The Longest Battle

And now she has won.

At least I think she has won. 

Does that count?

Does it matter anymore?

It has to.

After all this time, it has to. 

After everything that has happened and everything we’ve done.

This is all either of us has left.

Seaford sits in the dark, in the part of the house that is now his by default, but wasn’t for such a long time, and he scratches his head as he thinks his thoughts. The thoughts he thinks are different now. In the aftermath of the long awaited result he takes stock and tries to make sense of the world that has been presented to him. The changed world that he supposes is his prize and his reward. He looks around him despite it being almost pitch black with darkness and fights the thought that is banging on the thin door of his consciousness.

Was it worth it?

He holds that thought back with the only thought that has mattered these past three decades.

I am right.

*

Number nine Marston Road is quite a grand detached house. It was built in the Georgian era when there was a bit of cash knocking about, architects knew what they were about back then, and even the bricks had character.

Since number nine was built, trees and shrubs were planted in all the gardens on this road and these screen many of the properties, barring those which have been stripped bare in order to show off the modernised property, or to accommodate the fleet of cars that the homeowners have accumulated. None of the houses have gone over to flats, which is unusual for the size of properties and for the area. But then the road is desirable and once people buy here they are usually around for the long haul.

Seaford and Maisy certainly were intending to be around for a long time. They moved into number nine over forty years ago and they both agreed that this was to be their forever home, and it has turned out to be just that. 

On the day that Seaford carried Maisy over the threshold, their hopes and dreams were very different to the outcome of their lives. But then, few people fulfil their earliest dreams in their entirety and life would be boring if they did. Life doesn’t do boring, it does its own thing and that tends towards the interesting, people are adaptable though and they amend their dreams accordingly, sometimes telling themselves little fibs, like this was what they wanted all along.

For the first decade that the couple lived in something like wedded bliss, the promise of those dreams began to take shape and life looked good, even if that was not always the case. They decorated and updated and prepared their home for the family that they were planning, but try as they might, their family of two never increased in number. Part of their dream, a central part at that, crumbled over the next few years.

Seaford threw himself into his work. He was at that age where his career required sacrifice if he were to make partner in his firm. That sacrifice had been made for him, so he saw it as a no-brainer. 

It was also an escape.

An escape from number nine and an escape from Maisy.

If there was anyone to observe Seaford’s withdrawal and Maisy’s unwillingness to say anything to him about it, then they would see that this was where some of the damage was done. Maisy followed Seaford’s lead and threw herself into work as well.

As a result, number nine began to look a little worn and tired, and this reflected the state of the two people who dwelt inside. The garden was less well tended and the paint on the window frames and exterior doors faded and peeled. Inside was much the same story. The wallpaper became dated and little by little the place got a little cluttered and uncared for.

Eventually, the house became a little sad and it failed to welcome either of its dwellers when they returned each day from work. Maisy had been full of energy and the powerhouse of the marriage, but now she was listless and withdrawn. Seaford had admired his wife and adored the way she inspired him to do more and be more, but now he barely looked at her.

The whole thing was a gradual and incremental process that people like to describe as having crept up on them, which is a nonsense as they have consistently and diligently built the situation, day in and day out over the years.

However, all was not lost and there was always a way back for this couple. To Seaford’s mind it was all about achieving the one aim he had left to him. The piece of his dream that was intact. To make partner. As he neared his goal, something in him began to change and Maisy noticed this and somehow, it spoke to something inside her and she began to find her mojo again. She brightened and she began to hope again.

All marriages go through bad patches and this one looked to be coming to an end. Now, both Seaford and Maisy were exchanging smiles and the choreography of the dance they danced in number nine was more upbeat. The house was no longer sad and it became a welcoming refuge from the outside world once again.

The midst of change can be a dangerous place. As the oil tanker of a life shared gradually turns itself around, it is left vulnerable, more so if people do not attend to the risks and dangers and head them off before they strike.

There was an argument.

One morning at breakfast, after all the lonely and silent breakfasts, Maisy and Seaford were talking. Perhaps they were so out of practice that they had forgotten how to be around each other and in their clumsy eagerness for everything to be alright, they inadvertently hurt each other. The argument was over nothing, or more to the point, as soon as the argument was over, Seaford storming off to work and Maisy watching him go before she herself headed to her place of work, the reason for the argument was quickly lost to both of them.

The argument itself was not though, that part of it endured.

Both Seaford and Maisy knew two things about that morning, that they had argued and that they were right. 

And so the battle lines were set. 

That evening, Seaford worked late. He didn’t want to go home while Maisy was awake and moving around the house. For her part, Maisy got home, bolted some food down, grabbed a book and took herself off to bed so she didn’t have to face her husband.

When Seaford did get home, the house was in darkness. He didn’t bother to eat, grabbed himself a glass of water and slept on the sofa. Thus their dance in number nine changed yet again. This new dance was the dance of two solo dancers intent on never encountering each other, and they succeeded in this aim, each of them awaiting an apology from the other. 

An apology that never came.

Neither would back down, that admirable determination and singlemindedness that they both possessed now degenerated into stubbornness and belligerence.

Seaford could not remember exactly when he brought a bed down from the spare room and changed his study into a bedroom. He did however remember the day he came home from work to discover that there was building work going on upstairs. He made a point of coming home early the very next day so he could speak to the builder as he went back to his van for his tool box. Maisy was having a kitchen built in the spare room that Seaford had plundered for his bed.

Seaford booked the builder in to expand the downstairs cloakroom so that it would serve as a bathroom. After that work was done, Seaford came home to see that there was a big, locked door off the stairway upstairs. Now Maisy had a closed off, separate living space. Seaford eyed that door and considered following suit, even measuring up and establishing exactly where his door would go. He didn’t go ahead with it though. He left his living space open so that when Maisy was good and ready, she could come and find him to apologise.

And still the apology never came.

Over the next three decades, there were a handful of times when the feud that had begun as a silly argument could have ended. Three times, Maisy had walked into Seaford’s downstairs living space. Twice he had not been there and so her mission to offer an olive branch had failed, and the third time he had caught her trespassing and asked her what the hell she was doing in his property, the conciliatory words she was about to say died on her lips.

That had been the last time she had gone down to see Seaford.

Seaford had seen the look on her face when he confronted her and for the second time in those three decades, he went to the door on the stairway and he stood there prevaricating. His hand raised three times and hung there in front of the door. He looked small, childish and confused, and he never found the strength or courage to knock on that door.

They had both retired several years ago. These were the years in which they could do all the things that they had wanted to do, but had been too busy to get around to. Instead, they both sat in their part of their house as though they were waiting, and really they were, only they weren’t waiting for anything in particular anymore, they had just gotten into the habit of waiting as people do when they do something over and over again and have no inclination to replace it with an alternative habit.

Today, Seaford had heard a sound that would live with him for the rest of his lonely time on the Earth.

THUMP!

He heard that heavy and ominous noise and he knew it immediately for what it was. He turned his head up to the ceiling and in his mind’s eye he could see Maisy laying on the floor above him. He sat motionless for a long while in the chair in his bedroom where he spent most of his time. In the room directly under the bedroom that Maisy spent most of her time. Both of them waiting for the day where the other would cover the short distance between them and make it alright.

Now that was never going to happen.

Seaford struggled to get to his feet. It wasn’t that he was getting old and his joints and muscles weren’t what they were, it was the fierce weight of inevitability pushing him down into his seat. He padded slowly across his part of their house and he went up the stairs. Standing at that door again he wondered why he had never knocked on it. He also wondered why he had never stepped out to Maisy whenever he heard her comings and goings, hiding instead behind a door and listening to her footfalls and wondering what she was up to.

After a while, he turned the door handle and was surprised to find it unlocked. After the first week of it being fitted, Maisy had relented and never locked it again.

He walked the landing and into the bedroom that had once upon a time, been their bedroom. There was to be no happy ending now though. He knelt by his dead wife and he encircled her with his arms and he wept as he cradled her. He told her he was sorry over and over again, but of course, she would never hear his apology.

After the ambulance had come and her body had been taken away, he sat on the bed until the day faded and the night came. He sat motionless in the dark and after thinking his thoughts of petty victory and his constant assertion that he had been right, he fancied he could feel her beside him. Seaford wished that he had come to this room a long time ago and done this while she were alive. The dark was becoming oppressive, so he reached out to turn the light on. The table lamp he switched on was the one that had been there when this was his side of the bed, and under it was the same bedside cabinet. 

That was when he saw it.

The envelope was old, and the one word on it was faded, Seaford. Even after all these years, he recognised Maisy’s hand writing. He picked it up and the flap of the envelope hung open, the gum that had stuck it down having perished long ago. Under that envelope was another. The second looked new and fresh. He eyed it, but then decided he’d see what was in this one first.

There was one, small page and the note was fairly short. One line jumped out at him and in response to it, he opened the drawer of his bedside cabinet and there was his watch. He stared at his watch for a long, long while before picking up the second envelope, opening it and reading the longer letter that was inside.

Dear Seaford,

You will have read the letter I wrote so very long ago now, but that doesn’t matter. It isn’t the point. I was rooting around yesterday and I found that letter under all the others I have written to you over the years. Letters I wrote, intending to send to you but never had the courage to. So they are all there in the suitcase on the wardrobe. The suitcase we used to use when we went on holidays together. 

Neither of us have been on holiday since that morning when we argued have we? Both of us trapped here by something we could not name even if we tried. But we didn’t try. Neither of us tried.

It’s not about that stupid watch that you thought I had lost, but was there in your drawer all that time. I wish it was.

I also wish I knew what it was about. Why we fell out. 

Did we fall out of love do you think?

Is that what happened to us?

Both of us too stubborn and proud to do anything about it?

Scared too.

I’ve never, ever been scared of you Seaford, so it must be the space between us that scared me. A space that we allowed to grow between us in the years before our silly argument. Both of us too blind to see what it was that we were doing, then it blew up over that stupid, stupid watch and we managed to lose whatever it was that we had.

More importantly, we lost whatever we could have had, because you see Seaford, I didn’t ever want anyone else, it was you and always you, and only now, as I write this do I know that it is the same for you and that is why you are still there, just below me.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I fancy that I can hear you breathing and that makes me smile. To have you here in this house with me. To have you near. 

I suppose we settled for what we had in the end, didn’t we?

It hasn’t been a bad old life if the truth be told. It could have been much worse, couldn’t it?

But it could be better, and that’s why I’ve made a promise to myself. 

Tomorrow morning I am going downstairs and I am hand delivering these two letters and your watch. I’ll have handed you the first letter to read and now you are reading this and I am watching you to see how you react. 

I don’t want much more than we already have, Seaford. So don’t panic and let’s not get carried away. 

Perhaps we can have a cup of tea together and take it from there?

I would like that very much.

Yours, Maisy

Seaford picks up his watch and the only sound he can hear is it’s impossibly loud ticking. Somehow, that ticking is getting louder and louder and as it does it falls in synch with a pulsing sensation in his temple. That pulsing is dizzying, or is it the revelation of what was to occur tomorrow morning, the promise of reconciliation that will now never take place…

Life can be cruel sometimes. 

Seaford looks at his watch and his gaze follows the second hand as it makes its deliberate way around the face. The timing didn’t work out, but then he wasted so much time, so what did he expect? As he thinks about his time and his ridiculous estrangement from Maisy, his watch falls out of focus. He tries to blink away the fog that falls over him, but then the watch falls to the floor as his hand opens without his asking it to, and there follows a strange rushing sensation and then nothingness.

THUMP!