The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

by Laura Pearson

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 feel a rush of affection for this man I’ve spent my life with. I could have chosen so much worse. He’s kind, reliable, and that love of life he has, that’s probably kept us both afloat a few times. Because there have been tough years. 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.

When it was all laughter and joking and a whole lifetime ahead and we didn’t care if we made mistakes or took the wrong path, because there was an eternity to straighten it all out.

He was grateful, appreciative. Not just about that but about anything I did for him. About me agreeing to be his, I think.

‘I love you,’ I say. It’s a funny kind of truth. I didn’t love him, at first, but I grew to. Not passionate love, not the kind of love people talk about dying for, more a love built brick by brick. A love made of appreciation, and shared grief, and kindness. He was a good man. Such a good man.

My head is full of Arthur and Dot and Bill, and being young, and a time that felt like it was golden. No, that’s not right. It didn’t feel like it was golden when we were in it, did it? That’s a tint I’ve cast on it since, now I know so much more about life and pain and drudgery. I’ve added the gold shimmer, but how much of it is about youth and freedom, and how much about having those people close to me? It’s impossible to know.

Sometimes I cry, both for the loss of him and for the loss of all those years. For the life I didn’t live. All the lives I didn’t live. We only get to choose one, after all.

She’s about fifty. A good age, lots of life behind you but lots still ahead.

I don’t know what to say to reassure her that I understand. That I, too, have hoped for awful things to happen to bring me what I want most.

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.