Although sunbathing in this weather was nonsensical, a young girl lay on the jetty in two pieces of red string, magazines heaped beneath her towel. Passers-by looked at her and laughed, shaking their heads and zipping their parkas up against the wind. The siren sounded again and the girl tucked in her breasts, flipping onto her front. The wife went to comment, but the husband had walked on.
She came up by his side and asked when the tide was coming in.
‘That was it,’ said the husband.
The wife looked down at the water: it wasn’t more than a couple of centimetres high and the same dirty grey as the sky.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘You know this is one of the only places it happens on the whole planet?’
By the time she turned around, the husband had walked on again. She saw him on the promenade, tufts of hair blowing in the breeze, shoulders lifted in a shrug to the question they were both asking.
The wife quickly learned to occupy herself as she saw fit, and by the end of the first week both were spending much of their time apart. The wife decided she didn’t have to cook if she didn’t want to, she’d eaten at the chip shop twice and tried hard to leave mess she could then avoid clearing up: a sock in the kitchen, hardened crusts on her plate, a used toothpick on the doily. It wasn’t long before the husband was out every day, fishing with the Nigel mentioned at the pub. The husband was asked to bring bait in exchange for borrowing Nigel’s equipment, and in the morning the wife chopped pieces of chicken into food bags, wincing at the raw flesh between her fingers. She kissed the husband goodbye and shut the door behind him.
The wife began to frequent the gift shop at the end of the promenade which sold artisanal ice cream, and this was the furthest she would walk. Most mornings she darkened her lips, did her hair in a French twist, and looked only at the top half of her body in the mirror. Now she walked alone, she often drew the gazes of men, and today a crowd in shooting jackets tipped their hats her way.
Passing the pier the wife could never find the husband amid the anglers, who were all old and portly, flat-caps pulled over their thinning hair. She continued her walk until the gift shop with its gaudy blue paint, tacky postcards and baskets with multi-coloured hats. When she ordered her rum and raisin, the shop assistant asked if she was staying at Highbank. Initially the wife forgot this was the name of their house, but when she remembered she shook her head and said no, she was staying with relatives in Milnthorpe.
‘I was sure it was you,’ said the woman, wetting her scoop and rolling a perfect globe. ‘Marda said she’d bumped into you and your husband last week at the Albion.’
The wife smiled but stayed quiet. The woman rolled another and asked, ‘Doesn’t your husband go fishing with Nige?’
At last the wife said that yes, he did.
‘Oh, he’ll have him in a canoe soon,’ said the woman, licking the end of her finger. ‘Nigel has an adventurous nature.’ She smiled and pushed a plastic spoon into the ice cream. ‘You’re not as talkative as your husband, are you?’
The wife thanked her and told her to keep the change.
‘You want to be careful on that sand,’ the woman called after her. ‘It’s not like other beaches. Some people have sunk up to their waists.’
The wife walked back down the prom and stopped at a bench facing the sands. Sometimes big crowds crossed the flats, but today it was empty. She sat and licked at her ice cream and watched the train roll in across the viaduct. It was quiet and when she bit into her cone, the noise made her conscious of being a woman alone. When a crowd of seagulls flocked down to the bench, she was sent to her feet in surprise and dropped her ice cream. They struck at the mess with their polished yellow beaks and she rushed away, followed by their shrieks until she turned the corner.
When the wife got home, the husband was in his armchair. He had fallen asleep with his phone on his knee and when he stirred she asked him what he was doing. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, saying he took it out to quickly use the map.
‘Well then I’d quickly like to use mine,’ she said.
He looked at the wife’s trousers. ‘You’ve not been walking around in them all day?’
The wife ignored him and said she wanted her phone so she could talk to her sister. ‘And I want to meet this Nigel. I’m not sure why I haven’t been introduced already as everyone else seems to think he’s really something.’
The husband sat up. ‘You’d honestly have nothing to talk about.’
‘Because I didn’t go to Cambridge?’
‘He’s not Cambridge,’ the husband said, then mouthed Oxford.
‘God knows you lot think you’re a breed apart,’ she said.
‘I was joking,’ he said. ‘If you want to know the truth, he did want us for dinner but I fibbed and told him you get migraines.’
‘You told him I get migraines?’
‘It rolled off my tongue.’
‘Your tongue again,’ said the wife. ‘It’s always going places you didn’t intend.’
The husband told the wife there was no need to be spiteful. He walked into the kitchen and said she could do what she wanted but that they were a bunch of bores when they got together.
‘And how do you know that?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I suppose you go on imaginary fishing trips too? I never see you down at the promenade.’
The husband poured himself a glass of wine and told her everybody knew you had to go to the river to catch the real fish. ‘And it’s terribly boring when you play the suspicious wife.’
‘That’s one way to shift the blame.’
‘Why do you always need somebody to blame?’
‘It’s just that nothing seems to matter. It doesn’t make a difference what time we go to bed, or what I wear . . . none of this,’ she motioned at the room, ‘seems to make any difference. You always say it’s because we’re busy or because you’re stressed—’
‘Well it doesn’t help, does it?’
The husband walked upstairs, leaving the wife to listen to the clock, ticking in time with the thump of her heart.
The following day the wife was up and out soon after the sun had risen. The night had been restless and full of dreams in which she’d driven home early, letting the husband take the train. In the morning she tried to find the key to the cupboard where her phone was locked but gave up when she realised she didn’t have a clue as to where he might hide it.
One of the cafes on the prom was open and the wife sat there into the early afternoon, drinking cups of tea and staring out of the window. Her paperback sat untouched in her lap and she watched people drift in and out, dotting the tables around her. A couple arrived and sat by the window, on the same side as each other. They shared a black forest gateau and the boy refilled the girl’s teacup whenever it was empty. He let her have the cherry. The wife realised she wanted a drink. Young couples in love, she thought as she paid the bill, have no regard for the rest of us.
The wife spent the rest of the afternoon moving between one pub and the other. Once or twice the crowds inside recognised her and said hello, but she feigned deafness as best she could and they soon left her alone. She buried her face between the pages of her book, never reading a word. As the afternoon drew on, she watched as ramblers returned from their walks, skin ruddy with cold, mouths lifted at the corners. She ordered another beer. These were wonderfully cloudy, golden beers and she soon lost count of what number she was on. The wife always ordered porter around the husband as for some unknown reason it was the only beer he approved of her drinking. At first she’d tried to work out if he was joking – and she suspected he was – but in the end it felt easier to grow to like it than mention it again.
‘Everything okay for you, miss?’ The wife looked up at the waiter through hazy eyes and said yes thank you everything was just fine. The potted shrimp
smelled delightful but, thanks, she’d just finish her beer.
‘You want to set off home soon,’ he said, taking her empty glass. ‘Looks like the weather’s going to turn. One minute it’s clear, and then . . .’
When she stood and drained the last of her bitter, the wife felt glad for her thick walking boots. Approaching the cottage, she heard the workmen packing up, shutting the doors to their vans. The lad she’d seen last week with his shirt off now stood on the kerb, smoking. He was young enough to remind the wife of some of the older boys she taught.
She stopped as she walked by. ‘Couldn’t spare one, could you?’
He fished into the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and pulled out a pack, flicking open the top. She took one and asked him for a light. He had on his poker face, keeping his mouth shut to feign indifference around the men, all of whom had fallen still. The wife took a drag, feeling the warmth work its way down her throat. She looked at him, couldn’t say if he was good looking; he was just young.
‘It’s going to rain,’ she said at last. ‘Don’t want to get wet.’
As she opened her gate, she heard the conversations start up again. She bent to untie the laces of her boots on the doorstop, cigarette in mouth, and didn’t turn back when they drove by.
The wife knew the house was empty before she put her key in the lock. She supposed an evening alone would be welcome. Kicking off her boots, she walked through the house to turn on all the lights and in the sitting room she stood and looked at the husband’s armchair: pristine white, unruffled. The wife lowered herself into it and put her feet on the table, smoking until she got to the stub. She’d missed that wave of calm, watching the smoke drift and curl in the air. She turned on the television to murmur in the background and decided to eat the tin of spaghetti hoops. As she was alone, she slurped and tried to make noise when she burped, letting the thick arms of the chair hug her into a stupor.
Before she fell asleep – with the heat and beer, stomach full – she watched the TV through narrowed eyes. The show was about single mothers and on screen was a young woman, her mascara smudged, crying into her tissue. The wife felt her own eyes water, but then she was asleep, and afterwards she wouldn’t remember whether or not she’d dreamt this.
It was dark and raining by the time the wife woke. Something loose rattled on the roof and the rain had left dirty streaks on the windows. The tide was in, glossy black with gulls hovering low over its surface.
The wife called out for the husband but no reply. The clock read quarter to midnight but she checked the grandfather clock in the hallway to make sure it was right. She couldn’t help but think of the headline on the paper the day of their arrival, imagined the husband washed away in a river flood, being sucked into the sand and buried alive. The wife believed in premonitions. She forever told of how out of sorts she felt the day before Princess Diana’s death, of how there were hints everywhere: a burned-out car on the motorway, her niece’s plastic crown snapped in two. It’s like something was telling me, she told her sister. I could feel it. She’d had the same intuition of fear when they first approached the village, its streetlights blinking from afar, the only sound the low murmur of their car.
She walked into the kitchen to pick up the newspaper by the bin, but there was no longer any headline about the body in the river. Instead the picture was of a woman crying, her inky lashes running into the white of a tissue. It felt familiar but the wife was sure it hadn’t been there before. She checked the date and it was the same Westmorland Gazette of the day they’d arrived. Flicking through its pages, she found no reference to the death she was certain she’d read about.
‘Where is he?’ she breathed and the thunder answered in a long, ominous roll. The wife walked up the stairs. Accidents happened, she knew, the line between life and death thin as a hairline crack. All it took was a step in the wrong direction.
In the bedroom, rain hammered on the skylight like hail. She was glad she’d turned on all the lights. The air was icy and she noticed the draught was coming in through an open window. She pulled it shut and noticed, for the first time, a framed photograph of a river beside the bed. Leaning in closer, she knew the name she’d find before she read it. Typed in silver, glinting as she approached, she read ‘the River Bela’.
A gurgling erupted from the bathroom. The wife walked into the corridor and put her hand to the door, pushing it open so it slammed against the wall. The toilet was belching, throwing up sludge from below the surface, and despite herself she slammed the door shut and rushed into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She pulled the husband’s jumpers from his suitcase and buried herself beneath them on the carpet. A flash of lightning illuminated the white sheets on their bed and her thoughts shifted between possibilities. For a moment she wondered if the husband wasn’t playing a joke. He could be somewhere in the house, maybe even with Nigel. Perhaps they came back when she was asleep and, knowing her fears, had cracked open the window and conspired to have a laugh at her expense. She wouldn’t have put it past him. She tried to convince herself the husband had stayed with Nigel and those laughing crones. Perhaps he’d found something there he liked. She wouldn’t have put that past him either.
Eventually the storm quietened and all other noise stopped with it. The wife was stiff when she stood. In the bathroom she excavated the cabinet for her husband’s sleeping pills – the floor was wet and it looked like someone had hurled mud into the bowl of the toilet – swallowing two to send her out cold for the rest of the night. To stop me worrying, she thought, though she knew you didn’t need to worry after the fact.
The wife crawled fully dressed between the covers of their bed and swaddled her head in the duvet.
The next day the sky had cleared and the wife was relieved to hear the workmen. She called out, knowing already the husband wasn’t home. His jumper was limp on the floor and she felt momentarily embarrassed by last night’s conduct.
She walked down the stairs and peered out of the front window; the potted plants were green and swollen with rain. The boy from yesterday was smoking by her gate and he looked over when she opened the door. The wife gestured at him to come through. He threw his cigarette to the floor, hitched up his jogging bottoms and opened the latch. She told him there was a problem with their bathroom and the toilet had kept her up with its noise.
‘Couldn’t have a look, could you?’ She watched his eyes move over her face, to her lips and back when she spoke. ‘Quickly,’ she said, letting him in and closing the door. She told him it was upstairs and watched him climb the stairs, never looking back to see if she was following. He rattled around, flushing the toilet a few times before shouting down that this kind of thing was normal in a storm. He spoke with an accent, as the wife had expected. She looked at her reflection in the hallway mirror, at her knotted hair and crumpled clothes, and told herself she was something fuckable. There was a long pause in which she waited with her ears pricked up, before she realised she could hear him taking a piss. The sound travelled down the stairs, full of intent, more direct than that of the husband.
When the wife appeared in the doorway, the boy turned to look at her. He shook it out and put it back into his trousers.
‘You’re alone?’ he said.
She nodded and he walked up to her, the smell of sweat.
‘I’ve seen your man. He likes his tight jackets.’
She told him the husband was no longer around.
‘Where is he?’
The wife looked at his arms, darkened by days working in the sun.
‘I’m a widow,’ she said, running her fingers along the tiles as though trying to feel the effect of that word through the stone. ‘You know I played with Polish boys when I was a girl. For a while I pretended I was one.’
He told her she couldn’t be from Poland.
‘They don’t know that,’ she said. ‘It’s harder for them to recognise your
class if you pretend you’re foreign.’
He turned away from her and stuck his hands under the tap, splashing water onto his face and running his fingers through his hair. The wife didn’t move until he looked at her in the mirror and said, ‘So you’re a widow. What do you want me to do about it?’
The husband came home that afternoon. As though the wife had known, she’d sprayed the hallway and bedroom with air freshener. She was curled into his armchair and heard the door when he came in.
The wife thought he looked exactly as he had before he’d died.
‘What are you doing in my chair?’ he said.
‘I was waiting for you.’
‘You’ve got other chairs to do that in.’
The wife stood. She noticed a smear of mascara on one of the cushions and turned it around.
The husband walked up the stairs and the wife prepared lunch. She wondered what he might say about the state of the bedroom, the sheets tangled and his clothes on the floor. She knew he wouldn’t say anything.
The wife hardboiled two eggs and flattened them into mayonnaise, spreading it onto the stale bread she’d bought yesterday, or was it the day before? She sliced the sandwiches in half and slid them into food bags, then sat by the window to wait. Although she couldn’t see them from down here, she could hear the workmen: an occasional call, a tool being dropped.
The wife and the husband walked along the promenade until they reached the pier. The husband ignored everyone who greeted them and the wife answered with a meek hello. Without discussion, they took the steps hewn into the side of the pier down to the sand. The tide was out and the wife perched on a large boulder while the husband continued to stand. He didn’t touch his food and after a bite the wife realised she didn’t want hers either.
‘Where did you fish yesterday?’ she asked.
‘The river,’ he said. ‘We went canoeing.’
The wife had known that. On the River Bela. She watched the husband walk across the wet sand, his footprints fading as he moved.
Best British Short Stories 2019 Page 3