Rowena was tired. Rowena was always tired. She was tired when she went to bed, tired when she woke up, tired all day long.
She took a last look round the room she had just finished preparing, noting the main items. "Bed. Quite an adequate desk – it was the one dad gave me for my eighteenth birthday. Good swivel chair. Armchair, wardrobe, dressing table, bright curtains and a rug, gas fire. Yes, it should be all right." She sighed wearily.
"Wish I'd never volunteered," she muttered to herself. "Having to look after someone else, cook for them, and I suppose wash and clean for them. Why couldn't I keep my mouth shut?"
Two Sundays before the minister had announced in church that people with spare rooms in their house were being sought to take in university students. The students came from inland rural areas, and there was a shortage of accommodation for them. Most of these students had never been away from their families before, so it was thought desirable for them to be boarded with families in the city.
Rowena had sniggered to her self in a weary sort of way. She thought, "I should imagine one of the last things these young people wanted was another family breathing down their necks. What they'll be after will be the freedom to get into all sorts of trouble."
After the service, she noted that few people seemed to be rushing to take on these students. "They probably realise the difficulties they might be getting themselves into, taking on seventeen and eighteen year olds," she thought.
Despite her gloomy prognostications about what might be expected from youth, and on the spur of an altruistic moment, she volunteered.
"I've got that whole house to myself," she told the minister. "There are three bedrooms, and I could turn the big one into a bedroom and study." Now she regretted her impetuosity. She foresaw and foreheard, loud music, feet clumping, riotous behaviour, foul language and perhaps even drugs.
The minister had been doubtful. Not that he had said so, but you could tell by his attitude. He knew Rowena was a woman always in a state of depression, always brooding over her loss. She was a loyal church attendee and he did not wish to offend her, so he said, "I'll let you know Rowena when I've got all the names of those volunteering."
Rowena was only thirty-two but looked and behaved as if she was fifty. Those who had known her only since her beloved Ken had been killed five years before, would never have believed she had once been a scintillating and attractive young woman. Young men and not so young men had pursued her in those days, but in vain. It was not until her lovely Ken had taken her by storm, that she succumbed. Her wedding day had been the happiest day of her life. Both she and Ken had married as virgins. In the few years that followed their love had given rise to a great passion. Their marriage seemed to lack nothing, except the one thing they both longed for, a child. When Rowena announced to Ken that she was pregnant, it was a day of high celebration for both of them.
Three months later Rowena opened the door to find a policeman standing there. She knew before he even spoke. She simply said, "Ken!" He nodded. Ken had been killed in a car accident on his way to work. Rowena fainted, and the shock caused her to abort the child.
Since that awful day Rowena had wandered across an emotional wasteland. At first, nothing could console her for her double loss. She told her story to anyone who would listen, and wept endlessly. Later she ceased weeping and seemed to close off from life.
She carried on the daily routines, but with a weary resignation. She rarely spoke to anyone, and those who did try to converse with her found her remote, looking all the time as if she was in some distant place and not hearing them. Physically she seemed to age suddenly, walking with bowed shoulders and shuffling feet.
In the weeks after she had volunteered to take in a student she heard nothing further. In fact, the minister had hoped he would not have to take up her offer. Rowena was relieved. "I won't have to be bothered after all, " she thought.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the minister found he had one student he had been unable to place. Despite his doubts about the wisdom of it, he was forced to resort to Rowena.
"He's a young fellow from a cattle station up north," he told Rowena. "His name is Steven and he's nineteen years old, and being so isolated he's had a bit of a battle to make it to university. He's never been to the city before and his parents are concerned that he will be a bit lost."
"I had hoped it might be a girl," complained Rowena. "They're not so noisy and messy as boys." Having three teenage daughters the minister thought otherwise, but maintained a diplomatic silence on the subject.
"We really do need a place for Steven," said the minister. "If you won't take him I don't what we'll do."
So Rowena had reluctantly agreed, and awaited the arrival of her student boarder.
The minister brought him to the house, introduced them, and left. Rowena and Steven weighed each other up whilst trying not to look as if they were.
Steven's first impression was "Probably a spinster disappointed in love. Might look all right if she wasn't so slovenly."
Rowena was a little more favourably impressed in a grouchy sort of way. "Hmm, a big chap," she thought, "Looks as if he's got a lot of muscle. Not bad looking, and I suppose he's got a few brains or he wouldn't be going to university."
She showed Steven the room she had prepared, and he thanked her and said it was "very nice." She invited him to come and have a cup of coffee in the kitchen thinking, "And I won't make a habit of that."
Over coffee, they continued the surreptitious examination of each other in a little more detail. Steven was very quiet and not the rumbustious country bumpkin Rowena had anticipated. He seemed very shy and reticent, giving only brief answers to her hesitant questions.
Having a male in the house after so many years of living alone, Rowena was finding it more difficult than usual to make conversation, yet deep inside her self a little spark seemed to ignite. Could it be an ember of unruly interest? Rowena stamped upon it firmly.
Steven, whose life on the cattle station had not brought him into much contact with women, apart from his mother and two sisters, was still aware of the basic difference between men and women. In the manner of most males meeting a female, young or old, he surveyed Rowena with a touch of libidinous interest.
"Pity about her hair," he thought. "Could do with a comb through it. Nice face, if she didn't look so sour. Good Lord, she's got great breasts. She should show those off a bit more. Can't see her legs. I wonder what they're like? Must have a look when they come out from under the table.
These assessments went on under cover of hesitant and polite conversation, and when the coffee was finished and Rowena had instructed Steven as to meal times, washing days, bed sheet changes and so on, a silence fell upon them.
From Steven's point of view, it was a question of how one was supposed to behave in a strange house with someone you had never met before. Should he continue to sit in the kitchen or go to his room? If he sat in the kitchen, would he be unwelcome? If he went to his room, would he appear impolite?
Rowena saved the situation by suggesting that Steven go and unpack. Both parted with some relief.
In the following weeks the pair got to know each other a little more. Steven spoke of his life on the cattle station, his parents and sisters. He also occasionally talked about the agricultural science course he was doing, but he spent a great deal of time either at the library or working in his room. He seemed to have no social life at all.
Rowena's worst fears were not realised. Steven continued very quiet and she saw no sign of the drugs she had been sure would be in evidence. She revealed very little of her own life, her conversation being mostly limited to domestic matters and church activities. The little ember that had glowed the first day was still not quite extinguished, but she wrote it off as a "motherly interest." Steven on the other hand, had taken the earliest opportunity to inspect Rowena's legs, and concluded, "Not bad, not bad at all."
Rowena, having now lived alone for some years had, like many people who find themselves in this situation, become neglectful of her personal appearance. Such people have no one to please, no one to remark how nice they look, it does not seem to matter how they are, who cares? Add to this Rowena's usual state of depression, and you have someone who might be called, "A bit of a mess."
The advent of Steven into her life having, as it were, got rid of one side of the equation, namely, being alone, the other side of the equation, her depressed state, also began to disappear. Rowena actually smiled occasionally.
I do not suggest that Rowena suddenly became her old radiant self, rather I would like you to understand that a gradual improvement in her appearance and demeanor seemed to occur.
It is possible that it was simply the passing of time and the diminishing of her bereavement for Ken at the dictates of nature that brought about this slow, evolutionary change, and not the presence of Steven. Certainly, the people at the church took this view. But you see, they did not dare to take any other view, or they might have to admit that the arrival of a young man in the life of "Poor old Rowena," might have been the agent of change. That would be naughty.
Whatever the agent was, the practical outcome was, that Rowena actually went to a good hairdresser and had her hair cut and styled. She dug out from the recesses of her wardrobe garments she had not worn since Ken was killed. They were perhaps a little behind the times, but were a considerable improvement on the tatty skirt, blouses and cardigans she had normally been seen in.
Even more dramatic changes emerged. She found some old make-up and occasionally applied it. She showered more carefully, and noticing that there was a considerable bush of under arm hair, attacked it with a razor. She stopped short of assaulting her pubic hair with the cold steel, but decided that her legs were long overdue for a shave.
I should like to point out that, like all evolutionary changes, Rowena's were incremental and slow. Steven hardly noticed any changes in Rowena until a critical moment arrived, but this was largely because he was so immersed in his study he hardly took time to notice anything else.
