She still remembers the day it all began. Just another day, one of thousands like it. Abigail was standing in her kitchen, bleary-eyed and listening to her espresso machine sputter in tune with the richer growl of the 7.30am Overground that passed by her window like clockwork every morning. She stared absently at the framed “art” on her wall, which Ben had bought from John Lewis some years ago, back when they still lived together. The house in the painting was built of brick. It was wrapped in red ivy, and tied with a white picket fence, like a ribbon, which she felt was romantic. She liked to imagine the people who lived in it, a happy couple. Stylish, probably. Below it, on the counter, lay a bowl of fruit. The peaches were browning, fine lines emerging like wrinkles, skins softening. Time to throw them out and buy more fruit she wouldn’t eat in time.
When the machine ground to a halt, she wiped it clean immediately. Soon enough, she felt the coffee fuse into her bloodstream and her body kick into gear. She unceremoniously swept the fruit into the bin, wiped her machine a second time, and watered the friendly plant in the living room – the only other living being in her apartment. Casting a glance at the armchair that Ben used to love, she gave that a quick wipe too. She ran her hand slowly over the armchair’s back and felt a sudden pang in her chest. The wood was smooth and inviting, and unless she was mistaken, it was reverberating slightly.
It wasn’t about Ben, she knew instinctively, because it had never been about Ben. That’s what he had said to her when he’d left. Stroking the upholstery, she felt it was more about the fact that her flat was far too big for one person. Shaking herself out of this strange revery, she checked her watch. Time to go. Flicking off the lights and quickly surveying her apartment, she nodded with satisfaction. Not a single crumb or stain to be found. Not an object out of place.
And with that, she locked the door, and set out on her regular work-week walk to the station. Another day in the life of Abigail. Content enough, well enough. Though if someone had asked her in that moment how she felt in her body, she would not have understood the question.
She had noticed the metal post in the spear top fence because it had winked at her in the crisp Autumnal sunshine; sudden, bright, and impossible to ignore. The post was nothing special, she remembered thinking to herself at first. In fact, it was one in a line of seemingly identical posts in that fence alone and she was sure that, if she paid attention, there would be dozens just like it in the neighbourhood. Yet there was something about this particular post that caused her steps to falter: the ambulatory equivalent of a gasp.
It was probably steel, she thought as she ran her eyes over its body; it was a rather dashing silver-storm grey. It was strong, or it projected a veneer of strength, with its exquisite, stoic stillness. The spear-shaped railhead gleamed in the sun like Roman armour, yet the ornamental detail on its body was elegant and refined. There was a hint of femininity to it, she thought, in the way that it seemed to flow up from the ground all the way to the razor-sharp spike at its head, which, like hands in prayer, pointed up towards the heavens.
She spent a moment staring at it. It wasn’t so much an appreciation of the craftsmanship as of the post itself a curious feeling. It had brought a smile to her lips and frozen time for a moment. Perhaps even then (though it was difficult to be sure, as elements of their meeting were inevitably mythologised through countless happy re-tellings, as meet cutes always are), she had felt a subtle sense of something clicking into place.
From that day onwards, she visited the post daily. Sometimes she stopped just to admire it for a while, though as time passed, she began to leave her apartment early just to sit by him (yes, him). She would tell him about her day and felt that his silence represented the deepest form of listening. She would sit with her back propped against him, to see what he saw. She would wonder out loud at the infinite beauty and complexity that could arise from a view observed from the very same spot, if only one were to engage with it, to commit to perceiving it with intensity and dedication. She looked up to him (literally when she sat at his feet, metaphorically every other moment of her day) for his serenity, his complete lack of ill will, his poise and his grace. With time, she came to see him as the height of objectivity – no, nothing was deserving of criticism, just as nothing was deserving of worship, except perhaps he, who had so graciously imparted the wisdom – an expert, she thought, in stillness.
She began to spend time at work researching fences. A little at first, but the habit quickly swelled, as love tends to do. She learnt about gilding techniques, iron ore smelting and metallurgy. She learnt a lot about him through this process; that he was probably wrought iron because of the wood-like grain that was visible when she gave herself permission to observe him very closely, without any shame or shyness. She learnt about different polishing methods and daydreamed of caring for him. She learnt about his impurities, which only endeared him to her further. She learnt that he had probably, at some point in his life, been malleable in a way that his strength now did not allow and it made her wonder about his past. She found herself imagining what it might have been like for him to have been heated repeatedly, and bent into shape by rough hands. She imagined herself as hot, liquid metal, soldered to her lover, and…
Wait, her lover? She remembers this moment all too well, the way that word had erupted in her mind like lava from angry earth. She was revolted. How could she, a modern-day woman with a lovely one-bedroom apartment, feel this way about an inanimate object? She felt nauseous. What would people think? What would her friends say? But perhaps more sickening than those thoughts was the deeper realisation that she did, in fact, long for him. She did, in fact, deeply, truly, lovingly long for him, in a way that she had never longed for any human man, all of whom had, in any case, never offered her anything other than a vague sense of disappointment.
Of course, she tried right then and there to cut it off (as any sane woman would). The revelation had been too painful and she decided she would have to quit cold turkey. She diverted her regular walk to the station so that she wouldn’t have to pass him; she downloaded dating apps and threw herself into the scene. She tried to distract herself by speaking to her friendly house plant, who, much to her disappointment, spoke mostly of soggy things, like water and soil. They had nothing in common. And it didn’t help that everything reminded her of him: the other fences (none as sharp or elegant) on her new walk, the sad and quivering men she met on her pathetic attempts at dating, even her office desk where she had spent so much time researching his life and origins. But despite these challenges, she stood steadfast, her love for him outweighed only by the desperate desire not to be a pariah, for exile would surely follow, were she to pursue her passion.
How does one love a fence?
Whenever the question arose, she would shake her head with determination (the determination that he had taught her), and turn her mind to something else. Those weeks were some of the most testing of her life, but she was determined to move through the heartbreak.
But the one place she couldn’t escape thoughts of him was in her own bed. On lonely nights, in the liminal space between dreams and discipline, she would feel her fingertips trace her breasts and stomach, floating slowly down to the space between her legs. Already slick and wet with want, her hands would massage her softly and she would imagine they belonged to him. She had no doubt he would know exactly how to please her, just as he knew the inner workings of her heart and mind as if they were his own. Her heart rate would rise as if she were climbing some grand mountain of desire, and she would moan, loudly, in the vague hope that he would hear her from two streets over. She would feel her feet curling, grasping at the sheets in the blind ecstasy of her component parts. She would feel her rib cage opening to the sky like an oyster shucked roughly by a steel knife; until it would, eventually, crack open completely, baring her naked heart towards where his praying hands pointed always, resolutely, towards a Heaven where they would meet one day in sacred union – oh GOD, how does one love a fence?
It was during one of these incidents that she realised, as if struck by divine inspiration (which is to say suddenly and with conviction) that her love for him was boundless and inevitable, like the passage of time or the gravitational orbit of planets. It was undeniable as her own existence, and equally as important (if not more). And it was as bewitching as the silver moonlight that lit the street outside her window that very night. Overcome with emotion, she wrapped herself in a sheet and ran outside, ran two streets through the darkness of East London, and arrived panting. She looked upon him and confessed her love. Sweet relief! Breathlessly, hair a mess and wrapped in a (still wet) sheet, they giggled together at the absurdity of it, and the miracle of it in equal measure. And this entire interaction took place in silence. Seeing as they had never needed to speak out loud, there seemed no need to start now.
And thus their love story was finally allowed to flow freely and in full like a stream unblocked at long-last from the murky sediment of prejudice. She felt sometimes that he looked up to her just as she did him. She could sense the way he loved her vitality, her beating animal heart and her strong legs that carried her from place to place. Perhaps in the same way that she loved his stillness, he loved her freedom. Always in movement in relation to the world, a living, breathing being in symbiosis with creation. A living, breathing, sexual being.
The sexual aspect of their relationship was unconventional but, she reasoned with herself, plenty of perfectly acceptable relationships had been considered unconventional in the past. And maybe, just maybe, that introduced a kind of heroic element to all of this. Love Against All Odds. At Friday night cocktails in warm, fancy bars in London Fields, with jazz music rolling gently through hot crowds and human men with darting eyes who smelt of sweat and sadness, she would smile knowingly at the inane dating sagas her friends shared. She would listen to their stories, but never proffer her own. She would simply beam in a way that caused her friends to suspect she had met someone and, after months of this mysterious silence, they began to hypothesise about the reasons behind it. “Is he married?,” they would whisper eagerly, “is he famous?” This only made her smile more, and imagine the way she would relay the story to him the next morning and how they would laugh together in that happy way that was softly underpinned by the knowledge that what was blossoming between them was truly special.
She tried to placate herself and tell herself that masturbation was enough. Her fantasies were exciting, her orgasms better than with any ex, and each time they spent time together, new salacious ideas would enter her mind. But it became more difficult, as they got closer, not to consummate their love and sometimes it was all she could think about. And yet, there was the unfortunate truth: that penetration would prove deadly to her. How does one love a fence?
So they tried other things. One evening for example, in the moonlight again, when she seemed least able to control her desires, she crept to him in the dead of night and covered him slowly with hand sanitizer. She ran her fist up and down the slippery length of him and then, after ensuring that no one was watching, she sensually touched her tongue to his spear-head. He was hard as wrought-iron for her, and cold as night. She held her tongue there for a moment, pressed firmly against him, then slowly dragged it up to his point. She tasted blood, metallic and human – a mixture of both their essences – and she swallowed it gladly.
**
So after all of this, it was not a sudden decision, in the end. It had been a long build up. It had been a beautiful romance, with many elements and stages, longings and triumphs, much like any other epic love story. When she finally did put her affairs in order in preparation for her last walk to him, she had no doubt that her death would be worth the life they would lead together in Heaven. In her note to her friends and family, she told them not to mourn her, but instead to celebrate the love she had found in this all-too-lonely world.