Sidestepping

Jean could almost feel a tangled, matted knot of emotions tugging and tagging at her thoughts, and none of them were especially pleasant. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be on your Golden Wedding Anniversary! And though of course they’d had rows, and of course there had been bad times, she had never for one minute regretted marrying Sam. She doubted there were a more loving husband and father anywhere in the world, and not just because she was biased. So it was all wrong, it was just all wrong for her to feel disappointed in him today of all days, for her to think that perhaps he didn’t really understand her and know what made her tick today of all days.

     But she could see he had been put in an awkward position. If he had a fault, and of course he did, everyone did, it was that he let himself go along with things for the sake of a quiet life. Oh, he had his red lines, and he would have gone into the lion’s den to defend and support those he loved. But Sam had always been the one who ended up putting in the extra shift at work, and who said, of course he’d do their neighbour’s gardening for them. 

     But she’d have hoped and imagined he would have made a stand over this surprise party. She wasn’t antisocial, and having some friends round, or going to their houses, was fine, but big gatherings with lots of small talk, when she was expected to be bubbly and talkative and, well, grateful, all the time had never remotely appealed to her. She was pretty sure he felt the same, though maybe not to the same degree, and absolutely sure that he knew her own aversion to such things. Over the last couple of years it had intensified, because, somewhat to her annoyance, though in many ways she was fitter than a lot of women half her age, she had to give in and admit she needed a hearing aid. At first she had chided herself for making a big fuss about it and putting it off. It was wonderful to be able to hear music and bird song properly again, and it was barely visible (not that she was a vain woman, anyway). But she felt uncomfortable when lots of people were talking at once, and if that didn’t describe a party, then nothing did. 

     I wanted it to be just you and me, Sam, she thought. But her friend Marion had let it slip at the hairdressers that a “surprise” party had been planned for their anniversary, but she was pretty sure that Sam already knew about it because, well, she knew people who knew people ….. and Jean realised it was probably true. In fact that it was definitely true. Marion was one of those people who seem to waffle and live in a world of their own, and yet when she had got wind of something as she put it herself, Jean couldn’t remember a time when she’d been mistaken.

     It wasn’t even as if any of the people who mattered most to her would be there. Their only child Harry and his wife Angela had migrated to Canada several years ago, and though they remained extremely close, to everyone’s deep concern, Angela had recently had a “scare” heart attack, and though it seemed as if she’d be fine, thank God, she was still strongly advised against air travel. Of course, not for one minute did she expect or want Harry to leave his ailing wife, of whom she was extremely fond, and she looked forward to them coming over to visit later in the year. Or they might even take a trip to Canada! There was no rule that said everything had to be concentrated on one day. 

     Sam, you must have known I’d hate this, she thought, and for once, didn’t chide herself for using the word hate, which was what she termed a heavy-duty word, not to be used for something she just found an inconvenience. 

     Yet no, there he sat at the wheel of their faithful dark blue estate car, a little smile on his face.

     Even if she hadn’t been dreading the party, she was so let down that he had apparently felt compelled to keep the secret. To keep it from her. Utterly at one, they had brought Harry up to believe that though snitching was a bad thing, there were times when telling was a thoroughly good thing. Didn’t he think the same applied to himself? Was she only just discovering it after all these years? She hurriedly reminded herself that when they’d told Harry that it concerned things that could harm himself or others and that didn’t apply in this case, but that sense of betrayal, of he doesn’t really know me after all, and that he was sitting there looking smug and as if he didn’t have a care in the world, today of all days, was deeply hurtful.

     This must not turn into a wedge between us, she told herself. Yet she knew, as she watched the scenery flicker by without really seeing it, heading (according to Marion) to Rose and Paul’s house, that in her own mind it might be a wound that took a great deal of healing. 

     I love him, him and Harry, more dearly and totally and unconditionally than anyone else in the world, she thought. This must not spoil it. Yet she had enough self-awareness to know that even if it did not fester, it would linger.

     They had so often been the ones who did things slightly differently. Not just for eccentricity’s sake, not in a melodramatic way or to prove a point, but because that was the way they liked things, and though neither of them was at all selfish, thought there were times and situations when they had an absolute right to do things the way that suited them, irrespective of the norms.

     Even their honeymoon had been different. While others of their generation, as the swinging sixties segued into the flares and platforms of the seventies went to Paris, or Venice, or for a couple of weeks on one of the Costas, or at any rate to London to take in a couple of shows (a phrase that always reminded Jean of taking medication), they went to the wild coast of Northumberland – not even to the more “obvious” Lake District, to the west of it, and stayed in a wooden cabin not far from a windswept beach. 

     Oh this journey to Rose and Paul’s house seemed to be taking forever, not that she was in any hurry for it to end. She was suddenly reminded of an anecdote about the writer George Orwell, that when he was in the military police in Burma he instantly became an opponent of the death penalty when she saw a condemned man sidestep to avoid putting his feet in a puddle on the walk to the gallows. She told herself it was a wholly inappropriate and somewhat tasteless comparison, but oh, how she wanted that sidestep.

     She wanted it so much that it took a while for it to dawn on her that it had happened. They had passed the turning for Rose and Paul’s house, and were heading out into the open country and towards the motorway. 

     “Oh, love, your expression,” Sam said, gently, “I do feel bad about deceiving you ….”

     She was on the verge of saying that so he should, when he went on, “But even Marion doesn’t get it right all the time, you know – or someone actually persuaded her to keep her mouth shut for once, pardon me for not being a gentleman! I wouldn’t make you endure a party, specially not one that was sprung on you. The cases are already in the boot, though I’m sorry if I’ve not packed everything you need. The cabin in Northumberland has been booked for weeks!”