appropriate platitude.
I’m as gutted as you are, I tell her. It’s not the end of the world, though. We could have another cycle. Or we could think
about adoption.
We’d have to go private to get another cycle. And we don’t have the money.
Her voice betrays no emotion. Like she’s rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, lying here waiting for me.
I go over to the sofa and squash onto the opposite end, lift her feet up and place them on my lap, bare and cold with blunt
toes and rough skin at the heels. I start to rub them with my hands, massaging with my thumbs up into the instep the way she
likes it. And some of the tension melts out of her.
It
is
the end of the world, she says, quietly.
It feels like that, I say. You just have to take it easy. Just look after yourself for a few days. Don’t do too much thinking.
Yeah, she says, uncertainly.
I was thinking Kel. Why don’t I take a day off work tomorrow. We could drive down to Whitby, you know, like the old days.
Walk on the beach, fish and chips on the pier, lob a week’s wages in the fruities.
She smiles, reluctantly. Don’t think I’ve got the energy, she says.
Do you good to get away. Change the scenery, blow some cobwebs away. Remember that hotel we used to stay at?
She giggles.
Fucking hell, that squeaky bed. Didn’t get much sleep, did we?
We’re both quiet for a moment but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
Aye, she says, eventually. Let’s go. Maybe you’re right.
I’ll put a brew on, I say, levering myself up from the sofa. Then I remember.
Shit. Said I’d meet Yan tomorrow, up the Headland.
I hover in the doorway waiting for her response.
Thick as thieves, you two, is all she says.
She sits up, and her voice is flat again, and weary.
I don’t know, I say, shrugging.
You always made him out to be a bit of an ogre. Self-obsessed, short fuse, wanderlust.
That’s all true. But he’s growing on me. I spent all those years resisting the
idea
of him, I’d forgotten how likeable he is in reality. Even though he’s dying, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
He’s working the charm on you, she says. That’s what it is. The blarney.
I know. But I can handle it.
What do you talk about?
Nothing important. Just banter, really.
You don’t talk about us. The fertility stuff.
Of course not.
Because that’s private.
She crosses her legs under the dressing gown, purses her lips.
Dan. Flip him off tomorrow. Let’s do Whitby anyway.
I hesitate.
Can’t stand up a dying man, I say, my voice wheedling. We can go Sunday instead.
She breathes out, long and slow, deflating like a balloon.
No, she says. You can’t stand up a dying man.
So the next day me and Yan and more than a dozen others are peering over a back garden wall close to the church on Hartlepool
Headland. The doctor’s garden, they call it, though who the doctor was or what he thought about the army of anoraks at the
bottom of his garden is not recorded. After October storms and spring gales the Headland can be teeming with migrants blown
off course from Siberia, Scandinavia, the Arctic. It’s the first landfall after the North Sea.
Pallas’ warbler, says Yan. And she’s a beauty.
On the other side of the garden there’s a tiny bird, pirouetting like a leaf among the tendrils of a bedraggled climber. Yellow
stripes through the eyes and across the crown of the head, yellow wing barsand rump flashing whenever it flutters to a new perch. It’s not a life tick for either of us, but enough to get us out here
on a raw Saturday morning.
There’s a chippie just across the road with a crowd of kids hanging around outside. Lads in baseball hats and baggy sportswear,
lasses with bare and blotchy legs. They smoke, swear raucously to impress. But the crowd of birders doesn’t merit comment.
Just part of the scenery here. Saturday morning cars drone past bound for out-of-town superstores.
All the way from Siberia, says Yan.
The bird is deftly
I’m as gutted as you are, I tell her. It’s not the end of the world, though. We could have another cycle. Or we could think
about adoption.
We’d have to go private to get another cycle. And we don’t have the money.
Her voice betrays no emotion. Like she’s rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, lying here waiting for me.
I go over to the sofa and squash onto the opposite end, lift her feet up and place them on my lap, bare and cold with blunt
toes and rough skin at the heels. I start to rub them with my hands, massaging with my thumbs up into the instep the way she
likes it. And some of the tension melts out of her.
It
is
the end of the world, she says, quietly.
It feels like that, I say. You just have to take it easy. Just look after yourself for a few days. Don’t do too much thinking.
Yeah, she says, uncertainly.
I was thinking Kel. Why don’t I take a day off work tomorrow. We could drive down to Whitby, you know, like the old days.
Walk on the beach, fish and chips on the pier, lob a week’s wages in the fruities.
She smiles, reluctantly. Don’t think I’ve got the energy, she says.
Do you good to get away. Change the scenery, blow some cobwebs away. Remember that hotel we used to stay at?
She giggles.
Fucking hell, that squeaky bed. Didn’t get much sleep, did we?
We’re both quiet for a moment but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
Aye, she says, eventually. Let’s go. Maybe you’re right.
I’ll put a brew on, I say, levering myself up from the sofa. Then I remember.
Shit. Said I’d meet Yan tomorrow, up the Headland.
I hover in the doorway waiting for her response.
Thick as thieves, you two, is all she says.
She sits up, and her voice is flat again, and weary.
I don’t know, I say, shrugging.
You always made him out to be a bit of an ogre. Self-obsessed, short fuse, wanderlust.
That’s all true. But he’s growing on me. I spent all those years resisting the
idea
of him, I’d forgotten how likeable he is in reality. Even though he’s dying, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
He’s working the charm on you, she says. That’s what it is. The blarney.
I know. But I can handle it.
What do you talk about?
Nothing important. Just banter, really.
You don’t talk about us. The fertility stuff.
Of course not.
Because that’s private.
She crosses her legs under the dressing gown, purses her lips.
Dan. Flip him off tomorrow. Let’s do Whitby anyway.
I hesitate.
Can’t stand up a dying man, I say, my voice wheedling. We can go Sunday instead.
She breathes out, long and slow, deflating like a balloon.
No, she says. You can’t stand up a dying man.
So the next day me and Yan and more than a dozen others are peering over a back garden wall close to the church on Hartlepool
Headland. The doctor’s garden, they call it, though who the doctor was or what he thought about the army of anoraks at the
bottom of his garden is not recorded. After October storms and spring gales the Headland can be teeming with migrants blown
off course from Siberia, Scandinavia, the Arctic. It’s the first landfall after the North Sea.
Pallas’ warbler, says Yan. And she’s a beauty.
On the other side of the garden there’s a tiny bird, pirouetting like a leaf among the tendrils of a bedraggled climber. Yellow
stripes through the eyes and across the crown of the head, yellow wing barsand rump flashing whenever it flutters to a new perch. It’s not a life tick for either of us, but enough to get us out here
on a raw Saturday morning.
There’s a chippie just across the road with a crowd of kids hanging around outside. Lads in baseball hats and baggy sportswear,
lasses with bare and blotchy legs. They smoke, swear raucously to impress. But the crowd of birders doesn’t merit comment.
Just part of the scenery here. Saturday morning cars drone past bound for out-of-town superstores.
All the way from Siberia, says Yan.
The bird is deftly
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