Monday Lunch in Fairyland and Other Stories

by Angela Huth

  ‘Well, Mrs Harrow, we’re married at last.’

  Beth’s head, which of late shook constantly, like a flower in a slight wind, nodded more strongly in agreement. She was thinking that tomorrow she would pay for the rum in Annie’s cake, and how she would enjoy the afternoon sorting out their stores in the kitchen cupboard. Her own kitchen again. Strange thought, really, but a good one.

  Thomas and Beth met in the Sunset Home. Thomas had been there several years before Beth arrived from a Home in the country. She was newly widowed, and very quiet. From his chair in the semi-circle round the television – a long way from the chair assigned to Beth – Thomas observed she was prettier than most of the old ladies who came. She had a kindly face and a lively eye, though of course this was veiled by present sadness, her husband having so recently died.

  They did not have occasion to speak for several months. Then one Saturday afternoon, in the middle of Match of the Day, the old man in the chair next to Thomas shut his eyes and died. It gave them all a shock. They were used to their neighbours dying, but were upset by the witnessing of actual death. Going into tea that day, the bell ringing imperviously in his ears, Thomas found his mouth trembling and his eyes filled with tears. William Best and he had sat next to each other for seven years. They had not tried to know each other very well, but they enjoyed their mutual silence. They would nod at each other’s occasional remarks, and sometimes share a bag of sweets.

  In his upset state Thomas hardly noticed a tug at his elbow. It made him sway a little on his feet. Beth Soper it was: the pretty old lady who still looked sad. He struggled to regain his balance.

  ‘Terrible thing, death in the afternoon,’ she said quietly. ‘I know how you felt about Mr Best.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Thomas. And then an inspiration came to him. Beth should take William’s place. Beth should be his armchair neighbour. ‘I would like it if you moved into his chair,’ he said, ‘otherwise they’ll put in a new one. There’s no accounting for who I’d get.’

  Beth thought about it only for a moment. Then she said,

  ‘Very well. I’ll move my rug after tea.’

  After that Thomas and Beth stuck closely together. Beth moved into Mr Best’s place in the dining-room, too, and by the second meal Thomas knew she liked two spoons of sugar in her tea and put them in without asking. Beth was impressed. He was a good, quiet man, Thomas, but uncared for. It wasn’t long before she was darning his socks and reminding him to tie his laces. On Sunday, if it was fine, they would go for a drink together in the local pub. Wednesdays they would walk to the post box: Beth wrote to Annie every Tuesday evening, and Thomas wrote to his son Allan, in Australia, once a month. Neither of them received much news in return, but their mutual reminiscences were some compensation for lack of letters or visitors.

  Thomas and Beth’s association did not go unobserved by the others, for all its quietness. ‘The young lovers’ they came to be known as, and sometimes blushed at the public ragging. If they left the television room together to repair to the small lounge for a few moments’ peace, they would cause much speculation and merriment at supper.

  ‘Young lovers at it again?’ Alice, the spinster ringleader would croak. ‘You’ll be dead before your time, this rate.’

  Laughter all round, threads of soup wavering down chins. Beth privately thought Alice was coarse – she had been in the fish market all her life, after all – and was uncertain how to react to her jibes. Thomas, sensing the difficulty of Beth’s smile, would move his wiry thigh to touch hers under the table, and she would be comforted.

  On Christmas Eve Thomas proposed to Beth in the small sink room where they filled their hot water bottles each night. There was no one about. Drip of the tap and growl of the kettle the only noises. Night sky through the curtainless window, milky with reflections from the neon city outside.

  ‘I was thinking it might be more sensible, Beth, if we lived out the rest of our years together as man and wife.’ He was calm and firm, sure as he had been all those years ago when he had proposed to Josephine O’Reilly on Westminster Bridge.

  ‘Well, that would be nice, I think,’ said Beth, unscrewing the cap of her hot water bottle.

  ‘Seeing as we’re both in such good health we could leave this place, find ourselves a little flat. Be independent.’

  ‘So we could,’ said Beth, and the idea of her own home again made her hand tremble. She returned the kettle to the table for fear of spilling the scalding water.

  ‘We could discuss it more in the morning, when you’ve had time to sleep on it,’ went on Thomas, with his usual consideration.

  ‘Oh, I’ll say yes all right. There won’t be any changing my mind in the night.’ Beth smiled shyly at him.

  ‘There! You sound like a girl.’ Thomas handed her a filled bottle, screwed tightly as he could manage with his arthritic hands, and kissed her on the forehead. Then they went their separate ways down the corridor.

  Thomas gave Beth a cameo brooch for Christmas; she gave him the pair of red socks she had sworn she was knitting for her son-in-law.

  ‘And what about a ring?’ Thomas asked. ‘An engagement isn’t right without a ring.’

  Beth looked down at the wedding band Christopher Randolph Crest had slipped on her finger in a Dorset church in the spring of 1915, promising to have her and to hold till death parted them, and he had kept that promise. She wouldn’t like to take his ring off now, for all that he would be pleased she was to marry again and be happy (a different sort of happy, of course). Besides, it wouldn’t be possible to get it off, over her swollen knuckles. Beth felt the brush of one of the small awkwardnesses of second marriage. She fingered her new brooch.

  ‘Oh, not a ring, Thomas,’ she said. ‘This is quite enough, what you’ve given me already. Very like one my mother had. And anyhow . . .’

  She held out her hands. They looked at the lumpy joints on what had once been long and thin fingers.

  ‘Very well, on this occasion,’ said Thomas, and lapsed into an understanding silence. Beth was grateful to him.

  Their engagement was not a secret for long. Everyone approved of the idea and rejoiced. They sent small presents wrapped in tissue paper: soap and tobacco, writing paper, a potted hyacinth. Madge and Eileen efficiently set about finding a Council flat, and on fine days Beth went shopping for things they would need, most of her savings, added to Thomas’s, in her bag.

  In early spring Beth fell ill. Perhaps it was a chill: a nasty wind unexpectedly had savaged her on one of her shopping expeditions. Perhaps it was all the excitement – no one could tell. The doctor said she would soon recover if she took things quietly for a while. But the wedding, planned for March, had to be postponed.

  Beth, in bed, cameo brooch on a velvet ribbon round her neck, cried a little. Thomas sat by her, dabbing her handkerchief with eau de cologne.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself,’ he said.

  ‘But I do, Thomas.’

  ‘You just gather your strength.’

  ‘I never had more than a day’s illness in my life. Christopher said I was strong as an ox.’

  ‘We’ll be married soon as you’re on your feet.’

  Beth cheered a little. They could hear Alice’s penetrating voice in the corridor.

  ‘Expect she’s come to see what we’re doing,’ said Beth. ‘Whatever will she be thinking?’

  They both smiled.

  It took Beth longer than she had supposed to recover completely. But with the warmth of summer strength returned to her, and a new date was set for the wedding in October. By then, the Council flat was acquired, the furniture in, the carpets down. The day of the wedding there was early sun. The rain that came later was disappointing, but neither of them really cared. They had too much else to think about: so much to plan for the years ahead.

  The first day as Mrs Harrow passed very quickly: there was all the enjoyment of sorting out the kitchen cupboards, of seeing Thomas dozing in an armchair (which soon would lose its new lo
ok) in front of his own gas fire – of making mince in a parsley sauce for supper. The sauce was a little lumpy, but Beth felt soon she would be back in practice.

  They did not stay up late. When the nine o’clock news was over they took it in turns to undress in the bathroom. Then they lay in the new bed, just touching, the patchwork quilt drawn up high across their chests.

  ‘I think this was a very good idea of mine,’ said Thomas.

  ‘It was, too.’ Beth smiled.

  ‘My first honeymoon wasn’t half as damn comfortable as this.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ said Beth.

  Thomas sighed.

  ‘Ah, Beth, if it was years ago . . . a few years ago.’

  ‘Put all that out of your mind,’ said Beth, touching her hairnet.

  ‘You can’t help thinking,’ said Thomas. ‘Still, I should be grateful for a lively mind, even if the old bones can’t keep up with it.’

  ‘I should say so,’ said Beth.

  Thomas took her hand.

  ‘Believe me, I was quite . . . a devil in my time.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ said Beth. ‘Now, I’m going to put out the light.’

  They kissed, briefly, each smelling an echo of parsley sauce and wedding cake on the other’s breath. In the dark, their legs intertwined.

  For a while they were silent, listening for signals of sleep in the other’s breathing: pondering upon the extraordinary sensation of someone new, however much loved, beside them in bed. Then Thomas said,

  ‘Beth, I can’t manage to sleep with . . . I mean if you don’t mind I’d like to take out –’

  There’s a glass of water beside your bed, love,’ said Beth.

  ‘You’re a good and thoughtful woman, you know.’ Beth felt him move, stretch his arm about in the darkness. She heard two small splashes in the water. ‘Happy marriage doesn’t mean changing all one’s ways, does it, Beth? That’s what Josephine and I agreed.’

  Then suddenly he was definitely asleep, on his back, snoring a more rattling snore than Christopher Randolph Crest’s; but she would get used to it. Beth turned on to her side. Living into old age with someone you scarcely noticed the changes, could not be sure of the precise time when your habits changed, more milk puddings by day, bedsocks and bare gums by night. There was no unease. With a new person the small private acts of an ageing body could cause awkwardness close to shame unless there was much understanding. With Thomas, Beth could not imagine feeling more happily herself, but all the same she was glad that it was dark and he was asleep when she dropped her own teeth into the glass of water at her side of the bed. Then, at once, she joined her husband in sleep.

  When she thought about it later Beth could not recall exactly when it was that she began to find running the flat more difficult than she had supposed. Accustomed to the sedentary life in the Sunset, no worries about food and shopping and washing up, she had felt full of energy – indeed fed up, sometimes, that there was not more she could do. Now, with everything to think about again, to be responsible for, she felt curiously tired. Thomas helped as much as he could, of course: he carried the shopping bag and laid the table, but it had always been Beth’s belief that it was a wife’s duty to look after her husband once he had retired, and she would not allow him to assist her as much as he would have liked. Besides, he was older than her.

  Gradually, the punctilious rhythm of the day, which Beth had adhered to all her life, and had expected would continue in her new married life, began to disintegrate. It occurred to her that she and Thomas were still in their dressing gowns at eleven o’clock one morning, and last night’s supper things were unwashed in the sink. The pile of clothes to be ironed had grown dauntingly high, and winter sun exposed the dusty tops of furniture. On shopping expeditions the cold bit through their gloves, and made their arthritic hands to ache, and to open a tin, to turn on a tap or do up a button became a struggle. Some days, when it rained and a vicious wind blew, neither Beth nor Thomas had the heart to go out and buy something for supper. They made do with bread and jam, and suffered indigestion the next morning.

  Madge and Eileen visited them every now and then: Beth made them tea and bought iced buns with wings of angelica, and listened with interest to news of the Sunset. Madge and Eileen seemed concerned: but Beth and Thomas assured them independent married life was very nice: no troubles, they could not be happier. And indeed this was true: to have your own home, rather than to be part of an institution, however comfortable, was an achievement in old age: and although neither ever mentioned it, both Thomas and Beth both privately intended to die at home.

  They bought a budgerigar and a collection of cacti for their window, and sometimes they treated themselves to the luxury of a small glass of sherry, or brandy, which they preferred now to drink on their sofa rather than in the pub. They spoke often of their children, and their past, and of the odd characters in the Sunset, and felt quietly content, while all about them gathered signs of Beth’s fatigue. Sometimes, she worried so much about what to give Thomas for his lunch or supper that she could not sleep. She was stricken with headaches in the morning. She could no longer make pastry, she discovered, because of her arthritis, and for so long she had been telling Thomas what a good pastry maker she was. He believed her, of course, even though she could produce no proof: but the disappointment depressed her.

  Then one morning, the first snow of the year smudging their window, Beth knew she could not get up. A great weakness gripped her, making her too feeble to explain how she felt. Thomas made her a cup of tea, and brought her biscuits for lunch, and she stayed in bed all day. That night a terrible pain spread over her chest and she moaned out loud. Thomas woke. He took one look at her, dragged on his heavy coat over his pyjamas, and went downstairs to the call box to ring for an ambulance. Beth was taken to hospital. Heart attack, they said.

  Madge and Eileen were very good about it all. They assured Thomas that when Beth was better there would be room for the two of them back at the Sunset. Thomas protested. He wanted so much to return to their own flat: he would insist on doing more of the housework, he said, and perhaps a home help could be found. But the doctor was adamant. Beth needed professional care.

  And so Thomas moved back to the Sunset, to a new, light room with twin beds. He left it to Madge and Eileen to organise the selling of their new furniture and carpets and curtains. They gave him quite a large cheque, but it gave him no pleasure. He bought roses for Beth, and a pretty shawl, her favourite blue, and a picture of a country village which he hoped would remind her of Dorset. He visited the hospital each day, almost an hour’s journey on the bus, and in between visits the hours passed slowly.

  Beth returned within ten days, seemingly recovered. But, once again, she had instructions to take things quietly. So they spent most of the day in their room, away from the others with their sympathetic looks. They had their television and their budgerigar, and received much kindness. But for all that, they missed their own flat.

  One evening Thomas noticed that Beth’s complexion had deepened to the colour of a stormy sky, and her eyes were sad as they had been when he first saw her. She began to talk about their time in the flat, and Thomas realised Beth was a little confused: she thought they had spent many years there. In reality it had been scarcely six weeks.

  But Thomas did not contradict her. She seemed happy to talk about their past. In some way it seemed to have replaced the greater stretch of time she had spent with Christopher Randolph Crest, and she wanted Thomas to assure her that when she was quite better they could return to the flat and continue their independent lives.

  ‘It will all be waiting for us, just as we left it,’ she said. ‘Just a few weeks’ time. A good dust, and there we’ll be.’

  Thomas broke the news to her gently.

  ‘Not that flat, won’t,’ he said. ‘You see, you being ill, it had to be given up, now we’re back here. But we can get another one, just the same. Easy. Same block, probably.’

  ‘Oh, good,�
� said Beth. ‘That will be nice.’

  ‘Just a little patience, that’s all we need.’ Thomas found his own mind confused, now: perhaps another flat was a real possibility. Beth, with all her spirit, even after the heart attack, seemed so sure she could manage it. He had faith in her. He was sure she could. He pulled a small package out of his pocket.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Thomas, you shouldn’t.’ Beth opened it with trembling hands. It was a small porcelain pot encrusted with roses.

  ‘For your hairpins,’ Thomas said. Beth smiled. She looked beautiful in the evening light, in spite of the glowering colour of her skin.

  ‘You spoil me, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s just like you’re courting me all over again, isn’t it?’

  Thomas scratched his head.

  ‘Seems to me when we were courting before we were making plans. We got a lot more plans to make again.’ He could not quite think what they were, but felt a strange certainty that in the days to come, with the return of Beth’s health, they would sort themselves out.

  Beth pulled her blue shawl more closely round her shoulders. She touched the cameo brooch at her neck, given to her by Thomas Harrow, and the wedding ring on her finger, given to her by Christopher Randolph Crest, and it seemed to her that everybody was together again in the room. They were all rejoined for the future.

  ‘A few days and I’ll be out in the shops, looking,’ she said. ‘Wait till you see.’ Her head nodded at the darkening sky. ‘I’m a little tired tonight, I think, but tomorrow we’ll make a list of what we’ll need . . . Thomas Christopher,’ she added, ‘you’re good to me.’

  Thomas patted her hand. He was glad that she had put his name first, and that she agreed with him about what they should do, and that they were married. He heard the supper bell, but Beth was sleeping now. Not wanting to disturb her, Thomas remained motionless where he was, his hand in hers, waiting for her to wake, restored, and to smile at him again with her pretty eyes.

  Acknowledgments