45 Years Page #2

She's a dreadful woman.

- Just ignore her.

- Mm.

Is it all right?

Oh, it's great. Great.

Yeah. Mm.

A drop more?

Mm, thank you.

- What?

- Nothing.

- There's something I want to tell you.

- OK.

You know, I-I feel sure

I've told you before,

but it was a long time ago,

so, I mean, I could be wrong.

- OK, go on.

- Yeah.

Um, I-I was her next of kin.

What do you mean?

Well, officially.

I-I was her next of kin.

I'm sure I told you this before, Kate.

I think I would remember my husband

being another woman's next of kin.

- Why?

- Why what?

Well, why were you her next of kin?

Because they thought we were married.

- Who did?

- The authorities. People.

What made them think that?

We-We told them we were.

You weren't, though?

Oh, no, no, no. No, h-hell, no.

We just had to pretend, so people

would let us stay in their houses.

Different in those days, Kate,

and then after the accident...

You're not lying to me?

No. Kate, she wore a ring on her finger.

It was a small wooden ring,

like a curtain ring, made of oak.

Funny you'd remember that.

Well, it wasn't real.

OK, you could've...

you could've just told me, Geoff.

I thought I had.

If I hadn't, well, it's hardly, er...

the sort of thing you tell

your beautiful new girlfriend, is it?

I suppose not.

I think I'm going to have a...

go upstairs and have a bath.

I've got lots to do tomorrow.

- Are you sure you're all right?

- Yes. Yes.

Yeah, really, I am.

I can hardly be cross with something

that happened before we existed, can I?

Not really.

Still...

I suppose a cuddle's out of the question.

It doesn't even feel like it was me

that was there.

Do you know what I mean?

How long had you been up there?

Oh, six or seven weeks, I suppose.

It seemed a lot longer.

We had a map, er, to start with.

It was so bloody unreliable.

I've still got it somewhere.

Yeah, we were getting higher

into the mountains

and I decided it would be best

if we found someone,

y-you know, to help us

get to the Italian border.

- A guide?

- Yeah, wasn't really a guide.

This swarthy little bastard

who thought he was Jack Kerouac.

- You always did hate Kerouac.

- Yes, I did.

Maybe you were jealous.

- What, of Jack Kerouac?

- Of the guide.

Was he flirting with her?

Well, they did have, er... the language.

My German, it wasn't that great,

what with its accent.

They laughed a lot.

He was forever making these jokes

I didn't get.

- Oh, God, you wouldn't like that.

- No, I didn't.

They were walking up ahead,

more than they needed to perhaps,

or... maybe I just let them, I don't know.

We were on a track round this rock,

and the glacier was on the right,

below us.

Way down.

Beautiful thing, it was.

You'd love the landscape out there, Kate.

- You really would.

- Yeah, I'm sure.

They were out of sight, round the corner,

and the last sound but one

that I heard was her laughter.

And, Christ, did it annoy me.

But then, there was a scream.

It wasn't a loud scream, neither.

Sort of outpouring of air from her lungs,

from the shock, I suppose.

It was low and guttural,

not like her voice,

which was soft, higher-pitched.

God, that's just horrible.

Mm. Mm.

And then what?

That was it, really.

When I got there, she'd gone.

And Kerouac was looking down this hole.

A fissure.

Yeah, a fissure, I suppose you'd call it,

like a narrow, narrow crack in the rock.

D-Do you remember that one in Scotland?

- Yeah, I do.

- Yeah. Well, it was like that one.

- Yeah.

- Only much deeper.

And Kerouac was just standing there.

His face, oddly enough,

it looked almost yellow.

Was she blonde?

- Sorry?

- Did she have blonde hair?

Oh, no, no. She had dark hair.

- Like mine, then.

- Mm.

I mean, not now.

Yeah, like yours.

How old was she?

She was two years older than me,

and that was '62.

Yeah, so she was about 27.

Yeah.

My mum died that year.

- Did she?

- Yeah. Mm.

- I don't know why that's funny but it is.

- Funny?

Well, we didn't know each other then,

you and I,

but we were both going through something

really unpleasant, and...

and yet we never talked about it in all

the years that we've known each other.

- Never.

- No. Never have.

I'm tired.

Shall I turn off the light?

Yeah.

I'm quite tired, too.

Come on.

Max!

Max!

Yeah, boy! Come on!

Come on! Good boy.

I Only Want To Be With You

You're up early this morning.

Yeah, I thought I might come into town

with you, if you don't mind.

No, of course I don't mind.

Yeah, I-I want to go to Thorns,

get a new ballcock.

Oh, good.

Do you think my library card

will still be valid, Kate?

- I don't see why not.

- I might pop in there if there's time.

Have a bit of a browse.

- We could have some lunch.

- Yeah, great.

Well, er, I'll just go do

what I have to do.

Give us a shout when you're ready.

OK.

About an hour. I've got to call

the florist and one or two things.

Do you think the library

will have anything on climate change?

- On what?

- Climate change.

- Sorry I'm late.

- All right.

- Did you get the thing?

- What thing?

- The ballcock.

- Er, they have to order it.

I'll pick it up in a few days.

What do you want to eat?

We've got to think a lot more

about the environment.

- Well, we recycle.

- Do we?

- Yeah. Well, I try to, anyway.

- Well, we should.

You're welcome to clean out the dog cans

and put them in the right bins.

Because these glaciers, they're melting

a lot more than people imagined,

- and the water's just not coming down.

- It's got to go somewhere.

No, it's saturating into the rock beneath,

and it's building up and up and up.

- L-Like...

- Like a dam.

Like a dam, yeah. It's waiting,

waiting, waiting, and then...

Oh.

Careful. No warning.

Come down like a tsunami,

wipe out everything in its path.

Schools, churches, people in cafes

drinking their coffee,

old men in shops

tinkering with their cuckoo clocks.

And if they hadn't found her,

that's when she'd have come down,

with all the rock and debris.

We'll be long dead by then.

Oh.

Put your book away.

Oh, yeah.

- You screening my calls, Kate?

- Not really.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- Sally!

- Hi, Geoff.

That's my favourite one, there.

OK, Mum. I think it's enough now.

It's getting really boring.

- I'm proud of my grandson.

- Sally, I want to have a look at Charley.

These are so lovely.

And the photos are really beautiful.

- Aren't they?

- Sally's going to be a photographer.

I'm not. I'm just taking an evening

course, just for the fun of it.

It's nothing grand.

- But it might lead to something.

- Or it might not.

We shall see, won't we?

But you should concentrate on it.

I took it up about three months ago.

It's a good instrument to learn.

You can play anything on the ukulele.

It's not just George Formby, which is good

because, as you know, I always hated him.

The Internet is absolutely brilliant.

If you go to a guy

called justinguitars.com,

he actually teaches guitar,

but it's all free.

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