For thirty-four years, I drifted through life alongside my wife, and now find myself tangled in a curious sort of affection for another woman. The whole thing hovers over me like a peculiar English mist.
My name is Arthur. I am sixty-five. By all outside appearances, I am a married man in his winter years, wife beside meMargaret, thats her name, sixty-two, hair like faded autumn leaves. We have one son, William, who left years ago, married now with his own little broodchildren with rosy cheeks, living just a trains ride away.
After William set sail on his own tides, I noticed a stillness had settled between Margaret and me, something quiet and chilly, as if wed both stepped into a cold, echoing manor and forgotten how to speak.
When the bell for retirement rang, airy dreams drifted through me. I wanted us to buy a cottage somewhere in the Lake Districtrolling green hills and stone walls and sheep dotted like clouds. Margaret preferred the bustle of London, or just sinking into the settee, a novel clutched in her slender hands and the telly murmuring softly. Still, I persuaded her. We bought a cosy, lopsided cottage with bluebells sprouting outside. Summer swept over us, and I revelled in the humming hedgerows and scent of earth, but Margaret was adrift. Shed sigh and say she felt unwell, declining every time I asked her to dig in the garden. So I tangled with weeds alone, spade in one hand and loneliness in the other.
Come autumn, we packed ourselves and moved back to the city. Margaret breathed easy, drinking in the city lights. I ached for the wild hedges, so within a week I bundled my things and returned to the countrysidea figure crossing fields under a grey sky. Margaret remained in London. Now, our meetings are as rare as a blue moon. In this half-forgotten village, amid mist and apple trees, I stumbled into something wild and strange: love for a woman named Edith, sixty as the counting of years goes, with laughter like a brook. At first she kept her distance, as if I were a figure from a painting, but now, things have blossomed between us in a way thats both exhilarating and petrifying.
I want to ask Margaret for a divorce, but the thought of telling William pulls at me, heavy as a London rain. For now, I tell Margaret that I am tending to repairsfixing leaky taps and painting sillswhile I truly spend my hours with Edith, walking sun-speckled lanes, hearts tangled like brambles.
Margaret knows nothing yet of these quiet revolutions. I hover in this strange, endless twilight, unsuredo I speak, do I swallow my secret, or do I let the dream unravel? I havent the faintest idea what I should do.
