A Man Called Darius Read online

  Darius was in the hospital for two weeks and each passing day did show signs of improvement, even if very slight... but I was pleased and optimistic. I visited him every day as Frampton was able to look after the children and when I wasn’t at the hospital, I would have him in my thoughts all the time, realizing the beautiful, gentle, courteous person he was and cursing again the days in Iraq when my stupid pride and snootiness had denied my love. It was so silly to have denied what I now had, because of nothing but class... He had never been my class. He was in a class of his own, high above anything I had ever know before and I would hang my head in shame …

  I had never known anything of his background, but in those times of great unhappiness when he was in hospital and I was so alone, I would think about the parents he must have had. Did he have any other brothers or sisters? He had never spoken about them, if he had. It seemed that Darius was an angel who appeared from nowhere, with no roots... Another Adam... Another beginning...

  The children were wonderful in those anxious times also, considering how very young they were. They knew that something was wrong and that daddy was in hospital, but they never said anything out of place or anything that would distress me, although I tried to smile when they were with me and reassure them that daddy would soon be home. It was just that he was a little tired from all the work he had done in the garden; the garden that he had made so lovely for them to play in.

  ***

  Darius came home to us, after a sudden improvement in his health and the joy at Rowan Trees was something that begged description. Frampton and I had decorated the house with some of his favourite flowers and although we knew he would never see them, we knew that he would know... He always did.

  I cried all that morning as I went about the preparations for his homecoming and I bounced our little ones on my knee in excitement when they were not otherwise engaged in hurrying about their own little chores in anticipation of the broad and handsome, loving smile that would soon be with them.

  Frampton was just as excited as any of us, as she fussed about in her kitchen, humming her own versions of songs that nobody else knew...or recognised as she prepared her ‘delicacies’... the ones that she knew he loved. Nothing was to be spared... everyone contributed with smiles and of course... those few inevitable little tears.

  I went to the hospital to collect him just before noon, with butterflies in my stomach and arrows in my heart and when I saw him, standing in his dressing gown, waiting for our arrival, I just thanked God that at last, our dream could continue in the happiness we shared and I hoped against all hope that he would be with me and the children for a very long time to come. I helped him to dress but we kept stopping to kiss each other. Oh, the happiness in my heart in those moments...and when we did eventually arrive home and the children and Frampton had hugged him to bits, we tried to settle down to what would normally be described as marital bliss...

  I knew I was lucky. Darius and I never had those difficulties that beset most marriages. You may think me trite but we never argued... we never quarrelled and we were always in each other’s arms when there was an opportunity to spare from the workload... Perhaps it was because I knew that time was short for us. I don’t quite know but I began to rethink differently after Darius came home again. I remember sitting one afternoon in the window seat of the lounge, just watching him as he dozed peacefully in the old armchair that he loved. It was old... very, very old, but I had it re-covered in chintz and it matched very well with everything else in the lounge. As I have said, I watched him as he sat there; his head nodding with the heaviness of slumber and I thought about each moment as it passed us by. I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and it read thirteen minutes past two then I glanced at my wristwatch. In a moment, I thought, it will soon be fourteen minutes past two and where has number thirteen gone? Life was passing by fast and I knew in that precise moment that I should use every single moment as it came... to the fullest. I resolved that I would fill each minute from then on, with peace and happiness and then when I had no more time to contemplate... I would have no regrets. I moved over slowly and quietly to where he sat and knelt down on the floor beside him. I took his hand... it was cold and pressed it firmly against my breast to warm it for him. He stirred and opened his eyes. I gazed into them …and willed them to see me... To see the love that I felt for him and which must have shown in my own eyes, but he squeezed my breast tenderly and I held his had firmly there. I didn’t want him to stop... I didn’t want him to move, but he leaned down and kissed me and I heard Frampton close the lounge door quietly and call out softly to the children who were playing somewhere in the garden.

  “Darius darling... I have never asked you before and you’ve never told me... What were your parents like? I do so want to know. I want to know everything about you and somehow, it didn’t matter before … but now.”

  I hesitated, thinking I should have chosen my words more carefully, but Darius saw nothing peculiar in my question.

  “Parents... parents?” he asked and his eyes seemed to stare straight ahead as he puckered his brow as if to think over what I had asked. I waited... His face was so still; his skin so satin smooth and tender as if a thin film of pure soft cream had been spread across it.

  “I don’t remember much about my parents, Frannie,” he said softly. “Well, not my father anyway and very little about my mother. I think she was fair and tall and … I like to think she was very beautiful, but then I suppose all children see their parents like that, don’t they?”

  I squeezed his long, slender fingers, which had got much thinner since he came out of hospital so that his wedding ring was loose and I smiled... waiting for him to tell me more... but there was a sadness surrounding his face... a sadness in his sightless eyes.

  “I have often wondered... Darius, they must have been very special people. I wish I could have met them.”

  He touched his lips with his fingertips and I heard a long, deep sigh coming from the depth of his chest.

  “I was brought up in an orphanage, Frannie. I don’t remember much at all about my parents,” he said and turned his face away from me. “I like to think of my mother and imagine she was beautiful, but then every boy thinks that about his mum, doesn’t he?”

  I wanted to reach out and touch his face... bring it back to look at me... to face me at least, even if he didn’t want to say any more, but I didn’t. I wondered if I had touched on a subject that was too private; too delicate for him to talk about, but in the next moment he turned again.

  “I have never known love, Frannie... until I met you. That morning in the desert when I first saw you, something strange happened to me... something that I could not explain then, nor can I do so now, but I knew my life had changed... and changed forever. When I lost my sight, it was no great issue to me, because by then, you had gone from my life and you were the only one I wanted to look at. What good were eyes that were denied such love? When we were apart... for those long years, I never knew how, but I did know that I would meet you again somewhere....and in that moment when I asked you to leave me, in that little bed-sit in Paddington... it was like someone else asking you to go... NOT ME ...but I couldn’t help the voice that spoke... even against my will. I wanted you and I loved you, but the eyes had gone and gone forever, and there was no going back. I realized that if I truly loved you, I should let you go, but my brain was afire with a contradiction that was so strong... My heart... my body screamed out for you but my logic said NO. It was only when I heard you cry outside my door that I knew how much I loved you and I knew I had to tell you... or go through HELL for the rest of my life. Yes, my sight had gone but my memory was alive and that would never leave me. It tormented me day and night with the thought of you... that you had forgotten me and you would surely have married and perhaps had children. That thought hurt me Frannie and I knew I was being selfish but I wanted above all, that you should be happy
and I didn’t think there was any room for me, in that plan.”

  I took his hand and led him into the bedroom. I had already left the curtains closed to ensure that it would be cool for him when he took his nap in the afternoon and the bedside lamp was still on.

  “I love you Darius Crane. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. I have never loved anyone else but I have suffered because I denied that love I had for you, in my pride. Will you ever forgive me for the waste of all those years we were apart?”

  He lay beside me and I gently pressed my lips against his eyes. I could hear Frampton singing softly with the children in the garden. Their voices faded as if they were miles away.

  “I love you Frannie... I love you my darling, he said and I reached across and switched off the light.

  ***

  Darius improved so much that life took on its normal state again and the pupils arrived as they had done before. The piano lived again... and Rowan Trees became the home and the haven that it had become since the arrival of the man who was the cause of so much joy and happiness.

  Summer had drawn to a close and autumn was with us, but the garden still looked radiant and many of the flowers were still in bloom. My life was blessed again in every way and I became complacent, I suppose, accepting all this as if it was my right; my heritage. Then suddenly Rosie became ill. She was only eighteen months and she contracted severe and repeated pains in her neck and head and I feared the worst... I concluded... I hoped... it was her teeth; the normal teething troubles that children have, but nevertheless I called Doctor Boylan. I hated to see such a little one in such distress. Her face would go blue and she would be unable to breath. Poor little Fleur was confused and distressed to watch her little sister in such agony, but when Doctor Boylan arrived, he diagnosed what I should have guessed in the beginning, but I was thrown by the head pains … It was a severe attack of croup and I wondered if it could have been an allergy due to Fotheringay repeatedly jumping on her bed. I had known of this before, where dogs and even cats could bring on croup when a child is too near the animal, so we decided to make a kennel for Fotheringay at the top of the garden, just near the kitchen. Joseph, who still came to see us a couple of times a week made a splendid one for us from some old wooden orange boxes, which he sanded down and varnished. A real felt roof completed the job and Fotheringay seemed to be happy with his own little room but I noticed he always tried to get near Rosie whenever he could. She was his favourite girl. The kennel looked marvellous and Fleur whooped for joy whilst Rosie coughed and tried to smile. Darius would have been so proud of it, I thought and then... I thought again... Oh God, when will I ever get it into my thick skull that my Darling cannot see?

  Darius helped me to sponge Rosie down as her temperature began to rise. I had hoped to keep much of the baby’s illness from him as I realized he had more than enough worries of his own, but where his eyes had gone, his hearing was doubly acute and I should have realized that he would hear my baby coughing and the scuffling going on as Frampton and I did what was necessary for the little one. She was a good and brave little girl and never once complained, although sometimes I would see her eyes bulge and she would writhe in her cot and shove her fingers into her mouth. I was very worried. Croup is considered to be of no great serious importance but Rosie was very ill and although she was very young, I couldn’t help wondering if the silence in her pain was an attempt to save her daddy any worries... or could it have been that she had lost her voice... and would never be able to speak again... I imagined all sorts of things and I went through a week of agony, hardly resting at all, except for a few hours in the late afternoon when Frampton would insist that I should lie down. Darius knew all that was going on, of course, and as I have said, he did what he could to help and stayed with me through the night, by the faint light of the tiny lamp at Rosie’s bed, ready to do anything that might be required of us, should Rosie awake from her restless and fitful sleep.

  Eventually, the fever left her and she opened her large brown eyes and smiled at us. I shall never forget that moment of triumph when my little girl smiled... the smile we had all prayed for. We went around hugging each other, laughing and crying simultaneously, but happy and grateful that the worst was over... or was it?

  I had begun to pray to God for things that I would never have considered praying for before. In fact, prayer was a new item in my life. I prayed that the children would grow up good and strong and that if they married, they would have the blessings that I had received in my marriage to Darius. I didn’t consider for one moment that they might meet another Montague Blythe-Summers ...I prayed that Darius would get stronger, although I realized it would take a major miracle for him to see again and I thought I was too much of a novice at this praying to expect that anyway, but I wanted him to be happy... I wanted him to know that I was there to make him happy, but sometimes when I watched him sitting alone in the garden, or poised over the piano, with that distant look that he so often had, I wondered if he really understood just how much I wanted to please him; to love him above everyone and everything else ...even my children. I prayed for Frampton in thanksgiving for the help and comfort she had given me in all the years I had known her and I prayed... yes, I prayed for Jeremy. Dear, sweet, loving, wonderful Jeremy... who died, that I would be free. I owed so much of my happiness, if not all of it to him.

  Strangely, I never prayed for myself. I never felt God would answer that prayer, but I knew He would look after me, in the way He knew best, as Cardinal Gillespie would have said... and that was good enough for me... after all, He knew that all I wanted was Darius, didn’t He?

  Fleur seemed to abound in health and hardly ever caught a cold, that you could talk about. She would laugh if she sneezed, wrinkling up her pert little nose as her golden hair fell about her shoulders. She would grin when I would scold her if she was naughty for any reason, but she never really was. She was always trying to help around the house and I remember one day, when she saw how busy I was with Rosie and she had tried to lay the dinner table for us. Frampton had developed a temperature but she made light of it, arguing that it was ‘just a bit-o-mild flue’ that was going around and that she would pop into the chemist in the village and get something for it, adding that the walk would do her good. Anyway, Fleur took the cutlery to the table, carrying it in her tiny apron pocket, but she found the table too high for her to reach and she dropped the lot all over the floor. She didn’t cry as I thought she might. Instead, she returned to the kitchen and insisted that everything should be washed again, before she made her second attempt... which she duly did and with success this time, standing on a stool... but everything was set in the wrong place. Well, it would have been O.K. if you stood on your head and were left-handed... I guess.

  Yes, my life was blessed in every way now. I had my prayer bank and it was getting quite healthy... my insurance for the days that might not be so good, I thought, but fate has her way and no-one can deny that.

  Darius took a turn for the worst. I couldn’t sleep with him because the slightest exertion in bed gave him the most excruciating pain. The doctor came every day and all that could be done to alleviate the pain was done. Darius was on morphia every four hours... sometimes every three hours if the pain got too much …but he died on August 14th 1965, the day my little Fleur was three.

  ***

  I cannot describe the darkness in my world from that moment on and the utter despair that made me believe that I would never be able to experience happiness again in my life. I had the children of course and I loved them dearly, but Darius was THE ONE in my life. He was my life and although I bitterly regret it and should never even say it now, I hated anything or anyone who intercepted my grief for him, even for a single moment. I wanted to run away from everything and everyone, including my two sweet darlings as I watched my beloved in his coffin, which lay in the lounge, near the white piano that he loved so much. I watched his be
autiful, serene face and touched those magnificent hands that had produced so much beauty in his music and which had so recently filled this very room. Strong, long-fingered hands where the veins stood out in defiance of the life that was no longer with him and I cried... and cried... and cried ...I wished then I could have gone with him into eternity... or wherever. It didn’t matter to me where we would go as long as we went together.

  Doctor Boylan told me that he had warned Darius of the dangers of his illness in 1961... and I then began to understand some of the thoughts that had befuddled me beforehand. It was at that time that Darius had proposed marriage to me. He knew he was dying in all of that time and he had sworn his friend, Boylan to secrecy. He never mentioned this fact to anyone at any time, but that was typical of the man he was, not to give anyone pain or concern on his behalf. He had developed a tumour of the brain, which had settled behind the right eye. I should have suspected something of this nature from the long, pink pills, but I didn’t simply because I didn’t want to think of anything like that.

  He was buried on the 20th of August and the sun left the sky for me at that moment when I flung my single white rose, down deep into the earth, on top of that shiny lid that bore his regal name.