When she could no longer fluff, she’d sit with her bony blue hands side by side in her lap or scratch her chair for hours on end, as though the urge to fluff were still in her fingers.

She could no longer tell yesterday from tomorrow. Both were reduced to meaning “not now”.

Was it because her eyesight was getting poorer or was she plagued by demons all the time? At any rate, she no longer knew whether it was day or night, got up when she was supposed to lie down and fell asleep when she was expected to speak.

She was still able to move about a little, holding on to the walls and furniture. At night, when everyone was asleep, she’d get up, drag herself to her chair and begin fluffing kapok that wasn’t there, or else rummage about until she’d found the coffee grinder, as if she planned to make coffee for some kindred spirit.

And always with that black hat on her grey head, even at night, as though ready to go out. Do you believe in witchcraft?

At last she lay down, and when she allowed that hat to be taken off without protest I knew she would never get up again.

II

That evening I’d been playing cards in the Three Kings until midnight and had had four pale ales, which meant I was in a perfect condition to sleep all through the night.

I tried to undress as quietly as possible, because my wife had been asleep for hours, and I can’t bear her nagging.

But as I was balancing on one leg to pull off my first sock, I crashed into the bedside table. She woke up with a start.

“You should be ashamed!” is how it began.

Then the doorbell rang, resonating through our quiet house, making my wife sit up straight.

At night a doorbell is a solemn sound.

We both waited until the reverberations in the stairwell had died away, me with my heart racing and clasping my right foot.

“What could that be?” she whispered. “Why don’t you look out of the window? You’re only half undressed.”

Normally it didn’t end that way, but the bell had cut her short.

“If you’re not going to have a look right now, I’ll go myself,” she threatened.

But I knew what it was. What else could it be?

Outside I saw a shadowy figure who shouted out that his name was Oscar and insisted I come with him to Mother at once. Oscar is one of my brothers-in-law, an indispensable sort of chap in circumstances such as these.

I told my wife what it was about, put my clothes back on and went to open the door.

“It’s going to happen tonight,” my brother-in-law guaranteed. “She’s in the throes of death. And put a scarf on: it’s cold.”