I will never forget that Friday

She will not forgive, and I will never forget that Friday, the day before Christmas Eve. My wife and I are now in our mid-eighties, so the event that still troubles my mind was a lifetime ago. The errors of youthful inexperience or poor judgement are supposed to be forgiven and forgotten, but, even though the years have worn it to a kind of soft blur around the edges, it still wakes me in shame at night.

It was a night sealed in frost and consequence. I had promised my wife I’d be home before midnight; and that we’d wake up with our unexpected windfall and take the boys into town to buy their Christmas gifts: the small and shining things children treasure.

It was the worst winter anyone could remember. The cold came early and stayed like a punishment. In Scotland and in the West Country, the snow lay feet deep as a thick shroud. Sheep froze dead in drifts, birds hung upside down from telegraph wires or lay in frozen heaps alongside the roadway, and in the lanes the hedgerows stiffened with the bodies of creatures that had stopped trying. It was as though the entire island had taken one deep breath and forgotten how to release it.

In my early twenties, I led a small team of door-to-door vacuum-cleaner men, middle-aged dreamers every one of them, and we’d made the company’s books sing that December. We’d sold the entire stock. The boss offered bonuses all round, and I was proud as a father seeing his sons in their Sunday best. After the pub closed, Ted, being a man who never let a night die its natural death, suggested a game of poker. So we fetched up at his house, where the fire was low and the air had that stale tang of whisky and smoke.

Ted shrugged off his heavy overcoat and emptied his pockets onto the table. A glinting heap of silverware spilled onto the mahogany surface: spoons, forks, and knives as solid and cold as moonlight. He said he’d bought them for a song in the pub from an old farmer, a man with the smell of ruin about him, trading his family heirlooms for another hour of forgetfulness. I remember thinking how the cutlery looked like a scatter of frozen fish.

Twelve came and went with a fleeting nod to my promise. We played deep into the night. Duke chain-smoking his elegant Sobranie cigarettes, Ted gnawing at a fat Havana, myself pretending I didn’t miss the tobacco I’d sworn off six months before. For I had won; I was on a winning streak. And with every pot I raked in, I felt something hot and reckless rise in me, as if luck itself sat beside me for once. The money grew in tidy stacks before me - neat piles of banknotes. I imagined how my wife’s eyes would light when I told her.

At some point I went to the toilet, and when I came back the room felt changed, like a church after a funeral. My pile of cash lay crooked; diminished. Ted had two hundred pounds of my money, which he’d filched from my winnings, in his right hand, the silverware in the other, and that grin that had no warmth in it.

Take the silver, he said. We’ll call it square if I lose.

But I wanted what was mine, not another man’s spoons. Still, I sat. Still, I played. The gulf between my lower working-class background and that of Ted and Duke’s social standing kept me mute. Embarrassment is a weapon of the wealthy.

When the dawn came, it found us hollow-eyed and poorer in every way. Ted had everything. I shook my wallet, hoping to find one last banknote, but found it as empty as my vow to my wife. Ted tossed me a fiver for petrol, and that was that.

The blizzard outside was like driving through a curtain of ghosts. I struggled to see the road. Every mile felt like penance. I turned the corner to our rented basement flat and heard the church clock striking six. My wife was standing on the snow covered pavement, stamping her feet to keep warm, her breath a white mist in the half-light.

The look on her face when she saw me: relief so pure it would break your heart. She ran to me, clung as if I’d come back from war. I couldn’t sleep. She said. You must have had a dreadful journey. Thank God you’re home.

I nodded, unable to speak.

She smiled then, brave and tired. Come on, let’s get warm. We’ll take the boys to see Father Christmas tomorrow. Everything will be all right.

But it wasn’t. Not inside me. I lay awake while she slept, listening to her gentle breathing, to the soft creak of water pipes behind the walls, and knew the truth was a living thing between us, cold as the snow outside.

Before the light came, I crept to the boys’ room. They slept the sleep of innocence, their faces still unmarked by the world’s small betrayals. I stood there barefoot and felt the shame rise in me like a tide. I knew then I would have to tell her. Because love, when it is true, demands its own terrible honesty, even if it breaks what little peace we have left.

She sighed when I told her; her shoulders slumped in defeat. No words; just the look of painful resignation. With two young boys not yet started school and another child growing in her womb, what other options lay before her?

I saw the stiffening of her posture and the lines creasing her face as she prised open the coffee tin, and took out a handful of silver coins. It was Christmas, and she’d make it right; at least, for the children. But she didn’t acknowledge me. Her silence became her rock of resilience throughout our lifetime together. She will not forgive, and I shall never forget that Friday, the day before Christmas Eve.