Open Writing

The chess club used to meet every Thursday in the village hall. It had been a lifeline for Arthur, and it was only a ten-minute walk away. Life had become rather colourless for him and Annie since their son Tom had died: he had been a soldier in Kosovo, and since he went, there didn’t seem to be a lot to talk about. Annie had never been one for socialising, and the neighbours were inclined to leave you alone, if that was the way you wanted it.

Annie embroidered a lot and looked after the flowers in the garden, and Arthur grew a few vegetables. Not a lot, they didn’t seem to eat much. They had stopped going on holiday or even coach trips; Annie said she didn’t have the heart. Arthur was the one who needed some other stimulus, so he’d started going to the chess club a couple of years back.

One Thursday it was particularly windy and chilly for September, so he put on Tom’s army greatcoat for warmth. It was a spare that Tom always used to leave at home for when he came back. Annie did NOT like Arthur wearing it at all.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said. “It gives me a fit. Makes me think Tom’s back again.”

Arthur muttered under his breath that the greatcoat was warmer, said he’d be back by eleven, and was gone.

It was a dark moonless night, and Annie was in bed well before Arthur was due back. She had dozed off before the church clock struck eleven, but when she heard it strike twelve and then one, she got up and went downstairs. There was no knowing whether or not she expected to see him lying crumpled on the doorstep. Slowly, fearfully she opened the door.

The wind was still strong, coming from the north.

Of Arthur there was no sign at all.

By breakfast time there had been no word from the Emergency services. Annie phoned the police and the local hospital, but there was nothing. By teatime she had simply come to the conclusion that he wasn’t coming home. The secretary of the chess club rang to say that they were all sorry he was ill and couldn’t come last night, and Annie didn’t contradict them. It seemed easy to let that assumption lie.

In the Post Office and the village shop Arthur was enquired about for a week or two, and then interest - or curiosity - waned. In a small village time can have almost no dimension; a quiet pool into which time seeps and trickles out on the other side. Six months passed and Annie’s life had changed little. She shopped once a week, collected her pension on Tuesdays, and once a fortnight a girl came to give her a shampoo and set. She was new in the area and thought Annie was a widow. She was a friendly girl and she felt a bit sorry for Annie, and one day in April she brought with the curlers and the lotions a holiday brochure for travel.

“Have a look, Mrs Baker,” she said. “There’s some lovely holidays in there. No kids, no smoking, lots of comfort stops. You can even go abroad. I’ll leave it with you, give it me back next time.”

Annie thanked her and said she would have a good look. It was the least she could do, the girl always made her hair look really nice.

A day or two later Annie had a call from her younger sister. Jane could drive, so three or four times a year she would appear, usually at short notice when her husband Jack wasn’t using the car.

Annie hadn’t told her about Arthur. Perhaps it was something to do with the slow movement of time in those parts; she had put it off and put it off, thinking at first that he would reappear, and then it had just slipped from her mind.

The moment had to come, of course, when Jane asked where he was.

“Where’s Arthur?” she said. “What have you done with him?” in a jokey kind of voice.

And then the whole story had to come out.

There were no tears; perhaps that well had been drained dry by Tom’s death. Jane asked all the possible questions of incredulity, but there were, of course, no answers. Jane had a perfectly good husband back at home and she simply couldn’t understand why Annie hadn’t done anything; she had made no enquiries, not contacted the ‘Missing Persons’ organisation, nothing. Annie just said she would make some more tea and bring in the cherry cake.

Sometimes a revelation can appear in the most unlikely places. While Annie was in the kitchen, Jane picked up the travel brochure from the top of a pile of old magazines. Annie rarely indulged in such trivial publications. The unexpected cloud of disbelief and embarrassment between the two sisters was beginning to lift. Jane turned the pages, stopping at a two-page spread on Prague in the middle.

“Look at this,” she said as Annie came in with the tray. “You can go abroad as well, it’s not just here. Where did you get this?”

Annie told her it belonged to her hairdresser, but Jane suddenly interrupted and thrust the picture of Prague in front of her.

“Look,” she said. “Look at that man with the young girl. He looks like Arthur, doesn’t he?”

It was a statement, not a question.

It was a very good photograph. It had been taken from a perfect vantage point, just low enough to see people’s faces. It was a beautiful sunny day in the Old Town Square, with St Vitus’ Cathedral in the background, and sunlight caressing the elegant buildings and the people talking and walking and drinking coffee at little wrought iron tables. In the foreground a couple were walking straight down the square towards the edge of the page, looking up at the sky and laughing at something that had just been said: they were looking up at Annie.

The girl was young, pretty, wearing jeans and a bright red jacket. The man was tall, grey-haired, slim: he was wearing an army greatcoat.

It was Arthur; a man in another world, another time warp, another life. There was no mistake.

“That’s rubbish.” said Annie, and she took the brochure away with rather too much vigour and threw it back on the pile.

It was half an hour later that Jane set off home, full of tea and cake. She made no other comment about Arthur or the photograph that looked like him, and the sisters agreed that they would see each other again soon. As Jane drove away, she was rehearsing what she was going to say to Jack when she got home.

That night Annie went up to bed earlier than usual. She took the brochure and looked at the picture of her long lost husband once again. She stared at him and his companion for a long, long time. Then she slid down beneath the sheet and blankets and listened to the church clock strike all the hours of the night, and when the morning came her pillow was wet with tears.