Myrtle looked down at her spreading wet feet as she
stood in the shower and wondered if there had been
any way of knowing that when Austin had left that
morning he would not return. That when she had
reluctantly leaned forward to accept his kiss on her
right cheek, it was to be their final farewell.
The hospital had called some time after eleven.
Austin, she knew, would have preferred her to be more
precise about the time but she was not a person who
had lived easily within the confines of precision. What
she did know was that immediately after she had left a
message for Gillian she had proceeded to the bathroom
and taken a shower. It was all she could think of
to do.
‘Sandwich cut in triangles – brown bread, cheese
and piccalilli, crusts off – six grapes, a yoghurt, small
spoon, napkin folded in a triangle, carton of juice,’
Austin had said, as he checked the contents of his
Tupperware box meticulously before closing it and
smoothing the sides anti-clockwise with his right hand.
Austin had left for work that morning, as he always
did, at ten minutes past seven – smart, exact and distinguished
in appearance. As he turned and crossed
the threshold, leaving his wife behind, he had winked
at her in the self-assured way only he knew, patted the
stylish, structured hat that covered his head, then
proceeded to close the door firmly behind him. His
routine was as reassuring as it was unnerving, Myrtle
had always felt. It created a kind of rhythm, and the
silence between each slow beat of a single drum brought
as much unease as anticipation.
Austin had been a man of extreme habit, there
was no denying it. Myrtle had known that before she
married him. This had brought a predictable tempo
to their life – a continuum of events that meant Myrtle
had always known exactly how things stood.
There had been times, though, when she had worried
something might have been omitted from his regularity
and it had caused her to fret momentarily – times
when she had wondered whether he would forget to
close the curtains in the orderly and symmetrical fashion
he always did before they left the house, whether he
would fail to press down the door handle systematically
three times to ensure the door was truly locked, or
whether he would inadvertently put the cheese on the
wrong shelf in the fridge. But Austin’s entire circle of
life was so committed to the religion of routine that she
need not have feared it would ever be broken.
So there Myrtle stood, that rainy Thursday.