“Because it’s not as if we can’t live with these ailments. The trouble is that we can live with them, as we can also live with all the other ailments that are coming soon to a theatre near you. We’re already well into the process of whittling away what we’ve always done, who we’ve always been—making sacrifices by degrees, like frogs in a heating pot. So it’s already out of the question that we’ll live some sort of fantasy old age in which we’re wise, spry lives of the party until we’re a hundred and ten.”
“That would never have been possible,” Cyril said. “I was no life of the party when I was twenty-five.”
“You were the life of my party,” Kay said. “And tonight’s party has been splendid.”
“It will still have been a wonderful evening even if we get cold feet about the pièce de résistance.”
“But if we go ahead and simply do the washing up, it’s actuarially likely that you predecease me. I don’t know about that second marriage to a strapping Brexiteer—I’m not sure I’d have the energy, and I worry that he’d never shut up about fishing rights—but I could probably function on my own. I dare say that I could get to the shops, and warm up a tin of beans—”
“You’d do better alone than I would. You’re more sociable.”
“Possibly, but the question is whether I’d have an appetite for that life. Whether I want to shamble to the shops for beans.”
“Come, come,” Cyril said. “It’s 2020. You could at least make it penne and pesto.”
“I’m being serious. I want to let all this go when it still hurts to let it go. When we can still feel a sense of loss. When what we’re losing is still whole, and not corrupted, and diminished, and made dreadfully sad. When other people will still be sorry to see us go. I’m not sure about Roy, but I’m certain that Simon will be sorry. To be fair, Hayley will be sorrier than she expects to be. She’s such a drama queen that it’s hard for her when she has to feel real emotions. She apes so much. It’s a form of avoidance, really, all her histrionics. Funny how pretending to feel things is really a way of not feeling them.”
“That’s what I find hardest to abandon,” Cyril said. “Your asides. They’ve made the course of my days infinitely more stimulating.”
“But what I’m saying is no aside, and it should be music to your ears. There’s only one thing you love better than a good steak and ale pie, and that’s being right. So, back in 1991? You were right. I know I’m always castigating you for being such an obdurate ideologue. But every time I’ve struggled against your unnatural proposition, I’ve ended up boomeranging back to your way of seeing things. Eighty years, whether it feels that way to us right now? It’s a long time. We’ve had a good run. And we—not you and I, but the Big We—we’re getting into the habit of destroying everything good about ourselves before taking our belated leave. Remember those horror films we grew up watching? About zombies, and mummies, and Frankenstein’s monster, staggering around with gaping mouths and vacant eyes? Those creatures played on a primal fear: of living death. And despite the fact that it’s one of our mythic terrors, that’s what we’re trying to arrange for everyone now: a living death. It’s a defilement! A desecration—!”
“You always get louder when you drink,” Cyril said.
“Oh, everyone gets louder when they drink,” Kay said, irritable at the interruption.
“It’s just, the Samsons—”
“FUCK FUCK FUCK!” Kay shouted at the window. “Is this the last night of our lives, or isn’t it?”
“I thought that’s what’s under discussion. And on every other night of our lives, we’ve tried to be considerate of our neighbours, so we should also be considerate on the last one.”
“I was trying to say,” Kay said, at an elaborate if condescendingly reduced volume. “Our lives are our artworks. Sure, we can do a deal with the devil. We can accept decrepitude in trade for remaining technically alive—as a travesty of what we used to be, a walking—or not walking—self-humiliation. But that’s like vandalizing our own creations. It’s like destroying what we love in order to keep it. You and I, we can still talk, and make sense. We can still enjoy each other’s company. Other people can still enjoy our company. You were a fine tenor. Let’s go out on a high note.”
“You’re absolutely certain?”
“I keep getting the impression that I’m more certain than you are.”
“But there was something suspiciously . . . lofty about that speech of yours, being our own ‘artworks.’ Suspiciously high-flown. As if you were talking yourself into something.”
“I’ll keep it simple, then. How much better are our lives going to get than they are right now? What are the chances that everything gets worse from here on out? Not only a bit worse. Loads worse?”
“One hundred percent,” Cyril said.
It was Kay who fetched the water, the tumblers, and the funny black soap-dish box, Kay who first raised her glass with a palmful of tablets and waited for her husband to do the same before giving
