He isn’t well. We’ve both said it. He even stopped the district nurse on her way back to her car to ask how he was. He’s doing OK, she said. When he asked if it was cancer, she said she wasn’t at liberty to say. I shouldn’t have asked her, he said, afterwards. He is failing, people would say. His body is shrinking. And he is unkempt. His hair and facial hair go uncut and untended. Is he imploding, is he in pain, is he willing his demise? And he rarely smokes. We never hear him coughing out of his open window. I want to say something but he doesn’t invite confidences. You well? I ask. Not bad, he says. I fear you’re ill, I want to say. Not because I am nosy, or wanting to pity but because I feel for him. I do. Though of what help we can be, I don’t know. Will she outlive him? Their family are rallying, brothers have been back and forth. It’s the silence. And the waiting.
And autumn comes swiftly. Already the pavements are made gold and yellow and orange with leaves.
A crap drawing day yesterday. I was too tired to think and make good decisions. I ended up drawing a left-behind Peroni bottle that someone had put a twig in, in lieu of a straw perhaps. It was perched on a wall on North Road. I drew it with a continuous line – a failsafe rush of mark-marking when your head is full of mush and you must do something, draw something.
