THE HONEYMOON

Optical illusion or insanity?

Wendy and David had been lovers for what seemed for ever and in terms of their lives was almost as long as eternity. In fact, they had first met in a flash of the sort of lightning that you remember for ever when they were both twelve.
Twelve, I suppose, is the sort of age when that kind of thing might happen. It starts plainly enough, comparing this or that idea in the playground and laughing at unfunny whimsies together, then calling for each other and then, by the time they were fourteen, kissing in a most elaborate and probably even messy way. But they had no real idea what it might lead to, or if they did ever ponder the subject, how long it would take.
But first, Wendy had a suggestion to make, aged sixteen and still so fond of David she wondered if it was love and decided it might be.
“I suppose we might get married one day,” she mused.
David wasn’t quite sure what kind of reply would do. At first a surge of what might have been enthusiasm and even hope for the idea swept through him, and then he remembered the couple next door and the rows he heard all too often for them to be a happily married couple, and shook his head.
“I love you, Wendy, I know that I do. But let me think about it,” he replied, which was the sweetest negative reply he could think of.
But that didn’t stop her moving in with him and sharing the same bed and get up to perfectly natural things in a way that could only be called mutual
And it turned out that for them it took above twenty years for a sperm to reach an egg, which prompted the marriage question again.
“I’m pregnant, Dave,” she said out of the blue, “I’ve tried two tests and they both say I’m pregnant. Haven’t you noticed how long it is since I had my last period?”
He had and it had crossed his mind that at the outside there was the remotest possibility that she may have been unlucky. Either that, but he’d also heard about a thing called the change, a female mystery beyond his comprehension. But pregnant? Not so likely, not if she was on the pill which he believed she was, and anyway they’d sort of almost slowed down in the bedroom department since they moved in together.
“You can’t be!” he replied.
“What do you mean, I can’t be?” she demanded in s=the tone of voice that bordered on being the one he had heard through the walls from nexy door since time immemorial, the one used by the woman next door when she had something serous to say to a husband who did’t want to know.
“I mean, we haven’t done much different,” he sniffed.
“Just because we’ve had a run of, what, twenty years without me forgetting to take my pill doesn’t mean I never forget stuff,” she told him, “and when we went to Skegness a few weeks back I forgot to take them. With me. So for days if you got up to your favourite games it was quite a risk, and if so happens....”
“I never knew!”
“The fortnight we spent in that caravan,” she sighed, “when night after night you were all over me like a rash, and we had fun…”
“But there was the pill to stop anything serious happening,” he protested.
“You weren’t listening. I forgot to take then with me.”
“Oh dear.”
“So I’m pregnant and in a few months we’ll have a b*****d on our hands.”
“Don’t say that!” he reprimanded her, “no son or mine will ever be called a b*****d!”
“Or daughter of mine,” she put in.
“Whatever.”
“So we’re getting married, then, at last?” she said flatly.
“You’re pregnant?! It was more a hopeful wish than a question, she knew it and he merely nodded.
“Then I’ll see the vicar,” he mumbled.
“Not a church wedding, David. I don’t like churches or vicars or all the crap they spout.”
“Then I’ll go to see the, what is it, registrar?”
“I knew you’d do the right thing, lover boy,” she amost giggled.
“Boy? I haven’t been a boy since…”
“I know. So we’ll see about the wedding and then the honeymoon. I want to go to where there’s sea, and sand, and life!”
“Skegness then?”
“I said life! I want to go abroad, and I want to fly.”
And that’s what happened. They went to Portugal in an aeroplane, and had the time of their lives on Portuguese beaches. There was sea and sand, plenty of both, and music and dancing and everything a newly wed couple could possibly want.
And then it was time to return home, Mr and Mrs Randall for the first time under their own roof rather than two thirty-somethings living in sin.
“Well, here goes,” smiled David.
“I could stay here for ever,” sighed Wendy.
“Even you would get tired of too much sand after a year or two of it,” grinned David.
“Maybe.”
There was no problem at the airport and they were soon on the plane and it was charging down the runway before soaring like a metal bird into the Portuguese skies.
“You know, I need a piss,” whispered David when they were less than halfway through their journey home.
“Hurry up, then. You shouldn’t have had that second cup at breakfast back in the hotel,” she almost chastised him.
It was while he was in the small aircraft toilet that he heard it. A crunching sort of noise as if something was splintering very close to him. Only weeks ago he’d demolished an old garden shed in order to make way for a new one, and the sound he could hear reminded him of that.
“What on Earth…” he muttered, and popped his head out of the small toilet to see what might be going on.
And he couldn’t believe what he saw. The impossible was happening and the very fabric of what had seemed a very sturdy aeroplane looked as if it was breaking into two. Impossible. Aeroplanes can’t fo that. They go through all sorts of safety tests before they’re allowed to take people across the world But this one could because as far as he could see that’s precisely what it was doing. And it seemed to be made of ply-wood, not metal at all. The whole thing made his feel hopelessly dizzy.
“David! A shriek was the familiar voice of his dearest Wendy, “you have’t done your flies up! Something’s hanging out! And it’s dripping!”
It was while he was adjusting his trousers that, unnoticed by him, Wendy slipped out of her seat and started sliding down the aisle on her bottom as if it was a playground slide.
Towards him, she slid. but the two parts of an impossibly divided aeroplane were drifting apart, and nobody else seemed to have noticed.. And her slide was getting steeper.
“Wendy!” he shouted, and without wondering about the logic of what he was going he do next. He stepped away from the aeroplane’s toilet door and leapt towards Wendy, desperate to save her from a five mile fall into the distant sea.
He didn’t, of course. Save her that is.
Two newly weds looked quite foolish as they crashed face-down onto the aisle floor and dozens of fellow travellers stared n horror at what they had done.
And when they arrived back home David found himself searching the Internet for whatever was recorded about optical illusions.
Oh dear.
© Peter Rogerson 30.12.23

Reviews

[Coffeeprincess]

Wow! Nice twist at the end. I thought they were going to die! Glad it was just an illusion