She waited, watching him, thinking about the phone call. Over his shoulder, as he finished the row, he asked, Who was it then? Some man, she answered. He said he’d met me twenty years ago, on that course I went on. The husband put down the empty can and looked at her, mildly enough. What course would that be? – The course you gave me for my birthday, the poetry course in the Lake District. You said I’d been rather down in the dumps and a course writing poetry in the Lake District might buck me up. All my friends said what a nice present it was. – Oh, that course, the husband said. And the man who just phoned was on it with you, was he? – Well he says he was, but I can’t for the life of me remember him. I said I could, but that was a fib. – But he remembered you all right, enough to phone you up after twenty years. – To be absolutely honest, I’m not even sure he did remember me, not me myself, if you know what I mean. He said he did, but I’m not so sure.
The husband turned away to put the can back by the water butt where it belonged. She watched, wondering more about the man who had phoned than about her husband and his questions. Did he have a name, this man? he asked, returning. Yes, he did, she answered. He said he was called Alan Egglestone. But I honestly don’t remember anyone of that name on the course. I remember who the tutors were, and two or three of the other students, but I don’t remember an Alan Egglestone. Then the husband said, Well it was a long phone call with a man you can’t remember. You must have discovered you had something in common, to go on so long. Yes, she answered, I’m very sorry I left you with the washing-up. I couldn’t see a way of ending it any sooner. I didn’t have the heart to interrupt him. Now the husband looked at her as though, for some while, he had not been seeing her for what she really was. Don’t look at me like that, Jack, she said. I’m not looking at you like that, he replied. I just don’t know what you could find to talk about with a complete stranger for so long. Perhaps you’ve been on his mind for twenty years. Perhaps he’s been writing you poems for twenty years. I very much doubt it, she answered, beginning to feel tired, and not just of the conversation about a phone call, but, as happened now and then, of everything. Jack must have seen this. It was pretty obvious. Nobody else of his aquaintance lost heart quite so suddenly, quite so visibly, as his wife. I’m not getting at you, Chris, he said. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I was only wondering what this Mr Egglestone had to say to you that took so long.
With the index finger of her left hand Christine pulled down and let go, again and again, her lower lip. She did this when she was nervous or puzzled or both together. It was a bad habit, annoying to other people, and she had often been scolded for it by her mother as a little girl. He told me he’s got leukaemia, she said. He said he’s probably only got three weeks to live. And she looked at Jack as though he might know what to make of it. But Jack shook his head: Don’t give me that. You don’t phone a complete stranger to tell her you’ll be dead in three weeks. I never said he was a complete stranger, she answered. I said I couldn’t remember him. And if he’s a stranger to me, he says I’m not to him. He says we were on that poetry course together in the Lake District. And I’m in his address book. – You’re in his address book? – Well there’s nothing very odd about that. Why shouldn’t people on a course swap addresses at the end of it if they feel it has been a special time? The fact that I can’t remember him is neither here nor there really. And, let’s be clear about this, it’s not just me he’s phoning, he’s phoning everyone in his address book, he told me that at once. So he’s into the w’s, said Jack. Not far to go. No, he’s nowhere near the w’s, Christine answered. He’s only in the b’s. – So why, may I ask, did he phone you? – Because on the course I used my maiden name. I don’t mean I told people I wasn’t married. I used my maiden name because I thought that’s the name I’ll use if I ever get anything published. You never told me that, said Jack. Didn’t I? she answered. I’m sure I did. But it’s no odds whether I did or I didn’t. You didn’t, said Jack. And he gave her another look and went very deliberately back into the house.
Christine stayed in the garden. It was pleasant out there, quite like the country really, for a suburban place. Foxes came with their cubs in the summer early mornings and you heard them, the dog and the vixen, barking and screaming in the winter nights. And owls too sometimes, in the hospital’s big trees. She stayed out, fingering her lip. She stayed until around her shoulders she felt chilly.
Indoors, Jack was watching the news. There had been another massacre. I think I’ll go to bed, Christine said. He switched the television off. I’m sorry for this Mr Egglestone, he said, of course I am. But I don’t see why he has to tell everyone in his address book that he’s going to die. Aren’t his family and a few close friends enough? And how many strangers does he have to phone a day, I wonder. He’ll hardly get through them, will he, if he’s only got three weeks. In the Wakelin household, Christine had become the authority on the dying Egglestone. He does have a family, she said. Three girls, to be exact. But his wife left him and took them with her when they were still at school. She said he was selfish, apparently. So he hardly ever sees his family, and he hasn’t told them what his condition is. And perhaps there aren’t all that many people in his address book, perhaps half of them are crossed out dead, they are in ours, and perhaps it’s the old address book that his wife left behind when she cleared out and she started another for her new life and most of the addresses in the old one, the one he’s working his way through now, were her side of the family and her friends anyway, they are in ours, you must admit, there’d be nobody alive in ours if I waited for contributions from you. But how should I know? I’ve never met the man or if I have I can’t remember what he looks like or anything about him. He told me he’d just been told he’d got three weeks to live and he was going through his address book in alphabetical order and he’d reached the b’s and come to me. Now can we leave it at that?
In bed Christine reflected that you shouldn’t let the sun go down on your wrath because one of you might be taken by death in the night and forgiveness be prevented. But it wasn’t wrath, she decided, and really they had nothing to forgive. Anyway, Jack was already asleep. Christine lay awake trying hard to remember anything whatsoever about Alan Egglestone but nothing came back to her. Instead, with sudden emotion, she remembered somebody else on that poetry course in the Lake District, Steve somebody-or-other, quite a young man, a good deal younger than her at least, which he hadn’t seemed to mind but had suggested they bunk off for a walk together one afternoon when there were no workshops and everyone was supposed to be getting on with their own poems quietly. He knew the way up from the old coffin road to Alcock Tarn and beyond into the dale that was known as Michael’s Dale after Wordsworth’s poem about an old man who was building a sheepfold up there but his son had gone to the bad and broken his old father’s heart so some days he climbed into the dale and just sat still by the work in progress ‘and never lifted up a single stone’. Tears came into Christine’s eyes on that line of the famous poem, the poor father, the poor disappointing son, and the young man called Steve who had obviously found her attractive enough to suggest a walk with him to places she would never have gone to on her own.