alone in Lime Avenue, and I am probably the only person who crosses the threshold of the house these days apart from the doctor and the man who reads the electricity meter. It’s a lonely and vulnerable existence. What’s to be done? I discussed this with Fred when I got back home the night before last.
It was just after ten-thirty when my taxi turned into the gravel drive of 9 Rectory Road. As I let myself in at the front door I was, as always on returning from these excursions, struck by the contrast between the meanly proportioned, dark and dingy semi from which I had come, and the tactfully modernised and beautifully maintained Regency house which is now my home, with its gleaming paint-work and stripped wooden floors, its high ceilings and elegantly curving staircase, its magnolia walls hung with vivid contemporary paintings and prints, its comfortable, discreetly modern furniture, deep pile carpets, and state-of-the-art curtains which move back and forth at the touch of a button. The air was warm, but smelled sweet.
Fred acquired ownership of the house as part of her divorce settlement, and made its improvement her chief hobby until, with the opening of Décor, it became an extension of work, a laboratory for new ideas and an advertisement to potential customers. When we married I was glad to sell the serviceable but rather boring modern four-bedroomed detached box in which Maisie and I brought up our children, and to move into Fred’s house, the money I acquired in this way funding her ambitious improvements. Its three floors provided enough bedrooms for our combined children, two of mine, who were in any case at or about to go to university by then, and three of hers. Nowadays the house is extravagantly large for just the two of us, but Fred likes to throw big parties, and to host inclusive family gatherings at Christmas and similar occasions. Besides, she insists, living space is her luxury: some people like fast cars, or yachts, or second homes in the Dordogne, but she prefers to spend her money on space she can enjoy every day.
I hung up my coat in the hall, and called out ‘Fred!’ to announce my return, and found her, as I expected, in the drawing room. The lights were restfully subdued, the gas-fired artificial coals in the grate glowed and flickered welcomingly. Fred reclined on the sofa with her feet up, watching Newsnight on television, and I caught a glimpse of soldiers in battledress patrolling a dusty Middle Eastern street before she quenched the picture with the remote. I went over to the sofa and she tilted her face to receive a kiss.
‘Carry on watching if you want to,’ I said.
‘No, darling, it’s too depressing.Another suicide bomb in Baghdad.’
I sank down in an armchair, and took off my shoes. Fred said something I didn’t catch, I presumed about the news, something about a mine.‘How could you commit suicide with a mine?’ I asked. I saw from her expression that this was wrong. ‘Hang on,’ I said, and fumbled in my pocket for my hearing aid, which I had taken out in the train. As I inserted the earpieces I discovered that one of them was already switched on. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said you’re whining, darling. Or you were.’
‘I must have forgotten to turn one of these things off. Either that or it turned itself on somehow. I suspect them of doing that occasionally. ’
‘So how was your Awayday?’ Her tone was sympathetic, but the micro-humiliation of the whining hearing aid, reminder of my infirmity, lingered like the irritation of an insect bite, and diminished the pleasure of my homecoming. Deaf, where is thy sting? Answer: everywhere. Perhaps for that reason I painted a darker picture of Dad’s situation than I might otherwise have done. I described the state of the house, especially the cooker and the fridge.
‘He can’t go on living on his own much longer,’ I concluded.
Fred looked serious. ‘Well, darling, I don’t like to sound hard
It was just after ten-thirty when my taxi turned into the gravel drive of 9 Rectory Road. As I let myself in at the front door I was, as always on returning from these excursions, struck by the contrast between the meanly proportioned, dark and dingy semi from which I had come, and the tactfully modernised and beautifully maintained Regency house which is now my home, with its gleaming paint-work and stripped wooden floors, its high ceilings and elegantly curving staircase, its magnolia walls hung with vivid contemporary paintings and prints, its comfortable, discreetly modern furniture, deep pile carpets, and state-of-the-art curtains which move back and forth at the touch of a button. The air was warm, but smelled sweet.
Fred acquired ownership of the house as part of her divorce settlement, and made its improvement her chief hobby until, with the opening of Décor, it became an extension of work, a laboratory for new ideas and an advertisement to potential customers. When we married I was glad to sell the serviceable but rather boring modern four-bedroomed detached box in which Maisie and I brought up our children, and to move into Fred’s house, the money I acquired in this way funding her ambitious improvements. Its three floors provided enough bedrooms for our combined children, two of mine, who were in any case at or about to go to university by then, and three of hers. Nowadays the house is extravagantly large for just the two of us, but Fred likes to throw big parties, and to host inclusive family gatherings at Christmas and similar occasions. Besides, she insists, living space is her luxury: some people like fast cars, or yachts, or second homes in the Dordogne, but she prefers to spend her money on space she can enjoy every day.
I hung up my coat in the hall, and called out ‘Fred!’ to announce my return, and found her, as I expected, in the drawing room. The lights were restfully subdued, the gas-fired artificial coals in the grate glowed and flickered welcomingly. Fred reclined on the sofa with her feet up, watching Newsnight on television, and I caught a glimpse of soldiers in battledress patrolling a dusty Middle Eastern street before she quenched the picture with the remote. I went over to the sofa and she tilted her face to receive a kiss.
‘Carry on watching if you want to,’ I said.
‘No, darling, it’s too depressing.Another suicide bomb in Baghdad.’
I sank down in an armchair, and took off my shoes. Fred said something I didn’t catch, I presumed about the news, something about a mine.‘How could you commit suicide with a mine?’ I asked. I saw from her expression that this was wrong. ‘Hang on,’ I said, and fumbled in my pocket for my hearing aid, which I had taken out in the train. As I inserted the earpieces I discovered that one of them was already switched on. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said you’re whining, darling. Or you were.’
‘I must have forgotten to turn one of these things off. Either that or it turned itself on somehow. I suspect them of doing that occasionally. ’
‘So how was your Awayday?’ Her tone was sympathetic, but the micro-humiliation of the whining hearing aid, reminder of my infirmity, lingered like the irritation of an insect bite, and diminished the pleasure of my homecoming. Deaf, where is thy sting? Answer: everywhere. Perhaps for that reason I painted a darker picture of Dad’s situation than I might otherwise have done. I described the state of the house, especially the cooker and the fridge.
‘He can’t go on living on his own much longer,’ I concluded.
Fred looked serious. ‘Well, darling, I don’t like to sound hard
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