Do you remember that day? So long ago… Sitting in the
sunshine, side by side on warm, fragrant grass, watching the
sun scatter diamonds across the river. Children shrieking
with joy as the fish slipped through their fingers, as the
water slapped around their legs; parents looking on anxiously.
I remember that day – very well. I let you slip through
my fingers.
You were all for lazing in the sun, for silly jokes and for
murmurings, for melting chocolate bars that made our fingers
sticky. You blew on grass and made elephantine noises, you
tossed idle stones into the shallows and tore a leaf into
shreds. You talked of holidays lasting for ever, with nothing
to do but lie on the beach and stare up at the cloudless sky.
'Typical student,' I said fondly.
I didn't want to laze. I was full of plans. Forty years ago,
women were just beginning to discover the world; we were just
realising there was something beyond house and home. Remember
how you'd laugh at my enthusiasm? You bought me an apron as
a joke present and wrote on the tag: I don't want you ever
to wear this. But perhaps you don't remember. It was a long
time ago, and perhaps you have only the haziest memories of
long hot days that seemed as if they'd last for ever. We were
young after all and the young never contemplate the possibility
of change – least of all in themselves.
For me, it was all so clear, though I don't think I ever managed
to convey that to you. It still is clear. I haven't changed
my mind. I remember how you both delighted and infuriated
me, how you encouraged me but refused to do anything yourself.
I was going to make my fortune, to prove that a woman was
as good as any man, to see my name in the financial pages
and hear my salary exclaimed over. You wrapped the apron about
yourself and minced about pretending to wave a wooden spoon,
to be the housebound husband neglected by his successful wife.
And you exclaimed melodramatically that you would rather visit
the ends of the earth – Siberia, Australia, Antarctica
– than suffer such a fate.
I laughed, and planned the house we could buy with two big
salaries. I didn't believe you, you see. I thought you were
posing, pretending – a silly joke to try to provoke
me. I thought you were privately deciding what you were going
to do, and would one day surprise me with your new job. I
thought you'd be – oh – a civil servant in charge
of a government department? Or the finance director of a top
100 firm? I laughed at the elderly couple who were sitting
on a bench under a tree, staring at you in disapproval. Just
wait, I thought with all the pride of love, you'll see what
he can do. I sat on that bench today, after I heard the news,
but there was no one there by the river – just an empty
expanse of grass across which the mist drifted like fragments
of dissolving ghosts.
That old woman with scowling lines etched in her face. I never
thought I'd find myself looking like her, stiff with age,
under sentence of – But we all come to this. I shan't
complain. What have I to complain of?
I did what I said I would. That holiday job I had –
that summer you wanted me to go off to India with you? That
was the start of it. While you were doubtfully regarding the
Ganges' waters and scribbling on a postcard that you wondered
if it was safe to paddle in, I was treading carefully too,
fearful of offending my colleagues, watching the senior partners
to see how they dressed, how they talked, how they moved.
That winter, when your cards said you were crunching the snows
of St Petersburg underfoot, I was summoning the courage to
put forward my proposals to improve productivity. In spring,
while you were looking for awakening polar bears, I was looking
at my first salary rise and hunting for a flat.
I did write. I know you accused me a couple of years later
of neglecting you, but that was your fault not mine –
three or four cards came back, marked address unknown. In
the end, I admit, I didn't bother. I despaired. I was waiting
for you
to say you'd had enough, that you were coming home to settle
down to a real job, to real life, but the cards kept coming,
from Moscow and Vienna, and Sydney and Los Angeles, and never
a suggestion that you were coming home. That card from New
York, I remember, asked me to throw up my job. 'Come and see
the world,' you wrote. I couldn't believe you were serious.
I realised then that you were the eternal student, unable
to take responsibility, always wanting to do nothing but laze
in the sun.
Yes, all right. I remember you did come back, once. When was
it? Four years after that lazy summer? I remember thinking
you were too thin, and weathered; you called yourself fit
and tanned. You didn't like the café I'd chosen either
– all chrome and modern, you said, soulless. And when
you looked at my clothes, you said I looked just like every
other city woman in the café. I knew you didn't intend
a compliment.
You had stories, I remember. So many… I could hardly
get a word in. You didn't seem to want to hear about what
I'd been doing. Instead, you launched into all those enthusiastic
accounts of the women you'd met – calm, impassive women
in Peru, mothers of huge families in Kenya and Tashkent. You
lauded the way they managed their houses and families, told
me that if I'd seen them, I'd have known what life was really
like – life in the raw, a hard life, a real life.
Why couldn't you see how that seemed to me? Why did you cut
short all my protests? You said you were just telling me what
you'd seen, but we both knew why you were telling me. That's
why I insisted on overriding you, because you weren't being
honest with me, and in business you have to be direct or you
don't get anywhere. And so we had that argument, that final
argument. You said I'd opted for materialism, for money and
comfort; I'd fallen for all the old establishment lies. I
said, you'd no sense of personal responsibility, that you'd
dropped out and were relying on other people to keep you while
you dossed around. You said, I'd thrown my life away, that
you'd offered me the opportunities of a lifetime to see the
world and I'd turned them down. I said, you could have made
something of yourself; you had thrown your life away, not
me. I should have seized the golden moment of youth, you said;
it would never come again. No, you should have, I said; I
was the one who'd seized my moment in the sun. And no doubt
the look I saw on your face was the look you saw on mine –
that look of incomprehension.
Eventually, I decided there was nothing left to say. That's
why I left. And after I'd paid the bill, I heard you, arguing
with the waitress, insisting on paying your share.
I did receive your letter, but I thought it best not to reply
– not till now, at any rate. If nothing else, that tea
in the chrome comfort of the café taught me that our
moment for understanding had long since passed. I must admit
your letter annoyed me so much that I did scribble a response
– that gibe about always wanting to have the last word
infuriated me, for instance – but I tore up the pages
and pushed them into the waste-bin along with yellowing cabbage
leaves. Odd, isn't it, the details you recall? Those wilted
cabbage leaves, yellowing and limp, and the elm leaf you tore
into shreds that day…
What preoccupies me now, in this short space of time that
is all there is left to me, is a puzzle I cannot untangle:
how could we both have gone such different ways, learned such
different lessons, and yet, somehow, both believe unshakeably
in our own rightness? Because I was right. I seized the moment,
did what I could in it without hesitation or fear. You did
nothing, you lazed in the sun, dawdled from place to place,
slaved in dirty hotels to earn a pittance that would carry
you on to the next country. And yet, in that café,
you leant forward and told me, with desperate earnestness,
that you were right. We were both certain that we had seized
the day, made hay in the sunshine.
I heard after that, that you'd gone off to Portugal to help
with the olive harvest, but that could have been rumour and
in any case it was more than 30 years ago. I've heard nothing
since – I don't know whether this will reach you from
my solicitor, or even whether it should. For all I know, if
you are still alive, you may feel the same as you did, and
look upon this letter as my way of justifying myself, or trying
to convince myself that I was right all along. But it would
be worse, far worse, if you received this letter, and understood
at last, if you were suddenly, at this late age, to know how
wrong you have been and regret these wasted years. To cause
you such pain would distress me so much.
So, I will tear this letter up and push it into the waste-bin
with the remains of old teabags and vegetable stalks, like
the last letter. It is never wise to say, I told you so.
I love you.
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| Shortlisted
Entries shortlisted to final judging stage in the Make Hay
While the Sun Shines short story competition were from: Nadia
Al Yafai, Turnpike Lane, London; George Berry, Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent;
Patricia Gifford, Banff; Lynne King, Rainham, Gillingham,
Kent; Patty Lafferty, Seaton, Devon; Jacquelynn Luben, Pirbright,
Woking, Surrey; Barbara Oswald, Sproatley, East Yorkshire;
Dennis M Skeet, Bramfield, Halesworth, Suffolk; Laurence Tierney,
Hawarden, Flintshire; Pam Weaver, Worthing, West Sussex; Lynne
Worwood, Firsdown, Salisbury.
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