The soft twilight cast a crimson glow on the gentle waves of the sapodilla-brown Atlantic waters lapping at the Georgetown shoreline beyond the Dutch-crafted seawalls, as the sun slowly sank below the western horizon, partially hidden by the majestic silhouette of the Pegasus hotel.

Seated on sea-washed boulders, cradled in the protective arms of Ken Lye, Sian felt swaddled in the warm aura of his love as she breathed deeply of the cool evening breeze and immersed herself in the solace of the peaceful ambience of the Georgetown seawall.  There was no need for words. The silence was eloquent and profound, with two souls in perfect accord.

Eventually, however, Sian stirred, “I have to go, Ken, the children’s music classes will be over soon.”

“I know”, he responded, but his arms tightened in agony.  “My God, this is killing me.  Every time I have to let you go to that monster you are married to I have this awful, sinking feeling that this is the last time I would see you.” He drew her tighter into his embrace and nuzzled her neck, breathing deeply. “My God, how I love you…how I want you. Please, let us take the kids to their grandmother and go home to my place.”

She jumped to her feet, panic-stricken, “I can’t…as it is it is bad enough…I am a wife…I am a mother…”

“Mother yes…certainly mother….the best; but wife – to a man who brutalizes you, who abuses you, who cheats on you and humiliates you in public?” He gripped her arms and pleaded “Come to me, darling.  I will hire the best divorce lawyers and we will get married, then I will take you and the kids far away from all the bad memories and we will make a happy family.”

“Ronald is sick Ken. I cannot abandon him. Alcoholism is a disease.  If I leave him I would be hurting my parents because they do not believe in divorce.  I no longer love him but I pity him, and the children love their father.”

Ken was incredulous “You are destroying your life because you do not want to ruin your parents’ perfect social image?  Are you serious? Do you know how badly those kids are being traumatized when he returns home drunk and begins rampaging?  Please, darling,” he pleaded, “I do not sleep for needing you in my home, in my life, in my arms, in my bed.  I need you…”

“So do my children need their father,” she said sadly.  Disengaging herself from his arms, face averted from his passionate gaze, she quietly averred “…and in his own way he needs me also.  I married him in church for better or worse.  Their wellbeing is my first duty.”

“Your first duty is to yourself,” he shouted angrily.  “Look at you – dark circles under your eyes, hollow cheeks, a mouth that has forgotten how to smile.” His voice gentled, “You and the kids come with me,” he cajoled, “we will learn to laugh together.”

She looked at him in agony. “I cannot take his children away from him, and any mother knows that laughter not shared with her children is hollow joy.  I cannot give you anything. I will hurt too many people.  I know enough of myself to know that I can never find happiness or contentment by shirking my responsibilities.”

“Then share some of yourself with me. Don’t you have a right to happiness for yourself?  Don’t you have any responsibility to yourself?  We love each other, for Heaven’s sake. You don’t have a real marriage.  Everyone knows that he has a long-term affair with his secretary and he has no time for you. He never takes you anywhere.  Do you intend to live the rest of your life in celibacy while he enjoys the best of both worlds?  Do you expect me to do the same when we can share our lives together?”

She looked up at him for a long while as the tears pooled in her eyes then ran like rivulets down her cheeks.  Reaching up to gently touch his cheek, she said, “No Ken, I don’t expect, nor want you to waste your life in vain hopes.  What I want…”She looked away, swallowed, then stiffened her shoulders and turned back “What I want is for you to find someone else to love with whom you can live a happy life, someone who can give you a whole heart and a fulfilling future because….” She faltered, then continued “…because I cannot see you like this anymore. It gets harder to leave every time.”

“Are you joking?’ He was incredulous.  “Do you think love is a feeling that one can turn on and off like a tap?  If I for one moment I thought that you and Ronald have a happy future together I would walk away, but why are you subjecting us to lonely lives while he enjoys his?

“I live and breathe and survive each day just for these few stolen moments we spend together, even though you would not even let me kiss you properly.  Now you want to deprive me of even that?  What is the reason for this crazy decision?”

“The strongest reason in the world,” she replied softly. “I am finding it increasingly difficult to walk away from the temptation you represent.”

Kissing her hand he urged pleadingly “Be tempted, darling, please be tempted.”

“No!” She tore herself away “I can’t.  Why don’t you understand?  Too many people will be hurt, even us.  Neither of us have the moral turpitude to cheat – at least at that level.  It is impossible for us not to feel tainted by a sordid, backroom liaison.”

“What we feel for each other can never be sordid.” He was livid. “It is your subjective existence that subsumes your life that transcends the bounds of decency. Your marriage is a farce.  What we share is our true reality.”

“And that is why I refuse to tarnish it.  Apart from my children it…you are the most precious person in my life.  These beautiful moments that we have shared are the only sustaining factors that keep me sane and help me to endure, but…”She looked at him with tear-washed eyes “…but you need to let me go, please…” she pleaded, “I need to do this, and I need your strength to do this.  If you stop me I will become weak. Goodbye and please…” falteringly “…please try to be happy.” He clenched his hands impotently at his side as she turned and walked toward her car without looking back.

“Christ man, you’re drinking yourself to death.”  The voice penetrated Ken’s hazy consciousness.  He turned bleary eyes in the direction of the voice.  “Sh..Shamir, how are you, ol’ buddy?” His voice was slurred. He invitingly held up a near-empty bottle of El Dorado 25-year-old.  “Come have one with me.”

“No thanks,” Shamir detached the bottle from Ken’s fingers and placed it on the counter, then curved a supporting arm around his drunken friend’s waist. “You’re coming with me. I am taking you home.  You’re in no fit condition to drive.  Jeez, what the heck do you think you are doing to yourself? You never used to drink?”

“Ish…ish what Sian prefers.  Ronald drinks and she still wants him.”  Pathetically, “She may feel sorry for me too and talk to me again.”

Shamir exploded, “Are you crazy?  She is going through hell with that drunken, abusive sot and this is what you want to do to her?  Come let us go home and get you sober and then you can unload on me instead of in the rum bottle.  It is not true that you can drown your sorrows in a rum bottle.  You only add to your problems. Propping up a bar seems to have become your hobby recently.”  Shamir urged Ken to his feet, “Come let us get you home.”

“Hey,” Ken protested, “I haven’t finished my drink.”

“Drinks enough at home – black coffee.  Come on, we’ll take my car.  I’ll return with Joe in the morning for yours.”

Back at Ken’s near-palatial, luxuriously-appointed home, an hour after a shower, tons of strong black coffee swallowed between an ocean of maudlin tears, and explanations to his boyhood friend and Sian’s co-worker and neighbour, who listened patiently as Ken poured his heart out, the latter concluded “…so you see, I just try to fill the empty hours and kill the pain.” He slammed his right fist into the back of the luxurious couch.  “Four weeks…four bloody weeks without a glimpse of her…I am dying here, man.  She won’t even take my calls.” He sighed tiredly.  “It seems like a century of torture.”

“Something has to be done about her situation,” said Shamir quietly. “I don’t want to alarm you, or add to your pain, but she was covered in bruises when she came to work this morning.  She tried to cover them up with long sleeves and make-up, but they were visible all the same, and she was clearly in pain all day.  Don’t despair.  I will ask my mom to go and talk to her parents tomorrow.  They are old-fashioned Catholics, but even they would not want her to live like that.”

Pathetic hope shone in Ken’s eyes.  “Will you do that?  I am going crazy worrying about her safety, and I hear he even beats the children.”

“Don’t worry anymore.  We will get her out – one way or another, even if we have to get the Human Services Ministry and Child Welfare Department involved.  Ms. Brown will ensure there is no publicity,” promised Shamir.  He went into Ken’s bedroom for a pillow and a sheet and settled his friend comfortably on the spacious couch. Laying a sympathetic hand on his buddy’s shoulder he said “I have to go. I will let myself out, but I am at the other end of a phone.  Anytime during the night you feel blue just give me a buzz and bend my ear.  In the morning I will take Joe to collect your car and we can talk then.”

“Thanks chum, I’ll do the same for you someday,” Ken tiredly promised.

“Heaven forbid,” Shamir pretended to be horrified. “Don’t wish that on me.  I’m a philosopher who believes in numbers.  When one goes, there are dozens to follow – Janes, and Sheilas, and Kavitas, and Nazimas, etc, etc. The world is full of tasty dishes, and I am a gourmet.”

Ken smiled lopsidedly, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Let me miss, Buddy, let me miss.  That way I’m saved the torture of fidelity,” Shamir retorted, letting himself out and locking the door behind with an audible click.

Ken drifted off into a doze on the divan but was awakened by featherlight kisses trailing all over his face as Sian’s perfume wafted into his consciousness.

“Sian,” he breathed in wonder and opened his eyes.  The clock was striking eleven and the tolling bell was like an intruder into the magic.  “I have to be dreaming.”

She smiled enigmatically and opened his shirt, then laid her face against his bare chest.  Ken was not in the mood for rejecting miracles.  He reached out his arms to draw her closer.

It was beautiful and magical – a silent coming together of exquisite lovemaking that was all he had ever dreamt of, and more.

Afterward he cradled her in his arms with infinite tenderness.  “Oh darling, what made you decide….?” She laid her finger to his lips and nuzzled closer.

“All right,” He wrapped his arms tighter around her, his soul finally at peace.  “We’ll talk in the morning.”  He was quite content to savour her presence until she felt ready to talk.

Relaxed, at peace for the first time since falling deeply in love with a married woman who was caught up in a seemingly inextricable destructive relationship, he drew her closer and drifted into a deep sleep.

The shrill insistence of the ringing telephone jarred him rudely awake and he fumbled for the receiver. “Hello,” he queried as he glanced at his watch.  It was after midnight. Sian’s absence impacted instantly on his consciousness.  “Probably in the bathroom,” he thought.

“Ken,” Shamir’s voice was urgent, “Ken, I’m…I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

Frowning, he queried, “What do you mean bad news?” He was still sleep-groggy, but kept his eyes on the door in longing anticipation for Sian’s return from the bathroom.  He swore to himself that he was never going to let her go again.

“Sian…”Shamir’s voice faltered, “Sian is dead.”

“What kind of a bloody joke is this?” Ken roared and leapt to his feet.  “Sian is here with me.”

“No Ken, I don’t know what you are talking about.  Sian died tonight.  I heard the noise and saw the crowd outside her home when I was driving past. When I went in she was unconscious and covered in blood.  I rushed her to the hospital.”

There was a roaring in Ken’s ear and he had stopped listening.  Sian was taking too long to return from the bathroom, he thought, and said into the phone.  “You’re making a colossal mistake.  I’ll get her and let her speak to you herself.”  He laid the phone down with a clatter.

Shamir’s urgent “Wait…” was lost as Ken went striding toward the bathroom.  He called and received no answer.  He opened the door and gazed, stunned, there was no Sian.  He ran like a madman through the house, flinging doors open as he checked every room, but she was nowhere to be found. He checked the front door.  It was locked.  He distinctly remembered hearing the loud click when Shamir had pulled it shut behind him. Sian had never visited his home and had no key.

In horror he returned and fumbled for the phone, his heart seemed to go cold in bottomless fear. His voice was choking with the tears he was trying to suppress because he refused to believe.

“Shamir, oh God, tell me this is a joke. I will forgive you.  Just only say this is not true.”  He felt as if he was choking on his own words.

“I am so sorry, Ken, so very, very sorry, but I saw the commotion and the crowd when I was passing her house on my way home.  She was unconscious and covered in blood, but she didn’t die right away.

“She died in the hospital at…..”

Ken’s ears were roaring. He was hearing the clock striking “…11 o’clock to be precise.”

(BY PARVATI PERSAUD-EDWARDS)