The Deal

The 'Deal' was set, with no name or formal acknowledgement, that it was, a 'deal'.

It was more of an 'Agreement' I suppose.

The Husband had been off at the 'War'.

The New Wife had been at home, gestating, and bearing, and giving birth, to the child, who had been accidentally concieved, at a contrived, conjugal meeting, hasitly convened, just before the Husband had been posted off, Unexpectedly, " Overseas".

Upon the Husband's Return, he was dismayed, and shocked, to discover he had a child, though he had known of her birth, and he had even looked forward to becoming aquainted with this small child who was the result of his final expression of love, with his new bride.

A fractious, hostile, jealous, little daughter, who obviously disapproved of everything about him.

How dare he come between her and her mother... and 'Little Sister'.

Wait a minute... Little Sister??

There could be NO Little Sister.

The Husband had been overseas, deployed in hideous warfare, too terrifying to talk about, on his return.

His Return, to a horrible truth, he did not wish to face, nor want to confront. His Bride had betrayed him.
She had born another child, after his,~ this second child~ not his.
The result of an accidental 'coupling'.

After much agonising, a 'Deal' was struck.

The Wife could keep His (Their) child, on condition she relinquished the second child.

The 'Deal' dictated, should the Wife decide to keep the 'Second Child' she could not have access, nor the custody of, the Elder, Marital, Child.

The Distressed and Distraught Wife, chose the 'Deal'.

****
The Myna birds screeched in the tall dark Pines, a cacophony to deride and mock, the Wife in her grief.

The 'Deal' had been struck.

She had forsaken her second born, and cleaved to the Husband, and her firstborn daughter.

Too soon, she was pregnant with her third child, a 'cementing' of the marriage, and a denial, in a sense, of her folly, her 'fall from grace'.

As she bore the hot and heavy pregnancy of this third child, the screeching of the Myna birds continued to torture her with their mocking cries and shrill intrusions.
How did she remain sane in all of this misery?

Her fractious first born continued to irk. She did not seem to be compatible with her father, who she continued to regard as an 'Intruder, and treat with Hositlity. The child was frightened of the screeching birds, and most of all, the dark and ugly, outodoor 'toilet', under the dark and brooding pines.

The poor Wife tried to deal with the fractious daughter child, and the screeching of the Mynas as she slaved over the copper, which she had to light, to wash the clothes, and the concrete tubs, in which she had to rinse, and rinse again, with cold water, in the outdoor shelter that was her 'washhouse'.

Her chapped hands were testament to the hardship. Her hands bled, as she pegged out the clothes on the line, in the cold air of Winter.

Then, in pregnant heaviness, she laboured over the tubs, in the heat of Summer.
The coal fire range became a challenge for cooking as the heat increased in the small farm house kithchen.
The grissly daughter and the standoffish Husand/Father, became her nightly juggling points.


The wife became demented, over the Myna birds screeching, the whining child, the husband off all day on his 'farming' tasks.

"If the baby does not turn around, we will have to cut it from your body. It will not live, but your chances of survival are increased." What chilling words, for a small statured woman, alone, and in grief still, from her recent bereavement, of a child taken from her.


The Large Son was born, after a protracted labour, in a small country Hospital. The Wife almost died, as her options of delivery or death, were given. No modern facilites available. I do believe the Large Son, set some type of record, for that Hospital. It probably stands to this day.

"Hard labour, seeming due reward, for a wayward wife, with guilty secrets and a 'Duty to fulfil'.

The 'Deal' did not last.

The Wife left, when the Large Son was quite young.

A Divorce was the outcome.

Or, one could say "The Deal Folded".



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