Read Online The View from Here by Deborah Mckinlay - Free Book Online

of the heart, a passion. I had a husband who had left someone he loved, deserted her, for me. I could not fit all the pieces together. For the first time I felt that I was a sick woman, and it was a sick woman who Phillip came home to at exactly the time that he said he would.
    My illness from that point took the same course as the illnesses of so many others; one minute steady, optimism surfacing, and the next laborious, effort at every turn. There are no real patterns, no absolutes, though we look for them, we sufferers, especially at first, heartened a little by the happyending tales that well-wishers are so keen to pass on. But after a while we know that, despite the similarities, despite the shared pain and the same prescriptions and the similar symptoms, we are on a lone journey, with its own peculiar variations and pitfalls, and outcome.
    My journey at least has been undertaken in comfort. We live a life that is privileged, if lacking in glamour, so when I got back from that second, more grueling hospital stay, I did not have a lot to be concerned about in practical terms. Joan, the woman who has cleaned and babysat and cat-sat and watered plants for us for many years, had come to an arrangement with Phillip in my absence to work every day, rather than the two mornings that had been her previous quota. Since my return she has often taken it upon herself to prepare lunch, and she irons more now too, ferrying Phillip’s shirts upstairs in soft, warm piles.
    It has occurred to me that if the situation had been reversed, if Phillip had been the one afflicted, people would not have arrived with casseroles the way that they have, would not have been at such pains to relieve us of the burden of domestic things. They would have thought that I could manage the washing by myself. But that’s how it is, isn’t it, the conspiracy of men’s helplessness? We are all complicit in it. And anyway, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I was glad, particularly, of Joan’s help. She is a kind woman, and quiet, which mattered very much to me then. So many things were intruding on my peace.
    Our house is big enough that a downstairs room could be dedicated as a dayroom for me. Phillip chose which one, and organized it, for which he was rather proud of himself, while I was away. I agreed with his choice. There are good windows in that room and a wide ledge beneath them. There is a fire too, and Phillip lit it the day of my return, to ward off the chill of the early spring afternoon. The air smelled faintly of lemons, and there were daffodils winking in a jug on the mantel. A wide sofa that usually lives elsewhere had been moved in to serve as a resting place, and next to it a piecrust table, polished to gold, had been stacked with magazines.
    I did not need that household sanctuary then the way that I do now, but I nevertheless took to sleeping there in the afternoons. The days had begun to draw out and I would wake around five without the unsettled feeling that waking in early evening brings. Phillip, as promised, was at home all the time, and we fell into new routines, brought forward our customary six o’clock drink to five thirty and took to having it on the terrace, sitting in the cast-iron chairs, extra sweaters over our daytime clothes.
    Chloe came most weekends, often with Ed, who is goodlooking and polite, and funny too when he relaxes. In some ways it was a strangely happy time, one of those limpid spells in life that feel like they will last forever.
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    On the day that the men went fishing and left the women alone, I went to Maria’s house to give her an English lesson before anybody else was awake. I called her first from the little vestibule near the hardly used front door. A creamy telephone sat in there on a purpose-built shelf. There was a virgin white notepad next to it and a freshly sharpened pencil. Then I waited on the front step for Arturo’s driver to collect me,