Tim Dowling: is it the suburbs my wife finds dispiriting? Or me?
Iam alone at a supermarket till, scanning my own groceries. It’s taking ages – some of the bar codes are tiny, or inside out, or folded up on themselves – and a queue is building up. A manager comes over, not to help, but to roll her eyes and make sarcastic remarks. I feel 100 years old. Then I wake up.
When I open my eyes it’s already light outside, and already Saturday. I turn to face my wife, who is already sitting up playing a game on her phone. “So, what are we doing today?” I say. “We’ve been invited to lunch,” she says.
“I mean before that,” I say. “Are we going on a walk?” My wife sighs.
“I find our walks a bit dispiriting,” she says.
“What?” I say. “You can’t say that.” My wife looks at her phone.
“I just mean the landscape,” she says. “The endless suburban parks.”
“We both know that’s not what you meant,” I say.
“Fine,” she says. “I take it back.”
“Too late,” I say.
An hour later we are both standing in the garden, arms folded against the morning chill, sharing a silence that I am deliberately allowing to ripen. Without warning, my wife speaks.
“I suppose, actually, we could walk to the lunch,” she says. I stare at the sun through the branches of a tree.
“Maybe,” I say. My wife takes out her phone and types.
“Fifty-five minutes,” she says. “Easy.” When we first moved west, we used to take walks like this regularly – back towards town – in a bid to convince my wife that Acton still counted as part of London. But those walks tended to have the opposite effect, leaving us footsore and late for things. Better to take public transport and play games on your phone, erasing the distance instead of measuring it.
Today, however, the long march gives us a chance to talk frankly and openly about the marital difficulties faced by other couples we know. Unfortunately, by the time we reach the park my wife is already beginning to find me dispiriting.
“Anyway, they were having a break, but it’s all fine now,” she says.
“What kind of tree is this?” I say. “I want to say hornbeam.”
“Oh sorry, was I talking?” she says. “Oh sorry, were you?” I say.
“You’re not a much of a listener, are you?” she says.
“I have a good ear,” I say.
“I don’t think you do,” she says.
“No, I mean I have a good ear and a bad ear,” I say. “You’re walking on the wrong side of me.” I feel my wife shoulder-barging me from the right.
“We need to go that way,” she says. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I’m pretty sure it’s …”
“You have no idea,” she says. A hundred metres on, I realise she is correct: I don’t know how we get from this point to our destination. I drop half a step back, the better to follow her lead.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been here,” I say, looking around.
“I have,” my wife says. “I used to live in this road.”
“Did you?” I say.
“I shared a flat with two other people, one of whom only pretended to go to work.”
“What do you mean?”
“He went out and sat in his van at 8 every morning, and as soon as we went to work he went back inside.”
“I’ve never heard any of this,” I say. “You know nothing about me,” she says.
“I certainly never had you down as a former Acton resident,” I say. “Especially after all the fuss you made about moving.”
“This isn’t still Acton,” she says. “I think you’ll find it is,” I say, nodding toward the parking sign on the corner.
“We need to buy some wine,” she says. “Try not to drink it all as soon as we get there.”
“No promises,” I say. “I’m in an unpredictable mood.”
My wife leaves the lunch party before I do – because people are watching sport on telly – and by the time I’ve walked home I decide I need more wine, so step into a shop
I take a bottle to the till and I tap my card, but a beep indicates something is amiss. I insert the card and punch in my six-digit pin number, but hear the beep again. I repeat the sequence more slowly; the same thing happens. Then it occurs to me: my pin number only has four digits. The woman behind the till rolls her eyes, and the little screen says: Last Try!