Mary sat down suddenly among the sugared almonds. They stretched away to either side of her on this part of the beach: pale lavender, a dusty pistachio green, faint pink, blue-grey. Among them, here and there, lay large, white, oval stones, the size of her hand, their surface glistening a little, as though they were made of sugar. Her daily walk had been pleasant recently in the summery weather but today on the radio Alan Titchmarsh had warned of frost in May, advising fleece cover for bedding plants. She would have to start taking an interest in the garden. Apparently, with gardening centres opening it was time to.… whatever. Everything seemed a burden even though there was plenty of time to do it in. And she had a great Deputy Head. Marvellous, how Alison had stepped up. Basics in place, of course, Mary thought with satisfaction. A well-run school was a well-run school whatever happened. A sound foundation to meet the crisis. She had even relished some aspects of it – the thinking on your feet, the pushing back against Department bullies. Had she enjoyed it too much? Had she been distracted? Andy too had gone on working. The job he loved.
She tugged her coat around her. She used to like catching the six o’clock evening news. Now she escaped it. Monday’s headline had been so.… No, she wouldn’t think about it.
The beach was empty. A keen breeze. Sugared almonds. Andy had exclaimed over them the first time she had brought him here. He had picked up one of the smooth little pebbles and put it to his tongue. “Salty.”
“Well,” she’d said, tartly, “what did you expect? A mouthful of sugar?” But her blush had betrayed her apparent brusqueness. She’d been on edge that afternoon.
She picked up and weighed a handful of the pebbles: mauve, flour-white, even pale gold. Yes, that afternoon, he wouldn’t have known that inviting him to walk on the beach was, for her, the equivalent of tearing her clothes off and belly-dancing across the sand. She had hardly ever had a boyfriend. She noticed that qualification. She was given to aiming for exactness of expression – years of encouraging it in pupils. A few awkward near-misses with boys. So shamingly… inefficient… yes, that was it. Efficient generally, she hadn’t had the happy knack with men. And they were very young men, she acknowledged, looking back from her fifty-four years. But at the time! At the time, of course, it was all so disappointing, or so she had tried to console herself, though, in her heart, it had been herself she’d found wanting. The qualities of discipline that made her successful as a student, the ambition that, later, would serve her well in her career, seemed to work against her with men. She had had no idea how to get what she wanted; had even found it hard to accept that she did want… it, whatever that was. Marriage. Sex. Men found her overly serious. But it was serious. It was your whole life, wasn’t it?
Your whole life. Such dreadful angst the young go through, made worse by that end-of-the-world feel a beach can acquire on a cold evening, when the future stretches ahead as empty as the shore – as a girl, she had walked along here, unhappily trying to come to terms with her conviction that no one would ever want her.
She ran her thumb over a pale little nugget, as dingy as a rubber a child has treasured in a pencil case. Andy’s first visit to this beach had been Andy allowed into her territory. She remembered wondering, how has it got to this? But she had known exactly.
Her first, temporary, teaching job had been in the city and that meant catching a bus from the village to the depot where she changed for the main service. He had often been driving that city-bound bus and she had paid him no more attention than she ever gave to a bus driver. Somehow, he had impressed himself on her without appearing to do anything. He hadn’t even spoken to her. It had been his smile, ticket by ticket, journey after journey. There had been no pressure in that smile, nothing ‘forward’, as her mother would have put it, but Andy could make a smile go a long way. When she’d been sickening for the flu his smile had been full of concern and when, one day, in the summer term, she had got on the homebound bus with her arms full of flowers from the children, his smile had shared her pleasure. She had begun to fear that this level of exchange might go on forever and that fear had shown her that she was hoping for something more. She was hooked. That smile going on forever – smiled for her – was exactly, and almost all, that she wanted. So it had been she who had begun their conversations: the traffic; thank you; see you again; lovely weather; yes, sun burnt.
She passed the nondescript pebble from one hand to the other. Her hands were cold. She looked at the sea, a longish stone-throw away. It was in neutral, idling under a steely sky. On the last day of that term, she had lingered when they reached the depot so as to be the last passenger off the bus. She couldn’t leave it till the homeward journey because that was no more than a descent of the steps to the pavement before the bus moved off. So, as lightly as she could, she had said to him, “I won’t be seeing you again. My job is finished now. I’ll be somewhere else, come September.”
The odour of melting tarmac through the open door behind her. His face sheened with warmth. Him pushing open the little halfdoor at his side that was all that kept them apart. Him moving out from behind the wheel. Not a word! She had stepped back, despairing; lost her footing; teetered on the top step and he reached out and held her. Seconds. So close in that confined space.
She had walked away through the bus station sure that he was watching her. She had not known what to do next! She didn’t even know his name. And she was ambitious. She had plans to be the headmistress of a primary school. She knew what her mother would say to the notion of a bus driver as a husband. A dead-weight. Wouldn’t understand what a professional woman needed.
Then one day, that August, she caught a local bus and he was at the wheel. “I swapped with a fella,” he said, smiling.
“Sugared almonds!” she said to herself. She had been piqued that when Andy named them on that beach she hadn’t known what they were. She was the one with the education, after all. She was the one who was going to educate others. A week later a box of sugared almonds arrived for her in the post. She remembered peeling off its cellophane wrapper, folding back its flimsy lid, parting the paper coverings and seeing those little ovals nestled there. Exactly like the pebbles on the beach. And just as hard. The slight anxiety as she committed her teeth to the bite. The explosive collapse of the shell; the woody contrast of the hidden nut bracing against the rush of sugar.
She had wanted him whatever her mother said about dashed prospects and mis-matching. She had simply known. He was good to the core. And surprisingly passionate in their life together. A man at ease in himself. Instinctive. Not a thinker.
“No ambition!” her mother nagged. But it was, rather, that his ambitions were simple. Go to work. Come home. Do the garden. Be happy. How often his equanimity had tugged her gently back from the brink of some over-reaction. She expected life to be challenging. He met challenges as they arose. When other women shared confidences about domestic troubles – and worse – Mary felt almost ashamed that she had so little to complain of. She was thought to be a good listener.
A sound reached her. A dog barking. A young woman, late teens, walking by the sea; pink jacket and leggings; consulting a mobile, then wrapping her arms around her, head down, another look at the mobile, tucked back under her arm again. A listless walk.
Andy, yes, Andy enjoyed his work. He liked the regularity and he liked the variety. “No two days the same,” he’d say. He liked the passengers, especially his regulars, and he rose to the occasional drama. That time, years ago, when a woman had gone into labour on his bus, her waters breaking – he’d announced that he was diverting to the Maternity Unit, no questions; dropped someone at a phone box to ring the hospital; carried her off the bus himself. And when the man with the knife had threatened suicide, Andy had dealt with him. Never once did it seem to occur to Andy that he could opt out. Mary knew that she fussed about the business of authority – having it, wielding it. He took it up, laid it down. Got on with his day.
She saw him before her. “I have been adored,” she thought. “Adored.”
That final look he had given her as the paramedics took him away. So unlike himself. Wild. Imploring.
And she had let him be taken. No choice. No mercy.
The strange, truncated funeral. Lizzie and Tim not there – Missouri; Dublin. She had manufactured hysteria to ensure they wouldn’t risk the contagion of flights. No hugs. Scant. Meagre. Unfitting. There would have been passengers there in any normal time. Staff. Management. Throngs. For her gorgeous, smiling husband.
She looked at her hand, resting on the cold pebbles. Her skin was faintly wrinkled, the eternity ring from Andy sparkling. He had been worried. He had wondered. He had asked about infection risk. The union had spoken up. There was talk of herd immunity.
That was the heart of it. They hadn’t been there. No, they hadn’t been there – the people who killed him. Passengers. Managers. Shareholders. Councillors. Politicians. The public. No protection. A farce. A sham. The truth. The bitter, bitter truth. It coursed through her.… Four times – FOUR times – more likely to die: security guards, shop assistants, construction workers, cabbies, bus-…! Suddenly she was on her back as something hit her, was all over her. She was flailing among the stones. A dog. Barking. Lunging at her head. The girl in the pink jacket shouting at the dog and coming towards her. Something about the curve of the girl’s hand, cradling her mobile – did they never, ever stop? Did they never, no matter what happened, stop thinking of themselves first? Selfish. Careless.
Gasping, she tried to get to her feet. The girl was crashing up the slope of pebbles towards her. Mary lashed out at the dog, catching it sharply on the head. She hit it again. It was a very young dog. It cowered. She screamed at the girl. “Get away. Get away!” She scrambled up and kicked the dog, hard. It skittered off. Some mutt. The girl’s mouth was a shocked O as she lurched backwards amongst the pebbles. “Haven’t you heard of social fucking distancing?” Mary yelled. “Selfish little bitch!” She found a heavy white stone and flung it at the girl, wishing her dead. It skimmed the girl’s head. Then another. Terrified, the girl scooped the dog up and ran away.
“You killed him. You killed him! People like you!” Mary shouted after her. Mary howled. She howled, more than the dog, more than all the dogs in the world. She dropped to her knees and howled. She dug her fingers into the pebbles and pushed her face into their cold, myriad, uncaring surfaces.
A long time later she was sitting, in the same spot, with her head to her knees, when she heard a slight, thumping crunch among the pebbles to her left. Blearily, she looked across. A large, white stone had landed near her. She leant over. Written on it was the word, ‘Sorry’ and the outline of a paw. The girl was standing at a distance, awkwardly balanced on the slope of pebbles – poised for flight – biting her lip, looking uncertainly at her. Mary, numb, could think of nothing to do or say. The girl drooped. She turned away and headed back towards where she must have tied the dog up, somewhere along the beach. Mary could hear faint barks. The girl scuffed along the tide line, hands in her pockets, head down. “Oh, God,” Mary thought, seeing her. Some weary mechanism began to heave itself to life inside her, painfully. “I have been adored…. Adored.” She got to her feet. “Wait!” she called out to the girl.