A Bugle For The New Day

 He had seen her as a distant vision in those heady days when he was setting out to conquer the world, a goddess standing aloof on an island surrounded by a lake with water lilies, sunlight filtering through the trees and falling upon her in a radiance that made her whole being glow.

He had wanted her with more than the possessiveness which would characterise the rest of his life and he had ultimately reached her island and captured it with a surprising lightness of foot on the water lilies. Women had played no part in his life before, other than his mother and her steam, and Flora had been confined to a succession of callow fledglings paraded before her with a regularity boring enough to transport Richard into the exalted realm of a knight in shining armour. He was a man who made things happen, and he proved it to her before she could catch her breath.

The Clayton downfall and the death of her father marked the point when things had begun to go wrong. The rosy glow was fading, at first by degree, then going out altogether as more and more of his time was demanded to rescue their affairs. His growing family saw little of him as he became totally committed. The children had become Mother’s province, filed by him under D for Domestic, resulting in Father being seen as an ogre figure, always scolding, admonishing, laying down the law, only in evidence when something nasty was about to happen.

It seemed to him, as he watched tiny motes playing in the cold slab of sunlight slanting onto his desk, that he was in a vacuum of his own making and he thrust out a hand attempting to stop the dust motes from dancing, for they seemed to be celebrating his discomfort, but he only succeeded in making them swirl faster and enjoy themselves more…

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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