He didn’t reply. “I want you to give this to Ms. Sonny Yardley as soon as she arrives for work. It is most important.” He turned and walked back to the glass entrance doors, not hearing as she shouted after him, offering him her jacket.
He walked past the students smoking, chatting, browsing on their phones and making their way to begin college for the day. He didn’t notice the amusement arcades where families sheltered from the rain under striped canopies, or hear the electronic jingles and rattle of pennies from the arcades just opening up for the day. When he reached the beach, he was alone. No one else was stupid enough to come out in this weather, especially down to the sea.
It stretched out before him like a gray carpet, moving, rippling. He stood at the edge and watched, letting the shush of the waves hypnotize him. Water soaked through the toes of his shoes. The wind nipped his thighs. His ankles grew red and sore as he stood.
In the space of a few weeks he had gone from being a grieving widower, pining for his lost wife, to his mind becoming a mass of suspicion.
They had known each other so well. That’s what he had loved about their marriage. They were soul mates who were in tune with each other’s thoughts and emotions and likes. Except they hadn’t known each other’s stories. Why had he never asked his wife about her life before him? Because he hadn’t expected her to have one, that’s why.
Without her, he had—what? He had Lucy. He had Bernadette. He had his son on the other side of the world. But there was a hole inside him that ached, that would never be filled again. It ached for the woman he loved, the woman he didn’t know. His house wasn’t a home without her. It was just walls and carpet and a silly old man rattling around inside.
How could he live without again feeling her cheek pressed against his shoulder? Without the sound of her singing as they made breakfast together. Things could never be as they were when they were a family unit. The thought pulled him down like quicksand.
It began to rain more now. A spatter at first, flecking his eyelids. And then it began to fall heavily so it looked as if drinking straws were firing down from the sky. The water hit his face, rolled down his cheeks. His trousers were sodden, stuck to his legs. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Miriam!” His voice was captured and taken by the wind and blown elsewhere. “Miriam!” He shouted her name over and over knowing that she couldn’t hear him, that his words were futile. “Miriam!”
When those words were gone he felt empty, as if they were the only things holding him together. The sea rolled over his feet and filled his shoes. He stumbled backward over a rock and he hit the wet sand with a thud. His knees crunched and his hands and backside slapped against the sand. A wave crashed over his legs, soaking him again and surrounding him with a halo of white foam. “Miriam,” he said again weakly, digging his fingers into the sand. He felt it suck and slide away from him. He wished he had left her alone, perfect in his memory, instead of prying and pursuing her. He had opened doors that he wished had remained locked. How he wished he hadn’t sunk his hand into the boot. Someone buying them from a charity shop would have had a nice surprise in finding the charm bracelet. It might have brought them good luck.
He took it from his pocket. He hated it now, detested what it had done to his memories. The gray stretch of sea beckoned. He raised his hand to shoulder height, feeling the weight of it in his palm. He imagined it spinning through the air and then plopping down into the water. It would sink and drift down and then lie on the seabed for centuries, waiting to be discovered, when someone might find it and wonder at the origins of the charms. Except to that person the bracelet would be anonymous. It’s only significance would be its curiosity value or worth in gold.
Arthur wondered if it would make him feel better to be rid of it, but there was still the one charm he knew nothing about—the heart. The heart-shaped box, the heart-shaped lock and the heart-shaped charm. Perhaps it could tell him that his wife did really love him, that their time together hadn’t been a compromise for her. It might hold the answers.
It had to.
But it was so tempting to walk into the sea with the bracelet. The waves lulled him into their midst. If he carried it in he could be sure it was gone. His feet were wet, and his ankles, so why not his groin, his waist, his chest, his shoulders? Why shouldn’t the sea cover his mouth, his nose, his eyes, until all that was left was a tuft of white hair, which the sea could sweep over and claim.
Who would care?
A few months ago, he would say that no one would care. But then he and Lucy had reconnected. He and Sylvie had kissed. Bernadette cared for him.
It was when he thought of Lucy that he forced himself to stand up. She needed him. He needed her. It was a relief to hear the shingle crunch under his feet, that he hadn’t carried out what the sea willed him to do. Lucy. She had been through enough with her miscarriage, her marriage ending, losing her mother. He would have to be a selfish old fool to kill himself and bring more tragedy to her door. He stepped backward again and again until his feet hit a bank of pebbles. He sat back on a rock and stared at the bracelet in his hand. It shone so brightly against the dark gray of the pebbles and sea and inky sky. The heart seemed to glow.
There was a halo of water around his feet as he sat next to a rock pool. A tiny gray crab swayed, suspended in the seawater, still enough to be dead. Arthur watched it for a while. It was trapped. The tide would go out. The sun might come out and dry up the water. The crab’s little body would dry to a crisp.
He dipped his fingertips into the water. The crab moved one claw and then was still. It was as if it was waving at him. Arthur slid his hand in farther. His little friend was acting out its own variation of a National Trust statue routine.
“You might die if you stay in that rock pool,” he said out loud. “You’ll be stranded. You’ll be safer in the sea.” He cupped his hand and the crab drifted into his palm. Arthur gently lifted up his hand. He and the crab stared at each other for a while. It had black pinprick eyes. “Don’t be scared,” he said.
He carried it to the sea and waited until a small wave crept up onto the beach. Then he deposited it at the water’s edge. It paused for a moment as if to say thanks and goodbye, then it sidestepped toward the water. A gentle wave swept over it, and when the water eased away the crab was gone.
Arthur stared at its vacant spot on the beach. Perhaps I’ve been stuck in a rock pool, too, he thought. I need to be in the sea, even if it’s scary and unknown. If I don’t do it, then I will shrivel and die.
He imagined what Lucy would say if she saw him here, soaked to the skin, rescuing a crab. “You’ll catch your death. Come and get warm.” It’s what he would have said to her when she was a child. The idea of their roles being reversed was strange. He thought that Miriam would find it funny, too.
It didn’t matter what he did now. He was a widower. There was no one to tell him how to live. Why, if he wanted to perform a silly jig in the sea, he could do. In fact, why shouldn’t he? He kicked up his feet and waited until waves rushed toward him and he kicked and danced. “Look at me, Miriam.” He laughed hysterically as the tears rolled down his cheeks, mingled with the raindrops. “I’m being silly. I forgive you. You didn’t tell me things because you thought it was for the best. I have to trust that you did it for the right reasons. And I’m still alive. I wish you were, too, but you’re not. And I want to live even though it hurts. I don’t want to be a dried-up crab.”
He broke into a jog and then intermittently strolled and ran along the water’s edge, dipping in and out of the sea, the icy water reminding him that he was alive. He flung out his arms and embraced the wind, letting it whistle through his clothes and sting his eyes.