As The Sun Goes Down

by Jay Howard

Out The Other Side

  Sophie hesitated, needle part way through the denims she was mending for her son. She tried to gauge from her husband’s expression if this was a good time to start her campaign. Her work was very demanding, but on the whole was nowhere near as draining as her husband’s job in the City. The stress levels were bad and weren’t made any better knowing that the younger members of staff were snapping at his heels, wanting his position and prepared to do anything to get him out of their way.

  At the drinks cabinet Alan’s foot started tapping in time with the jazz Sophie had playing. He gestured towards her with the whisky bottle, she shook her head to decline a drink, and he replaced it with a flourish. She waited while he clinked two ice cubes into the glass then relaxed back in his armchair with a satisfied sigh.

  “Do you remember me saying about Anthea getting married last spring?” she asked, wondering what level of attention he was prepared to give her that evening.

  “Ah, yes. A lovely young couple, if rather idealistic. Have they sorted out a house yet or are they still living with her parents?”

  A good sign, she thought. He remembers the details and is showing interest.

  “Actually they’ve decided not to buy anywhere.” She paused to check if he was still with her. “They’ve decided to start a world tour and have both resigned.”

  Alan chuckled. “A world tour? It sounds like a modern version of the Victorian Grand Tour. Very grand! How do they think they can manage that in their impecunious state? Or have they found sudden musical fame?”

  “They intend doing odd jobs along the way to eke out their funds – a bit of bar work, busking, obviously, that sort of thing - but basically that old camper van is going to be their home for the next year.”

  Alan snorted into his scotch, nearly choking. “What? That old heap? They’ll only get as far as Calais and that’s because the ferry will take them that far.”

  Sophie frowned at him. “Give them credit for some sense. It may still look ramshackle but they’ve done a lot of work to ensure it’s mechanically sound.” Now or never, perhaps. “Don’t you think that’s a glorious plan? To actually take the chance and follow your dream?”

  Alan nodded. She could see from his unfocussed gaze he was remembering his own youthful wild dreams of freedom and adventure, but it wasn’t long before the tension came back to his face. They’d been married long enough she could feel his joys, his pain and his sorrows. She knew he was also remembering life throwing restrictions and responsibilities at him, mostly before he was ready for them.

  He sighed and shook his head. “Chance would be a fine thing indeed. It must be great to be young and free from care.”

  Sophie’s heart went out to him. Oh, my love, bear with me, keep listening, really listening, for a change.

  “You don’t have to be young to follow a dream.” She leaned forward and took his hand. “We’re no longer young but we could still follow our dream. We’ve just had to be more patient than Anthea, that’s all.”

  “What are you on about?” He sat up and grinned, play-punched her on the chin. “Have you been on the sherry, woman? I don’t want a world tour!”

  “No, darling, nor do I. I have a much more modest dream, and if you listen to your heart instead of your head I believe you’ll admit it’s your dream too.” She paused, took her thimble off, then looked up, her eyes demanding his attention. “I want to move to Devon. It’s not enough to go there each year on holiday for two weeks and then have to return here to work.”

  He laughed again. “Did you get through the whole bottle?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Alan. I’m serious.” She gripped her sewing with both hands.

  “Be sensible, Sophie. Without work we don’t keep the bills paid each month.”

  “Sensible? I’ve been sensible all my married life and believe I still am being sensible.” She got up and fetched the whisky bottle to top up his glass. “Think about it, Alan,” she said as she poured. “Why do we need our high salaries?” She replaced the bottle and then sat down again, stroking the back of his neck as she passed. “Once we did, with a mortgage and family and all the high bills we faced here. But now? Why slave for those salaries when neither of us actually wants to be here any more?”

  “But my career is here, everything I’ve worked for. I’d never find an equivalent position in Devon.”

  “Good!” Sophie was deliberately emphatic, slapping one hand on her sewing, then allowed her tone to soften. “You’ve done extremely well, darling, and I’m very proud of what you’ve achieved while we’ve been raising and supporting our family. But it’s taken over your life. It’s taken over our lives. The children have grown up now and I feel that not only have they left but you have, too. What about us? It feels like I’m facing a long prison sentence before you’re forced to retire and we might get a chance to find some fun in life again. Alan, we don’t have to wait! We’ve done the youth and freedom bit, we’ve done the adulthood and caring for others bit. Now we’re out the other side, at a new stage of our lives, one in which, yet again, there’s only ourselves to consider.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Eddie?”

  Their youngest son had moved out for a while. He was making noises about moving out again, but not really making much of an effort to do anything about it.

  “I thought it was mothers who were supposed to come out with such concerns?” She smiled ruefully. “I know what you’re thinking, wondering what the chances are that he’ll want to scoot back home again.” Sophie started sewing again while she talked. “Poor Anna, he didn’t really give the lass much of a chance last time of building a relationship that could stand the test of time, did he? It was very wrong of him to expect her to cope with all the domestic details of life as well as hold down a job just as demanding as his own. He’s very lucky she’s prepared to give him a second chance, albeit with the rules more clearly defined. He needs definite parameters set.”

  She glanced up and saw the merriment in Alan’s eyes. “And it’s not my fault, Mr Cheshire Cat there, who had the privilege of the handmaiden bit because I was too besotted with you not to! I’ve tried to teach him how to be a modern man. I offered repeatedly to teach him to cook but all I get is, “I’d learn to cook if I wished to become a chef”, and he still believes he’ll be able to employ a domestic - on his salary? - never mind I’ve told him otherwise. He really is terribly self-absorbed, and a boring old fart to boot.”

  “Sophie!” Alan was quite shocked. “How can you speak about your own son like that?”

  “Well he is! You have to admit that he does show extreme reluctance to let life show him the wonderful experiences that are on offer if only you are prepared to keep an open mind and a flexible attitude. Perhaps if we weren’t here to pick up the pieces for him this time he’d be forced to give life a proper try. He is thirty after all – it’s high time he left home for good. If he wants marriage then he has to take on the whole bag of responsibilities that go with it.”

  “OK, so working on the premise that it’s just the two of us, what do you envisage us doing in Devon? Monthly bills, however much lower they are, still have to be paid, you know.”

  “Of course I know. What we would do is relax, like we do every year when we’re on holiday there. You know I don’t mean ‘do nothing’ by that: you can be very relaxed and still be working. It’s all in the mind. We’d enjoy a quality of life that we’re missing here in the South East. You know the expression – if you want to get out of the rat race, stop being a rat. Somewhere along the way we lost a reasonable work/life balance and I want it back.”

  “But -”

  “Hold on! Hold on!” She stalled his attempted interruption with a hand raised against him. “Let me show you something.”

  Sophie reached for a file from her side table that Alan had assumed was more work she’d had to bring home.

  “I feel like I’m being set up here.”

  Sophie was imperturbable. “Not at all. We both k
now that rational decisions cannot be based on anything other than hard facts.”

  “Which you’ve been busy gathering…”

  “Wasn’t it you who insisted I learn to walk around the wall to see what was on the other side rather than taking a flying leap?”

  They smiled at each other, knowing that in their long marriage neither had ever taken a binding decision without the full knowledge and consent of the other. Their different approaches to life complemented and balanced each other beautifully.

  “I have here a current valuation on our house and details of all expenditure that would be involved in settling our affairs here. I also have details of suitable properties in Devon in two categories – a potential home for us, and likely properties for holiday lets. The spreadsheet shows predicted income and expenditure over the course of the first year, projected for a further five years, for several of the possible combinations of purchases of said properties.”

  Alan took the folder thoughtfully but couldn’t help laughing at the very first entry.

  “Sorry love, but you’ve got your figures wrong here. £750,000 for our house? I think not!”

  “Actually, that’s a conservative figure. The desirability of this area has rocketed in recent years. Surely you’ve noticed the number of expensive new cars on the drives now, not the beat-up wrecks there used to be? We don’t have local cafes, we have bistros. I used to be able to buy my knitting wool on the High Street: now I can spend £50,000 on a designer kitchen. Affluent people want to live here, and the competition has driven prices up. If you care to refer to the enclosed building societies’ report that was published last week in the papers, you will see that for this area the forecast is for it to continue to increase at the rate of 2% a month for the rest of this year.”

  “We only paid £42,000 for it. These buyers must need their heads examined.”

  “But we won’t insist on it if we are to be the beneficiaries of such madness.” Her eyes twinkled sensing she might win him round. “Besides, we’ve spent a great deal on it over the years, extending and improving it.”

  The sheets in the folder were turned very slowly as the dream started to gel into a real possibility in Alan’s mind. He peered at her over the top of his glasses. “I notice you’ve selected older, rather run-down properties to choose from for our next home.”

  A shared look was sufficient for them both to be back in that time long ago when it had been their ambition to buy a house with character, one that was just about habitable but would need years of empathetic renovation to turn it into their treasured home. Back then, with a baby on the way, common sense had prevailed. They had compromised and bought somewhere that could be improved, and had been over the years, but was fully habitable from the outset. Most of their married life had been a compromise in one way or another.

  “We’re still relatively young, Alan. We can do this. And think how much more experienced we are with DIY now.”

  “Will we have any time left over from working on home and garden to still play golf together?”

  She noticed he had said ‘will we’, not ‘would we’.

  “The final section of that folder details all the local courses,” Sophie assured him smugly.

  Alan went over to give her a kiss on his way to the drinks cabinet. “I’m glad it’s such nice things you try to talk me into. But I need a replenishment to get over the shock.”

  The lounge door opened quietly. “Hello,” Eddie said, and ambled over to the sofa.

  Eddie had never been noisy, or gone in for boisterous play, or did anything in the way that other boys did. Sophie had never been able to understand him.

  “Oh good, glad you’re mending those first.” Eddie indicated the jeans that lay in Sophie’s lap. “Anna’s insisting on going to the barn dance in the community centre near her place tonight. I tried to talk her out of it but no joy. With any luck that sagging old ceiling will have come down before we get there and save us all that sweating and stomping.”

  “Hello, love. Barn dances can be great fun. You’ll have a lovely time together.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “I’ll get your tea on in a minute, but there’s something we’d like to discuss with you first.”

  As always, Eddie gave his mother his full attention. As always it was impossible for her tell what he was thinking.

  “Your father and I have just decided to sell up and move to Devon.”

  “Move? Move when?” Eddie’s face was expressive of his shock at the prospect, which really surprised his mother.

  Alan removed some of the worried frown from his son’s face when he interjected, “We don’t know for sure yet. Your mother and I have only just started discussing it. We are agreed in principle but it could be many years yet.”

  “Oh, Alan, why wait?”

  “Sophie, you said yourself that house prices here are still rising. There’s a lot to be taken into consideration.”

  “Yes, we could continue to ‘consider’ ourselves into immobility!”

  “And what about me?” Eddie asked. “I want a say in this too.”

  “Eddie, it won’t affect you soon. You’re getting married to Anna, remember? You’re moving out anyway.”

  “Well actually, no, I’m not.” He paused, his eyes flicking from one parent to the other. “I’m going to tell Anna tonight that I don’t really think it’s a good idea. We’ll go ahead with the wedding plans and then both move in here. It will save us a small fortune.”

  Sophie knew how much Eddie brooded about things before making decisions. She realised he had probably been wondering how to break it to them for quite some time, and now the issue had been forced on him prematurely. His father’s face confirmed for them both that this was not the best timing.

  “I see.” Alan didn’t need any more ice to his scotch: his voice was sufficient. “You have the gall to believe you should have a say in what we do, but did not think that we should be asked for our consent to your plans? Plans which, I might point out, would have a major impact on our lives!”

  “Dad! It’s not like that at all!”

  Sophie watched the blood suffuse his face. She was sure it was primarily embarrassment, but there was definitely anger there too. At last, some sign of real emotion from him.

  “No? Tell me, what is it like? You plan to move in unannounced with your new bride, without our permission and with no indication of how long you intend staying. Or perhaps you expect to remain here hoping that possession is nine-tenths of the law when your mother and I die?”

  “Alan!” Now Sophie was shocked. What have I started here? Alan and Eddie have never had a cross word before and now they’re all but at each other’s throats. She’d noticed more and more of late just how short Alan’s fuse had become during the past year, how volatile his moods.

  Eddie jumped up, his mouth working frantically while the brain was still disconnected. “You… you taught me to be financially prudent, to consider all the options, to… Stop looking at me like that! Oh! I’ll speak to you later when you’re calmer and more rational!” Eddie slammed the door on his way out.

  “The insolent pup! Sophie – speak to the estate agents tomorrow. The Collingwoods are on the move, and young fellow me lad can like it or lump it!”

  Oh dear, Sophie thought, now I’m the one who wants to discuss the issue further. Good lord, Eddie - when Alan’s ‘calmer and more rational’? Whatever next? You’ll never make progress that way. But I don’t want a black cloud over your wedding day. Is the path to a dream ever smooth when a family’s involved?

  ~~~