'What colour, wondered Elsie, is passion?'
Godfrey, snoring beside her, rolled over to face the wall.
Whatever colour passion had been, Elsie had known it. They had known it. She recalled the claret fuelled vermillion night sky of their first kiss. Elsie had been coy in those long gone days. Her waist then was thin, and her shape feminine. Godfrey had been working his apprenticeship. He would boast that he could strip and rebuild the engine of a 500cc Velocette Venom motorcylce with his eyes shut.
And on that vermillion night when his lips first touched hers and their two tongues touched and tasted - on that night of blushing red, they had danced well beyond the hour of parentally imposed curfew - until morning.
So Godfrey had walked her home. At the front door of her house they stopped. He looked down into her eyes and she gazed upward to his. They were hazily lit by a street gas light. Godfrey pulled her slowly closer to him. He never once blinked or took his eyes from her eyes as they touched and their lives became welded together. It was but a kiss that fired in Elsie a flame that could not be quenched.
She called it love.
A month after their first kiss she won from Godfrey the promise of matrimony and allowed him to fondle her virgin breasts.
Godfrey stopped snoring. He rolled over on his back and suddenly woke up, staring at the low ceiling of their bedroom.
'What colour', he wondered, 'is love?'
Elsie slept soundly beside him and he took his turn to gaze at her.
He could see the laughter lines on her cheeks and the lines of care on her forehead. And he knew he loved her still. It was more than half a century since they had vowed to love each other in sickness and in health.
Their virgin marriage had been memorable. The villagers - those who survived - still talked of it. They still recalled the white lillies and occasional red rose that filled the church that day.
His father told him while he still a child that white flowers symbolise love's purity to the red roses' acknowledgement of carnal love. Ah, so many white lillies at their wedding. And now they had reached the autumn of their love. The vermillion passion of yesteryear had faded.
Elsie stirred in her sleep and reached out her hand to his - dry flesh against dry flesh. Godfrey smiled and snuggled up to her bony body.
He dreamt that night of white marriage lillies that never yellowed.