The Passage of Time

1

Katie Mumford hated housework. She didn't just dislike it, she hated it and wouldn't do it. Her uneasy loathing of all things domestic had been with her for as long as she could remember, and she made things very clear to Bruce Mumford immediately after their marriage.

'Oh no Bruce, you can't want me to be just another boring housewife..',

..as she nuzzled his neck and pouted prettily. Bruce couldn't imagine his gorgeous Katie being a boring anything, but felt he must gently remonstrate.

'But darling, it's all labour-saving I swear – vacuum cleaners and everything. And anyway, what else will the sweetest wife in the world be getting up to while I'm bringing home the bacon?'

This with a roguish grin and a playful squeeze. But Katie drew back and frowned.

'Bruce, I hate it' she announced clearly. 'It's stifling and.., oh it's just awful, you really can't expect me to...' her voice trailed away and she studied her frosted pink nails intently. Somehow the nuzzling and squeezing were over for the moment and the silence became rather oppressive.

'Why can't we have a daily?' she asked plaintively at last.

'Oh darling we can't even afford a weekly! Not yet anyway'.

Why on earth hadn't all this come up before? He'd naturally assumed that when she gave up her well-paid job as personal assistant to Sir Something-or-Other, just before the wedding, that at least she'd keep house for him. Well of course she must, otherwise what was she going to do with her time? She couldn't have meant that she wasn't going to do it, she must be just tired, strained a bit, what with the wedding and the journey.

Anyway, he sensed that if he pursued the topic there'd be a row, probably a major one, and after all they'd only been married twenty four hours. He just couldn't face spoiling it all... He'd sort it out with her later; after the honeymoon, that'd be best, at least the honeymoon should be a happy time....

This rather tortuous inner dialogue left his face rather flushed, and Katie braced herself for trouble. She quickly diverted attention.

'Oh Bruce, look!'

They both laughed gamely at an old man scolding an overloaded donkey up the dusty hill outside their rented Sicilian villa. Eva the rented maid bustled in, smiling and showing lots of gold teeth, and suddenly it was time to get ready for dinner and the storm drifted by. Somehow Eva's frumpish appearance seemed to back up Katie's disgust with housework, and Bruce felt an unexpected thrill of pleasure – at least his beautiful wife didn't look like that. He was sure it would all work out.

Katie certainly was very attractive. Slim and slight, with graceful movements and a neat, rather precise air about her. So different from her mother, who never seemed to catch up with things and was always flustered, grey and slightly shabby. Bruce remembered distastefully his first visit to 29 Middleton Road some eighteen months earlier. Katie's mother had got 'all behind' as usual, and as well as garrulously apologising for the thick film of greasy dust which lay like a mantle on all surfaces of the cramped damp little house, she confided to Bruce in a loud stage whisper that she hadn't made the beds yet.

'I just don't know where the time goes' she'd said wearily, making an effort at a smile as she sank back into the old brown leather chair with the dark stain on the arm. The airless little lounge had a faint sour smell, and Katie's father, a thin-lipped stooping figure with a cough, slid out of the door en route to the pub.

Katie remembered that first visit very well too.. For the 20th time since she had introduced Bruce to her mother ('Your young man is he dear? That's nice..') Katie had to watch her drag a browny-grey lock of hair away from her watery eyes. It fell straight back again of course, and Katie felt that familiar tingle of fury and frustration. It was an actual physical sensation, like getting a stitch. She longed to be able to get a big pair of glinting scissors and snip that damned hank of hair right off. How could a lock of hair raise her to such a pitch? Quite simply because it summed up everything Katie hated about her home. Her mother's hopeless, helpless attitude, her total inability to play life's busy little games. Her feeble flutterings, like the wings of a fly, against inevitable failure. Katie's father's shadowy presence, responsibilities always evaded, side-stepped, ignored. Somehow Katie felt it was all the fault of the house. Sucking her mother's energy like a huge dirty baby – endlessly demanding to be washed, cleaned, scrubbed and proudly displayed, but always needing too much effort and staying gleefully grimy.