He read it from cover to cover every Friday.

Then the pair of them got the call that the ICU was open to visitors, and they both walked down the long corridor lined with empty trolleys and incubators and heart machines. Past the Surgical and the Medical wards. Asking directions at the stations along the way. And eventually, arriving at the ICU, holding their breath on the threshold, and then, and only then, realizing that they were both heading for the same bed.

There before them, lying rigid and still, and protected by two cot-sides was the unfortunate Gussie, an enormous green plastic tube stuffed down his throat. Lines for drips and urine bags needled into his arms. His head was so crisscrossed with stitching that it reminded Hughie of a football. Louise thought he looked as serene as a sleeping baby. But it affected her. It did. Louise had to sit down almost immediately. She just burst out suddenly. Very dramatic and loud. Rocking herself in the chair and whining. Oh, she never expected it would have that effect. She really was shocked. And that at least hid the fact that Hughie’s hands were trembling, and that he was having no success in his attempts to get the handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and clear his eyes.

2

AND WHERE WERE YOU, BIRDIE?

At home. Isn’t that right? Yes. Sitting in your drawing room, with your back glued to the armchair, and your two hands gripping either armrest. The fingers of your right hand tapping away like an impatient detective. Tapping out something from Wagner maybe. Isn’t that the fellow the Vet used to play? That dark chocolate-in-the-river music. Tapping away the time because you knew even this would pass.

This waiting.

Everything passes. The Vet playing his records. He passed. You and him dancing. Oh that surely passed, didn’t it?

Whoosh.

Remember the day after he died, when you first poked out the old records from their sleeves and you clipped one of them onto the silver rod inside the gramophone and waited to hear Karajan conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. That was the stuff to waken the dead. And all that passed. Everything. If you sit long enough, everything dissolves.

Life is about endurance. No matter who is behind the curtain. The one sure fact is that if you sit it out, they’ll go away.

So you sat, Birdie, for hours, and days, and then weeks. Staring at the curtain. You had been sitting since the Vet died. Sitting since they took little Momo away in her tiny white coffin. And of course there’s no point denying that there have been times in recent years when you missed sex; when you regretted that all that messy stuff was gone forever.

The Vet never spoke of it. He just executed the operation with the rhythm of a man who saw animals doing it in farmyards day in and day out. He knocked on your door when he wanted it. And then he’d enter your darkness with an exquisite lack of romance, which caused you to shiver and tingle. Strangely enough, the delight was more intense than if he had come reciting the collected poems of Pablo Neruda. But you wouldn’t have objected to a little bit of conversation as well. A little bit of Pablo Neruda. That was the book Louise gave Gussie the Christmas before they parted. What was it called? The Captain’s Verses. Nice poems. But a fat lot of good it did poor Gussie. Louise may have hoped it was a road map that Gussie might follow.