powder which wobbles on the hairs of her chin.
She wouldn’t let me in at first. No one had let her know I was coming and she was obviously deeply suspicious of my motives. It turns out that she was in the first time I went round after all, but because she didn’t know who I was, she didn’t dare answer the door. Eventually I did persuade her to let me in, but it was only for the briefest of visits, during which she sat perched on the edge of her chair the whole time and didn’t take her beady eyes off me, as though I might pinch her ornaments. (They are in such breathtakingly bad taste.) In these circumstances, conversation was hardly possible and we only exchanged enough short questions for her to be sure that I was indeed who I claimed to be.
Her house is grim. It smelled so awfully of unopened windows and unaired rooms that I was worried Rob would smell it on my clothes when he came back from his sitar lesson. I felt grubby enough, what with the bicycle ride, to have a bath and change. Of course Rob probably interpreted that quite differently, if he registered it at all.
I noticed two intriguing things while I was there, which I shall keep in mind in case we continue to have as much trouble with conversation. One was that she has the most fascinating-looking collection of theatrical mementoes which, with a bit of luck, I will be able to persuade her to tell me about. The other was that her living room and hall aredominated by photographs of one man, presumably her late husband, in an astonishing variety of poses and costumes. He must have been in the theatre too. He has a long, lean face, which would be classically handsome if it were not for his sharply twisted nose. If she has got over the grief of her widowhood, it might be interesting to talk to her about him too.
*
But, at last, she had it all worked out. She put the cruets back where they should both have been in the first place: in the kitchen. She put the yellow ‘Gift from Torbay’ jug, which held extinct pencils, on the mantlepiece. No, she
was
going to put it on the mantlepiece when it occurred to her to sit down halfway in her armchair and tip all the contents on to her lap to see what they were: the clutch of cracked pencils, a souvenir paper knife and, in the bottom, an ancient blue cellophane-wrapped boiled sweet, furry with dust. She arranged the old newspapers on the floor beside the magazine rack. The magazine rack was more than full, so she couldn’t put them in it. She put the
TV
Times
by itself on the table where she could quickly find it. She put her reading glasses, opened, over the broad arm of her armchair. How dreadfully blind the matt green material looked beneath the magnifying lenses. She had long ago lost their case and she needed to keep them on a series of glaringly obvious perches. All that was left to tidy then was a handful of bits and bobs – buttons, safety-pins, some Free Offers – and it was infuriating that it took her the rest of Sunday morning to find the right places to put them. Among the bits and pieces she found a strange contraption; it was small and made of yellow metal, twisted into an indefinable but obviously once functional shape. She looked at it hard for a long time, turning it in different directions, but for the life of her she could not recall what it was. When the table mat was finally clear, she took it off and folded it away. The unaccustomed empty surface of the coffee table disturbed her. With the flick of the floral mat, the familiar objects were all gone and she wondered how on earth would she remember what they had been?
She put the best mat on the table. It was embroidered witha pattern of blue and purple flowers, made up of delicate pieces of other fabrics. She admired it for a minute with nothing on it, and she appreciated the knobbly silken stem of a sweet-pea with the tip of her finger. She chided herself for dawdling; goodness knows, there was more than enough to do. She put out the
She wouldn’t let me in at first. No one had let her know I was coming and she was obviously deeply suspicious of my motives. It turns out that she was in the first time I went round after all, but because she didn’t know who I was, she didn’t dare answer the door. Eventually I did persuade her to let me in, but it was only for the briefest of visits, during which she sat perched on the edge of her chair the whole time and didn’t take her beady eyes off me, as though I might pinch her ornaments. (They are in such breathtakingly bad taste.) In these circumstances, conversation was hardly possible and we only exchanged enough short questions for her to be sure that I was indeed who I claimed to be.
Her house is grim. It smelled so awfully of unopened windows and unaired rooms that I was worried Rob would smell it on my clothes when he came back from his sitar lesson. I felt grubby enough, what with the bicycle ride, to have a bath and change. Of course Rob probably interpreted that quite differently, if he registered it at all.
I noticed two intriguing things while I was there, which I shall keep in mind in case we continue to have as much trouble with conversation. One was that she has the most fascinating-looking collection of theatrical mementoes which, with a bit of luck, I will be able to persuade her to tell me about. The other was that her living room and hall aredominated by photographs of one man, presumably her late husband, in an astonishing variety of poses and costumes. He must have been in the theatre too. He has a long, lean face, which would be classically handsome if it were not for his sharply twisted nose. If she has got over the grief of her widowhood, it might be interesting to talk to her about him too.
*
But, at last, she had it all worked out. She put the cruets back where they should both have been in the first place: in the kitchen. She put the yellow ‘Gift from Torbay’ jug, which held extinct pencils, on the mantlepiece. No, she
was
going to put it on the mantlepiece when it occurred to her to sit down halfway in her armchair and tip all the contents on to her lap to see what they were: the clutch of cracked pencils, a souvenir paper knife and, in the bottom, an ancient blue cellophane-wrapped boiled sweet, furry with dust. She arranged the old newspapers on the floor beside the magazine rack. The magazine rack was more than full, so she couldn’t put them in it. She put the
TV
Times
by itself on the table where she could quickly find it. She put her reading glasses, opened, over the broad arm of her armchair. How dreadfully blind the matt green material looked beneath the magnifying lenses. She had long ago lost their case and she needed to keep them on a series of glaringly obvious perches. All that was left to tidy then was a handful of bits and bobs – buttons, safety-pins, some Free Offers – and it was infuriating that it took her the rest of Sunday morning to find the right places to put them. Among the bits and pieces she found a strange contraption; it was small and made of yellow metal, twisted into an indefinable but obviously once functional shape. She looked at it hard for a long time, turning it in different directions, but for the life of her she could not recall what it was. When the table mat was finally clear, she took it off and folded it away. The unaccustomed empty surface of the coffee table disturbed her. With the flick of the floral mat, the familiar objects were all gone and she wondered how on earth would she remember what they had been?
She put the best mat on the table. It was embroidered witha pattern of blue and purple flowers, made up of delicate pieces of other fabrics. She admired it for a minute with nothing on it, and she appreciated the knobbly silken stem of a sweet-pea with the tip of her finger. She chided herself for dawdling; goodness knows, there was more than enough to do. She put out the
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