When Kay first opened up the pound of thawed mince after a long day of packing their possessions for the removal men, he’d noticed her poking at the meat with a sigh of disappointment before breaking it in half to begin forming patties. In the very middle of the mound, perhaps no more than an ounce had still looked like beef. The remnant remained a vibrant red, and one might postulate that if this central titbit had been rescued from the rest, it would still have retained its original flavour. Something at the heart of Cyril’s psyche had been preserved in just this manner, and in the early hours before dawn it was this morsel that wept and wept and wept.
12
Once Upon a Time in Lambeth
“Hold on. Let’s be clear.” Kay swung her feet back to the floor and sat up straight. “You’re proposing that we get to eighty and then commit suicide. You didn’t use the word. Anyone who concocts a plan like that shouldn’t rely on euphemism and evasion.”
“Quite right.” Cyril recited, “I am proposing that we get to eighty and then commit suicide.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Cyril Wilkinson, don’t be ridiculous. Honestly, sometimes!”
Cyril looked wounded. “I was serious.”
“I know,” Kay said, standing up. “That’s what makes it ridiculous.”
“How do you propose we avoid your father’s fate, then?”
“I don’t. Our destiny isn’t wholly in our hands. I realize you don’t like that about the world, but there’s an upside: our destiny isn’t wholly our responsibility, either. Or, if we end badly, our fault.”
“I don’t appreciate you simply dismissing an idea that I’ve given a great deal of thought.” He was sulking.
“You have any number of brilliant ideas, my dear,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “This simply isn’t one of them. By contrast, your proposal that we add a second skylight to the conservatory is spot on.”
“What’s wrong with planning for a clean break?” he asked petulantly.
Blimey, he simply wouldn’t let it go. “Some silly, numerically arbitrary suicide pact is psychologically unrealistic, and besides. I don’t want to kill myself. Is that good enough for you? Occasionally people conduct an old age that is fulfilling, active, and rich. If believing in such a possibility is like believing in fairies, then fine. I believe in fairies.”
Kay put both attractive sherry glasses in the dishwasher. What on earth had she been thinking, drinking at such an early hour? It would have been one thing had she been driven to drown her sorrows over her father, but she was not sorry he was dead. She was merely sorry that she wasn’t sorry.
* * *
It was only four years later that Kay opted for retirement from the NHS at fifty-five. Before she announced the decision to Cyril, she was anxious that he’d regard leaving the service at the earliest opportunity as a betrayal. Worse, she worried that the second career she hoped to cultivate thereafter would elicit his derision. The occupation she aimed to train for wasn’t morally freighted; it had no moral qualities whatsoever. The arrangement of surfaces, shapes, and colours had nothing to do with doing good, though properly pursued it could entail doing well.
Yet when she laid out her tentative plans—nervously, in a spirit that implied she might forget all about the whimsical notion in the face of the slightest discouragement—her husband was astonishingly supportive. He commended the redecoration she’d done in their own home and saw no reason why her innovative design instincts couldn’t be scaled up. He assured his wife that she’d more than put in her time at St Thomas’. He even confessed to a cheerful envy of a trade that could provide her such broad opportunities for creativity. That night, she’d never felt more certain that she’d married the right man. He wasn’t nearly as rigid as the children seemed to imagine. Though he could get wrapped up in his own ambitions and his own way of seeing things, he had a warm nature. He cared passionately about her happiness. He might have been raised in an era when women were expected to assume a muted, subordinate position, but he was not stuck in the 1950s and he was capable of change.
After she graduated from Kingston, the jobs for friends and friends-of-friends eventually gave her a long-shot crack at doing over the lobby of a flash, relatively new hotel called One Aldwych in Covent Garden. Not only did she snag the commission, but her bold yet cosy revamp won a major national design award. Having made the leap to commercial properties, she was soon commanding considerable fees and able to pick and choose which spaces she found inspiring. She acquired a coveted reputation as a designer who never sacrificed
