Stories of the Street - Twenty Three

The baby is a sleep.

She walks quietly to the sitting room and checks that the bay alarm is working. She can hear breathing, an occasional snuffle and movement, so all is well.

She sits down, her body tired and her mind more than a little numb.

When was the last time she spoke to anyone about anything interesting or intellectual? Indeed, when was the last time she spoke to anyone?

Mid morning and she has been up since six o clock. Brian, her husband hardly said anything to her this morning. He was getting ready for work, eating breakfast, listening to the news quietly on the radio. She was breast-feeding the little one.

“That feed is badly timed,” she thinks. “It needs to be either earlier or later but somehow it just fell on that time. Brian doesn’t seem to mind. He just coasts through the process and leaves.”

She thinks about switching on the radio but cannot be bothered. TV at this time is as empty of stimulation as a conversation with the baby. Perhaps even less challenging! She looks around and realises for the first time that she can remember, she does not have at least one book on the go. How did that happen? She gets up and looks at the bookshelf in the sitting room.

After a long time surveying the contents she decides there is nothing there she wants to start or to re-read. “Why don’t I have a paper,” she wonders. ”I could have one delivered every day and at least I would have something I could dip into and out of as I trudge through the day.”

She walks through to the kitchen and puts some water in the kettle. She does not even feel like calling anyone.

“What’s wrong with me, today!” She wonders.

“Easy,” She answers herself, “you are bloody tired, deeply in need of regular sleep, you are lonely, desperately short of intellectual stimulation, deprived of adult conversation and contact and, in a word, BORED!”

“OK, now I know why young mothers are so eager to join mother and toddler groups. But, by the time baby is a toddler I might need a straight jacket…”

“When the baby wakens up I’ll change her and walk down to the library, then I can do a bit of shopping on the way back. That way, I can have my human contact and get something to read, too. It’s been a long time since I went to the library.”

This gives her some hope as she finishes making her coffee.

Sitting down in the silence of the sitting room she suddenly feels quite low. As she brings the cup to her lips the telephone begins to ring. She puts the cup down and dashes for the ‘phone. As she lifts the receiver she hears the baby stir awake and cry and her husband’s cheerful voice says “Hello!” in the earpiece.

Suddenly, and without warning, she burst into tears and uncontrollable sobs.