundered up the stairs or banged on the ceiling below, roaring for the boys to turn down their head=banging teenage music or TV programmes that seem to fill the house with their violent blood curling noises. What he give to hear that sound fill the house tonight.

“But Ruth soon put a stop to that,” he muttered. Sliding down he leaned against the loose spindles of the wooden rail that ran the length of the landing. He had promised to fix it many times. “One of these days you or the boys are going to find yourselves flying through the air and crashing into the hall tiles below,” Ruth had warned. But he still he hadn’t fixed it. Purposely, he leaned against it. If it happened tonight, now, he wouldn’t care.

“Why did she have to say what she did? She knew it wasn’t true. In the end she forced my hand. I had no other option,” he moaned moving to sit on the top step of the stairs. He looked downwards and counted the steps from the bottom up. One, two, three… His mind pondered Ruth’s words. Why did she have to tell the boys he didn’t love them? That he wasn’t even their father. “It was her that didn’t love them. She was the one who went out at night dancing and left them alone. “If she’d wanted to have other men she knew I wouldn’t stop her just as long as I had the boys,” he moaned.

He slid down a few steps. “I wish I had done it years ago when the boys were small. It would have easy any of the nights she came in roaring drunk and got sick in her own vomit. Why it took me so long to pluck up the courage?” Why did she never leaved me, he wondered. But he thought he knew the answer to that. The boys would have wanted to stay with him. She had to smash the love between them first. “Yeah, she was always jealous. Couldn’t understand how, she, who had given birth to them, couldn’t love her sons but me; a man she picked up in a dancehall could take them to my heart and love them. Little did she know that was the one thing I regretted,” he mused. “Yes, I was popular and had plenty of women but I was never able to father children.” And now I’m childless again he thought as the doorbell rang.

He didn’t have to see the flashing lights of the police car to know they had come for him. Surely they would understand he couldn’t let her take his children.

. The door got another bang as he climbed on the shaky spindles. The cold air hit him as he yanked the knotted rope from the attic beam and pulled it over his head. With a sickening thud the front door got pushed into the hall just as the wood beneath his feet splintered and he fell head first into the hall below.