Forty-Two Minutes

On the eleventh morning of his retirement, Arthur Bell asked the kitchen speaker what he ought to do with the rest of his life. He had intended to ask for the weather. The larger question escaped while he was waiting for the toast.

The speaker requested permission to consult his calendar and the personal preferences he had supplied during setup. Arthur agreed. He had spent an entire Sunday completing those preferences, including a section on adventure in which he had been careful not to commit himself to anything involving heights.

“You have forty-two minutes,” it said.

Arthur lowered his knife. At sixty-seven, he had hoped for a less precise answer.

“Before your next appointment,” the speaker added.

Across the table, June continued reading a letter from the council. “Who with?”

“The financial adviser. Twelve o’clock.”

“Again?”

“He’s explaining the revised dashboard.” Arthur retrieved his toast. The previous dashboard had shown a small green hill, which he had found reassuring until the adviser explained that the hill represented fees. “There’s been an improvement.”

June turned the letter over. Arthur waited for her to ask about the improvement, but she was looking for a telephone number. It occurred to him that she had learned to get through a morning without being told where his money was.

He addressed the speaker. “I meant something a little more fundamental.”

“I can suggest a starting point within the available interval.”

Forty-two. Arthur smiled. There was an old paperback somewhere upstairs that would have appreciated this. He wondered whether the number had been chosen for him, then decided he would rather not ask.

“Go on.”

The speaker offered to clear one obligation, finish one deferred task and make one social arrangement. It would suggest actions; Arthur would approve anything sent or changed. Arthur asked it to remind him when the appointment was due. This sounded manageable. His last employer had required three departments to approve a replacement kettle.

June folded the council letter. “If you’re finishing something, the chair could go round to Patel’s. He’s there until one.”

The rocking chair stood beside the back door with a folded newspaper under one runner. June’s father had made it, and Arthur had promised to have it repaired after their granddaughter’s second birthday. She was eight now. In his defence, the newspaper had been changed regularly.

“Is that what you were going out for?” he asked.

“Among other things.” June put the letter in her bag. “I’d like to be back before three.”

Arthur nodded with the distracted gravity he used to bring to other people’s deadlines. The speaker asked which obligation he would prefer to clear.

* * *

The Residents’ Paths and Access Working Group had occupied alternate Wednesdays for four years without acquiring responsibility for a path. Arthur had joined because the pavement outside the library flooded. The council fixed it the following spring. Since then the group had considered benches.

At work he had complained about the meetings. In retirement he had begun putting on a jacket for them.

The assistant offered to draft a resignation. Arthur asked to see it on his phone. It thanked the members, explained that he was stepping down and wished them well. There was no provision for his continued availability.

“They’ll think I’m washing my hands of the whole thing.”

June came over to read. “You can still sit on a bench.”

He added a sentence offering to answer questions during the transition, then removed it before she could say anything. He approved the message. Almost immediately, the chairman replied with thanks and a request for the key to the cupboard.

Arthur had forgotten there was a cupboard. He found the key on the little brass hook where he kept things too important to lose and too infrequently needed to recognize. June wrote CUPBOARD on an envelope and left it beside his wallet.

The second suggestion concerned an unopened digital indoor weather station. Arthur had bought it to replace a thermometer that had given him thirty years of service without once telling him how it felt about the humidity. The return window closed on Friday. The assistant found the order, prepared the form and waited while he checked it. Four minutes later he had a return code and the unexpected pleasure of forty-nine pounds coming back.

He carried the box to the hall. The house felt slightly less demanding.

For the social arrangement, he chose Dennis. They had worked together for twenty-three years and retired within six months of each other. Their last exchange consisted of Dennis writing We must get something in the diary and Arthur replying Absolutely. This had occurred in May.

The assistant proposed a message about maintaining meaningful connections. Arthur deleted it.

“Ask whether he’s free for lunch on Thursday. Tell him I’ve left the paths committee.”

Dennis replied before Arthur had put down the phone.

Congratulations. Does June know?

Arthur sent back a photograph of the cupboard key. Dennis chose a pub, and they agreed a time without assessing what sort of connection they intended to maintain.

Arthur stood in the hall with the weather station under one arm, feeling that retirement might be coming together. He had cleared an obligation, recovered money and made a friend laugh. He went back to the kitchen to ask the speaker what came next.

“The chair,” June said from beside the door.

“Yes, I know about the chair. I meant after today.”

* * *

The assistant could provide a continuing programme. It would balance exercise, social contact, practical tasks and activities Arthur had described as rewarding. Each Sunday he could review the week and adjust the next one. Nothing would be booked without his approval.

A sample appeared on his phone. It had coloured blocks. Arthur had missed coloured blocks more than he cared to admit. At work they had meant that someone expected him somewhere; in the past eleven days he had twice gone to the supermarket for something they already had.

He scrolled through a proposed Tuesday. There was a walk at nine, a domestic task at ten and ninety minutes of exploratory leisure after lunch. The leisure block was pale yellow. He tapped it and found six possibilities, one of which was identifying local birds.

June was taking the newspaper out from under the chair. Arthur put down his phone to help her, and they lifted it away from the wall. Dust had gathered beneath it in the shape of something that had never expected to move.

“Where would this go?” he asked the speaker.

“The repair errand could occupy Tuesday’s practical task interval.”

“Next Tuesday?” June held the chair steady while he fetched a cloth. “We can carry it round now.”

“I’m not saying we won’t. I’m trying to see how it works.”

She waited while he wiped the runners. The cloth came away black. Arthur folded it so she would see a cleaner part.

“How much of this can you do for me?” he asked.

The speaker described optional permissions: protecting selected time, declining conflicting invitations, proposing alternatives to plans that repeatedly went unfinished. It could draft polite replies. Arthur would be able to inspect a weekly record of decisions.

He found that attractive. Nobody would have to be offended because he had forgotten lunch or failed to answer. The system would remember what he had meant to do, then keep him to it.

June let go of the chair once it was safely against the table. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come out with me on Tuesday.”

“We could put it in.” He reached for the phone. “What time?”

“I don’t know yet. That was rather the point.” She picked a small feather off his sleeve, looked at it and dropped it into the bin. “I thought we might take the train somewhere.”

Arthur could see himself opening the yellow block, looking for the nearest approved equivalent. He had spent years answering her invitations with a glance at a screen. Now he was considering paying to keep the habit.

He turned the phone over. “Where were you thinking?”

“The coast, perhaps. Or that town with the terrible statue. We could look at it and have lunch.”

He remembered the statue. They had laughed so much at its unveiling photograph that June had cut it out of the paper. He would have liked to see it in person. He would also have liked to know that he would still want to go when Tuesday arrived and it was raining.

“What if I don’t do anything?” he asked her.

“On Tuesday?”

“Generally.”

June looked at him more carefully. He wished he had asked while they were carrying the chair, when she would have had something else to attend to.

“We’ll have some dull days,” she said. “I’ve had them for years. Sometimes I do a wash.”

He laughed, and she rested her hand briefly on his arm.

“You don’t have to get good at it by Friday, Arthur.”

For a moment he considered asking the speaker whether that was true. Instead he lifted the front of the chair and waited for June to take the back.

“Don’t start the programme,” he said. “Keep the lunch with Dennis.”

“The programme has not been enabled. Would you like to retain the forty-two-minute timer?”

Arthur glanced at the clock. “Was that a recommendation? Forty-two minutes?”

“It was the time between your request and your next appointment.”

“Nothing more?”

“Would you like a longer interval?”

He caught June’s eye over the chair. She was trying not to smile.

“Leave it,” he said. “I’ve grown attached to it.”

* * *

They carried the chair down the street, stopping once because June had the end with most of the chair in it. Arthur offered to swap. She said she would rather he took the bag off her shoulder, since she had been bringing that to his attention for half a pavement.

Inside it was the council letter. She was applying for a little plot in the community garden. Not one of the large allotments; she wanted somewhere to grow flowers she could cut without depriving their own garden of everything taller than a shoe.

“You could have told me.”

“I’m telling you now.”

He took the bag and asked what she wanted to grow. By the time they reached Patel’s, he had learned that June disliked three flowers he had been buying her for decades. She had thanked him because he had brought them home.

“I can buy different ones.”

“Yes,” she said. “You can.”

Patel came out from behind his counter and watched Arthur demonstrate the fault.

“It rocks,” Arthur explained.

Patel looked at June, who folded her hands and declined to help.

“Sideways,” Arthur added. “It’s developed an interest in sideways.”

The repairer crouched, pressed a joint with his thumb and showed them the movement. He could fix it by Friday. Arthur started to ask for an estimate of how much longer the chair might last, then saw June running her hand over the worn top rail.

“Friday’s fine,” he said.

They left it with him and went into the café next door. Arthur had walked past for years without entering because the sign advertised homemade soup, which had seemed an insufficient distinction. June ordered coffee and half a toasted teacake. The woman behind the counter said they came whole. June said that was all right; she had brought someone.

The table rocked. Arthur looked underneath it, checked the floor and folded the paper sleeve from his cutlery beneath the short leg. June set down her coffee. Nothing moved.

“Useful having you here,” she said.

His phone sounded as she was telling him about the garden committee’s interview. The forty-two minutes were over. The financial adviser would be waiting to explain the new dashboard.

Arthur sent a message asking for the explanation by email. Then he put the phone in his coat pocket and asked June what they had wanted to know at the interview.

“Whether I could make a regular commitment.”

He looked at her. She looked back. The woman brought the teacake before either of them could speak, and June divided it with unnecessary care.

Arthur asked for another cup.