“Happy birthday,” Cyril said, nuzzling her neck with only his shirt on.
“Will it be?” she wondered aloud.
“At least we haven’t to worry about the kids clamouring to help celebrate your eightieth,” Cyril said. “If they did throw you a birthday bash, they could be arrested.”
“You know, the clocks changed to summertime last night. We’ve lost an hour.” Horribly, it was not noon, but already one p.m. “That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Of all the days to be cheated.”
“You never really ‘lose’ an hour, any more than you ‘gain’ one in the autumn. Time is constant. It can’t be borrowed or gifted.”
“Pedant,” Kay said affectionately.
Cooking that afternoon achieved an ecclesiastical aspect. It was not a chore. Kay was sorry when all the potatoes were peeled. The tubers seemed harder and rounder and more resonant under a blade than ever before; the Bramley apples for their crumble also seemed crisper, tarter, and somehow more forcefully in the world, insistent on taking up their rightful space on the cutting board, pushing back against her knife. The smell of butter and cinnamon from the topping was heavenly. The menu was deliberately “ordinary,” for it transpired that all along they’d not dined on Cumberland sausages and hearted cabbage for the sake of their budget, but because that was what they’d both grown up eating and that was what they liked. Truth be told, she’d never really fancied smoked salmon.
Hayley and Simon rang to wish her a “safe” birthday—safety having been mysteriously elevated of late to the highest of virtues. She hadn’t the heart to tell them that, despite the government’s good intentions, remaining “shielded” behind closed doors with her own husband was the most dangerous thing she could have done today. Both children seemed consternated when she kept them too long on the phone. Later they’d understand and be grateful, but in the moment their mother would have seemed clingy. Roy didn’t ring, and perhaps in due course that would cost him. Or not.
Taking a break late afternoon, she sat on one of the patio chairs that Cyril had brought from the tool shed and wrapped herself in her favourite grey woolly jumper, for the air was still sharp. The sun had held and the light had goldened. She did not read The Week. How rarely she registered that sitting, looking, and thinking were activities in and of themselves, and rewarding activities at that. Cyril came out also and cupped her shoulders from behind, as they both beheld the azaleas, just coming into leaf.
They hailed from a generation still given wedding china. Laying out the elegant plates, with plain cream centres, solid emerald borders, and a glint of silver on the rims, Kay was pleased that she’d had the good taste in her youth to choose a simple pattern of which they would never tire. They should have used the good china more often, if not every day. They owned a service for twelve, and she had a sudden urge to smash one of the surplus plates like a heedless Greek, purely because she could. She didn’t, but the notion was bracing.
“What is it?” she asked casually, pressing fresh candles into the holders, though the old ones still had five inches left to burn. “What’s in the black box, exactly?”
“Quinalbarbitone,” he said just as casually. “Aka Seconal. You remember, it was that insomnia medication taken off the market because of the dangers of overdosing.”
“Is it painful?”
“Certainly not. Fatigue, a spot of dizziness or blurred vision. It’s very quiet.”
In the sitting room, Kay put on one of the 1960s playlists she’d located whilst planning their memorial service, turned down to a level low enough for them to talk. They partook of pre-prandial sherry, again dry Amontillado with a twist of lime, along with two strong cheeses and savoury biscuits so thin that they didn’t crack but shatter. They could gorge themselves silly tonight without fear of getting fatter, but Kay inclined instead towards nibbling the tiniest smears of Ardrahan on the corner of a biscuit, then popping a single pea-sized Niçoise olive and sucking the pit.
“Oh, I love this song,” she said when Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” came on, and she sang along. Cyril joined in; he should never have quit that choir, with such fine pitch. The simple melodic line was so infectious that she hopped up to play the song a second time. They danced on the reprise. Ridiculously, on her eightieth birthday, she felt like a girl. Her swaying floor-length dress was a virginal white: the variety of garb in which women were both married and laid out. She’d done a good job on the sitting room, she concluded as the trailing-orchid wallpaper swirled about her. Those not-quite-matching end tables were just right.
They dined. The cheese had quickened her palate, and despite the nature of this occasion, which might have cast rather a pall over matters, Kay was hungry. The whipped potatoes were better with that extra double cream. The sausages had a nice crust without having burnt, and the hearted cabbage with butter and shards of sea salt was still bright with a slight crunch. In fact, all the colours were heightened—in candlelight, Cyril’s face framed by the bookcase looked like a Rembrandt—as if she had taken tablets of a very different sort than the kind in the fridge.
So this was life without consequences. She’d have expected to have to gird herself, to make promises inside her head (Come on, spit it out, this
