How long now, cowboy?

As students they’d had a mad romance, guitar-below-the-window stuff. Tom was first intrigued that she didn’t wear shoes—he’d never met anyone who didn’t wear shoes. She had soft sweet soles but they were black and dusty always. Even in lectures; and Grace was one of those people to prop her legs up, recline, be louche. She studied psychology. The professors were turning from cliff-faced, pipe-smoking, bowtie types, to experimenters with acid, who liked music made electronically, and were users of first names. It was just about the nineteen-seventies. Their uni was fresh, and moist-lawned, and cantilevered. They were from families new to this world, and hopeful.

Tom first met her the day after he first met her—or so he’d tell friends, once they’d married. Because there’d been a party at the student union and Tom remembered his first six or seven ales before the memories stopped being made or anyway became intermittent and there were only sensations left to him rather than real recollection, such as lying down in the autumn grass of the campus, slick and dark with dew before the night’s end, and getting his face wet and chilled, and the sensation of throwing up, done drunken enough that there wasn’t much distasteful about it—he leaned with his left hand on the steel drum which held the toilet paper, in a room painted totally black (the cistern, the screws of the door’s hinges), expelling into the toilet. He’d learned the next day Grace’d found him: taken him to his room: slept on the sofa, under his jacket for warmth, to be there if needed. Both nineteen.

“You stayed there all night? Unbelievably sweet. Didn’t have to. How’d you sleep? Can I give you something as a reward?”

She laughed at “reward”. “I don’t want anything. You were in a very very bad state. I’m happy to have helped.”

“You must have gotten a sore neck sleeping on that sofa. It isn’t as long as a person.”

“It was more comfy than it looks.”

“Can I kiss you as a reward?”

Again she laughed. “Maybe if you brush your teeth first.”

“I do geography by the way.”

“Your t-shirt says ‘geology rocks’.”

“They didn’t have a geography one.”

She wanted to watch High Noon for their first date, which was showing at the Alhambra. Tom loved it: not the film, but her open eclecticism and her free attitudes. She was happy to adore old illiberal Gary Cooper, who represented everything she didn’t. Happy to see cowboys on a romantic evening—happy to absorb black-hat morality, the precise antonym of all her relativist thinking. Grace’d been stop-the-war, nuclear disarmament, pro-lesbian, yet likewise adored High Noon. Tom adored her adoration—Tom expanded to her happiness. It was a way to widen certain circles within which your life was usually compassed, and in the widening, to soften.

They had a later-than-late dinner, 1:00am, in her room. Just sitting on the bed, eating pork chops and cubed crisp potatoes, done on a portable gas stove. He tried to hold his fork neatly. Soon they put down the plates which they’d eaten only a small fraction from because they were too young and too aware of their togetherness, Grace laying on top of Tom to kiss him, and for several hours they were in similar positions, wearing out making out, cold plates of unheeded food weighing dim craters in the fluffed sheets. They avoided getting elbows or hips in the grease. They fell asleep with the pork and potatoes there, and woke with them in the afternoon.

A couple of years on—when they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend a couple of years—Tom finally indulged Grace. He thought it was corny, but she had the cowboy bug, and for her birthday he took her line dancing. In a plastic carrier bag, bulging oddly, he had two cowboy hats. Only felt and cardboard things, with studded sequins round the rims. Glitzing in the leisure-centre light. One pink, one black.

They were dancing and Grace laughed, laughed a lot. “You’re good!” She covered her face like you would sneezing, but it was laughter. “You’re so good, I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t have—in a million years. God! Look at you Tom. You’ve got it.” Laughing, laughing. To laugh in such a place was a beautiful incongruity, because somehow all around them was seriousness, but Grace towards life took an attitude of naïve wonder. You didn't get that in a background like hers without the proper practice of joy. You weren't so game for life unless you meant to be.

Tom'd wanted to impress her so had read a chapter of a book on line dancing beforehand. He leaned back on one heel, and his thumbs were hooked in his beltloops. He was wearing the pink one. “This is awful but it’s really enjoyable.”

Her laughter was everywhere; she whispered: “Shhh Tom, there’s all the other people, don’t say it’s awful.” She only wanted to not intrude on other dancers' happiness, as that would have dampened her own: a woman's pleasure is predicated on the balance of others'. A man can be cheerful in spite of the moods about him. When Grace laughed, she showed more gum than is shown on average. Tom loved that.

Four years on, married, Grace was making most of the money, less openly joyous now, though deeply serene, twenty-five, a therapist, her ambition met. Tom taught geography in a school walkable from the house they owned—a railway cottage, number sixty-eight Primrose Villas, 1880s, red-brick, a terrace. Angled so steeply the hill they lived on was a challenge on the lungs each time Tom went off to work, and he had to lean back, bounding, whenever coming home. Yet Grace had work far from the home and went by bus for miles—to a peeling unwindowcleaned clinic, where she saw six people per day and gave them each an unflagging hour of her focus.

An evening: “There’s a film on at eight at the cinema I want to see,” Tom said, slipping ham and eggs onto earthenware.

“Quite tired today.”

“It’s got Jimmy Stewart.” He placed a plate before her. Making meals was nigh on a devotional act, and he refused to allow her to do it in return—one of those selfishnesses born of selflessness.

“Hm. Know if it’s on any other day?”

“Think it’s just today.”

“Let’s call up and check.”

“I just saw it as I was going past this afternoon.”

“Let’s see how we feel when we’ve eaten.”

For his thirtieth, they went to dine at the new, chic, glass, chrome, unfriendly place in the middle of town. He wore a slim tie; Grace in her usual sharp-yet-soft workclothes. Lemon cardigan et cetera. Tom looked at her eyes over the table—brittle. He wasn’t clear if he’d known that before. They moved dancingly too much. It was attractive, but anxious. Actually Grace’s eyes seemed not to be keen on looking at Tom. They hadn’t had a row—he thought this was just how she was, or had just always been. Revelation would be overstatement. He was noticing, a skill in which his personality was unusually deficient.

“Salmon—have never tried salmon before,” she said.

“I’ll order it, that way if you do and you don’t like it you won’t have to eat it all. But I’ll order it and will swap with you if you end up liking it.”

“That’s sweet. I’ll have pork then.”

He smiled, which smile she did not return. She wasn’t sad looking, no, but the eyes were going about jittery, everywhere.

“White wine? Red wine? You like red wine.” Tom didn’t like red wine but Grace did. “A bottle?”

“I don’t know if I really feel like drinking.”

“Sure.”

That evening when they were home they didn’t have sex. They did kiss and it remained passionate but there wasn’t the impulse between them, which was usually felt and understood and external, to further anything. Grace steadied her look and showed it to Tom and her eyes just had two points of warbling: between each of his. They still had love in them. With their arms held softly they lay down together, on the floor, in the living room, deep in the cool-smelling carpet, moving their arms and hands to hold the other round the head, as though each of them supporting the head of a small baby. They were half warm and half cold. Their electric fire smelled like toaster and bore stinging red bands of heat. They kissed—kissed; that was all.

Although they'd been trying, and agreed that having any could function as reparative, the question of children was decided by a visit to the local doctor, who referred them to a specialist, whom they met hand in hand, vibrating sadly, and who told them Tom wouldn't be able to. And that was it—one more adventure into which they'd never delve together.

Grace, later, said, “No, it isn’t a matter for discussion now.”

“Well we could of course. We could adopt.”

“No—I’ve seen it. I don’t want to do that to you.”

“Meaning?”

“The emasculation of it.”

“What then?”

“Well, it’s just as it is. That’s what.”

“We won’t try?”

“We have tried, Tom. I love you. I’m so sorry this is the case.”

“I want to try other ways.”

“You don’t need to be brave for me Tom. I’ve said I love you. Let’s move on.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Tom.”

“I’m just—I just want to be certain.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m not sure I am.”

“You mean you aren’t or you wouldn’t mind…?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s leave it.”

If this was kindness he would take it as kindness, not now brave enough to think of her another way. He was happy to have the sustaining little delusion, which came about with him like a pebble in his pocket, where he could hold it from time to time as the normal buffets of life carried on, a small safeguard he had to have. His grief he never allowed for, because he knew that in facing it openly he could be lost. But he had his pebble.

Retirement was a early for them both. In careers, they’d almost been fulfilled. But both taxed—his: standing, teaching, minding children; hers: bearing the cumulative pressure of the problems of many hundreds and many thousands of strangers, which even in work meant to resolve problems did something to you, by unfelt acts, as sea mist brings down cliff. Tom didn’t take up golf—he didn’t take up anything. Grace liked a country churchyard, a canal path, a converted mill. She developed in retirement, learned, and didn’t mind that her husband sat about, growing steadily worse on the guitar, pottering. Generally living a life of being instead of doing. Buying cookbooks to not use them—putting overfocus towards weeding their svelte, pristine garden.

“You still look beautiful Grace,” he said, contextless, one morning while he sat on the stool of her dressing table, a knee up, eyes down, donning socks.

“That’s kind Tom.”

“Even now.”

“You don’t have to emphasise now.”

“I meant, you know.”

“I know. I know. You don’t have to say anything more.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to compliment you. Can I kiss you?”

“You can. Come over here.”

He did. “I feel like I’ve almost been forgetting to do that.”

“I’m glad you said that.”

“Why?”

“I’ve felt it.”

“Well I’ll make it my mission in life, you can count on it from here, to make sure I remember to be good to you. We’re young, thank God. I still have things I want to do.”

“I’m going for another little trip today. A walk of a few miles or so.”

He moved back to the stool again and sat. “I’d love to join you but it tires me out so much these days.”

“Just said we’re still young—” She turned halfway to the window. Morning cars going by.

“My knees, Grace.”

“They’d be fine on a short one.”

“They’re tricky. The hill.”

She lifted an envelope from the bedside table, seemed to look through it, and made a silent sigh. Tom didn’t know if it was disappointment.

“I’m sorry. It’s just.”

“Don’t worry Tom. I get it.”

“I should be on pills for them maybe.”

She did not speak. A pause breathed out, long.

He said, “I could try it. Perhaps a mile. I might be all right.”

Quickly Grace said, “Oh I don’t feel like it now.”

“Hey, hey,” he said, heaving up to stand again, “why don’t we just go for a little one? That’d be nice together.”

“Not really in the mood now Tom. I’m sorry. We could put a film on.”

“You were just so keen to go out.”

“I know, I probably wasn’t keen though. I was probably trying to want to be keen.”

“Is that it? Is that what it is?”

“What?”

He would have had to say what he'd meant to say, and didn’t, going over near her, lingering, picking up the same envelope she’d placed down, tapping its blade of edge onto the dresser wood. Its sound was high and pointed. Tom tapped it two and then three and four times, for the sake of its noise. Other than birdsong, other than morning cars, it was the only noise.

“Never mind,” he said at last.

After Grace died of breast cancer, Tom had a few months alone. He was youngish—only just getting to his seventies; he had his health, mostly, no hearing-aids, all the usual teeth. Grief was able to be boring. He started to do pointless things like ironing shirts even on days he knew he wouldn’t go out even to the shops: just to be sat alone in an ironed shirt, listening to songs he didn’t like on the radio. The radio was now on one hundred percent of the waking time because of its company. He preferred voices to music, and always had. Grace’d been good at finding new music he’d like.

Four months of it, and sick of being lonesome finally, he found on the internet a line-dancing class within an hour’s drive of their house. He was, by three decades’ stretch, the most senior of the dancers. It wasn’t a leisure centre with lessons offered by the local council anymore—he remembered the asbestos squares of the ceiling; this was a nightclub before it became a nightclub, perversely sunny. Mostly there were couples. The flooring was squares, like the photonegative of the leisure centre ceiling half a century back, but of a sort of black glass, with flecks of shine.

He lacked a cowboy hat now. His limbs obeyed him less well, all aching at least a little, all a little rebellious. It was like many hands pressing down on parts of his body to restrain him. Yet Tom clacked to time the thick hard heel of his boots, specially bought, and turned round with the young people. Slower and frailer, they watched him caringly. He moved in arcing broadness, slower than the music, missing the claps, and found his lungs' effort huge to lift legs and spin, and found that adhering muscles couldn’t achieve.

Tom took a seat—there were benches. He skipped out half a song, smiling. Afterwards he rocked himself forwards, back onto his boots, standing again, and sun was serenading by the windows, glowing at each like oven doors. Joining once more he had joy out of the dance. Wrung from it a new happiness, or the old, as he’d not been allowed for four months. Perhaps more than four months. Sloppily, he exulted. It was real rapture to be with real people and turn as though turning were the point of everything. He fudged thumbs through frayed beltloops, nodded as punctuation, as if hatted, letting sun rile him hot and pleased. Tom kept turning, turning, and his heart was too slow. It danced fast but couldn’t do enough for the dance, and with a tender flutter, gently sad because he was making the steps now, he had to ease himself down to a bench again. He sat and recovered once more, and rejoined once more, and failed among the young people. Once more he tried and once more he backed onto the bench. Again, to standing, he took his place in the dance. The line dance had gotten past him, and he was unable to reach it. His turning was the shadow of others’ turning, a misplaced echo of theirs. They danced to the pulses of time, coherent, mapped flush, evenly squaring with life. Tom danced his dance askew, a window not fitting its frame.

But he kept trying—he’d had practice.