The words kept battering at the back of her teeth looking to escape. Standing in the middle of the front room wanting to shout out loud, “I’ve had enough, I can’t do this anymore.” His lackluster lackadaisical attitude toward their married life together drove her to distraction. She no longer wanted this idle, indolent life her husband desired. She turned and left the room, leaving Frank standing alone digesting her earth shattering news, which for him had torn his world asunder. Now what was he supposed to do? Very quickly he realized he would have nothing but his pension. And the idea of living alone in a one bedroom flat terrified him. Mute, he stood there gazing out of the front room window, unsure what to feel or what to do next.
Frank was stumped. Surely, she didn’t mean it! Frank had not been able to believe his luck when she had agreed to marry him back in nineteen fifty-nine. They had met at the local dance hall the year before. Her flame red hair had set her apart from the other lasses and he’d had to pinch himself when she agreed to step out with him. But that was many moons ago.
The last fourteen months had been the unhappiest months of her life. Well, if she was honest, she had not been happy when he had retired. That was almost seven years ago. She did not appreciate having him home all day, every day, under her feet and in her way. He cramped her lifestyle. But if she was really truly honest she had not been happy being married to a Frank since nineteen seventy four. Not since the debacle of his most inappropriate birthday gift to her. He had bought her a steam iron. He knew she hated ironing. She had been heart broken that this was all he could think of getting her after fifteen years of marriage; she got an electrical appliance for a task that she abhorred. Ironing was the devil’s invention in her considered opinion and she had avoided it at any cost preferring to fold freshly laundered garments neatly and hold them flat with a heavy object, letting gravity do the majority of the pressing.
Every little thing he did irritated Lydia.
On their first day home together of Frank’s retirement, she has seriously asked him, “Does this mean I have to make your lunch each day?”
Without thinking, he flippantly responded, “Expect so!”
“But why,” she retorted brazenly, “you have been perfectly able to feed yourself whilst you’ve been at work. So what’s changed?”
Frank looked disbelievingly at his wife; he knew she had a point, but he was going to ignore it.
“Are you suggesting it’s my job to look after you now you’re home?” she retaliated.
It had been the clearest signal that all was not well between the newly retired couple but Frank adopted his usual relaxed attitude that the least said the soonest mended and ignored the topic.
Bickering endlessly had become part of their daily routine. Frank actually believed that all married couples argued. If he moved the salt and pepper pot and did not put them back exactly where he had found them, it would spark a row between them. He thought nothing of it, having a row; he simply dismissed it. It was of no consequence to him. He believed if he forgot about it, it no longer existed.
Today, he was beginning to realize that maybe Lydia had a different view of their married life together and that she had reached the end of her tether. He wasn’t sure where exactly he had gone wrong. Or even if it was his fault. He had imagined spending the rest of his days pottering in his potting shed; fixing things out in the yard. He loved tinkering with old engines and had aspirations to fix the old banger buried, hidden in the barn. It was what he had done up until now.
