It was his funeral yesterday morning but it was to be just for family so we couldn’t go. His body doesn’t exist anymore, he said when he returned with the shopping. No, I said. I heard them in the flat downstairs when I returned from my walk in the afternoon and put out some fat balls for the birds in the feeders hanging outside the flat the Americans vacated oh so long ago (are they ever to return?). There was the noise of talking voices and a child. I hoped that they couldn’t see me as I made piles of birds seed on the step and struggled with the now rusting feeder lid. He wants to get new ones but I have a thing about discarding things (even when they are clearly no longer efficient) – an age thing perhaps or was I always like that?
She called in the middle of our supper. Can he come round and measure the carpet? He’ll be there in about half an hour, she said. We both sink. We share that privacy thing. The prospect of the interruption, the intrusion even, gives me indigestion and makes him snappy. He does it though and often with more grace than I can must. Aright? asked the carpet man as he came to the top of the stairs. Made grumpy at having to remove his shoes and wear a mask, he made no attempt at customer-focussing. Who’s supposed to be lifting it up then? You are, we said in unison. Oh, he replied, first I’ve heard of it. I am impatient with the way other people do things. Why does it always have to be so drawn-out and then forced into this last-minute affair? But then I pull back and remind myself we don’t all see the world in the same way.
I felt discombobulated by the day. And even when I walked out into that glorious day I felt little moved by it. Is it the prospect of the investigation today? Ugh how I hate being tampered with. And yet, she, poor love, is having an operation today. Mine is nothing by comparison. Such a smiling woman, so warm. I wish her well. Keep her safe. And her, and her, and her.
