Free Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 by Isobelle Carmody Page B

is ignoring the warnings of the gods and striding on to challenge them.
    And why not? What else is left for him to do, now that his wife has been transformed into a hag? It feels like their realm, this sudden transmogrification. She left him a beautiful woman and has returned to him a crone. He always knew. She never deceived him about this.
    And yet, somehow, he didn’t know. For all his powers of imagination, he has never envisaged her as she appeared to him that evening. He has always believed what his eyes told him, not his mind. He has been entrapped by her womanly arts, like a spider in the jaws of its deadly mate. His train of thought offers him a nice bone of resentment to gnaw on, but he stops it there anyway. It is nonsense. They didn’t come together on Bondi Beach or at a Hollywood meat market. They met as mature adults. Their relationship is not based upon such superficialities, but on mutual respect. So why should it matter? Why should the colour of her hair make a difference?
    It does.
    He passes a corner pub. A man and a woman burst out of it, laughing, ducking beneath the rain. The man is wearing a linen jacket, which flies apart as he walks and shows the leanness of his body beneath a soft, white shirt. He has a set of car keys in his hand. The woman is raven-haired, wrapped in a long tweed coat. She takes his arm, tripping along beside him, hurrying from the rain, still laughing. For an instant the man’s eyes catch his, and the look in them says, Aren’t you envious, mate.
    As he walks on he understands that he has invented it, this silent exchange, and he sees why he has. It has provided him with the answer to his question. Because he is proud to be seen with her. She draws attention for all kinds of reasons, but her looks are high on the list of them. She has a great body for a woman of her age. She doesn’t dress provocatively but she has a unique sense of style; a casual elegance which turns heads. But who will look at her now? He tries to remember other grey-haired women in their circle of friends and acquaintances. He spends some time thinking about this, and lights a cigarette to help him concentrate. Are there any? He can’t think of any. Does that mean that there aren’t any or that the ones there are have made no impression upon him?
    So is that it? Is that the basis of their relationship? The whole fifteen years’ worth? The fact that she looks good on his arm?
    The rain is coming down harder. He needs to get out of it but he daren’t go into a pub. So he ducks into the next takeaway he passes and orders a doner kebab and a black coffee. There are no tables, but there is a ledge running along one wall with stools pushed under it, so he eats there. The kebab is greasy and slimy with mayonnaise and some kind of translucent red goo. He isn’t hungry anyway, and neither the smells nor the tastes produce the appetite he knows he ought to have. But eating the food and drinking the soapy coffee is the price of shelter from the rain, so he takes as much time over it as he can.
    He is still severely rattled. His heart is going at an alarming rate. He feels its uneven rhythm in his throat, as unwelcome as a neighbour learning the drums and as difficult to ignore. He tries to listen to the conversations going on behind him at the counter, but his internal dialogue is too demanding and soon reclaims his attention.
    He can’t accept the conclusion he has reached about the nature of the relationship because to do so would be to accept an image of himself that he finds unpalatable. If his interest in her is solely based upon the augmentation of his ego, then he has become the kind of man he despises, concerned only with attracting admiration and envy. He will not accept that judgement upon himself. He declares, silently, that he loves her whatever she looks like, but when the image of her white hair returns to his mind he recoils as strongly as ever.
    He asks for