THAT IS THE QUESTION

Who would have guessed that it would be him of all people to persuade her into the life-changing deed? The one who’d stood by her, inspired and guided her for years. Decades. The man whose sublime words got her out of bed in the morning, five days a week, led to her encouraging, learning and teaching others, hoping that his wisdom would be passed on through her, absorbed by others and an inspiration since 1564. Or rather, about 1589. It was hard to be sure about that detail, as with so much else in his life. But his words, his words!  

Not Joyce, that’s for sure. She would never have predicted such an outcome. But then, if she’d learned anything in her 66 years on the planet it was that there was no point thinking you knew anything because you almost certainly didn’t. Life has a habit of catching you out, telling you what its plans are for you, not allowing you to have your plans for it. Well, fair enough. Don’t try to swim upstream; you’ll get nowhere and only exhaust yourself. Let the current take you and transport you to new horizons. 

New horizons? Well, that’s ironic, thought Joyce. I’ve seen precious few places other than my regular haunts for... well, she couldn’t recall the last time life had permitted her a lovely surprise. I have ossified, she realised. Let things stagnate and accrete around me, like lichen on a tree trunk or fluffballs under the bed. 

Housework, really, what’s the point? What’s the point of any of it? 

There used to be a point, of course, when Alan was alive. Dear Alan, kind Alan, annoying and funny Alan. Forty-five years they’d spent together. Or, as he was fond of saying, ‘Thirty-five wonderful years...  And the rest!’ It always got a laugh, even from Joyce. But she acknowledged that behind the glib joke was a truth: no marriage is unalloyed happiness but then nor was it ever so bad that either of them wanted to bail out. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse... She hadn’t realised she meant it when she’d repeated those words to Alan in St. Anne’s church, her Dad struggling to hold back his tears and her Mum fussing with the collar of her new Jaeger suit. But she discovered over the years, particularly the later ones, that she did. For richer, for poorer...  Well, they started poor and got  a bit less poor thanks to their hard work. In sickness or in health...  Aye, there’s the rub, indeed. We were unlucky in that respect, weren’t we, Alan? Joyce liked to talk to him still, even after his death, just as she had done when he was around physically but not emotionally, unaware who she was. Heart-breaking, that was the best word to describe it. Not that she’d have admitted it to anyone. No, no, the pain of the tragedy must be kept private at all costs. 

To love and to cherish until death do us part. As it had. It flippin’ well had, hadn’t it? Some people had been shockingly insensitive. 

‘I suppose it must be a relief in some ways?’ 

In what ways exactly do you think I’m relieved to see my husband die? 

‘Poor Alan, but now his suffering has ended.’ 

What about my suffering? Will that ever cease?

‘You’ve cared for him so well, Joyce, and for so long. But now you can be released.’ 

I don’t want to be released; it was my duty, my promise to him. What now?

‘This is your time. You can begin to live a full life again, not just be a full-time carer. Spread your wings.’  

They think I’m a bloomin’ butterfly! They have no idea; nobody has the least clue what it’s like to be Joyce Fairburn.

Even I don’t know, she admitted to herself one quiet evening watching television. Or rather, switching between various channels of bland blather. Politics, weather, gameshow, drama, comedy, pop singers...  I don’t know what it means any more to be this me, today’s version. Nor do I care about me any more than I do about these warbling singers. She silenced the screen with a press of her thumb. So much choice and so little pleasure in any of it. 

As a girl they’d had no television at first, then a black and white one, a huge monster of a thing with a choice of two channels: the proper one and the nasty one. The arrival of a third was a real talking point. And as for colour, well! That generated as much chatter as the second coming. Now there were endless programmes and multiple handsets. When they first arrived she remembered thinking, why would anyone need one of those? How vast must their sitting room be that they can’t take three steps to change the channel?  

But nothing stays the same, does it? Look at me, she thought. Shy girl, married Alan, took a part-time job at St Swithin’s Junior and Infants in Buryfield Road, helping out with the little ones, to earn some pin money. Then was asked to do some proper teaching. Found I loved it. Was told by the Head, Mrs Belton, that I really ought to have a qualification; got one at Adult Ed, took on more classes, loved it more. Got more diplomas. Was asked to go to the senior school, specialised in English Lang & Lit, rose to Head of Department. Imagine that. She wished her own parents had lived long enough to see it. Another regret.  

What with Alan’s busy job at Mortison’s National Haulage (which became Mortison’s International Haulage under his watch) and her ever increasing workload, they were always flat out. Enjoying it but not with spare time to think about some things. 

Children, for example. 

Joyce would admit now if asked, not that anyone would be so intrusive, that she more-or-less assumed it would happen. Like the weather changing with the seasons. But it never did. 

Sex. 

It was a funny old business really, wasn’t it? All over the telly, embarrassingly so, but not a fit subject for discussion. 

They didn’t go too far when they were courting; kissing with tongues and the odd wandering hand under a blouse was the unspoken limit. On their honeymoon in Criccieth they’d decided beforehand that they’d go all the way. They knew it was allowed, more or less expected. People would be looking at her differently, assuming they’d done it, even asking discreetly if everything had ‘gone all right’ or had Alan ‘treated her properly’. Or, in the case of her girlfriends, something more blatant: ‘Are you a real woman now, Joyce?’ Or, as Maggie Fletcher had blurted out, ‘Did he stick it in you?’, spurting her Fanta across the café table, outraged by her own audacity. 

Joyce had batted the questions away with brief answers. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and ‘It was fine.’ And then moved on swiftly to extol the virtues of Snowdonia. 

But the truth was, she wasn’t ‘a real woman’. He didn’t stick it in her. Not that first night or the rest of the week. She was apprehensive and he was a gentleman. He did ask whether, as that wasn’t possible, she might do something else to him, something she’d heard about from the likes of Maggie Fletcher, who claimed she’d done it to two different boys and liked to scandalise the girls with detailed descriptions including the taste. But Joyce hadn’t liked the sound of it at all so she’d declined. And he never asked her again, not once in all their forty-five years. 

They did start doing the other stuff though, the normal thing, soon after they came back from Wales. And she didn’t mind it too much. She couldn’t say she particularly enjoyed it but was aware it was part of the duty of a married woman to offer that service to her husband, like providing a hot dinner and ironing his shirts. Besides, she wasn’t stupid; they wanted children so she knew it was necessary. He wasn’t over-demanding and never insisted. She knew when he was feeling frisky and hoping for a ‘special cuddle’ and would try to oblige him. Once or twice he’d even talked during the actual thing, muttering dirty words into her ear, but she’d giggled and then pulled a face and he hadn’t done it again. 

When no pregnancy happened, for month after month and then year after year, unlike her friends who began to bear children like fruit in the summer, she booked herself in for an appointment with Doctor Colley who took blood, asked her questions and poked and prodded her. He sent her to see a gynae expert at the new hospital on the by-pass, who took blood, asked her questions and poked and prodded her some more. These men had access to her in ways that even Alan didn’t. But they reassured her she was ‘in full working order’ and that time would probably tell. Oh, and had her husband had himself checked out for a potential low count? She doubted it so she mentioned it that evening over the shepherd’s pie. He blustered and was clearly insulted. 

‘What are you saying?’ 

‘Not me, dear. It was the consultant, a Mr Beaufoy. He thought perhaps you might – ’

‘Oh, Beaufoy is it? A Frenchie? Ha! And he thinks I’m shooting blanks, does he, this Froggy quack?’

‘It’s just his name. He sounded English.’

‘What possesses a man to go into that business anyway? You’ve got to wonder about him.’

‘He was very nice. Gentle. When he put – ’

‘Oh spare me the details! Not over dinner.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Pass the peas.’

‘Sorry.’ 

She passed Alan the peas and they ate the rest of their meal in silence. It was pineapple-upside-down cake for afters, his favourite, and he didn’t even comment. 

Joyce let the subject drop. She told him about the Blenkinsop’s new dog.

That night he wanted her. He took her in a way that felt different, not kind.

And so it shifted, silently and inexorably, from a bright ‘we don’t have children yet’ via a brave ‘we don’t have children’ to a melancholy ‘no, we never did have children’. Thus time flows; future becomes surprisingly present and fades into the past, unattainable. The little girl with dolls became a shy teenager who grew into the woman who married and had a career in teaching, retired to care for her sick husband but only for a shockingly short time until she was wearing black and in mourning. Widow was a horrid word but it described accurately that horrid state of affairs. 

Joyce Fairburn was grieving for so much. For Alan, of course but for her own life too. Past and future. Real and potential. The life she felt she’d only half lived and the one she’d imagined but never had. The reasons for much of the frustration and sadness she knew could only be laid at her own door; she would never try to shirk her responsibility for all this mess. If only she’d been braver, more ‘on the front foot’ as her tennis coach, Tim Warley, used to say. ‘Attack the ball, Joyce!’ he’d shout. ‘Show it who’s in charge!’ If only I knew, she wanted to reply. But she did as she was told because a) her father was paying for the lessons and b) she had a bit of a crush on Tim with his facial hair and tight shorts. Not that she’d have done anything more than smile at him. Anyway, there were rumours that he wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man; the same went for anyone in those days who had a moustache without a beard. 

No, she’d never got the hang of being on the front foot, at the tennis club or elsewhere. She was a passive reactor, not a mover or shaker.  

Joyce was learning that anger was a part of grief. She was angry with herself for not having taken more control over her life. And now the greater part of it was gone. But Joyce couldn’t contain her anger in a box marked ‘my fault’. She’d tried but it would keep spilling out. Some of it was Alan’s, uncomfortable as it was to admit that. She blamed him, she did. 

Blamed him for not getting checked at Dr Colley’s to find out if he was the cause of her never getting pregnant. They might have had children, grandchildren too. She imagined three of the former and four of the latter, a mixture of genders. Ups and downs, rough and tumble. The delights of sports days and weddings, the worries of illness and arguments. But no, it had been life on a too-even keel, cruising through. Placid and pleasant enough but wishy-washy. Hot pot without a dash of curry powder. 

The changes had crept up so stealthily, brushed off as silly mistakes or oversights. A forgotten word, a misunderstanding. A stumble or a misjudgement. Individually nothing to worry about. But cumulatively, a trigger for a rumble of concern. For Joyce at least. Alan laughed off the tiny incidents as tiredness or ‘age’. But he was only in his fifties when she began to collect the moments and join them together in her mind to see if they indicated something serious. 

She blamed him for becoming ill. Irrational, of course, but still her irritation with him seethed. Dementia? she queried the consultant, a Mrs Quinton. ‘Early onset dementia,’ she’d elaborated, as if that made a ha’pporth of difference. That’s just when he gets it, not what he’s got. With no hope of a cure and no hint how to deal with the horror. Here’s a leaflet; be brave and enjoy what time you have together. 

‘How dare you?’ she wanted to scream at Alan so often. ‘How dare you get this? This is the end of you, of us, and effectively the end of me. I’m being denied so much. More years together, a proper third-age. A cottage on the south coast. Travel abroad in groups of like-minded people of our age, other retired teachers and accountants and doctors. Nice white, middle-class, married people like us. Some singletons. Even a couple of gays; that would add to the feeling of adventure. Actually, not necessarily all white; I’ve done all the multi-cultural training modules. We’d get about in small vans and boats and maybe on horses. She’d watched the television programmes, looked up to see where Guyana and Madagascar and Cambodia were on the map. Those names, so exotic; yet almost within reach. All of that might have been possible if only...… 

If only. Life was overstuffed with if-onlys. 

And so here she was: Joyce Fairburn, née Drinkwater. Age 66. Widow of the parish. Residing at Castleview, a nice-enough bungalow on the edge of town. The name Castleview was entirely suitable when it was built in the 70s and when they bought it in the 80s but since the Cedar Vale estate of ‘executive style detached villas’ had been constructed at the turn of the century was now bragging in a deceitful way. But Alan and Joyce had never got round to renaming their home and rather enjoyed the gentle ribbing of friends and Walter the postman about their false claim. 

There was so much history of not getting round to things. Children. Travel. Other ways of living. And now..? 

That was the point, wasn’t it? What now? 

If the truth be told, and it’s about time it was, now felt like a very gloomy place to be. Joyce had lived, loved and lost. She had grown to maturity and was now...  what? Over the hill? Past her best-before date? What she’d once imagined as a gentle shared decline through her sixties, seventies and with luck her eighties had become a grim and solitary relentless ordeal. There was plenty to look back on with aching regret, but only a bleak void in the future.  

Joyce had loved her job but resigned to be able to care for Alan. And then he handed in his resignation to the great employer in the sky. She loved her subject, loved her pupils – even the difficult ones – and really loved seeing them learn and progress. She could sense the excitement when one of them – Barbara Trent, Sam Benbow, Ali de Souza – became enthused about the work of a particular author or the English language in general. That’s when she got the thrill of knowing she’d been a crucial part of that process and felt more fulfilled than at any other time. More than having sex with her husband or hitting a winning volley, more even than nursing Alan in his final days. Only the delight of inspiring others with the subtleties and richness of the written word gave her that ‘good to be alive’ sensation. 

They’d given her a lovely send off when she retired with speeches and gifts. Really, she couldn’t have asked for more. It was an occasion full of gratitude on both sides and tinged with sadness, both for her departure and the reason for it. Joyce had been discreet but it seemed the staff and even some older pupils knew about Alan’s condition. She called it that, not dementia or Alzheimer’s or even illness. His ‘condition’. More neutral, not so doom-laden.  

The final chapter had lasted less than a year. He deteriorated faster than anyone had anticipated and it was all she could do to learn new skills in response to his increasing needs. She tried to do it all willingly and with a good heart but sometimes her frustration couldn’t be kept below the surface. His mood alternated between childlike loving and wild aggression. He fought against his decline, stumbling about the house like a beast, unco-ordinated, attempting tasks once simple but now beyond him. Changing a lightbulb, knotting his tie, shaving. Raving and cursing too. She knew it wasn’t really Alan saying and doing those awful things. But it still looked and sounded sufficiently like him to remind her of the person he used to be. By now he had reverted to a second childhood and she became his mother and nurse, not wife. 

It was an impossible task. Joyce felt her failure multiple times a day. Her best efforts fell short of what was required again and again. Cooking, feeding, washing, restraining, reassuring, cleaning, talking, listening, checking, correcting – over and over, day after day after day. She slept in the spare room and sometimes snatched a whole hour of shut-eye before he needed her once more. It was a bleak time with only rare moments of relief: a shared laugh, a cuddle, a glimpse of recognition as he slid further away. 

The end had been necessary. Not quite desired but accepted.

A funeral. Too many cards saying the same thing. Sorry for your loss. He was a fine man. In sympathy. Those words about relief and release. Some had rubbish about ‘God’ and ‘Heaven’. Utter foolishness.  

And then there was silence. No more howls of anguish, no weeping distress or shouts of fury.  

Silence. 

It was not a comfort, not a relief. It was terrifying. She hated the empty nothingness and tried to drown it out with voices and music on the radio, carrying it from room to room like an addict. Sometimes she’d leave it burbling away by the bed – the too big, half-empty bed – while she slept, waking in the night to sounds that softened the loss. 

There were groups. Bridge, yoga, Spanish, life-drawing. She dipped in; she dipped out again. They didn’t feel real.  

She’d made discreet inquiries about the possibility of returning to the High School – or ‘Academy’ as it had been rebranded – but the Head, Mr Dasgupta, had explained that, although he had ‘unquenchable respect’ for her ‘unsurpassable teaching legacy’ it would undermine the new head of department, Jessie Soledad-Macintosh, in her role. He was sure she, being sensitive to these things, would understand. 

‘With her tail between her legs’ was the idiom she would have used to describe her feeling after that too-brief phone call. Brief but, even so, interrupted twice by his secretary, Elliot.   

Elliot?  Who had a secretary called Elliot, for goodness’ sake? Elliot!

When did I give up? Joyce asked herself, gazing through her murky window at the unkempt garden. And, given that I have, what next?  

As so often in times of crisis, she consulted her guru. She went upstairs to the wardrobe in the back bedroom containing all her notes, files and folders accumulated over a lifetime of teaching English. These would bring solace, surely. Twelve months ago she’d boxed them up to gather dust, a silent memorial to all the classes and pupils with whom she’d shared her enthusiasm. All those ideas and essays, the discussions about language and meaning. Simile and metaphor, alliteration, synecdoche, anadiplosis, imagery, prose and blank verse. And nowhere better to find comfort, to reconnect with the very essence of her life than in the pages of her beloved Will. 

Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice and Taming of the Shrew, fraught as that was with problems these days. Even crazy old Titus Andronicus. She ran her fingers along those beloved copies of his great works, battered and worn from all the times they’d been pressed into service. She took one down to skim through: Measure for Measure. Oh, the delicious complexity. Love’s Labours Lost, the wit and the spark. Lear, the ineffable tragedy. 

And, of course, her favourite, her special friend. The Danish prince. Hamlet. That single word still capable of instilling awe and recognition worldwide. Oh, the towering genius of one man to create such an icon. A work of art that lays bare the struggles with family, betrayal, revenge, grief, love...  life itself. 

Life itself. 

And wasn’t that the delicate dilemma in Joyce’s head right now? The book fell open at a familiar page. 

To be, or not to be…

Yes, that. But wait, no. Not how to live but: 

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. 

Oh yes, Will, that really is the question, isn’t it? You understand, she whispered, you know me so well. Joyce spoke the words she thought she understood, but with a fresh significance now as a new truth dawned. 

To die — to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.

It felt as if the clouds had parted like some cheesy Hollywood effect. She almost heard a heavenly choir. Absurd really, there in the back bedroom of ill-named Castleview on a drizzly Autumn day. But that is how it felt. A revelation, a sign. A gift to Joyce Fairburn across the centuries from William Shakespeare himself, her secret fantasy-lover for decades. She’d carried a torch for him and now he returned this favour. Countless times she’d helped an O-level class struggle through dense line after dense line, unpicking phrases word by word, but today nothing could be clearer. Of course, that was it! The answer. 

Take arms against a sea of troubles. Not to be. 

Joyce hugged the copy of Hamlet  to her chest and gasped in delight. Not to be. Not to be. Yes! Finally she saw the way ahead, the path she must take. It was less a decision than the realisation of an ineluctable truth: this was her future, her duty, her destiny. 

Suicide. 

The word had become tainted with implications of madness or badness. But it was something one had to commit, and that felt good. Finally in her life she would be committing to something. To take her own life; yes the taking indicated action and resolution. She mimed a snatching fist in the air, she was a tennis player on the front foot celebrating victory. Tim Warley would be proud of her. This was triumph and supremacy. Yes, yes! At last, she saw in this moment how to give meaning to her now pointless existence. By seizing it and ending it she could complete it, create significance and substance where none had been before. 

The beauty. The simplicity. The clarity and purity of it. Joyce was fairly throbbing with elation and yet had a delicious serenity. She was hot but cool; it was outrageous but obvious. She turned and saw her face in the Ikea mirror she’d never liked. But it wasn’t quite the one she knew. It had a cheeky hint of whimsy, the naughty girl she’d never had the courage to be. 

Or not to be, she giggled.  

How, though? So many choices, a multiplicity of ways. Some dramatic and shocking, others calmer and more dignified. A modicum of research was necessary. She could hardly consult the new GP  at the health centre, he’d try to dissuade her and prescribe mind-numbing medication. This energy was the very opposite of anaesthetising; ironically, Joyce had never felt so alive! And when? Not immediately, there was so much to plan. Many decisions to be made, ‘putting her affairs in order’ as the phrase went. 

Helping Alan on his way out with a pillow had been a temptation on many occasions but she’d never been brave enough. This, however, this was quite another proposition. It didn’t require courage; it was all so simple and right. 

Gosh, this was going to be fun! 

Joyce was grinning madly - no, sanely - at her own reflection and squeezing herself with a pleasure close to hilarity when a sound brought her back to the mundane present. It was the front door bell, a clunky arpeggio that usually signalled a parcel or someone selling cleaning products. 

Joyce descended, saw two figures through the frosted glass, and opened the door ready to turn away the peddlers with politeness. 

‘Hello, Mrs Fairburn,’ they said in unison. 

‘Oh, hello, it’s...’ She hesitated just long enough for them to fill in the blank. 

‘Melanie and Bethany?’

‘Of course, of course. How lovely to see you both. How… unexpected.’ How odd, how inconvenient; how come? 

‘Sorry to call out of the blue?’

‘We wondered if we could have a word? Our mum thought it would be better to come in person?’

‘Ah. I see.’ She didn’t, of course. Not yet. ‘Well, you’d better come in, don’t stand in the rain.’ It was really chucking it down now. 

The Whiteway twins, not quite identical, came in and stood awkwardly in the hall while Joyce took their wet coats, which were identical, and hung them up. 

‘Go through, have a seat, anywhere you like. I’ll put the kettle on. Oh, do you drink tea? Or coffee perhaps.’ She had no idea what sixteen-year-olds liked. 

‘Do you have Coke Zero?’

Again, her silence spoke for her. 

‘Water’s fine?’

‘Yes, tap please?’

She brought their glasses through; nothing for herself. They were perched upright on the edge of the sofa, clearly instructed to be on their best behaviour. They were good girls, diligent and sensible unlike plenty in Year Eleven.

Joyce was on her best behaviour too and she inquired about school, making sure to include the sports aspect as well as the academic since that was where their strengths lay. One was in the football team, the other in the hockey squad; they both swam for the school, she remembered that. There were pleasantries and chit chat but for quite an annoyingly long while the reason for their visit didn’t emerge. 

Joyce decided it was time.  

‘So your mum suggested you came.’

And then, in a halting and overlapping duet like some mediaeval round, it all came spilling out,  Melanie leading and Bethany the echo. 

‘The thing is, Mum thought – ’

‘Mum thought, and Dad agreed – ’

‘Thought we needed some, like – ’

‘Some, like, extra sort of…’

‘Some private tuition.’

‘Yes, that.’

‘And she asked the Head – ’

‘Mr Dasgupta – ’

‘ – asked him if he could suggest – ’

‘ – suggest someone to, like, provide it. The extra.’

‘And he suggested you?’

‘You?’

They nodded jointly to indicate they’d finished. 

‘I see.’ Joyce looked from one to another. ‘Some private tuition in your language and literature classes? For your O-levels.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ 

What she did see was a chance, a glimpse, a sliver of hope. She had been on the cusp of welcoming oblivion as the ultimate frisson of achievement. But this...  now... This was, literally, a lifeline. 

Joyce looked from Melanie to Bethany and back. One was marginally plumper, the other marginally slimmer. One had her hair swept up off her face, the other let it hang. But the eyes fixed on her had the same level gaze of patience. 

‘I see. Well...’ 

Knowing how crucial her decision was, what was at stake, she was not about to rush this response. 

‘Well now, this is very flattering. And I would be delighted to accept your generous offer...’

They both gave a tiny smile of thanks. 

‘... under normal circumstances.’

The tiny smiles were replaced by tiny frowns.  

‘Unfortunately, the current circumstances are far from normal. You see, girls, I will shortly be...  I’ll be... going away. Yes, that’s right.’

‘Oh, well...’

‘Anywhere nice, Mrs Fairburn?’

‘To be honest I’m not sure. The destination is something of a secret location. It’s a mystery tour. But I hope it will be very nice.’ 

‘Gosh that sounds a bit...’ 

‘Yes, a bit...’

‘Awesome,’ they chorused.

‘So I’m afraid to say I can’t help you any more. I have a lot of...  organising to do, to be fully...  prepared.’

‘Are you going soon?’

‘Like, soon?’

‘I’m not sure. Quite soon I think. That’s part of the mystery. But there’s no reason to delay. It’s the journey of a lifetime and I honestly can’t wait.’ 

Joyce showed the Whiteway twins out, washed their glasses and put them to dry. Then she stood in her kitchen and looked around at the pots and pans, the knick-knacks and bits and bobs. All the superfluous paraphernalia. She looked at all the parts of a life she no longer needed. Joyce Fairburn couldn’t wait to get make a start on her new project.