Those were the days
Edith Strallan looked up from her paper and smiled as she watched her son manhandle a large packing box into the kitchen. He stooped a little as he went through the doorway - a habit picked up from his father, whom he more than matched in height. Puffing a bit, he staggered over to the table where Edith sat and dropped the box on it, making her tea cup shake.
"Phillip!" she scolded, steadying the cup. "Do be more careful."
Phillip ran his hand through his hair and grinned at her with his father's little crooked smile. Edith couldn't help but smile back.
"What've you got in here, Mum?" he asked. "It weighs a bloody ton!"
"Language," she said with a raised, disapproving eyebrow. The look that had always been effective at quelling him as a boy was still powerful. He ducked his head, and pretended to be remorseful.
"Seriously, though," he continued. "Everything else is labeled in the attic. Why did you ask me to get the one thing that isn't?"
"Because your father wants it," she said with a sigh. "And I don't want him trying to carry it down from the attic." Her eyes went to the door that separated their downstairs bedroom from the living room. It used to be the study, but Anthony found the stairs to be too much of a daily challenge, so they had moved their bedroom to the first floor. Edith found herself content with the change; it was something of a relief for her to not have to trek up and down the stairs multiple times a day as well.
"I'm sure you don't," Phillip said, following her eyes. "But why does he want this manky old box. It's barely hanging together." He gave the box a critical poke. "What's in it?"
"Memories, Phillip. Memories that are older than you or your sister."
"Our boxes are clearly labeled," Phillip commented. "I found one with my name on it that has every single choir ribbon I ever won."
Edith laughed and patted his knee. "So that's what took you so long to get back down. You were browsing through your own memories."
Phillip smiled sheepishly. "Well, maybe a bit. You and Dad never threw away anything."
"That's not true," Edith argued. "We just kept what we thought would be important."
"Well, what's so important about this?"
"I"m not sure," Edith replied evasively. "Your Dad just wants to go through things, I think. Make sure every things in order. We don't want you and Jenny to have to be bothered with all that."
Phillip frowned and looked towards his parent's bedroom door. "How… is he really doing alright? You said he was fine after that fall, but… is he?"
"Darling, he's as fine as he can be. We're just getting older, that's all. It had to happen."
"It just seems to have happened rather fast, Mum. He only retired five years ago."
"And only because they made him, or he'd still be trying to cram an appreciation for Dickens into the reluctant heads of undergraduates," she said with a bit of an edge in her voice. "He's doing well, Phillip. And he doesn't like being fussed over."
"I know… I know…"
"And if you had been able to join us last month for Parker's birthday party, you'd have seen how very vigorous he can still be."
"I said I was sorry for that, Mum. Jenny still hasn't let it go…"
"You nephew only turns five once, you know."
"I got him a smashing gift to make up for it!" Phillip protested.
"And your Dad and Parker had a marvelous time chasing each other through the house with those foam darts flying everywhere for two hours. So please don't worry so about your father." Edith's eyes flickered a little guiltily as she remembered that it took Anthony a good three days to recover from his exertions at their grandson's party.
Phillip lifted his hands in surrender and grinned at the snap in his mother's eyes and voice. He bent over the box to lift it carefully from the table.
"I've got to get back to Ripon by six, Mum. Where do you want me to put this?"
"Certainly not on the table," she said, wincing at the rim of dust that had been left behind. Her eyes flew around the tidy living room and landed reluctantly on the door to their bedroom.
"You might as well go ahead and put it in our bedroom," she said with a resigned sigh. "I'm sure that's where it will wind up."
Phillip just nodded, his eyes twinkling at the reluctance on his mother's face. Carefully supporting the heavy box, he marched over to their bedroom, allowing Edith to go ahead of him and carefully open the door. She peeked in at Anthony napping peacefully on his back, then looked quickly around for a good spot.
"Over by my wardrobe, please, Phillip," she whispered. "Just put it on the floor."
Phillip obliged, then watched his mother sit carefully on the side of the bed and gently brush the flop of grey hair off his father's forehead. He dusted his hands on his trousers and felt like an intruder on a private moment.
"Alright," he whispered. "I'll be off now." He walked over to kiss his mother's temple.
"Thank you, Phillip," she whispered, squeezing his hand.
"Bye, Dad," he whispered as he turned to go.
"Bye, Son," Anthony rumbled, as a smile spread across his face, deepening the laugh lines in his cheeks.
Phillip turned back to see his father wink at him and grinned at the disgruntled look on his mother's face. As he left, he could hear her scolding him playfully.
"You're meant to be resting! How long have you been laying awake in here?"
"Long enough to hear Phillip mother henning about me," he grumbled, before gripping her wrist and yanking her down to his side on the bed. "And long enough to hear you conspiring to keep me out of the attic." At her annoyed huff, he pulled her closer and kissed her behind her ear.
"Stop that," she scolded. "I'm not happy with you."
"That's what I'm trying to rectify, my dear," he said, as his lips traveled down her neck to rest on her collarbone. Edith breathed in sharply as his tongue gently explored her skin. She squirmed away from him and smiled down at his disappointed face.
"What's gotten into you?" she asked, running her hand down his chest and playing with the buttons on his shirt. He smiled and leaned up to kiss her forehead, grunting a little with the effort. She pushed him back down and laid next to him, her head nestled on his shoulder.
"You just look particularly lovely when you're annoyed at me."
"Which explains why you annoy me so often, then?"
Anthony stroked her back. "I don't annoy you all that much, do I?" He could feel her smile on his neck.
"I'm never as annoyed as I pretend to be."
Anthony made a satisfied noise and Edith gave his chest a light slap.
"But I am a bit annoyed about that box," she added. "If Phillip hadn't been by today, you'd have snuck up to the attics to get it as soon as my back was turned. What's so important that you needed it down here now?"
Anthony didn't answer right away, and Edith raised up on her elbow to look at his face. He was frowning thoughtfully. She stroked his cheek until he looked at her and smiled again.
"What is it, Anthony?"
"Oh, it's nothing really. There's just times when I get a little mixed up about when things happened." He looked into her deep brown eyes and was unable to continue for a moment as he fell into the love and sympathy shining from them.
"I can remember things so sharply after the children came along," Edith commented after a moment. "And there are some moments before then that I'll probably never forget…"
"Probably times I annoyed you," Anthony teased. Edith leaned down and nipped his lips lightly, making him grin and pull her closer to him.
"Sush, you," she scolded. "As I was saying… things do seem to blur a bit as time goes on. Perhaps a little trip down memory lane might be rather fun."
"Let's get started, then," he said enthusiastically, struggling to lever himself up. Edith hooked a hand under his arm to give him some leverage, and he sat up at the edge of the bed.
"Are you sure you want to start now?" she asked, admiring his rumpled hair and smiling at the excitement in his eyes.
"Why not? Have you any other plans? Hot date, perhaps?"
"Oh yes," she said with an expressive roll of her eyes, "I almost forgot about that rendezvous I had planned with the new Bursar who doesn't look old enough to shave yet."
"Ask him if his mother knows that he's out when you discuss your retirement investments," Anthony advised with a twinkle in his eye.
"They all look so bloody young these days," she observed as she made her way to the box. "I'm sure we didn't look like we were fresh off our A-levels when we started in professional academia."
"Hmmm. Well, I certainly didn't when you met me. But you looked like you could have just stepped out of your gap year."
"You're such a sweet liar," she said over her shoulder as she dug through the top layer of papers and photos in the box. "Good Lord!"
"What?" Anthony asked, getting up with a little wobble. Edith waved impatiently at him to sit back down, which he ignored.
"This," she said, holding up a manuscript, held together with binder clips. "This is a print out of my thesis." She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "You never did explain to me how you got a copy of this."
"I have sources, my dear," he replied mysteriously, sitting in the armchair next to her as she sat on the floor next to the box. "What else do we have in here?"
Edith handed him a photo album and continued to dig through the box. She looked up as Anthony began to chuckle at one of the pages.
"What? What's so funny?"
He just grinned broadly and handed her the album. "I can only describe them as Wedding Photo Out Takes."
Edith burst out laughing as she saw all the photos that had been rejected from their wedding, including the one where her nephew George had thrown up spectacularly on his mother's dress after one too many pieces of cake. They smiled at each other over the album.
"I can't believe I forgot we had these," Edith marveled. "They're so much more fun than the wedding album sitting out on the bookshelf in the living room."
"Oh, the official ones are rather nice." He looked over her shoulder as she snorted and pointed out a photo of her father looking very put out. "I thought your father was never going to forgive us for using the Register's office instead of the big church do he expected. He was only somewhat mollified by the reception you let your mother plan."
"I only went though with that reception because I knew I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't. And I never heard the end of it anyway. Papa went to his grave muttering about how we weren't really married with just a piece of paper signed by a public servant."
"What else did you find?" Anthony asked, kissing her shoulder and rubbing his hand down her arm, quite confident that they were really married.
"Oh… just some odds and ends. Why did you keep these rather nasty notes I wrote you when we were sharing that office?"
"Well, you weren't talking to me at the time, and it was the only way I felt in touch with you. So I'd re-read them and pretend you were there, yelling at me."
"You didn't!" Edith said, turning to him with an expression somewhere between amused and irritated.
"I did," he replied. "And I got quite the kick out of your use of 'idiot' as a comma."
Edith glared at him a moment, then they both began to laugh. Shaking her head, she kept digging through the box. As she fished out a loose photo from the bottom, her breath caught.
"When did you take this?" she asked, holding it out. It was a picture of Edith sitting on the ground surrounded by dappled sunlight. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were shut. Anthony took it from her silently and gazed at it.
"That was the day you dragged me out of the office to sit under the trees in that clearing behind the library. I, er… figured out how to work the camera on my Smartphone while trying to look up something on the internet to prove you wrong."
"And did you?"
"Prove you wrong? I doubt it. That was a comparatively rare occurrence." He smiled at her and ran his hand over her copper waves, streaked with silver. "But that didn't matter once I discovered that I had taken that picture of you. It took me weeks to figure out how to get a print of it."
As Edith looked up at him, he answered the unspoken invitation in her eyes and leaned down to kiss her. She got up on her knees to deepen the kiss and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"I'd have showed you how to print it out," she murmured into his ear.
"After you had lectured me on taking pictures of you without your knowledge or permission, yes, you might have done," he replied, kissing her cheek. She leaned back to look at him.
"You're probably right," she said with a smile. "Why did you never show it to me later?"
"Um… well…"
"Why are you blushing? It's just a picture?"
Anthony couldn't meet her eyes and tried to snatch the photo from her hand. She jerked it back and leveled a suspicious glance at him.
"Anthony," she said sternly, "just what were you doing with this picture?"
Anthony blushed even more. "Well," he began in a strangled voice, "it's a very lovely picture… and there were times, you know, before we began seeing each other that I… um… you were so attractive, you know…" Her eyebrows shot up. "You still are, of course! Very attractive!"
Edith's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she began to suspect what he had used the photo for.
"Er… I… um… well, I mean, I had an imagination, but—" Edith put her finger firmly over his mouth.
"I do not need to hear the rest of this," she said, brown eyes sparkling with amusement and mischief. "At least, not right at this moment."
Anthony's laughter had a nervous edge to it. He made a point of bending down to peer into the box. "Anything else in there?"
Edith's mouth twitched and she suddenly stood up, pushing him gently back into the chair, and sat in his lap. He jumped in surprise and grasped her under her thighs and around her hips to hold her to him.
"Did reality prove to be as good as your imagination?" she said as she leaned in to nibble on his ear.
"Reality absolutely buried my imagination, Edith," he answered with a moan as she kissed him under his jaw.
"I'm glad to hear it."
They snuggled together on the chair until Anthony began to shift around uncomfortably. Edith slid back down to the floor and reached into the box again.
"What's this?" she asked as she removed an obsolete digital recording disk. Anthony shook his head with a shrug.
"Not a clue. Does it have a date on it?"
"No," Edith said as she flipped it over. "It just says 'Valentine's Day.'"
Anthony furrowed his brow as he tried to think of why he would have put something like that in this particular box.
"Valentine's Day…" Edith muttered, turning it over and over in her hands as her thoughts raced. "I wonder if this is from our first Valentine's Day together. It looks old enough…"
Anthony's face suddenly went from confused to alarmed. He swallowed hard as Edith continued to muse.
"We went out for dinner, but I don't remember bringing the camera with us. Then we walked by the river until it got too cold and we came back home so we could 'warm up,' and then we had a few drinks… oh my God! You SAVED that video?!"
Anthony's mouth flapped open helplessly as he tried to make sensible words come out. Edith's eyes were wide with shock and embarrassment over the hand she had clapped over her mouth. They stared at each other.
"You said you would erase it after we watched it," she whispered.
"I'm sure I meant to…" he replied weakly.
"I don't believe this! I cannot believe that you still have that video of us…for hours…"
"Edith, I honestly forgot that I had saved it…"
"We only watched it twice. How many times did you watch it?"
"I'm…I'm really not sure. But I'm sure I didn't watch it after we were married… more than once or twice anyway."
"What?!" Edith stood up and walked to the other side of the room with her hands on her hips. She glared back at Anthony, who was sitting frozen in the arm chair, cringing whenever she looked at him.
Edith took some deep breaths, her mind racing.
"That was almost thirty years ago," she suddenly said. Anthony nodded. "Do you remember anything from it?" Anthony thought for a moment.
"Not really," he confessed.
"Me either. Thirty years ago…" They stared at each other, lost in memories. A slow smile began to spread across Edith's face.
"I can remember being somewhat more…flexible and athletic."
Anthony began to smile as well. "You're still rather…flexible."
Edith came back to kneel next to the box and picked up the recording. "I don't suppose there's anyway to watch this now," she said. "This technology has been obsolete for two decades."
"Would you want to watch it?"
"I might," Edith replied in a distinctly seductive tone. "That would be quite the trip down memory lane."
Anthony's breathing sped up as Edith licked her lips and looked at him under lowered eyelids.
"I could, um, do some checking to see what it would take to recover it," he offered.
"Or… we could just reenact what we remember…" Anthony stood abruptly, feeling light headed as Edith spoke, "…and improvise what we don't."
"I'm not sure I'm up for an hours-long performance anymore," he groaned as he pulled her tightly against him and began to move towards the bed.
"I know I'm not," Edith replied, "but you have a way of making time stand still when you make love to me." She cradled his face in her hands and gazed at him, as if memorizing every line that time had left on him.
"I'd very much like time to stand still for a while, Anthony. It's going by far too quickly to suit me."
They lowered themselves down to the bed and their hands began the slow dance of removing the layers that separated skin from skin.
"I'm rather glad we can't watch the video," Anthony gasped as Edith loosened his trousers and began pulling them slowly down his hips. "I'm certainly not in the same shape as I was then. Those were the days…"
"These are the days, my darling," Edith murmured as she kissed his chest. "And everyday only gets better."
There was no camera to capture the moment, but neither Edith nor Anthony would forget that night.