"Troubles when they come, come not single spies, but in battalions."
Chapter 1. Storm.
Margot sat staring sightlessly before the large picture window in the lounge. Big black clouds were rolling in from the sea. The atmosphere was oppressive and the town waited for the storm to break to bring relief to the sweltering populace.
Lightening ripped the air with increasing frequency and as the storm grew closer so the accompanying thunder increased in volume and immediacy. As the clouds came over the town it began; first the violent wind, then a torrential downpour.
It was mid afternoon, but across the town it was as if night had descended. The lightning sizzled and crackled and the thunder roared right overhead, but Margot sat as if she was a statue, making no move to turn on a light and seemingly unaware of nature's violence just beyond the window.
As the rain lashed against the window, sending cascades of water coursing down the glass, the tears began to stream down Margot's face; silently at first, then with increasingly heartrending sobs, Margot wept.
After a few minutes she seemed to slide from the chair she was sitting on, and fall to her knees. Then through the choking sobs came the words – words that seem to be torn from the depths of her being.
"God what did I do?" she moaned. "Why, why, why? Where did I fail? What did I not give that I should have given? If you are punishing me then tell me what for. What wickedness have I done, or are you just a scourging God, striking out at us for the fun of it? You're an evil God...oh God help me...help me."
Margot collapsed in a crumpled heap and the storm that raged outside matched the storm that seethed within her.
Just three hours before Mark had come home unexpectedly from work. Without preamble he said, "I'm leaving you Margot. You can cry and scream as much as you like, but I'm leaving."
At first Margot had thought he was joking; not a very tasteful joke, but still a joke. Then she realised and began to question Mark ever more frantically. What had she done? Why was he leaving? Where was he going?
She became ever more hysterical, begging and pleading, but Mark was adamant. He was leaving her for another woman. They had been having a sexual relationship for some months and now he was going to live with her.
Mark had put together a few of his things saying he would send for the rest of them. As he made for the door Margot had still been pleading, clinging to him, telling him she loved him, wanting to know where she had fallen short.
Mark had shrugged her off, refusing to discuss anything. She could have the house and the second car, he didn't care, and he would make her an allowance. Then he strode out.
For a long time Margot sat before the picture window staring out unseeing at the storm. Her thoughts were a crazy jumble as she tried to understand what had happened and in the midst of this and under the influence of years of routine, she began to wonder what she would give Mark for his dinner that evening.
But Mark wasn't coming home that evening or any other evening. She wouldn't hear his car pull into the drive and then his footsteps and the door opening and his cry, "Home darling." She didn't even know where he had gone or the woman he had gone to be with.
Sixteen years of marriage seemed to have all gone for nothing. All the love and caring had been wasted. In bed she had never refused Mark; not that she had ever wanted to refuse being a very libidinous woman.
True he had in recent months rung her to say he was "working late" but...of course...why had she never suspected? The apparent fall off in Mark's sex drive she had put down to the "working late," and yes, it was that, except it wasn't the sort of work she was supposed to have thought it to be.
Margot dragged herself up from the floor. The storm outside was passing, but the storm within her still went on. She suddenly felt sick and raced to the toilet and vomited. When she finished she washed her face then without thinking dragged herself into the bedroom and dropped down on the bed.
The tears came again; the bed where they had made such love and so often until recently she would now occupy alone in the long nights. Even now she felt his kiss, the touch of his hand on her breast and then his gentle stimulation of her clitoris.
"Made love! Yes, perhaps that is what it was. The child I have never been able to conceive; the child Mark and I had wanted so badly and tried so hard to...the new woman! Would she give Mark a child?"
Exhausted by her vomiting and emotionally drained, Margot breathed out, "Mark...oh Mark..." Then she slept to dream of standing frightened and alone on a column with a storm raging round her.
Chapter 2. Awakening.
She slept on through the afternoon, the evening then into the night. She did not wake until nearly ten o'clock the next day. It was as if her psyche had been defending her from the pain she would have to face when she awoke.
Still fully dressed and lying on top of the bed covers she at first did not know why she was there and how she got there. Then with Mark's place in the bed unslept in, she came to full consciousness and the realisation of what had happened. She lay very still, not sobbing, but with tears streaming down her face. She didn't want to get up, eat or wash, but bowels and bladder made their needs known, so she was forced to rise in the end.
She made the effort to shower but did not eat. At first she wandered aimlessly round the house, so much of its contents reminding her of Mark. His golf clubs, fishing gear, and the room he used as a study, his computer and most agonising of all, the clothes he had not taken with him still hanging in the wardrobe; so much of Mark still there.
She felt a terrible weariness so she took to the bed once more. She still struggled to come to terms with the fact that Mark would no longer be there with her, but while rationally accepting this, emotionally it was still not real for her.
She began harrowing her self again with the question, "Why?" Where had she failed? She thought she had given herself completely to the marriage; was there something she had missed, something she had done or not done?
Then as hope seems to rise up in people even when there is in fact no hope, she began to tell herself that Mark would come back to her. One day soon he would come in through the door and beg her to forgive him. It had all been a terrible mistake and it was her he really wanted. This other had been a mere passing fancy that he had foolishly succumbed to.
She would forgive him and take him back. She would understand, telling him that such mistakes happened in life. Of course she would forgive him; didn't she love him and isn't forgiveness one of love's great gifts?
Deep down she knew this was a futile delusion but in the torment she was suffering she had to cling to it.
Her body and mind were merciful to her, giving her snatches of oblivion as she slept again, dozing on and off for some hours.
She rose in the late afternoon. Her body was demanding sustenance and she made an effort to prepare and eat a simple sandwich. She ate it sitting where she had sat the previous afternoon and beyond the picture window the glorious day - a day of light and silver glistening sea, the gulls swooping, their screams faintly heard through the glass.
She saw but did not see. The day might just as well have been as black as the previous afternoon. For a moment she thought of the tablets in the bathroom medicine cabinet, then the cliff top where the incoming waves boiled below. The thought passed, but it was to return again.
