lock

She was a pretty woman, grey long bob, slender in trousers and unremarkable clothes, standing on the corner of a street I was walking past and smiled.  “Do I know you ?” she asked.  “No” I said “ but I have seen you before – so I smiled.”   She invited me to have coffee. 

The café was there, with chairs outside, not busy.  I said “Thank you.” And though I offered to pay for all of it, or my cup, she insisted on paying for exorbitant coffee and talked.

I know that you do not hear the story of a life in one meeting.  You hear what the person wants to tell you

so I said little.  She seemed to need to talk and I reproduce here as much as I can, her terms, not mine.  She told me she had been married for 52 years, had four daughters and that from time to time, quite regularly, her husband (she referred to him only that way) preferred the company of a woman other than herself.  This had gone on for years and she found it painful.  

She also told me that she had a most unhappy childhood, brought up mostly by her aunt, because her mother “lost” her father and landed with a young child, needed to find another one quickly.   She said that she was envious of and unpleasant to her sister, and she came to London to a nursing school where other trainees mocked her for being from Norfolk but having no local accent. 

One night she went to a church where she heard preached that all her sins would be forgiven if she declared for the Christ

and she couldn’t wait till the end of the service.  She said that the church had changed but she was still part of it, they ran a coffee bar on Tuesdays for the young and the newly arrived. She had learned to be a barrista.

She said that she had asked her husband for a divorce but he didn’t want that.  I said before I could stop myself “Of course not.”  She asked why.  I said “Because he married his mother.” She said that was probably right, he lost his mother when he was 15.  After the first half of his life in the army, he went into the City where he met women and the pattern she described had culminated most recently in a 27 year old beautiful Ukrainian who had lived with them and when she moved out, he wanted to continue the relationship.   She said “I hate fireworks

but he has booked for the three of us to go and see the local display.  What would you do ?“ I said I would tell him  quietly that he was not kind and I would not go – but she will and I know why.  She is afraid not to.  She asked me if I would come to the Church on Tuesday and I said “No, thank you.”

This is what I call a lock.  She can only do it this way, he can only do it that way.  Such a waste of a life, to know that there is a pattern or a series of patterns but be unable or unwilling for whatever reasons to change them. 

I don’t know much about the Middle East but in reading about it, no matter the angle on this subject or any other, I am always aware of the writing.  Writing is like food.  You like it or you don’t.    I’ve tried before with two fine writers  but I can’t get in.  However I kept Black Wave which is about the unending standoff between two rival theocracies, Saudi Arabia and Iran, to dominate the area.  The writer is a Lebanese journalist. 

And I am reading Jeremy Bowen’s The Making of the Modern Middle East, much and justly praised.

Israel and Palestine have been locked from the beginning. And in spite of all sorts of effort on both sides, the majority see only one way.  And other vested interests manipulate the standoff. 

The war in which my father first fought was called variously the First War, the Great War or The War to End all Wars.  

Devastation by Graham Sutherland, in the Tate.

I wish.