In any case, if just for themselves, they’d dressed up a bit, and perhaps Mr Reeves had simply been taken by the way they’d done this. Thus he’d smiled at them as if, so it seemed to them, he was going to consecrate their marriage all over again.
It was a bright and balmy May morning, so they walked across the common. There was no point in driving (and when Mr Reeves said that thing about a car accident they were glad they hadn’t). There was no one else to think about, really, except themselves and their as yet unmet solicitor. As they walked they linked arms or held hands, or Nick’s hand would wander to pat Lisa’s bottom in her slim black skirt. The big trees on the common were in their first vivid green and full of singing birds.
They were newly married, but it had seemed to make no essential difference. It was a ‘formality’, as today was a formality. Formality was a lovely word, since it implied the existence of informality and even in some strange way gave its blessing to it. Nick let his palm travel and wondered if his glad freedom to let it do so was in any way altered, even enhanced, now that Lisa was his wife and not just Lisa.
Married or not, they were still at the stage of not being able to keep their hands off each other, even in public places. As they walked across the common to see Mr Reeves, Nick found himself considering that this might only be a stage — a stage that would fade or even cease one day. They’d grow older and just get used to each other. They wouldn’t just grow older, they’d age, they’d die. It was why they were doing what they were doing today. And it was the deal with marriage.
It seemed necessary to go down this terminal path of thought even as they walked in the sunshine. Nonetheless, he let his palm travel.
And in Mr Reeves’ office, though it was reassuring that Mr Reeves was so nice, one thing that helped Nick, while they were told about the various circumstances in which they might die, was thinking about Lisa’s arse and hearing the tiny slithery noises her skirt made whenever she shifted in her seat.
It was a beautiful morning, but he’d heard a mixed forecast and he’d brought an umbrella. Having your will done seemed, generally, like remembering to bring an umbrella.
When they came out — it took less than half an hour — the clouds had thickened, though the bright patches of sky seemed all the brighter. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Nick said to Lisa, as if the whole thing deserved only a relieved shrug, though they both felt an oddly exhilarating sense of accomplishment. Lisa said, ‘Wasn’t he sweet,’ and Nick agreed immediately, and they both felt also, released back into the spring air, a great sense of animal vitality.
There was a bloom upon them and perhaps Mr Reeves couldn’t be immune to it.
They retraced their steps, or rather took a longer route via the White Lion on the edge of the common. It seemed appropriate, however illogical, after what they’d done, to have a drink. Yes, to celebrate. Lunch, a bottle of wine, why not? In fact, since they both knew that, above all, they were hungry and thirsty for each other, they settled for nothing more detaining than two prawn sandwiches and two glasses of Sauvignon. The sky, at the window, meanwhile turned distinctly threatening.
By the time they’d crossed back over the common the rain had begun, but Nick had the umbrella, under which it was necessary to huddle close together. As he put it up he had the fleeting thought that its stretched black folds were not unlike women’s tight black skirts. He’d never before had this thought about umbrellas, only the usual thoughts — that they were like bats’ wings or that they were vaguely funereal — and this was like other thoughts and words that came into his head on this day, almost as if newly invented. It was a bit like the word kindly suddenly presenting itself as the exact word to describe Mr Reeves.
As they turned the corner of their street it began to pelt down and they broke into a run. Inside, in the hallway, they stood and panted a little. It was dark and clammy and with the rain beating outside a little like being inside a drum. They climbed the stairs to their flat, Lisa going first. Nick had an erection and the words ‘stair rods’ came into his mind.
It was barely two o’clock and the lower of the two flats was empty. Nick thought — though very quickly, since his thoughts were really elsewhere — of how incredibly lucky they were to be who they were and to have a flat of their own to go to on a rainy afternoon. It was supposed to be a ‘starter home’ and they owed it largely to Lisa’s dad. It was supposed to be a first stage. He thought of stages again, if less bleakly this time. Everything in life could be viewed as a stage, leading to other stages and to having things you didn’t yet have. But right now he felt they had everything, the best life could bring. What more could you want? And they’d even made their wills.
He’d hardly dropped the sopping umbrella into the kitchen sink than they were both, by inevitable progression, in the bedroom, and he’d hardly removed his jacket and pulled across the curtains than Lisa had unbuttoned her red blouse. She’d let him unzip her skirt, she knew how he liked to.
It rained all afternoon and kept raining, if not so hard, through the evening. They both slept a bit, then got up, picked up the clothes they’d hastily shed, and thought about going for a pizza. But it was still wet and they didn’t want to break the strange spell of the day or fail to repeat, later, the manner of their return in the early afternoon. It seemed, too, that they might destroy the mood if they went out dressed in anything less special than what they’d worn earlier. But just for a pizza?
So — going to the other extreme — they took a shared bath, put on bathrobes, and settled for Welsh rarebit. They opened the only bottle of wine they had, a Rioja that someone had once brought them. They found a red twisty candle left over from Christmas. They put on a favourite CD. Outside, the rain persisted and darkness, though it was May, came early. The candle flame and their white-robed bodies loomed in the kitchen window.
Why this day had become so special, a day of celebration, of formality mixed with its flagrant opposite, neither of them could have said exactly. It happened. Having eaten and having drunk only half the bottle, it seemed natural to drift back to bed, less hurriedly this time, to make love again more lingeringly.
Then they lay awake a long time holding each other, talking and listening to the rain in the gutters and to the occasional slosh of a car outside. They talked about Mr Reeves. They wondered what it was precisely that had made him so sweet. They wondered if he was happily married and had a family, a grownup family. Surely he would have all those things. They wondered how he’d met Mrs Reeves — they decided her name was Sylvia — and what she was like. They wondered if he’d been perhaps a little jealous of their own youth or just, in his gracious way, gladdened by it.
They wondered if he found wills merely routine or if he could be occasionally stopped short by the very idea of two absurdly young people making decisions about death. He must have made his own will. Surely — a good one. They wondered if a good aim in life might simply be to become like Mr Reeves, gentle, courteous and benign. Of course, that could only really apply to Nick, not to Lisa.
Then Lisa fell asleep and Nick lay awake still holding her and thinking. He thought: What is Mr Reeves doing now? Is he in bed with Mrs Reeves — with Sylvia? He wondered if when Mr Reeves had talked to them in his office he’d had any idea of how the two of them, his clients (and that was a strange word and a strange thing to be), would spend the rest of the day. He hoped Mr Reeves had had an inkling.