Just a short drabble that I couldn't quite beat into submission as I tried to write more for the next couple of chapters for Under Pressure.
Gene/Missus (angst and reflection)
The day she left...
The day she left it had been raining, Gene had called to say that he would be home late and not to bother saving a plate of dinner for him, as he would get something to eat at Nelsons place. After she had hung up the phone she had sat at the kitchen table and cried her heart out.
When there were no more tears left to cry she had gone upstairs and packed her bags.
It had been a marriage of convenience really; she had discovered that she was pregnant with his child little over six months after they started courting. He had done the honourable thing and married her without any question as to whether it was really his child; she had never strayed though and she pleased that he trusted her enough to know that.
They had gotten married when she was barely even two months along in her pregnancy but she had sadly miscarried before she reached three months. She had honestly expected Gene to walk out the door at that point; but he stayed and was devastated by the fact that they had lost a child. He never admitted that fact to anyone outside the privacy of their own home; to him it was something that no-one else needed to know about.
She had heard him joking once in the pub with a couple of his friends about how it had been a 'close call' and that he was lucky that they didn't have a nipper running round and getting in the way of him having some fun with his missus.
That night she had listened to his muffled sobs as he sat downstairs listening to records, long after she had gone to bed.
There was no denying that she loved him; but she was really in love with the idea of being married, having a house and maybe one day having a family all of her own to care off. Her own childhood hadn't been that great; her father was a drunk and her mother seemed to care more about shagging the milkman than taking care of her own five children. He had become her knight in tarnished armour, threatening her father that if he ever laid another finger on her it would be his last moment on earth.
Gene, of course, loved to play the man of the house with his little wife whom he protected; he commanded respect at work, at home and quite often in the bedroom. Yet he also had a soft side to him that she knew he rarely revealed to others; it was the side of his personality that would randomly show up with a bunch of flowers silently apologising for all that he had done wrong, it was also the side that could be so very tender and loving when she needed it most and it was the side that she saw, when he had witnessed some of the horrors of his job and he came home... and clung to her like a lifeline.
There were of course more than two people in their marriage; she knew that was how it was going to be from the start. At their wedding reception he had gotten incredibly drunk, beaten up two of his best mates and then vomited in the corner of the pub before passing out. If it wasn't the alcohol that was the third wheel of their relationship it was definitely his job; sometimes she felt like she was the mistress and his career was his wife, whom he was cheating on every time he came home to her and lay in bed besides her... that is, if he did come home.
Oh she knew about the girls he slept with, she would have been a fool for denying it; all that mattered to her was that Gene came back home and slept in their bed at the end of it all.
If someone asked her when it was that she fell out of love with Gene, she would have to answer that it was probably just after Sam Tyler showed up; she never blamed him for the end of their marriage, gods no, it was already on the rocks by the time he came on scene; instead he had been the final straw that broke the camels back.
She had put up with Genes' late nights time and time again but Sam seemed to bring out another side in him; a new leash of life which final gave her the strength to realise she wasn't needed any more... that she hadn't really ever been needed by him in the first place. She stayed at his side for another five years going through the motions and playing her role, never once did the subject of children come up.
The day she left it had been raining, Gene had called to say that he would be home late and not to bother saving a plate of dinner for him, as he would get something to eat at Nelsons place. After she had hung up the phone she had sat at the kitchen table and cried her heart out.
When there were no more tears left to cry she had gone upstairs and packed her bags.
Writing him the letter had been the hardest part, there was so much that she wanted to say that would forever remain unsaid; she had poured out her heart and soul into that note but not that it mattered really because at the end of it all she knew it would end up crumbled up and dumped in the bin.
She even left him a list of things for keeping the house running.
As she closed the front door and posted the keys back through the letter box she took one last long look at the home she was walking away from. There would be no turning back, Gene would never forgive her and she could never forgive Gene for all the pain she had been made to go through; all the times she had thought him dead, all the drunken nights where he came home and passed out on the settee and all the mornings he had come in stinking of cheap perfume.
Walking away from the house she tilted her face up into the rain and let it wash over her; almost starting the slow process of cleaning her soul and mind.
To her it symbolised a fresh start.
That night when Gene came home he read the note over and over again; his brain seemed unable to process the words on the piece of paper held before him. His fingers traced over the curls of her letters before he screwed the note up and dumped it in the bin.