The shelves in the charity shop were lined with dead men’s shoes. Sturdy brown brogues were laced tight against the probing fingers of prospective new ownership. Old ladies’ coats, some check, some plain, still smelled of perfume – Eau de Cologne, Lilies of the Valley. It all reminded me of my grandparents, long gone to meet their maker; but I wonder – up there – did they ever meet each other? Would she have come out of her corner fighting just long enough to return one broken nose before retiring to her dressing room for a quick kiss and a cuddle with husband number two?
Would
number one still be standing in all his Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffalo
finery with his chest puffed out like a pigeon and looking like an escapee from
the nearest pantomime? Or are wife-beaters barred from heaven and sent to spend
eternity being beaten with brooms by buxom, apron-clad women who sport rollers
and scream torrents of abuse at the poor defenceless bastards?
She
married again, my gran – and for a few years before he died, knew love and
peace at its best. The second husband moved into granddad’s house, into his
chair by the fire, and may have even smoked his pipe, but he didn’t take his
bed. The two single beds that had lay against opposite walls in my
grandparent’s bedroom were replaced by one big, cosy double.