A River Path to Love

My name is Linda Prince. At the time of writing I am forty one years of age but the events I shall relate to you began their course six years ago. I am, or was, the wife of Jeff Prince, CEO of a government department and, as I was to discover, philanderer extraordinary.

I have a daughter, Lisa, who was aged fourteen when the events began. After her birth Jeff announced that we didn’t need “any more bloody kids”, and marched off to join the vasectomy brigade without any discussion between us. I thought it really was so we didn’t have any more kids, but really it was to assist with his extramarital love life as I later discovered.

At the point where my story begins I had recently learned of Jeff’s sexual activities, and this started the trail that led to us being two people leading separate lives but living in the same house.

I had worked in the same government department as Jeff when he was, as people said, “An up and coming young chap.” I was what they called “The Com Girl.” That meant that I worked in a room on my own filled with electronic gadgetry such as computers, fax machines and other equipment that the rest of the department didn’t know how to use in those days.

I don’t wish to sound big-headed, but a lot of the young and not so young men in the department seemed to find reasons for visiting the Com.Dept., and quite a few surreptitious gropings took place, and were repelled by me. I had a particular goal in mind, namely, Jeff.

We both found reasons for working late one night and he took my virginity on the Com.Dept. floor. It was a rather bloody event and we had a hell of a job to clean the carpet. It may have been that time, or one of the following occasions in the back of his car, when I got pregnant.

Jeff could not leave me alone at that time, and I admit I wanted him pretty badly, so the pregnancy led to marriage.

I continued working to within a month of giving birth, and from then until the proper start of my story I was a stay at home mother.

It was at the point when I learned of Jeff’s “bits on the side,” and the growing aggression of my teenage daughter, that I took up another job. It was nothing spectacular, just a three day a week part time job receiving classified ads for our city newspaper. It was not for the money I went back to work, Jeff was at least generous in that respect, but to get out of an environment in which I found no great satisfaction.

We have a path that runs beside the river that flows from the hills, through our city and its suburbs, to empty itself eventually into the sea. It was my custom to walk my dog Arnold along part of the path every morning, starting about seven o’clock. It is here that you meet with many other people jogging, pounding along in a bath of sweat and deodorant and, others strolling or walking their dogs.

It is the dog walkers, more leisurely in their strolls that stop and talk, comparing breeds, commenting about the weather, and so on. Over time the conversation can become more personal when family news and such like, are exchanged.

One couple I got to know quite well were Ken and his wife Delia. They were in their late sixties when I first got to know them, and it was Ken whom I saw most of. This was because we were amongst the most ardent dog walkers, and when everyone else seemed to have taken cover, because the temperature had risen to around forty degrees Celsius, or it was pouring with rain, we would still be out there.

These two had experienced the tragic death from cancer of their daughter. She had left behind a son, twelve years of age at the time of her death. The boy was in the care of the man she had married eighteen months prior to her death, and now lived about sixty kilometres from the city in a small country town.

Ken and Delia were both troubled by the way the boy was being treated, but as they pointed out, they felt that at their age they could not cope with a teenager, and in any case the stepfather had full legal rights in the matter.

The grandson, Stephen, came to spend a weekend with Ken and Delia once a month to keep him in touch with the rest of the family. This was how I came to meet him. He was fourteen at that time.

I saw Ken coming along the path with his beloved Dalmatian. Ken is tall, well over six feet, and walking with him was a boy who promised to match Ken’s height in later years. Coming up to them Ken introduced the boy as his grandson Stephen. We said hello and shook hands.

A brief conversation followed during which Stephen and I surreptitiously looked each other over as newly introduced people do, not wanting to appear as if they are weighing each other up.

Not until some years later did I discover what Stephen had seen when he looked at me, but I do recall something of what I saw as I examined Stephen. He had clearly inherited some of his grandfather’s features, especially the soft brown eyes and the not especially large mouth that had well moulded lips turning up at the corners and always seem ready to smile.

I had seen photographs of the dead mother, and she had been very beautiful indeed, and Stephen seemed to have some of her characteristics including the well shaped nose and golden-brown hair. I also noted that he was not suffering from that teenage plague, the pimple.

The boy, like many teenagers of his age, tended to be rather lanky, but unlike many of them he moved with a sort of flexible grace and stood very upright. I could see he had the making of very handsome man.

He said very little during our conversation, but I could almost feel his eyes on me when he thought I was not looking in his direction. It came across as a very intense examination of my person.

I felt a mixture of amusement and embarrassment at this inspection and if I looked directly at Stephen, his eyes would turn away from me. It was only after we had parted and I was on my way home that I considered his interest more carefully.

My thought was, that many boys like him, in the early stages of puberty, are trying to fathom the female psyche. Often their mothers are the model for them, but Stephen had no mother. Perhaps he was assessing me as a potential model, or perhaps even at fourteen his interest was earthier. I smiled inwardly and let the matter drop from my mind.

Two days later I met with Ken again on my walk. His first words were: You made a big impression the other day, Linda. As soon as we left you Stephen said, “She’s a beautiful lady, grandpa.”

I laughed and made the rather limp response, “That’s very flattering, especially coming from a boy more than half my age. I must say though, he has all the making of a very nice looking man. The girls will be after him.”

“I don’t know, Linda. He doesn’t seem to be very apt socially; he doesn’t make friends easily. One of the problems is, he’s very intelligent and the other kids at school call him a “swot,” and tend to avoid him. His stepfather keeps a tight rein on him, and he has little opportunity for socialising outside school. Delia and I are fairly concerned about him.”

“It’s a difficult time for kids his age,” I commented, trying to be sympathetic.

“Yes, Delia and I have him down here as often as we can, you know, the odd weekends and during the school holidays, but there’s no one around here he can relate to, except a couple of oldies like Delia and me.”

He gave a rueful smile and said he had to be going.

Weeks and months went by and I saw Stephen along the path walking with Ken or Delia, and sometimes walking the dog by himself. When we spotted each other we always stopped for a talk. I would ask the usual boring adult type questions about school, friends, hobbies and so forth. Stephen would respond by asking me about my family and work. I avoided family matters as much as possible not wishing to reveal the wretched state of the home front.

Always as we talked Stephen would look at me intently like a hungry puppy wanting to be fed. I continued to tell myself that he was looking for a mother substitute in an older woman.

At times our conversations would go on for quite a while, especially if it was one of my non-working days, and we would sit on a bench by a bend in the river, sometimes talking and at other times in companionable silence. During school holidays I saw much more of him when he spent a week or more with his grandparents.

I found myself taking an increasing interest in Stephen, and watched as over time he reached the six feet tall mark when he was sixteen and also the way he filled out. The rather gangly youth had started to disappear and the attractive man he would become began to emerge.

It was towards the end of the year in which both my daughter and Stephen were sixteen that crisis erupted in our household. Jeff and I were now leading almost totally separate lives, except he still expected me to wash and cook for him, and take care of the house.

Our house, in keeping with what Jeff saw as his CEO image, was about twice as big as we needed, with swimming pool, tennis court (mainly unused) and a triple garage. If the house was already far too big for us, it was to become even more so in the sense that Lisa left.

It started with Lisa being brought home by the police having been caught shop stealing. They decided not to charge her, but she had to submit to a lecture by a police sergeant. I accompanied her to this lecture and the sergeant sternly, but not unkindly, outlined what she could expect if she were caught again in a criminal act. At the end he asked, “Have you understood me, Lisa?”

Lisa had remained silent throughout the talk with her head hung down. To the sergeant’s question she responded meekly, “Yes.” I found this troubling because Lisa was anything but meek normally.

From the time she was fourteen Lisa had become increasingly irascible and abusive, and the deceitfulness of her meekness in the presence of the sergeant was revealed as soon as we got outside.

“Fucking arsehole,” she exploded, “I fooled him. Who does he fucking think he is, lecturing me!”

I decided not to risk a scene out in the street, so I waited until I got home before saying anything.

“Lisa, the sergeant was trying to…”

“Don’t you fucking start! What do you know anyway? You live your dreary life and want me to be dreary along with you. Well I’m going to live. I’m not saddling myself with some girl fucking shit like dad.”

I was shocked at these words, not because of the foul language so much as the revelation that she knew about her father’s behaviour with other women. I had done my best to keep it from her, but someone must have told her.

Lisa went to her bedroom and I didn’t see her for the rest of the day. At some time she went out and stayed out until the early hours of the morning. Next day I had to go to work so I still saw nothing of her.

When I got home from work there was a note on the kitchen table: “Gone to live with Gig. Don’t bother to try and get me back because I’ve looked up the law and it says at sixteen you can’t make me come back.”

I was aware of Gig’s existence, a tattooed, pot smoking, and pill popping boy of about twenty years of age. He lived on the dole in a single room, and my efforts to get Lisa to drop him had only entrenched her determination to hang on to Gig.

On enquiry I found that Lisa was right. In our State a sixteen year old could not be compelled to return home. Oddly, the social worker whom I spoke to seemed to be very supportive of Lisa leaving home. Without actually putting it into direct words she implied that Lisa must have left home either because her father had raped her, I was an impossible mother, or both.

Jeff, who had never intended that I should get pregnant in the first place, took the situation with what he called a “philosophic outlook,” and advised me to do the same. I gathered he meant that he was not sorry to see the back of Lisa and had no intention of trying to persuade her to come home.

My own attempt to get her home was to say the least, a miserable failure. I knew where Gig lived and I went to the house which contained the one room he rented. I knocked on the door and it was answered by Gig, stripped to the waist and stinking with a combination of sweat and foul breath. Added to his odorous person there wafted out through the door a combination of pot and the fishy smell of much sex and little washing.

Gig called back into the room, “Yer ma’s here.”

Lisa came and looked over his shoulder. Her complexion was a sort of dirty white and there were sores at the corners of her mouth. She had changed dramatically in appearance over a very short time, but one thing had not changed, her vitriolic tongue.

”Fuck off bitch. I know what you want and I’m not coming home, so piss off.”

The door was slammed in my face.

I leaned against the stained and damp wall opposite the door, tears starting, beaten.

I had no one to talk to. Both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and a husband who couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think I had ever felt so alone and wretched in my life.

I left the place and in the following days tormented myself wondering where I had gone wrong with Lisa. How did she turn from being a sweet and much loved little girl, into a foul mouthed harridan?

Jeff had left most of Lisa’s upbringing to me, so, I told myself, “It must be your fault, Linda. It was you who went wrong.”

Sleepless nights followed as I wrestled with my feelings of guilt, but I could never come up with any solid conclusion as to where I had gone wrong.

There were two things that saved me from complete despair. One was my work. This at least forced me to concentrate on something other than my woes for a while. The other was Stephen.

He was nearly seventeen by then, and I met him on the path as like an automaton I still walked Arnold every morning. Now an aging dog, he ambled along at a snail’s pace, so I could not even lose myself in a brisk walk.

Stephen almost immediately detect something was wrong with me.

“What’s the trouble, Linda, you look thoroughly depressed.”

Had it been Ken or Delia I had met I might have poured my troubles out to them as they were both good listeners. Meeting Stephen I at first felt no inclination to tell him my troubles. It was Stephen’s initiative that changed that.

We were near the seat where we had often sat before, and he took my hand and said, “Come and sit down, Linda, you look exhausted.”

He led me unresisting to the seat, and still holding my hand he asked, “What’s wrong.”

As I have written, I had noticed the physical changes in him over the two, nearly three, years that I had known him. What penetrated through my fog of misery at that moment was the change in his voice. From the piping notes of my first hearing him, he now had a deeper, mature and even mellow voice. Strange as it may seem I think it was his voice and the look of concern that made me open up to him.

For the first time I let it all pour out and as I did the tears came. He put his arm round me and I leaned against him. Passing people must have thought it odd, a teenage boy giving solace to a woman of thirty eight. One passing female walker stopped and through my sobs I heard her ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?” I’m not sure what Stephen replied, but she moved on.

When I finally stopped my outpourings and my sobs subsided, we sat, he with his arm still round me and I continuing to lean against him, in silence for a long time.

In opening up to him, I had expressed my feelings of guilt, condemning myself as an inadequate mother. When he spoke, Stephen took up that theme.

“You know,” he began, “It’s no use going over the past like that. You can’t change it and in any case, Lisa’s behaviour doesn’t mean that you were a bad mother. There are lots of things – I know kids at school that come from terrific homes. They’ve got the sort of parents I’d like to have, but they still go wrong, still get into messes. We’ve had girls at our school who have run away from home, and I used to wonder why.”

He paused for a moment and I felt his arm give me a squeeze, then he went on, “There are lots of things that cause kids to get into trouble, not just home things. I mean, look at the images presented on the media; all the “beautiful people,” you know, “if you buy this, you’ll look like that. And the kids see these things and haven’t got the money to buy whatever it is, so they think they can get it by stealing.”

“Then there are the kids who think it’s smart to take drugs. The adults can warn them but that’s the ‘oldies’ talking, and ‘what do they know?’ For a lot of the kids it’s as if there’s a big wonderful world out there, and they’ve only got to make the break, and they can step into that world.”

“Don’t blame yourself Linda, there’s so many temptations hung up in front of us kids, and a lot fall for it.”

I was amazed at his understanding and the comfort he had offered me. How was it that a young man like Stephen could give me what my husband couldn’t or wouldn’t?

I thanked Stephen rather awkwardly for listening to me and he said very seriously, “Any time, Linda.”

I looked up at his face and wondered, did I see love in his eyes?

I fled from that thought. Warm though my feelings were for Stephen, I needed no further complications in my life, whatever form they might take.

I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him again, and said “I must be going.”

I had no need to leave him at that moment, but despite my gratitude for his comfort, I felt a sense of danger. Something I did not want to name or acknowledge had stirred in me as I felt his arm round me. By departing when I did I was fleeing from a threat.

Having fled from him, with all the contrariness of a human being, I looked out for Stephen in the days that followed. He did not appear along the path but I met Delia and casually asked how Stephen was.

“Oh, he’s gone back home, won’t be down here again for another three weeks.”

I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. As I walked home I questioned myself why I felt like that. Was it such a disappointment not to be able to see Stephen for three weeks? I might not see him even then if our walking times did not coincide.

I cannot exactly say I was in a fever of anticipation for Stephen’s next visit to his grandparents, but my thoughts constantly returned to him and on the weekend his visit was due, I spent extra time along the path, hoping to meet him.

He usually arrived late on a Friday afternoon, and might walk the dog on Saturday morning. Of course, he might be with Ken or Delia and that might constrain our conversation, but just to see him….

I had just about given up and was about to go home when I saw him. I think he spotted me first because he was waving and coming at a half trot towards me. As he drew near I felt my heart beating against my rib cage and I was having difficulty breathing evenly as if I had just been running hard.

Coming up to me he asked, “How have things been going, Linda? I’ve been thinking about you often.”

“No too bad I gasped,” my heart pounding even harder.

“Let’s sit down and talk he said,” and taking my hand he led me to a bench.

Once seated, he did not relinquish my hand, and I had no desire to free myself from his touch. I who, as an adult should have been the stronger, was seeking support from him. I wanted his arm round me again, but could think of no way I could gain that end without seeming brazen.

“Has anything changed?” he asked.

I took this to refer to Lisa, and since I had not heard from or seen her, I could truthfully say that nothing had changed. If, on the other hand, he meant had anything changed in me, then I could with equal honesty say that it had. I played safe and took him to be referring to Lisa.

“No, nothing’s changed Stephen. I haven’t heard a word from her. I’ve been wondering about making another attempt to talk to her.”