Blind Date by Frances Fyfield

raised her body with one enormous hand supporting her shoulders, the other loosening her swaddling clothes and plumping the pillow. The duvet was tucked around her, leaving the arms outside. The pores of her skin opened; sweat poured into her eyes: her hair was damp, her face ruddy and she closed her eyes, flushed with heat. There were movements around her. She could feel a damp tissue wiping her forehead and the hollows beneath her eyes, moving to the bones of her neck where perspiration gathered. The duvet was raised from her feet. In the months of nursing, in all her squirming resentment of that enforced touching, the hideous intimacy inflicted on the helpless by the healthy, she had never known such instinctive gentleness.
    â€œSorry,” he said formally. “My name’s Joe. I’ve no credentials. I’ll go in the morning, but you really can’t chuck me out in this.” The rain had reached a crescendo of feather drums, hissing at the window without real force. She was warm now.
    Chuck himout? The deference in his voice, the very idea that anything of the kind was remotely possible, or that she might be in any position to insist—as if she could leap up with her china body and throw his hand downstairs, let alone his arm—made her want to giggle, although the sound which emerged was a helpless grunt and then she was suddenly monstrously tired all over again. Like her own life and death, what did it matter what he did? It was pain she feared. As long as pain was not imminent, she did not care. She was only dimly aware of her silence becoming the same thing as compliance or of him pressing a mug of lukewarm milk into her hands and sitting on the end of the bed, eating an apple.
    â€œI’m mending the clock,” he said, chattily. “What do you think? Don’t mind the noise in the morning.”
    â€œYou won’t be here in the morning,” she murmured. “I’ll have chucked you out. Piece by piece. I’ll lift you over my head.”
    He watched her. She was unable to fight that drift back into sleep: helpless against it.
    Then he went back upstairs in his nightshirt and his boots. There was ample room for the other, large futon in the room which held the clock. He lay down on it, still in the nightshirt, hands crossed behind his head, looking down at his boots, listening to the rain. It was slightly damp in here and smelled of oil. He had alarmed her, which was the last of his intentions, and he felt sorry for it. Jenkins would not be impressed. He had given Joe this crazy address in the hope that Joe would look out for his other protege, not scare the woman to death.
    Poor old Joe, he thought to himself. So quick to take the hint, but so impetuous around human beings, especially of the female kind. Better with the inanimate: better at photographs of objects and the dead. Better at most things than this. Quite happy to sleep with a pile of defunct machinery, and the clock was very definitely deceased. Outside, according to the blue face of it, time stood still and nothing changed. What a sensitive soul you are, Joe, he told himself, trapped in a bulldog’s body, big eyes, all snout and muscle, no bark or bite.
    What thehell do you think you’re doing?
    A t least, Jones told himself, he did not wear pyjamas. He looked at his own reflection, sadly. No wonder they called him the Owl. He could remember a note left on his desk at school, to be read in front of witnesses. Dear Jones, I would swim the deepest ocean for you, cross the driest desert for you, scale the highest mountain for you … PS, I’ll be round tomorrow night if it’s not raining. Love, Cleo: the secret light of his life at the time. How they had laughed and how he had played into their hands with his look of blank incomprehension. Nothing had changed much, except his head had grown to match the size of his ears. Mr. Charisma, squinting into the glass and trying to tell himself that