CHAPTER NINE

The month of September had gone half and Vivian had been constantly counting her fingers about how many days it remained to give Charles a kick-out-of nexus. Vivian whose conscience was not entirely clear upon her divorce plan, elopement and betrothal looked extremely blank and mild compared to her former characters, in which she was recognized to be agile and mostly saunters. She was unable to overcome the small daggers of bereavement which her divorce proposal stabbed her with. “It is not fair, Charles she heard herself say, “It is not fair that you left me roving in subutopia, and it’s not fair that your roving has blighted my life, too,” she sobbed.

Anger surged and ebbed in her like the waves of the sea, and she knew it wasn’t going to go away until this divorce case was over. The false calm she had been forcing herself to feel, the distancing from this case wasn’t gone. In one moment, she was in it up to her neck and likely to drown in it. It stood like a faggot in her heart. She had never imagined that Charles would do something like this in the beginning of his courtship. It is heart breaking to watch someone you love go away from you and finally believe that you’re the enemy. What she really wanted to know was why he wasn’t inviting her along.

The thought about her divorce was just haunting her like a ghost-haunt, blowing on and forth into her conscience, telling her that it would be wrong to divorce Charles on the conditions or reasons, which she laid down, which she could not explain by the divorce laws. She knew it is very adverse and ridiculous to law of the society and her religion for her to destroy her marriage rite. Perhaps, she was beginning to think that Charles was in love with many women in Rano State. For her, that would most probably be the reason he couldn’t visit her, or that he couldn’t care about her condition and what had happened to her. She knew she wasn’t responsible for the way Charles had chosen. Of course, not! From what she had said and what she had heard about her husband’s family, they were very busy reinforcing accusation against her about Charles irresponsiveness to her. They developed the story that she had indeed driven Charles away.

Sometimes, she would sit on a stile, gaze at a distance, and wept bitterly for the situation which Charles’ absence had kept her into. Panic lanced her. How could she swallow it? She wondered desperately. Yet, in spite of her evil plans, she was under increased impressions to divorce Charles and betroth to John Hill. She had all the day mourn thousand pities over Charles negligence and had refused eating normally. On account of this, she began to thin down a little. Everybody complained about her being so lean and she was resisting an urge to explain to anybody the cause of her leanness. She did not quite know what to say to people who asked her, and she began to feel embarrassed, a little foolish, and very aware that she was simply living like a widow. It was suddenly impossible to understand or even remember how she could have been so gullible to Charles.

Mrs. Rogers had suspected and attributed her thinness and quietness to be signs of new pregnancy. She thought that her slimness coupled with restlessness and momentary wailing were signs of few months pregnancy. Because of her perplexed condition, she had all the day provided for her and taken proper care of her, in such a way that she lacked nothing. Upon all this charitable providence by Regina; she still retained an air of grief, dejection and languor. She was mute to every inquiry she made. She watched her now and then, being careful not to stare too intently on her as she washed the dishes. She had never really had the opportunity to observe her this way, since she came back, and she certainly would not want her to think she was taking advantage of the situation, which she sensed that she was into. On one occasion, when she saw her retrieved into a condition of answering her questions after they had dined together, she congratulated Vivian on her recovery, the advantage of which she took entirely to herself and all these by way of introduction to a most mutual conversation:

“You are now tolerably well,” she said. “And you are very welcome from school to stay with us as long as you pleased before the school re-opens from the strike incidence (thinking that Vivian just returned for holiday, without knowing that she had already gone to her parents first before she came to them, and there was hideous plan she was about to carry out).

“Thank you mum,” Vivian said slowly. She was silent for a minute. Regina noticed her looking through the doorway of the palour as enraged person could do in a strenuous speculation. She was listening to the end of the conversation. She felt irritated, though she did not mind that she was listening in.

“I observed that your famous way of behaviour took pathetic nature, which instead of the happiness, joy and peace, your attitude all of a sudden shows nothing but the depth of misery, horror, and the sharpest affliction. You look faintly embarrassed, and uneasy. Would you kindly let me know the cause of your sudden change of character? And who did rile you up? Are you sick?” She asked. “You don’t look good,” she inquired.

She couldn’t answer. She remained silent or speechless like a dummy and Regina was seeking how to completely engross in conversation with her. Vivian was half turned towards her uncomfortably like a woman who lost her only child. The guess was that something had gone amiss, keeping in mind that she is no longer happy as she was before. Now she had to worry about whether she was irritated by them. In some strange ways, she felt her terror, as if she had left some kind of psychic impression on the atmosphere that she was able to sense.

“Truth for truth! What about your husband Charles? – You have been here with us and you never talked about him. I am wondering!” she questioned.

She felt almost as if she had been punched as soon as she mentioned about Charles, the question was so unexpected and added sorrow to her wound. She suspected that her secret of divorce had been given out by some talkatives because she suspected previously that the news of Charles distancing her had reached the ears of her parent-in-law. For a long time, neither one of them said anything. There was no answer from her. She wanted to stop the conversation at the mere mention of Charles, but instead she found herself ready to expose her condition which had become the shackles of a horrible secret troubling her mind… because the isolation that Charles had planted in her mind were writhing like snakes in a pit. “This was not good,” she told herself. Not good at all.

“Mum,” called Vivian, “If I could express what caused the sudden change of my character, or what did rile me up, it would hang on Charles’ shoulder and satanic behaviour to me. After few months that I married him, he played me a false love. He did not really mean the love which he vowed to me during our wedlock before thousands of friends, relatives and foes. I discovered that he was untrustworthy, not fit to marry a poor girl from poor parents like me. In the earlier hours of his courtship with me, he praised my virtue, virginity and beauty – which he professed that he did not find in most of the women he had acquainted with throughout his life. But after our weeding and honeymoon, I soon felt the consequences of his false love: for all my true love given to him never seemed to me in the light he used me, my dreadful necessities, my gratitude and above all, to say the plain truth, the dissipation and diversion from the exaggerated love I began to find in him in our new wedlock; from the black corroding thoughts my heart had been a prey to ever increasing propensity since his absence, concurred to stun my affection toward him. If I thought of him to be my first and only charmer of love affair, he was still with that untenderness and regret of his fondest love. I am embittered that I am no longer worthy of him; and I would be shameful to be named after his name; ‘Vivian Charles’. I had neither virtue nor courage to endure the separation which he had done purposely. He abandoned me at home and lived with his girlfriends in the township

“Oh Vivian,” began Mrs. Rogers. “I am scared of your complaints and disagreement on love and trust on each other, which you think have changed level. I mean the love and marriage treaties between you and him. But I would assure you that violent love never last long, that which I did not acknowledge between you and my son before your wedding took place; but whatever would result from wedlock should be weighed on the scale of suffering love that binds two together, before taking action for divorce. If there was qualm that arose among you, I would assure you that it is the result or consequence of love. Love without consequence and bitterness is no love in the first place. Nothing good comes easy. And every good thing is in the midst of a storm. You cannot take things to heart like that without being ill. If it is Charles’ absence that riles you, did he not let you know about his affairs and whereabouts in Rano State?”

“No, in all his letters, there was nothing like his residential address,” she began. “But I would like you to understand one phenomenon. It was wild and senseless for Charles to use my love for him against me. The poor never die when to die; and men sometimes hardly live their vows of love. The love they start with plain young girls would end up in false love. And the promises they made in the beginning would end up in fiasco; yet, I owe my pure love to Charles. I am glad somehow that I married him, because I learned a lot of things that I never knew were in this world, especially the deceitful characters of men and I am grateful that I saw it all a little bit.”

She drawled her words, looking exceedingly perplexed. Except that, to her mother in-law, there was something strange about her drawling and her perplexity about Charles: between the shadow of something evil, and in her bearing an intentness that gave her mother in-law a faint sense of uneasiness as she watched her spoke of the direction in which her living with Charles had taken. Although Mrs. Rogers knew that this entire squabbles among them was a test that always comes when two mates enjoin together; she absolutely could not permit the fusses among them. Besides, she knew that in a new marriage, you hear all kinds of things about each other. She was not really impressed with the point she was raising. She was seeking and failing to find any word that might give her comfort and correct her upset and wrong impression against Charles.

“Yes my daughter, to have a true love is as scarce as goldmine, and if you find one, it is a fight and great battle. Look, Charles did not do well if he has not returned to you since he had been posted to Rano on youth service. He did not do well by withholding his residential address in most of his letters to you. It was bad enough that he had to abandon you. Why in the world did he do that? You had only vague idea where he was in Rano. And you had not any idea which direction he was, and this makes it impossible to find him. You cannot connect to anybody in a big State like Rano without an address. He would have given you his residential address, and that would offer you the opportunity to visit him from time to time. Well, if you suspected that he was engaged in living rascal life, you should know that it was not the way he was brought up. He was brought up in a single way. If there was a strange development in his character, it would be the result of external influence, the effect of his association in society and with the delinquent campus undergraduates. That wouldn’t stop you from loving him. Please wait for him until he returns from Rano.”

“Mum,” began Vivian. “Never justify Charles’ adult characters. Character is a victory. The beauty of any man is his character. And character without virtue is satanic. His childish characters were not compatible with adult expected characters. The monkey could only defend the baby she carried in its womb and would never dare to defend the one she carried on her back, because she might not know when the baby would pluck a forbidden fruit and eat. There was no act or psychology to find a man’s mind show on his face. Remember that I and Charles joined and agreed to part no more until the end. His ideas recently, were far from our original statutes. Though my love for him was as firm as ever, just as the time I first met him. His own proposal wasn’t different from that common to others, but I maintained it as if it was different. After our wedding, I never thought that a consequence like this would arise between us in a very short time. It is like a dream to me, and I am now an object of caricature and criticisms. Worst still, he has considered me as his enemy, which I did not regard as something strange. In spite of that, I still extended my love and cherished him. A true wife ought to love his husband indeed, as she really loved herself. After our wedding, we started well; I did not give away my true love to another man because of Charles’ ignorant flirting. I rejected the satanic ways of living with a groom and flirting about like other women laden with sin, and faced him with agape love.”

“Vivian,” Regina called. “You have been speaking to me with a broken heart about Charles’ misdeeds to you, but there is danger in your complaint which could destroy your relationship with your husband, and I do not want you to do that. I know you felt a pang and resisted his careless behaviours. You have had sad thoughts, regrets and was guiltless. Nothing in this life had ever been as painful as being able to trust a spouse who roves about. His acts are amazingly passionless. At least you weren’t supposed to be alone, because suddenly you are terrified of being alone. Terrified of what his long absence from you might hold, and upon learning your situation, I would like to offer you some useful pieces of advice on what to do: don’t ever expose the ills or weak points which you discovered from your husband to aliens or even neighbours, lest you would as well destroy your own status. Every home has one problem or another. Please note that every man born of woman has his weak points. You know that where a person points one finger on another, the rest four fingers point at him. Do not be in a burst of discomfort to retard your health. Your thoughts about him might be suspicious, and one I am ashamed of almost as soon as I heard it. When Charles comes back from Rano, I and his father would call his attention on your complaints about him, please.”

“Thank you mum, I will take it as you have suggested.” Vivian greeted with conclusive voice that interjected every discussion which was further to exist between them. She rose from her seat, turned away and went to her bedroom, nursing the rage that had already begun in her. The only thing she knew with absolute certainty was that she hated the way Charles behaved and would elope if any reconciliation between them wasn’t reached. She did not have to plan her life around Charles’ needs any longer, because he was never coming home.

Mrs. Rogers also left, after this confessional dialogue with Vivian. Regina in turn related the news of the discord to her husband – Rogers. He absolutely couldn’t permit that of her divorce loophole in her own mess. He thought about it – discarding each thought as his wife explained it to him. There was nothing he found reasonable that would engender her divorce. It was hard for him to understand that she actually had to abandon her husband and plan for something else. It was ridiculous. He instantly began making her intention unacceptable to himself by laughing at her machinations decision. However, they jointly rejected all her plans over the issue between her and Charles. Their advice gave the bald, bare facts on her impatience on the characters of Charles, since his recent decent into excommunication. Then, she judiciously concluded that if Charles didn’t come home within the space or time limit she had stipulated, she would carry out her plan on divorce.

Her parent-in-law’s questions and advice had forced her to dig up things she had been trying to forget for a long time, and her accountability of those dubious acts of Charles vent her anger and pain. She stood in her living room and tried to reach for calm, but she couldn’t find peace because a woman without a hubby has no rest of mind. ‘‘In the first place, he has deceived me. In the second place, he has robbed me of men who offered to take up my problems, if I did something he took amiss that made him to behave the way he had chosen, the repercussions on me could be bad indeed,’’ she said.

At the approach of night fall, the idea that Charles had betrayed her love, wedlock band, and had so soon forgotten her beauty and personality became a sudden feat that seized her like one seized by epileptic encounter. She was married to Charles for few months ago. For most of these months he was getting increasingly obnoxious. She had never imagined he would do something like this in the beginning. She immediately said that everything had an end; therefore, her relationship with Charles would also have an end. It was true she had wasted most of her precious life in the name of marriage with assumed husband, but nothing spoiled.

In any case, in early days Charles took her to theatrical shows, plays, operas, movies and dances and every diversion of the town. All of which pleased her indeed and in those days, he explained every mysterious thing to her. Perhaps, the natural impressions of surprise and great admirations, which such sights never had failed at the first time to excite an uncivilized girl like her, who was new to the delights of time but to her, all this outing with Charles to areas of township regale had absolutely and sensibly proved to be the circumcision of her timidity and possessed the complete dominion of her, a passion in which body, soul and spirit left her no chance for any other kind of replenishment of life. Charles then was a universe to her; all other things were indeed nothing to her.

Though, her love in comparison with his own love was so excessive, that it completely erased every suggestion of jealousy. For one notion which signified to her the less of Charles’ love gave her exquisite torture that his love, she dreaded of worse than death, made her forever renounce and defy his pretenses of greater love affair; nor had she indeed, the occasion for, were she had to enter here on the recital of several examples where Charles mingled before her with women than she dared hint or to mention, (which considering his flirtatious attitude was no such amazement and misdeed to her), but one would accuse her of warming up again an accusation that she ought to have forgiven and forgotten.

Upon all his constant sleeping away from home, for handful of months they had lived together, she could not for one day had any wrath on him rather she tolerated him and loved him so much that Charles could feel it, while he did not love her as much as she did to him – (which was the constant and only matter of everyday contention between them). Even though he tried at least as to give her the satisfaction of believing it impossible for man to be tenderer, truer, more faithful than he was. Yet, his love for her was tampered with the love affairs with other women that misspell his constant testimonies of loving her the more. If she spoke to him about his flirting indulgencies, he would bark at her like a dog and protested to divorce her any time she mentioned or talked about his infidelity. She said a wise thing to Charles when he had not been posted to Youth service: ‘‘man’s immoral acts were pleasing in his eyes: so did Charles’ amorous love in his eyes.’’ During those days, she could, without check of awe or restraint gave a loose to joy and avoided every scheme of his dalliance with other women in which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion in prostitution act.

When she reflected on his compulsive attitude, and his apparent distancing her, she was still mad at him. Wounded. Even. She felt bruised by his dishonesty with her, all the more so because she had been caring for him in both his guises since they married and lived together. The sense of his betrayal was sharp and painful. She felt really painful for scrutiny and questioning she was getting now from her colleagues about the absence of her husband. But she would tell her school contemporaries that “marriage is not the be all and end all of life”.

Besides, it was her fault for not having recognized that something was quite wrong about her from the very moment she started dating John Hill. She had found her volition on divorce and elopement plot eliciting, and the strange notion she took against every parental warning had been exhilarating.

They met in the university, married and things had been soft enough for both of them that a trivial wildness in each other had simply seemed like part of all the rest. His suspicions of students who befriend her had always been unjustifiable, and his sudden interest in women to women had seemed like a lark. Even after they married and when his flirtatious act began to worsen, she had been able to explain it away as a vagary. Back then there had been long periods when Charles would not come home for many days. During the early periods, she was silent even when she felt he was wrong, or cheating her, because he would not hear her controversies, anyway and he did only become extremely agitated when she dare to mention his adulterous activities.

Vivian, this particular night spent few hours thinking on the behaviours that Charles had exposed before her. When she slept that night, she dreamt like a moron, packing her properties, eloped and lived with John Hill, who gave her his residential address in Novo State. She dreamt how she lived with him in peace and tranquility, and neglected the traditional and church weddings; her permission to Charles’ wishes and her demands which he accomplished. When she rose from the bed that morning, she thought that John Hill whom she reserved all the love that Charles rejected was lying down in the bed with her, but she found that John was not in the bed with her only that she was enflamed by a distant thought of a new lover. She was dreaming on a grasping shadow.

Two weeks had added to the days Vivian stipulated for Charles’ return. One day, when she saw that she would no longer wait upon him, her patience wore out. She was ready to forget about all the troubles she was worrying about Charles. She realized with the most awful, creeping sense of dread Charles’ behaviours and his insistence to direction of life which he had chosen. She packed up her traps in Charles’ household, eloped, and married John Hill, who had his business in Yale Republic.