Pets

Pets

By

John Riminton.

They looked a perfectly normal couple: mid-fortyish, Jack undistinguished, could have been athletic once but now getting plump around the middle, Meg still quite attractive but not likely to earn a second glance if one passed her in the street. She works in the local community Post Office while Jack has always worked in the urban delivery business as a driver.

They were only a few weeks short of their 25^th wedding anniversary but trouble lay in the fact that Jack had never acquired any insights into Meg’s mind. An only son, followed by boys school and a male-dominated work environment, for a man of, charitably, average intelligence, the opportunities just hadn’t been there. They had no children of their own – two pregnancies both ending in miscarriages - that had left Meg with deep scars that Jack didn’t begin to understand although he did have regrets that he would never have a son to take to a Test Match. He felt that their marriage was going along routinely as marriages did, didn’t they? He accepted Meg’s company as he always had, still using the same term of endearment that he had used when they were engaged.

They had just turned off the TV after watching a programme that had not engaged either of their minds, each engrossed in their own thought. Jack reached over to stroke Meg’s arm and asked “Pet, what shall we do to celebrate our Silver Wedding?” Suddenly she angrily brushed away his hand and swung around to face him “Don’t ever call me that again. I’m not your bloody pet although I do sometime feel like a pet rabbit trapped in a bloody hutch. Don’t you understand anything? I’m not interested in who is going to knock out whom is some boxing ring or win a trophy in some dam’ ball game. There is more to life than that and I want to be free to find it for myself before it is too late. I don’t want a Silver wedding celebration - I want a divorce!”

Jack was flabbergasted. This was nonsense, absurd, where had it come from? Why now? What was different from yesterday and the day before?

Surely she was just feeling petulant.