Upperkirkgate Chapter 5: Vouch Him No More of His Purchases, Part 4

He tried to walk to the counter in a co-ordinated way, the buzz of surrounding conversation coming and going. He concentrated on getting there, a drowning man keeping afloat, hanging onto a piece of timber. “One latte, please,” he said to the woman, hanging onto the counter for support. He looked up towards the history section. There was a book with a picture of George Stephenson’s Rocket.

     The coffee machine filled with a whoosh, like a train departing. Jack thought he saw Claire through the dissipating cloud, and clutched at his trouser pocket. The black box was not there: he had left it in his jacket. The image of Claire was an illusion. He reached out for the coffee, making his way back to the table. Furtively, he checked in his jacket pocket for the box. It was still there, still recording. He sighed with relief. “Are you bargain hunting?” he asked her, relaxing.

     She smiled. “Not particularly.” Jack licked his lips, glanced at the reduced price on Waiting for Godot.

     “When Romeo and Juliet get married, that is such a short window of happiness,” he said, saying the first thing that might sound intelligent, academic, around her. He wanted to go, yet Claire might come here. He might run into her anywhere.

     “Yes. Isn’t it,” said Alison slowly. “The coincidental death of Mercutio, then Tybalt, then the exile, so little time to join his new wife… ‘believe me love, it was the nightingale.’ No wonder they wanted to spin things out.”

     “And he was fortune’s fool… they both were. No matter what they did, it was fated. The priest couldn’t get there in time, Romeo didn’t know Juliet wasn’t dead… ‘Why art thou still so fair?’”

     “I like that Juliet stayed with him, though. She’d have been wasted as a nun.”

     “She didn’t have to die.”

     “It brings a certain unity to the story… they wouldn’t have been star-crossed lovers if she’d taken up with Benvolio after Romeo’s death.” Jack’s hands were shaking. He tried to look calm, look straight ahead though not at Alison, and drink his coffee. “Halfway through the play, they were just so happy, overcoming that silly feud….”

     “It didn’t last.”

     “Well, it did… they were married when they died. It overcame the feud, the parents buried the hatchet, promised to honour them both.”

     “’A glooming peace this morrow brings’.”

     “It doesn’t have to be like that, there are good and lasting marriages. It doesn’t have to be about pain and dominance and loss of identity.”

     “Are you saying the basis of my dissertation is no good now?” said Alison.

     “Maybe.”

     “Mary Wollstonecraft argued against marriage in The Rights of Women.”

     “So did William Godwin, and he married her anyway.”

     “Mary’s child was the death of her, something the young Mary never forgot.”

     “She wrote Frankenstein. The first edition came out in 1818, before she lost Percy Bysshe Shelley… she said in the 1831 edition, she was a stranger to loss and pain when she first wrote it, portraying what the rejected monster felt, and what he did.”

     “Would you have befriended him?”

     “I’d like to think so- strange he happened to have a copy of Paradise Lost in his coat pocket when he left Frankenstein’s lab, taught himself to read, then meets a blind man, so he can quote lines from a blind poet to him.”

     “The fall of man, in more sense than one.”

     “Milton was a republican, he hoped for great things from the Commonwealth. However you look at it, Cromwell was bad news for Scotland, but I’m still a republican.”

     “On that we agree.”

     “There’s so much loneliness in Frankenstein… the scientist’s pretension creates such pain: for the monster, his family and others. The monster threatens to be with his creator on his wedding night.”

     “That’s horrible.”

     “Isn’t it. But the monster still wants his creator who rejected him… in the end, he’s annoyed that the cold kills him first.” Jack had relaxed, feeling inside his pocket less often. Now he checked it again, against his better judgement. The black box seemed lighter. He frowned.

     “Is there something wrong?”

     “I might have lost something important, I don’t know.”

     “I think I do.” Alison had been keeping her left hand concealed, drinking with her right hand. He looked away. This could not be happening. She smiled, holding up her left hand. “What did this lovely thing cost you?” On the third finger of her left hand was the engagement ring he had bought for Claire.