By Mark Keane

The morning after their fortieth wedding anniversary, the Jenkins sit down to breakfast in their kitchen. It’s a Wednesday, which means porridge and a slice of buttered toast for Jim. Jean has muesli with blueberries, soda bread and marmalade. At weekends, they have pastries and, sometimes, pancakes with crispy bacon and syrup. Jean pours her tea, adds milk and a smidgen of sugar. Jim sips his instant coffee and scans the front page of the newspaper.

“Those bloody heartless Tories and their sense of entitlement.” He looks over at Jean. “Not that the other lot are much better. Do you know those union jokers still address each other as comrade?” He raises his arms and addresses the ceiling. “Solidarity comrades, I propose we recognize our common mediocrity.” He lowers his arms and fidgets with his cup. “Comrade Smith, same bloody thing as Viscount Dingleberry or Cardinal O’Bannion. Bloody titles.”

Jean reads the arts section and doesn’t comment.

Jim folds the newspaper, leans back in his chair and crosses his legs.

“Lucky I ordered firewood last week. Getting noticeably chilly these days. It’ll be Christmas before we know it. Bloody Christmas, having to deal with a tree and lights and decorations.”

Worse still, he thinks, is taking down everything in January.

Jean spreads marmalade on her soda bread. She pictures Jim rifling through the dresser for old Christmas cards and arranging them on the mantelpiece, filling the spaces between the cards that will come in the post. She’ll ask him why he does it and he’ll say, “It looks too bare otherwise.”

“There’s a recital in St. Cuthbert’s on Saturday,” she says.

“Really? What are they playing?”

“Offenbach, four pieces for cello and piano.”

“Who’s doing it, some amateur group?”

Jean checks the advertisement. “The Friends of St. Cuthbert’s Chamber Orchestra.”

“Thought so. Well, you know what I always say?” Jim waits, but Jean doesn’t look up from the paper. “Better Bach often than Offenbach.”

The rattle of the letter box heralds the arrival of the postman. Jean watches as Jim rushes out to the hallway. She hears him grunt as he bends down. Silence, then his steps on the wooden floor, a hesitation as he stops at the hall table. More steps and he reappears in the kitchen doorway, hands plunged in the pockets of his brown cords.

“Bloody electricity bill.” He looks at the cups and plates. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

***

Jean starts reading an article, entitled, “What Distinguishes an Autobiography from a Memoir?” The chair scrapes the floor as Jim sits down. She feels him watching her.

“You’re looking very pale.”

She says nothing, moves her plate to one side and turns the page.

“I mean it,” he says. “Your face is really pale.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

She doesn’t tell him about the dream, the one she’s been having intermittently. In the dream, she wakes up in bed but Jim isn’t there. The room is full of smoke. She gets out of bed. A strong wind buffets the flat. She leaves the bedroom, moving slowly, running her hand along the wall. The ceiling in the kitchen crashes down and somehow she is under the table. The fridge explodes, flames creeping around her, but she feels safe. There’s no sign of Jim, and the dream ends.

Jean pours more tea. The milk jug is nearly empty. She takes the carton from the fridge and fills the jug. Rain lashes against the windowpanes. The tenement buildings across the street appear blurry. Jim had insisted on a top floor flat to avoid the sound of footsteps overhead and, as he put it, the intolerable intrusion of other lives.

“It’s a pity you didn’t get around to cleaning the windows,” she says. “They’re filthy from all the pollution. It’s too cold and wet to clean them now.”

“I’ll sort it out in spring, don’t worry.”

He resents her implied criticism and refuses to share his private dread. The sash and case windows swing inwards on a hinge so the outer face can be cleaned from inside. Thinking of the window yawning open causes a queasy fluttering in his guts. He imagines reaching out with a sponge, the bucket of sudsy water balanced on the window sill. Reaching into the emptiness and tumbling through the window and down five floors, the impact of crushed bones on the pavement or impalement on the spikes of the metal railing. An inexorable force draws him into that emptiness, but there’s also an insidious desire he can’t ignore, the temptation of falling.

***

“Anything special on today?”

It’s what he asks every morning. Jean works in a Cancer Research charity shop, three days a week, at the cash register or arranging the window display or sorting out the accounts. She was a financial analyst before retirement.

“I told you, I’m filling in for Grace. Her husband is in hospital.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“They’re still running tests.”

Jim nods but stays silent. Another topic to avoid, the unwanted shadow of illness, even the illness of someone he doesn’t know.

Jean removes her reading glasses and puts them in their case. “You’ve got your book club.”

“Hmm,” he responds, stung by her tone, the way she said your book club—cheery and dismissive.

“Aren’t you giving a presentation?”

“That’s right, I better finish preparing for it.”

He goes into the study to get the folder that contains notes for his lecture on the life and work of Joseph Roth. The Radetzky March is the club’s next book of the month.

Back in the kitchen, he puts on the kettle to make more coffee.

“Joseph Roth is a very interesting man,” he says. “You know, he claimed to be an alcoholic at the age of eight.”

“Really.”

He watches her fussing around the table. Of course, she’s not interested in Roth or anything the man had to say or write.

“Marrying an unstable woman didn’t help Roth. She was schizophrenic, and ended up in an asylum. He died from liver failure—keeled over in a Paris cafe. She outlived him, but came to a worse end.”

He spoons instant coffee into his mug and waits for the water to boil.

“A victim of the Nazi Aktion T4,” he says. “Involuntary euthanasia. What do you make of that?”

Jean puts the used dishes and cutlery in the dishwasher. A glance at the wall clock tells her it’s almost nine. She’s due in the charity shop at ten but will leave early and take her time, stroll through the park, passing the young mothers with their children in the play area.

“I’ll get out of your way,” she says, and goes to the window. “Looks like the rain has stopped.”

***

The electricity bill is on the table in the hallway. She’ll deal with that and the other bills at the weekend. Why does he have to be so nasty and bitter? He wasn’t always that way—he used to make her laugh at silly things.

Jim can’t concentrate on his presentation. He had given Jean a first draft. The pages were left unread on the coffee table. He pressed her for an opinion, and she pointed out some grammatical errors.

“But what do you think?” he had asked. “Is it interesting?”

“That’s your stuff,” she said. “Why do you have to involve me?”

“So, you don’t have an opinion?”

“You take any criticism badly.”

Jim looks up, distracted by the ping from Jean’s phone, which she has left on the table.

“Jean,” he calls. “You’ve got a message.”

He sees her walk past the doorway and hears her opening and closing drawers in the bedroom. His eyes skim over his lecture, taking nothing in.

“You’ve got a message,” he calls, louder this time.

Nothing is ever urgent as far as Jean is concerned. Passive, no opinion but never siding with him on any topic, and taking every opportunity to undermine him.

Eventually she appears, wrapping a scarf around her neck. She takes the phone and swipes the screen. “Oh dear,” she says.

“What is it?”

“Grace’s husband has died.”

Jim puts his notes back in the folder. Jean has her back to him, phone to her ear, talking to one of her friends.

“Yes, it’s terrible. Poor Grace.”

He leaves the room and picks up the envelope with the electricity bill, unthinking, not knowing what to do with it.

Grace must be in her sixties. He half-remembers Jean telling him she’d retired from the civil service. Filling in time, like Jean, in that charity shop. Now a widow and alone though she may have children, even grandchildren. Not that it matters; children or grandchildren, she’s still alone. Her husband is dead.

Jim puts the electricity bill back on the table. There’s no reason it can’t happen to him or to Jean. No reason at all. Jean gone, leaving him on his own. He watches her, standing at the smog-streaked window.

***

She finishes her phone call.

“Ruby, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” Jean looks up from her phone.

“Fortieth wedding anniversary.”

“That’s right.” She puts the phone in her bag.

“Why ruby? What’s it meant to signify?”

Jean hesitates. “Persistence.”

“I see.” Jim returns to his seat and fiddles with his folder. “We must do something, a meal out at the very least.”

“Yes, let’s do something.”

Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash