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Thirty-two
What are you doing in there, Mary?'
'Washing up, Willy.'
'Don't – I'll do it later. Come and talk to me.'
'I've put the raspberries in a bowl. I've put some sugar on them. We might eat them for tea.'
'We might.'
Meals with Willy were still rare, strange, like a picnic, like a eucharist.
Mary came back into the sitting-room wiping her hands on the drying-up cloth. The heat in the room made a kind of positive velvety silence in which one moved slowly as if swimming.
Willy was stretched out in his armchair beside the hearth.
The front of his shirt was open to the waist revealing a curly that of grey hair which looked like a shaggy undergarment.
He had dug his fingers into the that and was scratching abstractedly. Mary placed a chair between him and the table and sat down, putting one hand on his shoulder. It was not like a caress, but more like the firm grasping of something loved yet inanimate, like the steering wheel of a car.
'Is Paula coming for the Aeneid? I'm so glad you persuaded her to read.'