Truth be told, Liz had been closer to Jimmy and Marleen than I was. She saw them as good people in need of a bit of a hand. From the little I knew of Jimmy, he was not one to accept a handout, though. I thought he might accept a bit of help, but just so long as it wasn’t offered as charity. I warned my wife of this, and she kept it in mind in her interaction with Marleen.
I also tried to apply the same principles in my dealings with Jimmy. I recognised him as a highly intelligent man who had been held back by his environment. I encouraged him to take every opportunity that presented itself to broaden his knowledge of those things that interested him. And his interests were many and varied.
He was so skilled with his hands that he’d become known throughout the area as ‘Mr Fixit’. The only things he wouldn’t touch were anything that plugged into an electrical socket. He even supplied most of the townspeople with their winter firewood.
The few times I’d met Marleen, I’d been impressed with her outer beauty. She had a very pretty face which was surrounded by long, loosely-curled dirty blonde hair. Her tight body highlighted her breasts and hips, giving her a model-like appearance. Anyone not in the know wouldn’t believe that she’d delivered four children. She gave the impression of being very close to her children, and it was obvious that her love was reciprocated. She was no rocket scientist but seemed to have a lively — if somewhat earthy — sense of humour.
While her outer beauty caught the eye, though, my first impression was that that beauty did not reflect what was going on inside. She struck me as being shallow. Yes, she might have been attractive. But I got the feeling that that beauty was — as the saying goes — ‘only skin deep’.
She’d probably been quite young when they’d married, which put her into the thirty-four or thirty-five age bracket. Jimmy, I knew, was older, being a year or two shy of forty. But he was one of those people who still looked to be in his early twenties. It was probably that boyish look that held him back when he sought advancement. No-one would put him in charge of a gang of men because they didn’t see him having the presence needed to command respect. His size didn’t help. He was barely one-hundred-and-sixty-five centimetres (5′-6″) tall.
Marleen, on the other hand, was fifty centimetres (two inches) taller than her husband and would tower over his slight frame any time she wore heels.
‘Was that the problem?’ I wondered as I thought about it. ‘Did it all come down to size?’
I thought back to the few times I’d seen them together and reviewed their body language. From the picture I had in my head of the two of them sitting side by side, I sensed the love emanating from Jimmy towards his wife. He was leaning towards her and holding her hand. Conversely, Marleen had a neutral posture, She was neither leaning towards nor away from him. Nor was she actively holding his hand. From what I was seeing, the love was moving in only one direction.