The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

by Laura Pearson

‘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 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?

There will always be tough years in a marriage this long. It’s guaranteed. The best you can hope is you have someone who cares enough to weather them with you.

It’s been just the two of us for so many years. People don’t talk much about marriages without children, about the intensity of them. No one else in the house to act as a buffer, to force you to come together after an argument. There was a time when it seemed everyone I knew was having children, and then I lost them all to that life. It’s not for the faint-hearted, parenting. Years and years of care and attention. And there was Arthur and me, still just us. Always just us.

She shrugs. ‘I’d never report someone for stealing food.’ I think about that. ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, because it’s not like they’re stealing something decadent or luxurious, is it? Or something expensive. If someone is stealing food, chances are they need food, and that’s none of my business, and I’m not about to try to make things harder for them.’ It’s a compassionate response, and clearly one she’s thought through.

‘When you’re young and you’re a woman,’ I say, ‘everyone’s interested in you. In what you look like and what you’ve got to say. And then there’s a point in your life, around fifty or so, when it all stops and you become invisible. And it’s stupid, really, because by then you have much more interesting things to contribute to the conversation, but no one wants to hear them. I’ve come to terms with it, it happened to me a long time ago, but since my husband died, some days I don’t speak to anyone, and I feel like no one can see me, and I think I wanted to test that.’

‘No. He saw me and Hannah.’ She gestures to a girl of a similar age on the next checkout over. ‘He saw us kissing, in the car park. We’re seeing each other. He doesn’t like it.’ ‘Whatever has it got to do with him?’ She shrugs. ‘Nothing. It’s just, men like him, they think we’re all here for their entertainment, don’t they? And they don’t like it if we’re not interested in them. In men, I mean. They feel like it’s some kind of personal attack.’ I shake my head. ‘He couldn’t get the hang of potty training.’ ‘What?’ Erin shakes her head slightly as if she’s not sure she’s heard me correctly. ‘I knew his mother. And he used to shit in his pants until he was almost five.’ She laughs and covers her mouth, and her eyes are sparkling. I lift my hand in a wave and turn to go.

People didn’t move about the way they do now, when I was younger. You stayed put unless you had a good reason to go elsewhere. A job, or a person, I suppose. That way, you had the people who loved you around if you needed them.

I nod, trying not to show I’m disappointed. Because I’ve been foolish, haven’t I? It was when these women were alone, like me, that they had time to spend doing things with me. And now things are different, and they don’t have the time they did before. I tried to make them happy and I’ve done myself out of their friendship in the process.

It’s funny, how you age and watch those around you aging, but if you come across someone you haven’t seen for decades, you struggle to imagine them having done the same.

‘Love,’ she says, a hairline crack in her voice. ‘That’s the biggest dream. Then art.’ I nod, because I understand. I do. All those career paths I didn’t and couldn’t have taken, none of them would have led me anywhere as wonderful as love. ‘Go for both,’ I say. ‘Always both. Then later, if you have to, you can start making compromises or choosing between them. But right now, reach for everything.’

‘Leave it to me. I’ll order a feast. You should try everything. You won’t regret it.’ Those are the words that stay with me, even after we’ve eaten until we’re completely stuffed, and discovered that I do, in fact, like Chinese food, after we’ve played classic songs from my youth and danced stiffly around the front room, the way we did in Patty’s class. You should try everything. You won’t regret it. It’s so different from the way I’ve lived my life. But I’m starting to think it’s right.

Arthur used to tease me for being conservative about food, used to say you can’t live off ham sandwiches and conference pears, but he was wrong about that. You can live off so little, can avoid variety and texture. It just makes for a boring life. I don’t want to do it any more.

And it is there, in that café in Overbury, in front of Julie and Joan Garnett, that I finally come undone. That I break apart. Because the death of the person you spent your whole life with is one thing, but the death of the person you didn’t? Sometimes, that’s the real tragedy.

too, that she’s offering me this space to think. You can’t live in the past, I tell myself, but you can visit. And you can bring bits of it into the present, when you need them.

They’ll make it, or they won’t, but at least they won’t not make it because they’re too scared to be open about who they are.

There are so many names and labels now. It’s a good thing, people can choose how they identify and find people like them, but it makes me laugh, too. In our day, there was just right and wrong. Normal and queer. And very few admitted to being the latter.

Patty dips her head and I notice again how beautiful she is. I wish I could see her modelling, the way she looked when she was in her teens and twenties. But perhaps she’s at her most beautiful now, with all this life behind her, all this wisdom.