The Marriage Act(14)
Jeffrey turned his head and left before either man saw him blush.
10
Arthur
Arthur remained motionless in the hallway, trapped between the kitchen and the front door. He was scared to move in case he was spotted by the shadow hovering outside.
‘Mr and Mrs Foley, are you there?’ came a voice he recognized. He had hung up on her by phone several times already in the last week. ‘It’s Lorraine Shrewsbury. You should have received a notification that I was coming.’
Arthur remained tight-lipped and focused on keeping his breaths quiet. It was a challenge given years of smoke inhalation during his pre-retirement career as a fire fighter. Medication had prevented his emphysema from advancing but stress manifested itself physically in shortness of breath. And there had been many occasions of late when anxiety had threatened to swallow him whole.
There was another knock, followed by the opening of the letterbox, positioned at the door’s base. ‘Mr and Mrs Foley,’ the voice echoed through it, ‘if you are there, I really need you to answer, please.’
From her position, the uninvited visitor wouldn’t spot him if he moved right now. So Arthur shuffled as quietly as the soles of his orthopaedic trainers would allow, across the floorboards and towards the staircase. He climbed up two steps and pinned his back to the wall, still out of her sight.
‘Arthur, who’s at the door?’ June shouted from the bedroom. He willed her to be quiet. ‘Is it that woman again? Tell her to piss off.’
‘June,’ he whispered through gritted teeth. ‘Shh!’
‘Mr and Mrs Foley, you’re breaking your Sanctity of Marriage Act contract by not allowing me in. I am legally entitled to return with a court order and a police officer to enter your property by force if you don’t answer. But I really don’t want it to get that far.’
Arthur noticed his left arm was shaking, so he gripped it tightly with his right hand. Eventually, Shrewsbury admitted defeat and shifted away along the path. Slowly, he approached the closed curtains of one of the front rooms and moved them just enough to locate her parked vehicle. He slipped on his glasses: she was inside, her mouth moving, as if talking to someone on the phone. Only when her car pulled away did his breath return.
His Smart watch vibrated as a message appeared. ‘Write notes of praise and text them to your partner. These words can be re-read again and again.’ He cursed under his breath.
With each step up the stairs, he gripped the banister tightly, noting the framed photographs on the wall that he passed daily and normally took for granted. Most were of just him and June in front of European landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square and remaining segments of the Berlin Wall. The sky-blue VW campervan they’d bought to travel around Europe was also pictured in some. They had both loved that vehicle and their adventures, just the two of them.
Arthur and June’s many attempts to start a family had ended in failure. And, at times, the pressure and the strain of wanting so much but receiving so little had almost broken their marriage. But when they finally accepted parenthood was beyond their reach, they began to live for the now and not the maybe. Travel did not fulfil them as much as a family might have, but it had solidified them as a couple.
The campervan remained with them even now, parked in the garage and tucked under a tarpaulin cover. It cost an astronomical amount to tax and insure a petrol vehicle now that electric replacements were the norm. So once June had fallen ill and ceased to show an interest in travel, he had not bothered to renew either. But sometimes he couldn’t resist sitting inside it, reversing down the drive and remaining there, allowing the thrum of the engine to vibrate though his body as he replayed bygone days.
‘Was that her again?’ June asked as he entered their bedroom.
‘It wasn’t anyone. Just a salesperson.’
However, after almost half a century of marriage and despite her confusion, he had yet to pull the wool over her eyes. ‘It’s that Relationship Responder again, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘It’s nothing for you to worry about. She’s gone now.’
‘But she’ll be back, won’t she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You have to keep her away from us.’
‘I will, I will.’
‘Because if she sees me like this, you know she’s going to insist they take me away. And it’s not right.’
A silence enveloped them, Arthur recalling reading the clause in the contract that allows an expedited divorce with no financial penalties if a partner is suffering from an incurable degenerative brain disease or long-term debilitating mental health issues. In fact, ‘better halves’ as they were referred to, were encouraged to tick a box to place their ailing spouses into private care homes or medical facilities while they actively sought their next relationship. Another more controversial box took the opportunity to make a fresh start even further. He shuddered when he thought of it.
‘We both signed up for the Marriage Act, not just you,’ June reminded him. ‘We had no choice but to protect our future. Once they started taxing our bedrooms, we couldn’t have remained in our old marriage and kept this house. There would barely have been anything left of our pension to pay our NHS contributions. And the cost of my medication alone meant we’d have had to choose between my pills and being able to eat. We did the right thing.’