Your Wife Dies by the Seventy Lingering Deaths

The first time your wife died you were terribly sad. You cried and got on like a child. You drunk yourself blind with the chaps from college. You swore you’d never touch another woman. Your wife was the only girl for you. You took a full page out in the local rag and -in between the advertisements for herbal tonics and lady’s maids- wrote at some length about her virtues: her charity, her tremendous good humour, her ankles which were like those of a newborn deer. You had an artist paint her portrait and hung it upon your bedroom wall and could not sleep for staring at it and fancied it was staring back. You spent a fortune on the funeral: a horse drawn carriage for a hearse, a marble headstone, a wreath as big as the Crystal Palace, turtle doves and a twelve gun salute, a commissioned work from the Poet Laureate, a wake which lasted seven weeks. You knew you’d never get over her.

The fifth time your wife died it was sad of course, but less surprising, like having a conversation you’d had before. You cried. You said you were devastated. You went out drinking with the chaps and drunk too much and wept on the table and said, “I’ll never find a better girl.” But when the waitress with the boudoir eyes, was helping you into your taxi, you still took the opportunity to give her backside a playful squeeze. The funeral was almost as lavish. You spent three hours on the eulogy. You still plumped for a marble headstone and afterwards, at the hotel, splashed out on a decent spread, but having taken advice from your accountant, decided to forego the turtle doves. The loss was just as loud and lasting. You missed your wife around the house. You knew you couldn’t manage without her. You also knew she’d most likely be back.

The thirty first time your wife died it was damned inconvenient. You were hunting in Shropshire with the chaps when the telegram came. Wife dead. Return immediately to London. You had to go through the whole rigmarole. You were sad. You cried. You drank too much. You said there’d never be anyone like her. You did not mean this as a compliment. You no longer felt like a man who’d lost his wife so much as an actor in a cheap stage play, running through his everyday lines. You buried her in a plot at the back of the graveyard, with no one but the vicar attending. When he asked what you’d like in the way of a service, you said, “the usual will be fine.” Afterwards you took him out for a ham sandwich and a glass of porter. You were seeing a lot of the vicar. You now counted him among your closest friends. You thought you might confide in him. “I can’t bear to lose my wife again,” you said. This was not one word of a lie. He read a thing out of the Bible that was meant to be a comfort to you and said he sincerely hoped she would not die again. You wondered if the vicar wasn’t lying. He’d been dining out on your wife’s funeral for almost six months by this stage.

The seventieth time your wife died you did not even bother to cry. You did not inform the papers or wire her brother who lived in Hull. You finished your breakfast and dressed for the city, told the butler you’d be back for dinner and yes, you’d be dining alone tonight. Then you bundled your wife into a taxi. It wasn’t easy. She was rather stiff. But you’d had so much practice with all this dying, you were now well-used to handling the dead. You’d already buried her fifty seven times, cast her off bridges and blown her up, once, cut her into little pieces and dropped these pieces down a well, twice wrapped her up in brown paper and mailed her to the colonies. You had not yet managed to forget her. However, this now seemed like something you might be capable of. You forgot your wife in the back of the taxi, like a left behind umbrella or a dropped pocket watch. You did not even realise you’d lost her, though all day you were pursued by a niggly suspicion that you’d forgotten something rather important. A dentist’s appointment or a friend’s birthday. You could not put your finger on what, though never once thought it might be your wife. She was dead now; truly dead. You would never have her back.

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s 1927 novel, The Big Four

Dropped in the Ulster Museum, Belfast on Thursday 6th February 2020

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