The bumble bee, a young drone, dipped towards the pond, took on ballast and made its way over to the clump of dandelions by the fence. The other drone, Alice’s husband Frank, watched lazily and aimed a desultory flick at a hoverfly positioned just above his head, and buzzing as it appeared to give the person in the lounger a multifaceted once-over.

Middle aged, over weight (not obese, he would argue when challenged), and thinning on top, Frank was in the process of decommissioning his youth and taking on an identity loosely recognisable as early-onset decrepit geezer. Redundancy had stolen most of his ambition and Type 2 diabetes his energy. Alcohol pretty much accounted for everything else and, despite Alice’s best efforts, entropic forces were truly engaged in the battle for Frank’s later years. If he was lucky, he’d make 60; if he wasn’t, it would be 65, he joked, while concerned friends and family made vain attempts to revive his motivation, by poking at his conscience.

‘No pension claims!’, he’d fling back at them. ‘No drain on the state!’, and ‘I regard it as a civic duty!’

Collective sighs of exasperation could be heard, and someone would note the time in feigned surprise, as if they hadn’t been watching the clock for the last hour, desperate to leave.

‘See you at the gym?’

‘In your dreams!’

Then, as people shuffled off uneasily, Frank would eye the bottle on the occasional table by his chair, push it away, reconsider, and reel it in with an extended digit. Plenty of time before supper, and down would go another couple of measures.

Alice peered out of the window on the upstairs landing and regarded her husband with detached contempt. ‘Lazy, idle, unreconstructed encumbrance,’ she remarked to the air. ‘Useless git!’ she added with satisfaction. Her mobile rumbled something in her pocket – a text – Dorrie wanting some company at the fitness centre. Alice glanced down at what used to be her toned abdomen, and which now resembled a moderate sized bum-bag. She should go, work up a sweat, hone the muscles that used to underpin the tanned, taut torso that had been her youthful body.

‘Bugger it!’ A biscuit tin had slunk into view, as her eye wandered over to the tiny alcove that passed for their domestic office. She headed for the computer and cranked it up. Waited for it to finish counting its toes, and cough up the couple of bits of office software its previous owner had blessed it with. Meanwhile, a chocolate chip brownie had made its way into her hand, and was offering little resistance as she bit absently into it.

‘It’s prehistoric!’ she had protested, when Frank had returned with his prize. ‘Looks like a bloody Tonka toy. I bet it plays ‘Bob the Builder’ when it boots up.’

‘We’re broke. Beggars can’t be, and all that.’

‘You’re broke,’ she’d volleyed back at him. ‘I’m still in a job and supporting you!’

‘Buy your own then.’

She couldn’t, of course, and so ‘Morticia’ had been enthroned in the alcove office, and still sat there four years on, a geek’s nightmare of white plastic with jade trim. Still, it served the purpose for email, the odd letter and the kids’ inevitable social networking, the product of which would follow them down the years, and cause more embarrassment than any number of family albums.

‘You can not use that word as part of your email address!’

‘They accepted it alright.’

‘Well you don’t send it out then.’

‘It’s on my web site.’

‘You’ve got a web site?’

Alice wished she hadn’t asked. Somehow, when she hadn’t been looking, her little boy; all dark hair and long lashes, and a slightly iffy tooth arrangement top left, had turned into a heavy-metal/punk/goth zombie. Albeit one with 10 GCSEs. She hadn’t dared look at his sister’s site right then, but sneaked a glance a week or so later, when Jen had nipped out to make a coffee. It was pink with stars, princess regalia, and photos of Jen with a bunch of mates on a sleep-over. Alice didn’t want to think about what they were wearing, and just hoped they hadn’t been web-camming at the time.

It wasn’t long, though, before she’d been drawn into the whole social networking thing herself, and signed up to three different messaging sites. When both children had finally left home to start university, she had been on line more than off, as Jen and Lawrence preferred to keep in touch that way, and she could see when they were logged in. That little icon, with a tiny image on it, brought surprising comfort, and she felt close to them, just seeing it sitting there in the system tray.

Today she was in a grump over the endless tedium of it all. Frank draped over his lounger outside, apparently without the wit to find himself some sort of work. Jen and Lawrence away, ‘getting degrees in bugger all’, according to their dad. Most of her friends struggling with second marriages, empty nests, or nests not quite empty enough, as older children came home jobless from college. The concomitants of middle age; still young enough to get legless, but not to look halfway decent the next day, with a hangover the size of Wales. It was all rather bleak and unappealing.

So who was online, Alice wondered, watching the list fill up on the message dialogue box. Nobody. There was something from RamJam69 though, with another plug for Northern Soul and a link to a gig in town later that month. Alice speculated briefly on the matter of tickets, and her chances of getting Frank fully dressed, pointing forwards, and sufficiently sober to get through an evening without threatening to deck someone.  It didn’t seem likely, and she retreated into thoughts of early evening telly, but gave up on that too. Frank couldn’t, these days, manage even TV without making threats of violence towards newsreaders, soap actors, reality programme contestants and, most vehemently of all, politicians. The greater his alcohol intake, the louder and less coherent the rants.

Time was, getting drunk had been a social pastime, to be reported on with post-inebriate humour at subsequent get-togethers. Alice remembered how she had sold her Duran Duran tickets to go to a Flock of Seagulls gig instead, and getting so plastered she swore she’d seen Duran Duran after all.  She had kept this up until photographic evidence, retrieved from a neglected Instamatic, had been presented with a righteous flourish. Even then, she claimed that Flock of Seagulls had looked so much like Duran Duran around that time, that anyone could have made the same mistake.

Come to think of it, alcohol had featured quite richly in those early days, and had been largely responsible for her current position. Always the party animal, she had, with little effort on her friend’s part, been talked into a pub ‘lock down’ – a private party in a local bar that fancied itself the centre of yuppie culture. There she had met Frank, loitering in a corner with an asymmetric haircut and acne. After a few minutes of unsubtle eye-flirting, they had danced, consumed several pints of London Pride, and finally slalomed off up the road towards Alice’s flat, propping each other up and snorting with gusto at nothing at all on the way. Sex had definitely been on the cards, but it struggled to achieve any other manifestation, as they had fallen about with hysterics trying to get out of clothing done up with the armoury of bows, belts, buttons, zips and decorative regalia, that passed for high street couture.

The next morning, as the sun shone brightly and inconsiderately through Alice’s sixth floor panoramic window, they had prised open an eyelid each, and surveyed the damage – a ripped waistband (hers), a shirt with an unidentifiable stain (his), and a knitted unisex tie neither of them recognised.

‘Who did you say you were again?’ Frank had inquired, somewhat tactlessly.

‘I don’t know that I did. We were on our 5^th pint before we actually spoke.’

‘I’m Frank. I think,’ Frank offered, rubbing his face with the back of his hand, and squinting over his knuckles at Alice.

‘I’m Alice. How the hell did we get home?’ A pause, then ‘Where’s my car?’, and ‘Did we …?’ The last question hung. Alice didn’t think so, but then she didn’t think she would have invited a stray home either, and there was plainly one in evidence right now.

‘Doubt it, London Pride’s the best contraceptive known to Man. Ought to be on the NSH.’ Frank struggled with his mouth, ‘NHS.’

‘You doubt it? Don’t you know?’ she had squeaked, through the gathering thundercloud of a migraine.

‘Well don’t you? I thought women had an instinct for that sort of thing.’ Alice squinted back at him, observing from some detached internal vantage point, while Frank’s expression shifted from blank incomprehension to fledgling panic. His brain, it seemed, was running an emergency programme designed to alert him to Woman Trouble and generate a plausible defence. It didn’t appear to be doing very well.

Truth was, neither of them had retained the wit to monitor their own behaviour and, in this quasi-coma that was the consequence of last night’s indulgence, they were strangers thrown together by the dreadful possibility of having set in place another link in Darwin’s glorious chain of life.

As it turned out, alcoholic impotence had spared them from precipitous decision-making, and they had gradually discovered a shared liking for music, food and gregarious encounters with their accumulated social crowd. Much of it comprising graduates of the Frog and Rascal where they had first met. Alice had met Dorrie there too, but recognition had taken a back seat to the tortuous consideration of her encounter with Frank when Dorrie pitched up later that day to see what was what. In the absence of a proprietary social nicety from Alice, Dorrie had plunged in with ‘Is he any good then?’ and ‘Absolutely everybody at work has been trying to pull Frank – how the hell did you manage it?’

Alice was in no condition to determine whether the last was flattery or insult, but had neither the will nor the wit to follow up. So Dorrie had launched into a biography of the asymmetric, dermatologically challenged Frank who, it seemed, had the girls of Ayckborough’s social work team drooling to the point of collective dehydration.

By the time she was done, Alice, who had gained the impression that gratitude rather than horror was the required reaction to her situation, was responding to the analgesia Dorrie had administered. Sitting on the floor, head on the sofa behind her, and feeling numb, nauseous and lobotomised, gratitude was a long way from her considerations. But, lacking the energy to dredge up any alternatives, she sat in slack-jawed silence. Frozen in time between the inebriate hootings of the night before, and the cold, calculating cost accounting that would ensue once normality returned.

Well, normality had soon returned, and with it the business of checking calendars, dates and pill packets for an indication of the appropriate degree of panic to be expressed. She had taken the pill; she hadn’t thrown up. So far so good. And it was early in her cycle. DEFCON 2 then she decided, unconcerned about treatable STDs, and completely ignorant of the wave of death about to descend as AIDs broke its Gay banks, and seeped inexorably into populations that had thought themselves exempt.

Luckily for them, neither HIV nor pregnancy interrupted what became for Frank and Alice, a kind of communal courtship. One that pottered along in comfortable multiplicity, through a string of pub nights, wine bar nights, rock concerts  and dinner parties. The Ayckborough Dining Club, as they titled it, reflected the inevitable process of maturation. Helped along by a precipitous ousting from the Frog and Rascal, as it aimed for a new clientele by heaving itself into the 1990s, and targeting young executives straight out of the nearby station. Now with the name Stock and Share emblazoned over its portals, the bar no longer favoured its older, less sharp suited patrons. It focused instead, on aspirational types with mobile phones, and a need to feel umbilically connected to their office at all times. The ‘Stock’ in question was their in-house wine club, and ‘Share’ was a smug reference to the availability of crates that customers could make up themselves, in the conceit that they knew what they were doing.

Frank had finally lost his rag in spectacular fashion, the night a ‘twelve year old waiter with bum fluff on his chin’ had suggested he reconsider his choice of wine, as it ‘would not complement the duck, Sir’. Frank advised that, had he wanted to compliment a duck, he would not have shot it, and stuffed walnuts up its arse. This had not been well received and, after some further exchanges involving the chef, the manager, and very nearly the police, the party had decamped to the chippy nearby, never to return.

With Stock and Share off the list, the small group, gradually downsizing though the natural wastage of marriage, children and jobs elsewhere, settled into an easy routine that delivered all they needed, challenged nothing, and rendered ambition redundant. Even Frank and Alice’s wedding had been a composite affair. Succumbing again to alcohol along with Frog and Rascalites, Michaela and Chas, they had failed the crucial test of critical judgment, and taken the plunge while on holiday in Vegas.

‘With this Cheerio, I thee wed!’ Frank had tittered, teasing Michaela about her constant dieting, and watching Chas out of the corner of his eye, trying to work up enthusiasm for the knuckle duster Michaela’s inebriated fancy had lit upon. The staff had clearly seen it all before, and offered to discount their ‘full package’ as they ‘just loved your wonderful country’, so that, within the hour, all four had been done up like dogs’ dinners, installed in a stretch limo with cheesy piped music, and deposited in front of a gilded reverend of questionable denomination.

Back home, the reality that had dawned afterwards in their Vegas hotel room, took vengeance in the form of distraught and infuriated relatives, seeking explanations as to how they had suddenly acquired in-laws without so much as a sniff of champagne. Anger turned gradually, though, to the anticipation of progeny, and Alice had obliged, producing Lawrence and Jenna in quick succession. But as she had become more involved with them, and begun to see alcohol as an adjunct to social events rather than a core necessity, Frank had drifted into his own world, sidelining himself through whisky. Eventually, he was also cast adrift at work due to erratic, unreliable, and occasionally offensive behaviour. When the round of redundancies came up, Frank had been sober enough to see the writing on the wall, and had somehow retained enough of his moral fibre to do the decent thing.

Alice reflected often on the rise and fall of their relationship. Had it all been too easy? Was it the booze? Had they ever actually fallen in love, or did they just fall in line, going along with the default position, and never looking outside their group? She heaved up a deep sigh, glanced again at the computer, now busily and tediously engaged in a lengthy download, and crossed back to the window. Frank was still there, snoring at the sky and twitching, bottle close to hand. How much of Frank’s decline had been her fault? Neglected due to the children? Unconsidered while she had focused on her own career to compensate for the loss of his? Dismissed as impotent baggage on the long-haul journey of life?

She resolved to make more effort, pay him some attention, maybe go to appointments with him – or at least try to get him to a few. She would start today with a proper meal, candles, a bit of romance maybe, instead of the inevitable pasta on a tray in front of the TV. Alice clattered down the stairs to set about her task, warming to the idea, and visualising Frank as he once was; smart, witty, snazzily dressed. Yes, he’d been a catch alright. Quite a turn-on in fact. She smiled as she chopped, crushed, stirred and simmered. Then she cleared the table of books and domestic debris, wiped it down, and placed on it some tea lights left over from Halloween. Warm the plates, retrieve a couple of serviettes from behind the largely redundant baking equipment, slip into something a little less comfortable maybe …

Smoothing down her dress, the one she had worn to Dorrie’s anniversary party, and upon which Frank had conferred one of his rare compliments, she rehearsed a little shimmy to the mirror, then went to call in her errant husband.

‘Dinner’s ready, you might want to spruce up a bit, love.’ No answer, unless you count a spasm of nasal grunts. ‘Frank, dinner. Thought we’d have an Ayckborough Dining Club special.’ Frank grunted again, coughed throatily, and heaved himself out of the lounger, stumbling unsteadily indoors, and pushing past Alice on the way.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she muttered. Then, trying to hold onto the illusion she had created – in her own mind at least – featuring Frank the Catch and Frank the Lover, rather than Frank the Obnoxious Drunk, she called out to him, ‘I’ll dish up, shall I, while you change?’

‘Dish up, dish down, dish any way you like darlin’, I’m going to bed.’ Frank headed off towards the stairs, adding with more misanthropy than affection, ‘You look like an old tart in that frock, just in case you were going out on the pull.’  He lurched up onto the first step, missed the second, and staggered back, smacking his head on the balustrade. Still sniggering at his own joke, Frank reeled sideways, eyed the door of the spare room by the kitchen-diner, and took a bead on the handle.

‘Frank, be careful! Your nose is bleeding!’ Alice called to him, as he shuffled across the hall and collided with the door frame on his way into the room.

‘Piss off you miserable old bat. ’

Frank was bleeding onto the carpet, wiping his nose, and inspecting the result with drunken incomprehension. He staggered forwards a little; Alice jumped towards him to help, almost catching his arm as it flailed around for purchase. With extraordinary coordination, born out of luck and proximity, Frank kicked back at the door as he fell forwards onto the spare bed. It slammed inches from Alice’s face and trapped the hem of her dress, which ripped as she stepped sharply backwards.

‘Do what you like then! Stay there, and drink yourself stupid! In fact why don’t you just die there, you ignorant waste of space, I’ll get a dog!’

Face down on his bed, Frank, for once in his life, did as he was told.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

First published by Ether Books, 2013.

Image by DALL-E