Even More Good News

(Even more good news: I have just been placed third in a short story competition. Tried the same comp the previous two years without result so it is good to be on the podium there at last, and for a story that I really like. Here's another PB piece.)

HUNTLY’S WIFE KNOWS STUFF

He’s written another letter. Sees a difference in Alice. Doesn’t know what that difference might be and I won’t tell him. Not the whole thing. Not how Alice sat with Dodie Bredwell in The Ship on Wednesday evening and Dodie was quieter than usual. Not just quieter either. He wasn’t stacking up the empty glasses like he does on a Saturday night and wasn’t singing at the end of the session with Lachlan Davie. Instead he was with Alice till about nine. Then he walked her to her door. Nothing more in it than that, maybe. But that’s the reason she is different.

I asked Huntly if he wanted to go out. He’d said as much in the letter. So I said, ‘Do you want to go out today, Huntly?’

He looked at me funny. I thought then I might have given the game away. Maybe he already knows. There are few secrets in a marriage. ‘Just for the air. Just for a change,’ I said.

He thought about it for a moment. He looked out at the sky as if weighing up the possibility. Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not today.’

It wasn’t anything I hadn’t expected. I shrugged and asked him if he wanted something whilst I was out. A newspaper, maybe.

He asked me to come and see what he had in his hand. The closed cup of one hand, held like a fist in his lap but not so tight. Like he was holding something small and so fragile it could break.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Come closer and I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘Only it’s really small and when I open this hand I won’t be able to catch it again. So you’ll have to come close to see.’

I knew he was up to something. I could tell. You don't live with a man as long as I have lived with Huntly and not know him. His eyes said it all. There was nothing in his hand and the whole ‘come closer’ thing was a trick. Or there was something like a spider in his fist and he was going to make me jump with it. Men can be such boys sometimes.

‘I promise that there’s no spider and no dead fly. Just come here so I can show you what it is.’

See, he knows me too and can read things in me sometimes.

‘Trust me,’ he said.

So I had to. When he said that, I had to let him know that I did trust him. It was important to do that. I walked to his side. He beckoned me to lean in close. Then, when my attention was on his hand, he kissed me.

‘I’ll not go out today, but maybe one day. So long as you are with me.’

And I kissed him. And there we were behaving like a couple of teenagers in our front room. That’s how I know that what he says in the letters is not the whole story.