Although hungry, he felt too restless to settle down to a restaurant dinner, whatever its persuasion, on his own. He walked the short half-block west on Heath Street to the top of Fitzjohn Avenue and pushed open the door of the Italian deli. The smells of garlic and olive oil poured out into the street, tempting other passers-by. Inside, the counter beneath the window held pottery bowls filled with dark purple olives and multi-colored pastas, seafood marinating in olive oil, peppers and aubergine mixed with sliced garlic. Overwhelmed by the profusion, Kincaid bought his usual, a ready-to-cook pizza made with roasted sweet peppers and fresh mozzarella.
He stopped in the off-license across the street for a bottle of red wine, then started down the hill toward home, thinking that he might almost be going to some long-awaited assignation.
In a sense, he supposed he was, although the faded blue copy-books kept no account of time.
The wind scoured the streets today, shredding scraps of paper and hurling grit into the air, stinging skin and eyes like nettles. Punishment.
Waiting in the bus queue, huddled behind the Plexiglas partition, suddenly I thought of long-ago evenings spent sitting on the veranda in Mohur Street. There was a stillness to things then, an almost melancholy anticipation. Something exciting seemed always waiting just round the corner, if I could only see it.
Did I ever imagine that days could be lived with such numbing repetition?
Seems odd leaving Bayswater after so many years. At least I knew the shopkeepers, even the neighbors' cats. Carlingford Road radiates quiet and respectability in comparison, all the things I used to find least appealing. Have I grown old without noticing?
I feel more at home in this flat than anywhere I've lived since childhood. I don't know why. It fits me somehow, or I fit it. The furniture looks as though it's been here for years; my things seemed naturally to find their appointed spots. When I wake at night I know exactly where I am and I can find my way around the flat in the dark.
Met my downstairs neighbor. Major Keith. What a funny old bird, so formal and polite, yet something about him seems familiar. He lifts his cap to me, calls me Miss Dent. It's the Major who keeps the garden looking so lovely. Now that the air's warming a bit he's out every day, tidying this and that, but really I think he's watching for the first buds, the first green shoots to push through the earth. Even though he doesn't speak to me much, I don't think he minds my sitting on my steps while he works.
This cough is worrying me. I thought it was a spring cold, but it's lingered now for months. Suppose I'll have to see someone about it if it doesn't clear up soon.
My poor Theo. What am I to do if this doesn't work out? Surely he can manage this little shop with some semblance of competence? But then he's never done so-why should things suddenly change? Wishful thinking on my part, I'm afraid.
It's funny how much we depend on our bodies without ever really thinking about it. Cells and organs chug away, blood runs, heart pumps. We worry endlessly about accidents and falls and catching things. Betrayal from within is the last thing we expect.
And cancer is the most insidious enemy, the body turning on itself like some secret cannibal. How could this happen and I not know it? Not feel it? Not sense a spot of decay stretching fingers outward?
Radiation and chemotherapy, the consultant says.
Will I poison my body's hideous child? Dear god, I feel so bloody helpless.
Sometimes I go hours without thinking of it. I manage to pretend I'm like the others, whole and healthy, manage to pretend that the decision to grant planning permission on some project is of earth-shaking importance, pretend I care whether the new cafe has better chips than the old, pretend anything other than my own body matters.
It comes out in tufts, in handfuls, like plucking a bird. Decorates the bottom of the tub with long, dark swirls, fills combs and brushes with thick mats. I've thought of putting it out in the garden for the birds to use in their nests. How absurd.
May would laugh, tell me I'd got my comeuppance. She berated me often enough for my vanity. I've taken to wearing caps, a beret mostly, like a travesty of a French peasant. Can't bear to see Theo.
New clerk at the office while I was away for the last course of treatment. Such a lame duck, with her missing buttons and terribly fair skin that flushes whenever anyone speaks to her. She watches me when she thinks I'm not looking, her expression one of… what? Not pity, I've seen that often enough. Concern? It's very odd.
They've washed their hands of me, abandoned me to Morpheus. So sorry, can't do any more for you, let us get on to someone who will feel properly grateful.
Too weak now to work, left without much fanfare. What did I expect?
Meg Bellamy's come, first bringing cards and flowers from the office, then on her own when the rest of the staff's communal guilt began to fade.
Reading Eliot again. These long, golden autumn afternoons do seem to have an almost physical presence, an existence separate from my experience.
I've been rereading all my favorites, folding the stories around me like the comfort of old friends.
The Major and I have developed a routine. We don't speak of it, of course, that would be somehow stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, but we observe it faithfully nonetheless. On fine afternoons I sit on the steps and watch him work in the garden, then when he begins to clean his tools I make tea. Sometimes we talk, sometimes not, comfortable either way. On one of his most loquacious days he volunteered a little history: he served in India, in Calcutta, during and after the war. Must have been the colonial manner that struck a chord when I first met him. He would have been a young officer when I was a child, might even have known my parents, considering the incestuous nature of the compound.
Since they stopped the treatments my hair's come in again, thick and short, like a child's, and as I've lost weight my breasts have shrunk to almost nothing. I've become androgynous, a fragile shell of skin and muscle wrapped around memories.
I shall need a nurse soon.