Beside The Seaside

Dave sat back and assessed his wife as she mopped up the last of her bean juice with a square of fried bread, lifted a bumcheek and farted with an accompanying curl of her lip. She began constructing a roll up and he watched her stained fingers work. 

She'd tried to throw that wedding ring at him a couple of weeks back.

"You'd need an angle grinder to get that off, you fat cunt," he'd said. So she threw her plate at him instead and he just sat there, shocked, with chops and gravy dripping off him and he knew right then that whatever it was they'd had was now gone for good and there was no point in looking for it so this had been another mistake. One of many.

They came to the seaside every year on their anniversary. Same old B&B. Ate in the same cafe where they'd eaten the morning after they'd met. Same dour owner. Same badly tuned wireless on the back shelf coughing up old love songs.
There had been a time when they would share a bath and she'd take the tap end and he'd think, 'that's love.' Now if they'd tried to share a bath the water would have gotten out. They'd grown old and fat together through a life sentence of blazing rows and stubborn silences that sometimes lasted weeks.

"What you looking at?" she said through a plume of smoke.
"Nowt," he said.

Instead, he looked out the window at the horizontal rain. A newspaper ran down the promenade. He took out his wallet and placed a tenner on the table.

"What's the rush?" she said, "I've not finished me fag."
"I'm going for a paper."
"Ooh get me twenty benson duck, these fuckers are giving me cancer."

He crossed the deserted road and was soaked through before he reached the other side. He entered the North Pier and walked through the all but empty amusement arcade, heard some laughter, a couple on one of them grabber machines; he was manning the claw trying to win her a teddy, she had her arms wrapped round his waist.

Dave pushed through a fire door and went out onto the pier, leant on the railing and for a long time he watched the churning grey of the Irish sea. The violent wind blew waves in all directions between the piers old legs beneath him. 

He took a breath, gripped the bar, and with great effort, threw his right leg up onto the handrail. He felt his jeans tighten around his crotch and watched his trainer spinning silently into the churning sea below like a dying seagull. He tried to heft his weight up and over but his vast gut stopped him, the cold metal of the bars pressed into his belly through his saturated shirt. He reached over and grabbed a bar from the other side and tried to pull himself over. He grunted and gasped, felt his arse slip out the top of his jeans and gave up. He flopped onto the old wooden boards and he cried, tears lost amongst the cold rain.

After a long time just sat there the tears stopped. He pulled himself up and limped back through the arcade. In his wake, his sopping wet sock left a soggy puddle on the burgundy carpet marking each step. The laughing couple were gone and he wondered whether he'd won her the teddy or whether it had taken all his money and they'd left disappointed but still holding hands.

She was halfway through another roll up when he threw the twenty Benson on the table in front of her, sat down, and tried not to look at her looking at him. He took the soggy rolled up Sun from his coat pocket and slapped it down on the empty chair next to him.

She blew out a plume of smoke.

"Where the fucks your shoe?" she said.

He took his tenner back off the table and swapped it for one without writing on it.