Chapter 1. Goodbye St. John.
Snow fell on Mount St. John last night. It has made a tiny white cone on top of the mountain, the first intimation of winter. Here at Windabri, in the valley, it is still autumn but up there in that little cone of white it is already winter.
St. John is about thirty kilometres from Windabri, and serves as is a sort of seasonal clock for the town. Today the townspeople will look up at it and say, "Snow on St. John, winter will soon be here."
As winter approaches and during the winter itself, the snow cap will gradually creep down the mountain, and the skiing enthusiasts will be there until the season turns again and the snow creeps back up until it vanishes in the warmth of spring and summer.
For one whole cycle of St. John's seasonal clock I have stayed on in the house, but whether it has been summer or winter on the mountain it has been perpetual winter in my heart.
It was last year when the snow first appeared on St. John as it has today, when Glen came to me with his news. Not that it was really news because I had suspected for some time.
He tried to put it delicately, but no matter how he put it, it came to the same thing; he was leaving me.
"I don't want to hurt you Laura, it's just that...well...I want you to understand. These things happen, we...we don't want them to happen...they just do."
Of course they happen, especially when the other woman is tall, blonde, with big blue eyes and a figure out of a fashion magazine. They happen when she's working as the group practice nurse and somehow she and Glen have to work late.
He'd even brought her to the house – to dinner.
"Cynthia is new to the town, darling, and I thought it would be nice if I invited her here for a meal, just to make her feel welcome."
It was ironical because she had taken my place in the practice when it was found I was pregnant. I lost the child at three months.
Glen was very kind and considerate, telling me there would be other times and there was no reason medically why I shouldn't go the full term. "It's just one of those things, darling."
Funny, he used those same words when he came to tell me he was leaving me to live with Cynthia; "It's just one of those things," but he didn't say "darling" this time.
Now I am sitting here looking out through the window at St. John, waiting for the taxi to arrive that will take me to the station. Waiting and remembering.
I recall when I first joined the practice. I had not long finished my training as a nurse. I had completed a number of post graduate studies and had done well, but perhaps I was still too young for the job in the group practice.
I had been thrilled to even get an interview, but at the end of it I had little hope I would be chosen from among the other applicants. He has never said so, but I suspect it was Glen who swung it for me. Did he have in mind even then what happened later?
I've no doubt it went the same way with Cynthia; "Could you work late this evening, Laura? He had said to me."
For him I'd have worked every hour God made; the handsome doctor with his dark hair and eyes. When he said he loved me and took my virginity on the recovery room bed I couldn't believe it.
Why should such an attractive man want me? I suppose I'm not ugly, but I'm not beautiful either. "My little brown mouse," my father always called me. I suppose it described me well. Small, with brown hair and eyes; certainly not a beauty, not like Cynthia, and to match the "Little mouse" imagery, I've always been shy, ready to scurry away if I thought I was being noticed.
Odd isn't that I chose a people oriented profession like nursing? But somehow that was different; I could be professional, keeping that slight barrier between me and the patients. It was in social and intimate situations that my shyness took over. I suppose that was how I had come through high school and my years of training with my virginity still intact; a pity in a way because otherwise I might not have fallen for Glen so easily.
But I did fall for him; I adored him but could scarcely believe that he could love me.
After he asked me to marry him and I took him to meet my parents, they, all unknowingly, reinforced the doubts I had about myself.
My mother, like just about every woman from nine to ninety years old, fell for him.
"Darling, how did you manage to capture him?" was my mother's comment.
My father, less frivolously, asked, "Sweetheart, are you sure? I don't want my little mouse hurt."
How was it they didn't know that they hurt me with this implication that I wasn't attractive enough to have someone like Glen want to marry me?
Attractive or not he did marry me, and for five wonderful years we were passionate lovers. It was at that point that I got pregnant and left the practice and Cynthia replaced me.
I don't blame Cynthia for the loss of the child because at that time I had no suspicions about her and Glen. But for all that Glen reassured me that there would be other times, his sexual interest in me gradually diminished as his apparent need to work late in the practice increased.
When he told me he was going to leave me and live with Cynthia he was all consideration and selflessness.
"You keep the house, Laura, and the furniture. Cynthia and I are going to get a place of our own eventually so..."
His "generosity" was all too clearly his conscience salve; but didn't he know how that wounded, telling me of their plans after he'd dumped me?
I didn't protest; I didn't scream and abuse; I sat there and took it like the little mouse I was – a mouse cornered with nowhere to run. I didn't even cry until after Glen had moved out.
So here I am now, doing what I should have done after Glen left. I have sold the house and the furniture, and I'm sitting on the window seat waiting for the taxi with only my suitcases left, and looking up at St. John.
"I don't suppose I shall ever see you again, St. John – you and your foreshadowing of the coming seasons."
The taxi is here. It is shiny black like a funeral car. How very apt since so much has died inside me.
"Goodbye, St. John."
Chapter 2. An Aggressive Mouse.
I left Windabri for a city far from the town. Having been a group practice nurse it hadn't been difficult to get a job since I came with experience and glowing references; no doubt the references were yet another salve for Glen's guilt feelings.
The bitterness I still felt about Glen's betrayal had led me to the decision that I would re-invent myself. No more the little brown mouse grateful for the crumbs of love and affection that fell from life's table; I would be assertive and independent.
There's a problem with re-inventing yourself. I've noticed over the years since those days how people who make the decision to change do not in fact really change; not deep down.
What I mean is that they find in themselves traits that have always been there, and these become exaggerated. In my case the shy little brown mouse retreated into "Fort Mouse," a stronghold bristling with defensive armaments to repel any who tried to enter the space I created around me. But inside the fort I was still the shy mouse.
What I had determined was that no male, however handsome and charming, would ever get to me again. Not only that, no one, male of female would get close enough to hurt me.
I did my work efficiently but made it obvious that beyond that I wanted no socialising. If any male hinted at an interest in me, and there were a couple, I fired off a missile from my fortress, making it clear that there was no entry into it.
Outside work it was the same. If I went to a theatre, concert or to see a film, I went alone.
The group practice was located in one of those dull concrete and glass monstrosities that have come into fashion over the last century. The building was occupied by many businesses, most of them connected in some way with medicine. Located in the building was a cafeteria used by many of the people who worked there. The tendency was for the people who worked together to occupy adjacent tables where they laughed, joked, chatted and complained.
Right from the beginning of my joining "The Centre Health Practice," I had cut myself off from the lunchtime conviviality and regularly occupied a small corner table. Often the cafeteria was full at lunchtime, but however crowded hardly anyone ventured to sit in the chair opposite me, and if they did, they never repeated the experience.
The more polite of my colleagues called me, "A loner;" the less polite, like two of the younger receptionists, Margaret and Pam, were less polite. I knew they called me "a stuck up bitch."
Had I been less efficient at my work I might well have been "let go" from the practice, but I maintained just sufficient communication with those with whom I had to work, to not give any reason for them to dismiss me.
Yes, I was a loner. I sheltered inside my defences and any attempt to touch on the personal was immediately repelled. I was still nursing the wound that Glen had inflicted on me, a wound that would not heal. In all this, and as I looked out from my bastion with suspicion, trusting no one, I was not only a loner, but also lonely.
There is a difference between being a loner and being lonely. Some people seem to be made to be loners, just as people like nuns and priests seem to be made for celibacy. They have become what they essentially are, but others have become what they are by force of external circumstances.
