Before he could respond, though, she re-entered the house. He heard the sound of the kettle being poured. He shouted, ‘I’m not going out there and picking up that bird’s corpse out of some strange sense of fear my wife has for sharks. It’s not going to happen.’

She came back outside. ‘Vernie. Come on. You can’t just leave it.’

‘I can.’

Soon, though, with the two of them seated beside one another, neither saying a word, and Pen sipping her tea without having made him any, he stood, grumbling, and gumbooted his feet. He unlocked the shed again and took from the wall his shovel. A slight, hurried anger in his actions, plain as day beneath his wife’s gaze, he knew. The way he slammed the shed door. He saw within her eyes the hint of a smile as he climbed down the rock wall. Hard to tell if she was simply pleased he was doing what she’d asked, or if she found satisfaction in the power she held over him.

He splashed out to the bird. The briny smell had strengthened. The pelican’s head had been washed away from the torso. He scanned the water for it but caught no sight of it. Absurdly, his wife’s fear of sharks started to creep into him, so he was quick to lever the carcass onto his shovel and carry it stretched out before him back to the house. The weight of it difficult to carry in such a manner. It pinched between his shoulder blades. Too bloody old for this nonsense. He swore a bit as he walked towards his wife, lifting his gumboots out of the mud with stubborn determination. He stopped cursing as he neared her and offered her a forced smile. It made her smile in return all the same.

There was a patch of lawn at the rear of the garden that had always struggled to keep green grass, so he sat the headless bird there and started to dig. The work wasn’t difficult but even so, his back grew sorer. Was a time this type of work had been easy. Now he resented the constant fight his body seemed to give the simplest task. Gardening, for any length of time. Bowling. Used to be he would have joined his wife for a game. Now his knees weren’t up to the stress. His body at war with his spirit. Should have died in the bloody war, for all the good it’s done me, he thought. Like Weymouth.

You old fool with your self-pity. He stopped his shovelling for a moment and in the low and dying light he looked at his wife, who was watching him. She raised her empty teacup in a gesture of unity. He remembered her in her youth as he watched her in the now. It was she that kept him going. He’d done that right, at least. Married the right woman. How long had it been since he’d thought that?

Soon the bird was in its hole. As he shovelled the dirt back in he heard a car on their driveway and his wife went in to greet the visitor. Strange to have one this time of evening. He was a sweaty, aching mess. Returning to the back porch, shovel washed and replaced in the shed, he collapsed onto his chair and stared with satisfaction at his job, and breathed happily.