The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

1

I’ve been standing by this kettle, making tea for Arthur and me, for sixty-two years. Two different houses, god knows how many different kettles, but always me, always him, always a morning cup of tea. He’s at the kitchen table, pen in hand, tackling the crossword. He’s opened a window and I can hear birds chirruping in the garden. A blackbird, I think, and a robin. A whole conversation going on that means nothing to me. When I sit down, Arthur will fold the paper over and put his pen down and say ‘Well’, and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do with the day. A walk or a job or nothing much. In our working years, it was only the weekends we had to make these decisions, but now it’s every day, stretching out ahead, hour stacked on hour.

I drop in the teabags, the milk already in my cup but only added to his at the very end of the process. Half a sugar for him. Used to be two, then one. He would say, ‘Why deprive yourself, at this age?’ But I got it down, all the same. Olly’s sniffing around my feet, looking for crumbs I might have dropped. I reach down to pat his head but he dodges out of the way, goes back to Arthur, like always. He smells like the river, and I make a mental note to give him a bath soon. There’s bread in the toaster and butter and jam on the side, waiting. And there’s something I want to say, something I’ve been wanting to say now for decades, about this life we’ve built, but the words are stuck. They’re always stuck.

I take the mugs over to the table, noticing how the steam rises and then drags itself in the direction I walk.

‘Well,’ Arthur says, folding the paper. ‘Any plans for today?’

I shake my head, and the toast pops up with a quiet clatter.

‘I’m going to that funeral,’ he says. ‘Tommy Waites.’

There’s always a funeral when you get to our age. Arthur used to cut Tommy’s hair, when he had the barber’s shop, and they drank together at the conservative club sometimes. He’s been to funerals with less of a connection than that. I never know whether he’s going to pay his respects or just because it’s an outing of sorts. Finger sandwiches and slightly stale crisps, a couple of whiskeys for the road.

‘You go,’ I say. ‘I barely knew him.’

‘I’m sure Moira would be glad to see you.’

‘You see, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you his wife’s name. So I’m quite sure my presence wouldn’t make a difference to her one way or the other.’

His shoulders rise just a fraction and I know he’s annoyed. I’m an expert in his body language, as I’m sure he is in mine. You don’t live side by side, alone, for more than six decades without learning a thing or two.

‘So what will you do, while I’m gone?’

I could read, or do some knitting, or look through old photographs. I could just sit and think, go back over my memories, have a rake through my life. Our lives. But Arthur doesn’t approve of that kind of thing, thinks it’s maudlin. Always look forward, that’s his motto. Or one of them. Me, I’m more about looking back, especially now there’s so much back and so little forward left. What’s wrong with spending your last few years in quiet contemplation? It’s too late to change the world, isn’t it? That’s the trouble between us; I’m winding down and he’s still trying to go full throttle.

‘I need to sort out that kitchen drawer that’s sticking,’ I say.

‘Oh yes, that’s been driving me round the bend.’

I don’t say that it wouldn’t have got stuck in the first place if he didn’t keep putting things in it when it’s clearly full. Takeaway menus we’ll never use and buttons and rolls of sticky tape and who knows what else. I’ll throw 80 per cent of it away, and he’ll be pleased and won’t notice any of the things he was hoarding have disappeared, which goes to show he didn’t need them in the first place.

When he comes down in his funeral suit, he holds his arms out in front of him for me to do his cufflinks.

‘Bill’s old cufflinks, these,’ he says, as he always does.

I nod, don’t say that after sixty-odd years, they feel more like his to me than Bill’s, despite the initials. WM. William Mansfield.

He’s had that suit more than thirty years, and the trousers are a bit too tight. He smells like soap and water. Just clean. Just him.

‘You’re sure I can’t change your mind?’ he asks.

I look at him, right in the eye, and wonder when I last did that. You spend so much time talking from different rooms, or one of you on the sofa and one in the doorway. When do you ever stand inches apart like this, and really focus on each other? He’s still got a full head of hair, though it’s thinning, and it’s still got a touch of sandy colouring mixed in with the white. His eyes are as blue as they were on our wedding day, when I looked into them at the altar, still hoping for a reason to back out. He’s put weight on, of course. He’s not that compact, muscular man I first knew. He’s got jowls and a belly. It suits him, age. Because he’s got a magical smile, always has, and when he flashes that, you don’t really see anything else.

‘I don’t fancy it,’ I say.

He nods. And I know he’s thinking that I never fancy much any more. That I’ve mostly given up on life. And it’s true. It’s funny. When you’re choosing who to spend your life with, you don’t think about how you’ll both feel in your eighties. Whether one of you will be ready to sit and wait for the end while the other one’s keen to cram in as much living as possible. But even when we were younger, this difference raged between us. Him, always thinking he could make a difference, me knowing I’m just one person in a wide world, and it doesn’t much matter what I do.

‘Well, I’ll see you later, then.’

‘I’ll do a sausage casserole,’ I say, and we both know it’s an olive branch.

‘Right you are.’

I follow him to the door and wait for him to speak, knowing he won’t go until things are patched up between us.

‘I won’t be too long,’ he says, putting his arms around me. I feel the scratch of his stubble on my cheek and hope he’ll pull away.

And then he’s gone. I take sausages – paired and neatly wrapped in clingfilm – out of the freezer and put them on the side to defrost. Next, I tackle the drawer, being ruthless. If I don’t know what it is or it’s not been used for months, it goes in the bin. It only takes half an hour, and then I’m about to get my book out but Olly keeps going over to the door and looking mournful, and I know he’d reach up and put his lead on himself if he could.

‘Come on then, boy,’ I say, and I get us both ready for a walk.

It’s one of those bright, cold October days. Dry, at least, but I know my hands will be stiff and cold as stone by the time I get home. We go to the end of the lane and then towards the centre of town. I’ve lived here in this small Surrey town my entire life, walked this route so often I’m sometimes surprised my footsteps aren’t imprinted on the tarmac. Olly doesn’t care, as long as there are things to sniff, other dogs to growl at and somewhere he can relieve himself. Which he’s doing now. I wait for him to finish and then reach down with a bag and for a horrible minute I think I’m not going to be able to get up again, but then something clicks and I’m upright. I look at Olly, who’s eager to get going again. How long until we can’t look after him? When Arthur talked me into getting him three years ago (after writing a very well-considered pros and cons list) I said he might well outlive us both and Arthur shook his head at me as if he simply didn’t understand why I’d bring that up.

‘Sometimes you talk as if we’re already dead,’ he said.

I’ve always remembered that.

We go on, Olly and me. Past that new fancy bakery that smells of icing sugar and ginger and the hairdressers where Arthur’s barber shop used to be. Past the little supermarket with its sliding doors that open even if you’re just walking by, as if they’re part of a plan to lure people in, and the Carpenters, which is probably where the wake’s being held. Cigarette butts litter the pavement. I pull my wool coat a bit tighter around me and hurry along, hoping Arthur won’t see me through the window and come out.

It’s changed a bit, Broughton, over the years. It’s always had everything I need, though, with the occasional trip to Overbury for clothes or furniture. London is less than an hour away, but I’ve only ever been about once a year. Broughton is mostly enough. The shops thin out and I cross the road, take the little path up to the church. I walk among the gravestones until I find them; my family.

There’s Bill, who went first, though he shouldn’t have. Full of life one day and gone the next, one of those hidden heart conditions you hear about and never expect your brother to fall victim to. Then Mother, ten years later. She never got over his death, and though she officially died of cancer, it was quite clear to me that she gave up and started dying very slowly the day she heard her boy was gone. And then Dad, less than a year after her. Stroke. All over in a minute. Does it count as being orphaned if it happens when you’re in your thirties? Arthur’s mother treated me like one of her own but I was always aware of the fact that if I lost him, I’d be alone in the world.

I don’t think Arthur’s ever really understood that. He was one of nine and he’s always had siblings and cousins all over the place. All our lives, wherever we talked about going on our holidays, he’d have a cousin there, and they’d meet up for a drink or dinner and they’d always have that same Beaumont look. Sandy hair and freckles. My parents were both only children so we were a unit of four. Now whittled down to one.

There are leaves all over the stones, in reds and oranges. I can’t see Mother’s dates, or Dad’s full name. But it’s so pretty, this autumn scene, that it doesn’t matter. I know those things anyway, don’t I? And I’ve never really seen the point of sweeping leaves. Nature won’t be outdone.

I look over my shoulder to check there’s no one around before I speak.

‘It’s Mabel, just passing with Olly. There was something in the paper yesterday about people’s collections and I thought of you, Bill, and those stamps of yours. I showed it to Arthur and he chuckled, said he used to slip them out of your folder and hide them sometimes, for a joke, and you’d get all het up and sulk for days. What would you collect now, I wonder? If you were still here and you’d stuck with the stamps, you’d have thousands by now. I’ve kept them for you, up in the loft. Lord knows why. I suppose they’ll get thrown out when Arthur and I go, like everything else.’

Tears spring to my eyes and take me by surprise. I always have a quiet word with them when I come by here, and I don’t usually get emotional. Perhaps I’m coming down with something, or need a good night’s sleep. These days, I tend to turn like a chicken on a spit for hours before I can settle down.

I head home and wait for Arthur to return. It’s funny, I don’t mind him going out, don’t mind my own company, but I like him coming back, too. I like hearing his stories. The house feels different when he’s not in it, as if all our furniture and belongings settle and wait, like a breath held. It’s nearly four when I hear the scrape of his key in the lock. He’s opened his shirt collar and loosened his tie, and he’s had a few to drink, by the look of him.

‘Was it all right?’ I ask.

‘It was. He had a good life, Tommy. Lots of people there to see him off. Do you think there’ll be many there for us, when it’s our turn?’

He sits on the sofa and Olly comes running in to be fussed.

‘Hello, Dog,’ Arthur says.

Olly’s always liked him the most. I watch Arthur reach down to scratch behind his ears, the way both of their faces relax. I think about what he asked. For him, surely some of those family members will come, drifting in from all corners of the country. And there’s all his old clients, and the men he drinks with, those who are left. For me, I’m not so sure.

‘What’s got you thinking about that?’ I ask, but it’s a stupid question, because the answer is obvious.

‘Tommy and Moira had four children, and they were all there with their husbands and wives, and then their children. Just got me thinking, that’s all.’

There’s nothing I can say. It’s too late to go back and change anything.

‘Tea?’ he asks, getting up and disappearing from the room.

‘Yes, please.’

And all the rest of the day, I know we’re both thinking about the children we didn’t have.