The pandemic having provided a new talking point, it briefly revived Cyril’s inclination to opine. Yet whilst he had spearheaded the majority view during three and a half years of Remainer revanchism, he garnered less support—more precisely, no support—as a coronavirus contrarian. His “sense of proportion” was not well received. As fatalities soared both domestically and abroad, Cyril Wilkinson’s pooh-poohing was widely deplored as in poor taste.
“All these ‘lockdowns’ are an overreaction,” Cyril announced in the dining hall, whose denizens fell silent and glared. “Every resident here is old enough to remember the Hong Kong flu in 1968, which killed eighty thousand Britons whilst the rest of the country got on with their lives. For that matter, fifty-eight million people died worldwide last year. A few hundred thousand extra is a drop in the bucket.”
“If you were one of those drops in a kicked bucket,” the former software engineer at the next table snarled, “you might not be so cavalier.”
“I’m eighty-one and I’ve had a full life,” Cyril said. “If I pick up a bug that doesn’t agree with me, that may be a pity, but it’s not tragic.”
“You’re disrespectful of the victims of this crisis!” the female ex-CEO at the opposite table charged. “I’ve a sister in Durham who’s already at death’s door, and if she gets infected that door will swing wide open. You’ve no regard for human life!”
“I’ve plenty of regard for human life, Carol,” Cyril said calmly. “For example, last year one and a half million people died from TB, as well as over six hundred thousand of malaria, and world leaders didn’t close a single newsagent. The developing world lives with lethal endemic disease as a matter of course, and we don’t care because it’s Africa and they’re supposed to suffer.”
“What a load of posturing rubbish,” the software engineer muttered.
Cyril’s voluble concern that a recession or even depression resulting from a sustained economic deep freeze could produce even higher casualties than the virus somehow translated into wanting to kill all the old people, despite him being a card-carrying codger himself. By the time the lockdown was declared, his fellow residents were practising “social distancing” of the old-school variety: sniffing pointedly and harrumphing to an opposite corner of the common room when he sat down. The cold shoulder wouldn’t likely last—because his antagonists wouldn’t last.
* * *
Marriages tend to involve a division of labour, and Kay’s job as the upbeat one who knew how to savour life in all its piquant detail could become a tyranny. It didn’t seem fair that she was obliged to be all very jolly hockey sticks the livelong day; surely getting down in the dumps was a human right. Why, it was a human right even on your birthday. Your eightieth birthday.
Journey’s End never left residents to their own devices when such milestones came round. After all, nothing ever happened here aside from a novel diagnosis or another catastrophic fall, and even the appearance of new residents was facilitated by the disappearance of the old ones. Grateful for occasions of a more jovial variety, well-meaning but unimaginative staffers had planned a party for that night, when Kay could expect trite streamers, humourless banners, and bland cake with too much icing. At least there’d be wine. But she was dreading the evening all the same. None of these people cared it was her birthday really, and the only reason Kay cared she couldn’t share.
At a private table in the dining hall at lunch that day, she slumped over a wild mushroom fajita that had long ago ceased to excite a sense of discovery. If this was a restaurant, it was always the same restaurant.
“I sometimes wonder if you had the right idea to begin with,” she told Cyril glumly. “You know, live it up, spend the money down to the last fiver—and then go out in style, with music, and dancing, and tablets washed down with champagne.”
“You’re the one who chucked them in the bin,” Cyril reminded her. “Why, would you take them now if we still had them?”
“Of course not.” She gestured to the comely wooden blinds slatting the room with springtime sun. “This is fine, right? There’s nothing wrong with it. You were bang on the money back when my father died. The only way to do it would have been to commit to the date massively in advance, as you proposed, and marshal our resolve massively in advance—”
“As I proposed.”
“Because otherwise, it would always seem like a good idea to do tomorrow. Why, do you wish we’d committed to a firm exit date after all? If I hadn’t tossed the Seconal, would you take it now? I mean right now, today, the way we planned to before I bottled it.”
“No, but I’m not sure why not.”
“The body is in control,” Kay said. “The body wants to live, and the body will put up with anything. It has no standards. We get bored. Our bodies don’t get bored. They don’t even feel pain. We feel pain, but our bodies will never throw themselves off a bridge because they can’t take it.
