down for a closer look, touching without damage.
The bed hardly needed making, they slept so deeply in their separate dreams, but she pulled it apart for freshness. The room was large and gloomy, backing against the cliff. She shook the sheets smooth, pulled blankets straight and folded them in, banged both pillows into shape. At least the little iron fireplace when filled and glowing took out the damp of winter, the room a delight to be in then, shadows on the walls at dusk. Howard couldnât see them, though said he could, at the sparking of the flames, lying in bed with a three-day flu last winter. âThe first days out of action,â he said, âsince the crash.â
Two people couldnât be ill in the same house, so no debilitating flu or colds for her. Howard knew this only too well, and swore he would keep fit till his dying day.
After bumping the Electrolux around the living room she noted its bag was full. Hadnât emptied it for months, so unclipped the top, lifted out the paper container bulging with dust, and walked through to thump it into the kitchen bin. Fitted with another, the nozzle sucked perfectly, though there was little enough to feed on.
She cleaned the house while he was out, easier than when weather kept him in, even though he sat in the wireless room, as he called it, listening to his eternal and mysterious morse. She liked him to go out because he was always more cheerful when he got back. He was like a baby to look after, but would die of shame if she told him. Which he might have assumed was why she hadnât had any, not knowing the reason had been hers more than his.
She fought against tolerating vain regrets. Regrets poisoned the soul, and the soul seemed frail enough at times, Howard knowing he canât â she thought â tell me how nice I look, though he was able to at the beginning and did so in such a way as to last me for life. But I always dress for him and look smart, so that people will think the same when I walk out with him. And I dress as well as I can when in the house because it makes me feel good, and thereâs always the thought that if there was a sudden miraculous peeling back of his blindness, I would want him to see me at my best.
It was essential to tidy up so that he would know where everything was. If an ashtray or chair, or one of his three pipes was out of place, his system for getting about without knocking anything over would, he said, go for a burton, so she took care that nothing did. If he asked where something was it would be that even she couldnât find it. The house was his universe, every object one of the innumerable stars that lit up in his darkness for guidance. As long as he could find the domestic radio, however, and the record player to put on a piece by Elgar or Gustav Holst, all was right in the world.
She cleared the plates, all shining and stacked. He would be back for coffee, the newspaper under his arm. âRead me whatever you think I might find interesting.â There was usually one item or another, to be marked with a pencil and reserved for tea time or after supper.
She kept two pencils by the telephone, in case the point of one snapped off while writing a message. Sharpening both, though they had hardly been used, she threw the shavings into the bin. If she went out Howard could just legibly write the number of anyone who called and wanted to hear from her. Sometimes they descended the hill together, but mostly she let him go. He wandered everywhere, and came back happy, though occasionally exhausted. Or so it seemed. He always denied it. When she went with him he became irritated by the smallest thing, such as imagining she resented going slow for him. It galled him, but not her. When they got home he was burning with inadequacy, even after all these years, as if thinking he had failed to lead her to somewhere wonderful, or hadnât brought her home to a heaven more alluring than the one they