Three Single Women


Arnie loved women. He loved them from afar in the secret places within his own mind, the hidden places where Arnie was a hero, a strong shining light, scatterer of bright pleasures.
Arnie liked women. This should have given him an advantage over the machos, and yet somehow it did not. His gentle light was never bright enough to outshine their bolder glare. Born gentle, quiet and shy he walked unnoticed through life. Age brought maturity, but shyness remained tapping at his shoulder reminding him to hold back, not push himself forward. Within his own mind love could be glorious and golden, out in the world he met only confrontation and rejection which clashed and rattled against his world, while pity chased after him calling names.
Arnie knew all about love. He had fallen as often as the rest of them, but fall en silently, without words, without tears, so nobody heard the crashing of his breaking heart. When the time came to speak about his love, Arnie could never hold on to a look or a word. It was a race he did not know how to enter, and so, left behind from the start, he had never even caught sight of the goal where love waited to welcome him home.
Now at the age of 40 he still limped and lingered while the bold, the vicious and the uncaring had wooed and won and gone on to woo and win many times over.
Arnie was pitied by women. The well meaning and motherly gathered him in, petted him, fussed over him and sent him back into the world as they would a small son late for school. Arnie was used by women who allowed him to mend their broken vacuum cleaners or their splintered lives, then dismissed him with dispassion as they would any tradesman whose job was done.
Yet still Arnie loved women. He longed to be gathered in to that scented world where women shared their soft secrets and wove their feminine magic. Arnie knew about this world, and he knew it was set apart from the world of men.
There were plenty of women to be found in the kingdom of masculinity. He knew, because as a young man this was the first place he had looked for them. Here he had found decorative women who could be bought by the hour or by the lifetime and displayed as symbols of male achievement. He found nurturing women who could be safely directed towards the kitchen and nursery and left to skilfully manage the necessities of perpetuating society. He found clever women, and beautiful women, and independent women and ambitious women, all mounted like trophies around the walls of this club which was the world of men.
But Arnie had learnt a secret. He knew that when the men turned their backs, or went out to play with other toys, the women slipped silently from their posts and escaped into another world. Here they gathered into a sister hood of intuitive liberation, slipping and sliding out of the firm masculine grip into the freedom beyond. It was here that Arnie longed to be. But his male ness excluded him.
Then one day Arnie met Briony, Alice and Maggie - three single women who seemed prepared to open the doors and invite him inside their alien world. For Arnie it was an initiation, a wondrous infiltration into forbidden lands. His gentleness, his sympathy, his shyness, all the things that had held him back from being one of the men, magically opened those coveted doors for him.
He played with their children, the same games he had played in his own childhood but this time relished in the richness of family life - Arnie had been abandoned to an orphanage at the age of three.
He opened their bottles of wine which they bought at the supermarket with the fish fingers and chocolate biscuits. He sat with them around the kitchen table when they met together on a Saturday evening to drink wine, cook food and talk, talk, talk - all their thoughts, their plans, their fears were taken out, shaken, folded and packed tidily away again within the security of sisterly bonding.
Three single women, they said, laughing, heads together, and Arnie laughed too and bowed his head into the circle.
Briony was a single woman, even though she had two ex-husbands, not to mention a mother, sister, four nieces and eight cousins all within easy drop ping-by distance. Briony wove all the strands of her life together into a comfortable nest. The husbands shared the children, everyone mutually support ed the family network, and just when they thought they had Briony safely trapped she slipped away, reminding them that she had her own life to lead. Alice had never intended to be a single woman. She was too well organised to seek out the untidy life of single parenthood because wives belonged with husbands who belonged with their children in their own homes. When Tom rolled his car over and over across six lanes of the motorway and fatally disrupted her careful life by making her a widow, she reshuffled her schedules and carried on, stretching herself a little thinner to fill the gap where a husband should have been.
Maggie had always been single. Partners had passed though her life, leaving her with heartaches and children, but none had ever owned her long enough to take away her deep-rooted singleness.
Three single women and Arnie. His gentleness admired their independence while his masculinity feared it.
He told them about his childhood, abandoned by a mother who was not sup ported enough to cope with an illegitimate son. The shy boy went to live with the orphans and learnt how to survive out there in the world of men.
They analysed him - challenging him to tell them how he felt about his mother, what was his image of the nuns who brought him up, why had he never married.
He told them he was angry about his childhood - he had never told anyone about this anger, but then he had never told himself about it. In this safe circle it popped up and surprised him from the place where it had been so deeply buried he had forgotten it existed.
Three angry women - they said, smiling, heads together. Briony knew about anger, her family made her angry always smothering her with their being there. She knew why he felt angry about his childhood in an institution, where everything had to be shared with so many others. Escape from this anger came in recognising one’s own unique independence - in being single. Alice knew about anger. She carried a deep anger towards Tom for betraying her by dying. Arnie’s mother had betrayed her child, and no amount of suffering could buy off the anger. As a single person there was a freedom from betrayal, freedom from anger and the guilt of its presence.
Maggie knew about anger. She raged against life which grudgingly bestowed meagre gifts with one hand while greedily grabbing them away with the other. Arnie was justified in being angry, he had been dealt a lousy hand. Why conform to the ways of those who treated him so badly? Being single meant the freedom to be unconventional.
So Arnie understood he was angry, and understood he was single, and for got the world of men where he did not belong. Real life sat around the kitchen table exploring the passions of inner reality.
They did not allow him to be shy, he must speak up, tell his secrets, examine his emotions. This was the price that entry to the group demanded and he paid it willingly. This was his family, these were his friends and he had found the place where he belonged.
But even Adam grew weary of Paradise . He bit eagerly into the apple that would expel him from the only place where he had known happiness. And Arnie was Adam’s son and bound to the same fate.
Everyday life began to lose its reality as he felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into the magic with which he clothed the three women. Hours and days spent in work or leisure meant nothing because they were hours spent away from the circle that enclosed his true inner being. He longed to be with them during the day when they cleaned their houses, went out to work, did their shopping - for him every moment of their days had acquired a special touch of the miraculous which he longed to share.
One day he found himself walking past the school just at three o'clock and just when Briony and Alice stood waiting for their children.
They broke off their talk to greet him, laughing at the surprise of seeing him in such a place at such a time of day. He laughed too at the odd coincidence of his being there, even though he had planned for days to make it happen so casually.
Just little things to begin with, excuses to see them, to exchange a few words, to catch at a strand of the magic. They the necessity to be near them became an obsession. His thoughts turned constantly around ways to plan a meeting, work was forgotten, meal times ignored, nothing mattered if it did not link him in to a part of their lives. He spent hours sitting outside each of their houses in turn, and he followed them in the street without their noticing. Maggie went to work each morning and disappeared into a large office block where he could not follow. At five o’clock she re-emerged, called in on the childminder for ten minutes, then took the children home and shut her front door for the evening. There were few opportunities for casual surprise encounters.
Alice did not go out to work, but she was constantly busy. At any time of the day she was likely to rush out of her front door, leap into her car and drive off purposefully to the shops, the gym, the school. He became familiar with their routines but found no place in their busy days where he could feel welcome and belonging.
That left Briony. Easy going, dreamy Briony who drifted through her days in hazy disarray and was always pleasantly surprised to see him appear round the aisle of the supermarket or standing in the queue at the post office. They met often, and as Spring progressed and the weather grew warmer it became almost a habit for them to walk through the park and talk together in the late lunch hour before she collected her son from school.
Briony talked about her friends, she talked about her family, and about her life. She never asked practical questions like why Arnie was not at work, why he always had time to be with her. By the end of May, Arnie was in love with Briony. Uplifted by the heady independence he had learned from these three single women he was determined to tell her how he felt. He had spent too many lonely years afraid to speak about love. Now these women had given him boldness, they had helped him contact his anger and his fear and told him he had the right to ask for his needs to be met.
He chose the day carefully, a sunny afternoon when flowers blossomed in the park, birds swooped and chirruped among the green bushes and the air he breathed felt clear and fresh. An uplifting day, a day for taking a step for ward on the path of life.
But Briony looked stunned, the colour drained away from her face. He saw her lips white and rigid, her eyes darting away from his face as she searched for a way to escape. Just for a moment, then she recovered her familiar calm manner and looked at him kindly, firmly, pityingly.
Friends, she was saying. They were all friends, they all loved him as a friend - not the love of a woman for a man. A mistake - she said it was all a mistake and she must be leaving - time to go to school - things to do.
For hours Arnie sat in the park until finally it grew dark around him. The light had gone out in his life, he felt it splutter and grow dim as his magic world melted away. As if returning from a dream he tried to hold on to the memories but found them slipping through his grasp. He knew he was waking up back in that familiar bleak place where he failed to match up to other men.
He walked past Briony's house and saw a light in the front room. They were all there, all three sitting in the golden circle of lamplight and he watched from the dark street, alone on the chilly pavement.
They were talking about him, he could not hear the words but he knew what they were saying. He felt their pity, their sorrow, their longing to help him but their dread of touching him now he had returned to the men.
Then they laughed and their heads bend together - three single women.

Back to Stories