Robert and Mary Jones's house sits on Tuffnell Park Road, number 134A. Mostly a gift from Mary's family, but Robert had a couple of dimes saved up from the yard where he worked back in 1923. The neighbourhood has changed after the war: a few new, younger couples, and an old house rebuilt.

"Feels like we're one step away from a dust storm." Robert's finger skips along the mantel, kicking up the dust gathering there.

Mary smiles, sitting in front of the fireplace. Her chair is an old thing, but it was one of the few items Robert managed to purchase, so she's kept it. "Oh, I'll get it come morning, when my hands aren't freezing off." She rubs them together for emphasis, sending a pointed look at her husband.

He's leaning back against the wall today, arms crossed in a parade rest, hair coiffed perfectly. The fire licks up his silky curls, making them glossy in the dim lighting. His blue eyes glint in the orange light. "Better hop to it darling," he says, smiling back, "you'll horrify your mother again." 

"My mother found most things we did horrifying." Mary stands up and ruffles through the bric-a-brac that's piled up in the corner of the room. Too many letters, she thinks, before pulling out a favourite Bing Crosby record. It should be Christmas soon, but it never is truly Christmas, until Crosby's old croon floods the living room. Another record steals her attention.

"To think she raised you."

Mary slips the record from its sleeve, heading for the gramophone beside the mantel. She fiddles a bit with the needle." And remind me, what was it that you said?" 

"I said, ‘that's why I'm marrying her'," Robert whispers. He's bending over the gramophone too, his voice a soothing thrum in her ear. "I believe her skin colour began to rival apples."

"She shouldn't have sent me to the market that day, then."

Mary is quiet for a second, memories pouring unbidden. The end of fall, the smell of mead and wine, an argument and then, the flash of sea-blue eyes.

✦ 

"All that fuss for an apple?"

Mary whirls around, face still hot from nattering with the orchard owner. Her linen skirt swishes against the wicker basket slung across her elbow, jostling her spoils. Her hat, despite the many pins holding it in place, seems to wobble. But her words falter and catch in her throat.

 

The young man that spoke to her bears a shock of messy black hair, his boiler suit covered in smudges of dirt and sweat that extend to his arms, neck and face. He flashes a roguish smile at her, ducked under the tent of the stall. And heavens, his eyes are the bluest of seas.

Mary blinks, momentarily thrown. Then she takes a step towards him, hands in her basket.

"Only the sweetest ones," she replies, placing an apple in his palms. His hands are calloused, the mark of a life hard-lived. "Try one."

The man's eyes are wide, brows raised in an astonishment that grants her a frisson of satisfaction. His pupils dart about, like he thinks he's being tricked, before his relents and sinks his teeth into the apple. He makes a little sound of shock.

Mary settles her gaze on the man, his voracious appetite oddly comforting. "I told you so."

The man pulls back from another bite, rakishly handsome with juice running down his grimy hands and face. A skittering mischief dashes across his face for the briefest of seconds and then Mary finds her basket pilfered. She finds herself laughing.

"Join me for dinner," the man says, eyes sparkling.

Mary raises a brow at him, stifling her laughter. He starts squirming, sputtering about tea and lunches and perhaps we can just sit by the docks?

She interrupts his misery. "Yes."

✦

"We didn't even know each other's names until the second date."

"And then you told me that you wanted to be a singer," Mary says, placing a hand on Robert's chest. "Like Isham Jones, or Al Jolson."

Mary hums. She finally gets the vinyl on right, listening quietly as their house fills with a rich melody and warm tones. A hand on her shoulder, fleeting, pulls her from her reverie. 

Robert peers at her with eyes impossibly soft. "Lovely tune for a wedding, is it not?" 

"It was always your favourite," Mary says, "tad sentimental for me." She'd never admit to him that the ballad has grown on her.

"And yet, you've kept the record."

There's an aching tenderness in her ribs as she holds Robert's gaze. You looked at me like that, on that stupidly warm day in February. She thinks about roses and a church by her parents' house. She thinks about the dissatisfaction in her mother's eyes and the judgement in her relatives'. The sinking of her heart when she noticed the emptiness of Robert's entourage. The soaring when Robert looked at her like she'd hung the moon and painted the stars.

The vows they'd sworn to each other, two youths on the cusp of a yawning future.

Robert's mouthing the lyrics now, lips moulding to each word as if pulled from his heart.

"Do you?" Mary asks, quietly present. She remembers his wedding suit and tie, the one he insisted on wearing to kiss her on that first date. She remembers telling him she would have kissed him any day of the week, in his stained boiler suit, because that's who she fell in love with.

Robert doesn't answer, but he continues to sing, a thread of sadness weaved into the lines.

Mary takes a step forward, hands brushing against the lapels of his uniform, the badges on his chest. She listens for a bit, then she sings in kind about lips that were once hers, and the shine of blue eyes.

Then she's stepping into his arms, hands grasping with a hardness incongruous with their romantic evening. 

"They're the only place I ever see you now," she tells him; a thousand times, she tells him. And every time she does, Robert will look at her in fathomless sorrow, waiting for her to snap back into reality.

✦

Mary wakes to the sliver of moonlight.

Her shawl is draped loosely around her shoulder, and the fireplace burns with sluggish fervour. Her ears pick up the deep baritones of Bing Crosby humming away; a cursory glance to the mess in the corner reveals the Isham Jones record, untouched. The pension letters are unopened. Mary stands, cold. 

She looks to the empty space beside the mantel. There are badges and medals and ribbons. The shape of a soldier lies there, but the shape of her husband lies hundreds of kilometres away on French grounds. It's getting harder for Mary to separate the waking hours from the dreams. The passage of time escapes her, caught only by glimpses of coloured lights and the shapes of cars. 

She's getting older.

She looks to her coffee table and sees Robert's face on Elvis Presley's body. Maybe, maybe if she'd tried harder, Robert's dream could have been just her, just them and this house and it would have been enough. He was always her dream. And now that's all he'll ever be. Mary blinks at the old grief.

When she spots Robert standing in the kitchen, she's not surprised. Her feet take her to the counter, and she leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. He's staring at the apples on the counter.

"You've ruined me for all others, you know."

A phantom smile steals across her face.

She looks at her Robert, forever young and untouchable, with capable hands and sturdy heart. 

Her Robert, who told her one night that he'd finally make her proud, even when she said he already had.

Her Robert, chasing glory, chasing that chance to be a star in an endless sky of them, when he was already her once in a blue moon.