The first problem is finding somewhere to park. For years neither of us could drive, and then Arthur learned when he was in his fifties because he likes a challenge. He passed first time, after a steady six months of lessons, but he’s never had much confidence. He drives with his worried face permanently plastered on.
‘What about over there?’ I suggest, as we circle the car park for the second time. The low winter sun is making it hard to see. ‘I think there’s a…’
‘There’s a Mini in it,’ he says, his jaw tight.
‘We could go back, if you prefer.’
It’s a fine line I’m walking. I want him to know he doesn’t have to suffer this stress for me, but I don’t want him to think I’m looking for excuses to cut the outing short. He doesn’t say anything. A young couple walk back to their car, hand in hand, and he waits, the indicator clicking. When we get out of the car, I think about taking his hand. How long is it since we walked through the streets like that, declaring our union? We certainly did it in the early years, but I don’t remember when it stopped. Was there a day when he reached for my hand and I pulled away? Or dropped his hand to adjust my handbag on my shoulder, and then never picked it up again? Though we’re walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder, it seems too big a gulf to cross now. Too huge a gesture.
There are market stalls up and down the length of the high street, smells competing for space. Candy floss, and spicy meat, and fresh bread. A buzz of chatter and the occasional shout of a stallholder.
‘Get your fresh pastries here!’
‘All bowls of fruit or veg one pound fifty. We’ve got pineapples, we’ve got mangoes, we’ve got cherries…’
‘Fresh fish caught this morning!’
I nudge Arthur. ‘Remember the fishmonger and the shrimps at Morecambe Bay?’
It’s an invitation to visit the past with me, and I hope he’ll take it. I hope he’ll remember the better times.
His face cracks wide open and he laughs. ‘That man was wasted up there, with that voice.’
We are silent for a moment, memories spooling between us. There are so many, and perhaps we can live off them.
‘Shall we pick up a pie for dinner? And there isn’t much fruit in the bowl.’
Arthur pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. Of course he’s made a list.
We choose apples and oranges, and then he points to what I think is a mango, raises his eyebrows.
‘Go on, then,’ I say.
Where does he get it from, this eternal zest for trying new things? I admired it when I first knew him, when he was just Bill’s friend who was interested in everything.
At the pie stand, we weigh up beef and onion against chicken and ham, and then I hear a voice calling his name.
‘Arthur Beaumont, is that you?’
We turn, and it’s a woman of about our age. She looks like she might once have been pretty, but it’s hard to tell with the wrinkles crowding out her features. When she smiles, her teeth look too white. She puts one arm on Arthur’s and goes up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then she does the same to me and she smells of roses and soap.
‘Joan Jenkins,’ he says. ‘Well, I never.’
She shakes her head and laughs. ‘I haven’t heard that name in a while. It’s been Joan Garnett since 1959.’
I can’t place her, but the name seems familiar.
‘So you two got married, then?’ She tips her head in my direction and then Arthur’s.
‘We did indeed,’ he says, turning to me with a proud smile. ‘Sixty-two years.’
She shakes her head. ‘Well, shows what I know. I thought you weren’t suited.’
Arthur laughs and they carry on chatting, but I zone out and just hear that line about us not being suited over and over on a loop. Next thing I know, she’s waving a hand and walking away and Arthur’s back to looking at the pies.
‘Who was she?’ I ask. ‘I mean, should I remember her?’
‘She was just always around, in the old days. At the dances. Dot knew her a bit, I think.’
It’s a long time since I’ve heard him say Dot’s name. It startles me. But the moment is over in a flash. Still, for a few seconds I was back there, sitting at the side of the hall next to Dot, whispering about what the other girls were wearing and whose arms people might spend the evening in. I could hear the band, feel the sweat creeping from under my arms. And every time I saw a couple kissing in a darkened corner, I wanted it to be me. I wanted to know what it felt like, to lose yourself like that in another person, or to try to.
‘She had a bit of a thing for me, I think,’ Arthur says as we move away from the stall with our chosen pie in a paper bag.
I stop walking. ‘Dot?’
Arthur chuckles. ‘No! Joan. Sounds like she married John Garnett in the end, though. Did you hear her say she lost him last year?’
I shake my head. I didn’t hear anything after her saying she didn’t think we were suited.
‘Fancy, she’s been living here in Overbury all these years and we’ve never run into her before today.’
I might have run into her before. I might have stood next to her at bus stops and in butchers’ queues and at the bank, and I wouldn’t have known her. But I know what he means. Sometimes it feels like the world is unimaginably big, and other times it feels like you could hold it in your hand.
Back at home, we drink tea and Olly curls up with Arthur on the sofa, and I see that Arthur’s going to nod off. It’s the fresh air. I watch them from my armchair in the window as his mouth drops open slightly. I feel a rush of affection for this man I’ve spent my life with. I could have chosen so much worse. He’s kind, reliable, and that love of life he has, that’s probably kept us both afloat a few times. Because there have been tough years. There will always be tough years in a marriage this long. It’s guaranteed. The best you can hope is you have someone who cares enough to weather them with you.
But I can’t help thinking. What if he’d married Joan Jenkins? He said himself she had a thing for him, and it seemed likely from the way she was looking at him this morning, all these years later. Joan, who thought we weren’t matched, and who was right in a lot of ways. Joan, who might have loved him the way I never could. Might have given him the children he longed for. Might have been a comfort and a fellow adventurer in his later years, rather than someone always holding him back. Might have been, simply, a better choice.
When he asked me to be his wife, standing on the street corner on the way back from the first dance I went to after Bill’s death, the light fading and his eyes wide with fear, I didn’t think about what would happen to him if I said no. But perhaps I should have done. Because what I saw as breaking his heart might really have been setting him free, setting him on the path to find the girl who was right for him. Whether that was Joan Jenkins or someone he hadn’t met yet. When I said yes, and I was screaming no inside, I thought I was doing the best I could for him. But now I’m not so sure.
He wakes after half an hour and shakes his head in that funny way he always does, as if to get rid of the last remnants of sleep.