He swung his stick in case another curious gull thought him a piece of rock. Memories had ossified in him, since he’d stopped having them from the age of twenty. Cloud hid the sun, cooling the air, senses sharp enough to pick out the arrowing sloosh of incoming tide driving between the two halves of the broken harbour pier. The past was nagging even more than usual today. When he first met Laura at the station dance he’d seen her as a young rather severe girl, white blouse fastened to the neck, brown cardigan open to show her shape. She smelled sweet, hair freshened by shampoo. His aircrew insignia and sergeant’s stripes were newly sewn on, and he felt second to none, though slightly drunk from the cider.
They went around in the quickstep, and he knew it was polite to talk: ‘Would you like me to be your cavalier?’ Before she could answer he went on, pell mell to obliterate such a daft beginning: ‘Now there’s a remark to strike you, or it will when you wonder in the future how we first met.’
Nor had he ever needed to wonder, but why had he blathered such triteness when not really believing there could be any hope?
He had been blessedly wrong. She didn’t laugh or scorn. ‘Yes, you can be my cavalier.’
She had waited for him night after night to come back from raids, and then he returned a different person to the one who had set out, but in the hospital she took his hand and, through the confusion of his darkness, said once more that he would be her cavalier, forever.
There were days when he felt the bow was taut, as taut as before the arrow flies. No explanation, but a tightening of anguish which was there when it shouldn’t have been, making this day different though in what way from others he couldn’t know. A clock began striking, later beats muffled by car noise. Ten o’clock, in any case. His heart missed a turn, marked time, carried on. As always he would recross the satisfyingly perilous roads, trawl along the High Street to get Laura’s Guardian, and reach home in time for their morning coffee.
TWO
One day he’ll fall. Blind men do. He would fall a long way. Or would he hit the ground like a baby and not hurt himself? On the other hand, why should he fall? If he did maybe she would be there to see. If not she would hear about it. You could turn off a tap but not stop the invasion of your thoughts. One day either he or she would die, but who would go first was impossible to say. The time could be a long way off, but the problem was a cruel one to ponder, so she preferred not to, because wanting him to live long could mean she would drop dead first. There’d be no one to guard him then. Best not to think, since the future belonged to nobody. She watched from the front room window, as always when he set out. He would know what was in her mind. ‘And my life will be finished,’ she said.
‘Oh no it won’t’ — his tone a balance between humour and annoyance, the closest he would allow. ‘In any case, that’s as maybe, and good old maybe is always unpredictable.’
Why do I let such idiocies through my head? No one was steadier on his feet, and his health was robust. He seemed forty rather than sixty. ‘And so do you,’ he said when she told him.
He had climbed more steps and hills than she could remember. Choosing holidays, he opted always for inland, as far from the coast as they could get, somewhere in the Derbyshire hills, the Malverns, or Scotland. He was never happier than when they set out after breakfast from the hotel, walking a path between trees and bushes, into the open of higher land.
‘It’s like being in the clouds,’ he said. ‘It’s like flying in an open cockpit.’ Then his talk would stop, and he would go on, locked in for a while unticlass="underline" ‘At least I can feel the wind, and that’s worth a lot. There’s heather in it. Flowers and trees as well. The flowers are over there. Let’s look at them.’ He stroked the stalks, stamens and petals, bending down for a closer look, touching without damage.
The bed hardly needed making, they slept so deeply in their separate dreams, but she pulled it apart for freshness. The room was large and gloomy, backing against the cliff. She shook the sheets smooth, pulled blankets straight and folded them in, banged both pillows into shape. At least the little iron fireplace when filled and glowing took out the damp of winter, the room a delight to be in then, shadows on the walls at dusk. Howard couldn’t see them, though said he could, at the sparking of the flames, lying in bed with a three-day flu last winter. ‘The first days out of action,’ he said, ‘since the crash.’
Two people couldn’t be ill in the same house, so no debilitating flu or colds for her. Howard knew this only too well, and swore he would keep fit till his dying day.
After bumping the Electrolux around the living room she noted its bag was full. Hadn’t emptied it for months, so unclipped the top, lifted out the paper container bulging with dust, and walked through to thump it into the kitchen bin. Fitted with another, the nozzle sucked perfectly, though there was little enough to feed on.
She cleaned the house while he was out, easier than when weather kept him in, even though he sat in the wireless room, as he called it, listening to his eternal and mysterious morse. She liked him to go out because he was always more cheerful when he got back. He was like a baby to look after, but would die of shame if she told him. Which he might have assumed was why she hadn’t had any, not knowing the reason had been hers more than his.
She fought against tolerating vain regrets. Regrets poisoned the soul, and the soul seemed frail enough at times, Howard knowing he can’t — she thought — tell me how nice I look, though he was able to at the beginning and did so in such a way as to last me for life. But I always dress for him and look smart, so that people will think the same when I walk out with him. And I dress as well as I can when in the house because it makes me feel good, and there’s always the thought that if there was a sudden miraculous peeling back of his blindness, I would want him to see me at my best.
It was essential to tidy up so that he would know where everything was. If an ashtray or chair, or one of his three pipes was out of place, his system for getting about without knocking anything over would, he said, go for a burton, so she took care that nothing did. If he asked where something was it would be that even she couldn’t find it. The house was his universe, every object one of the innumerable stars that lit up in his darkness for guidance. As long as he could find the domestic radio, however, and the record player to put on a piece by Elgar or Gustav Holst, all was right in the world.
She cleared the plates, all shining and stacked. He would be back for coffee, the newspaper under his arm. ‘Read me whatever you think I might find interesting.’ There was usually one item or another, to be marked with a pencil and reserved for tea time or after supper.
She kept two pencils by the telephone, in case the point of one snapped off while writing a message. Sharpening both, though they had hardly been used, she threw the shavings into the bin. If she went out Howard could just legibly write the number of anyone who called and wanted to hear from her. Sometimes they descended the hill together, but mostly she let him go. He wandered everywhere, and came back happy, though occasionally exhausted. Or so it seemed. He always denied it. When she went with him he became irritated by the smallest thing, such as imagining she resented going slow for him. It galled him, but not her. When they got home he was burning with inadequacy, even after all these years, as if thinking he had failed to lead her to somewhere wonderful, or hadn’t brought her home to a heaven more alluring than the one they had left.
They talked about it. She never asked, but he volunteered. ‘The secrets of my blasted heart,’ he said, ‘are all I have to give you. I want to be more than your ball and chain of flesh. I want to lead you to I don’t know where. But it’s a yearning, you see, and it gets me at the heart every so often. I can’t think why.’