Chapter Five

Albert Todd sat at the table by the window and waited for his dinner. He had always eaten the main meal at midday, and affluence had not altered his habits or changed his use of words. Lunch was a snack which children took to school to eat in the playground. Dinner was what he wanted now. The window was streaked with rain. The lawn outside was littered with twigs, blown from the yews at the end of the garden. There were clumps of overgrown shrubs with dark shiny green leaves. He did not mind much that the garden was a mess. He didn’t often go out there now. It did not affect his comfort. The rhododendrons and the heavy velvet curtains at each side of the window shut out the little light that there was. In the room the electric light was on, shrouded by a red plastic shade, and the gas fire hummed. There was central heating, and that was on too. Albert felt the cold. He had moved into the ugly, yellow-brick villa fifty years before, and by now he had things arranged to his satisfaction, to provide for his comfort. He and Alice had bought the house because it was near to the park, for the children. Now he still went to the park to watch the bowling. He would never move from the house. It had everything that he needed, and he was in charge there. He had been persuaded to go into a nursing home for a month, after a replacement hip operation, but the stay had not been a success. The staff had been as pleased to see him leave as he had been to go. There had been complaints from the other residents, who had said that he was common.

Albert looked at the clock in the bulging wooden frame which sat on the mantelshelf. It ticked so loudly that he could hear it above the noise of the wind. It was only ten to one. At one o’clock Elsie would bring in the meal. Elsie was the wife of his middle son, Laurence. She was always on time. She knew that it pleased him. Albert considered that Laurence had married well. Elsie was big-busted, down to earth, with a barmaid’s easy sympathy and more brain than she was given credit for. Her only ambition was on behalf of her son, who was at university and wanted to be a lawyer. Before her marriage she had worked as a housekeeper. At The Laurels her duties were less arduous, her rewards greater, but she was just as conscientious. Albert never understood what Elsie had seen in Laurence; they seemed fond enough of each other.

She came in then, carrying a tray, pushing open the door with a round, tightly covered buttock, which still caught his attention, made him remember other days when he would have done more than look. There was steak and kidney pie for dinner. The kidneys had a sweet, fertile smell, which stirred more memories, made him look again at Elsie, at the rich fullness of her squeezed into the cheap clothes. She did not notice that he was staring, or if she did, she was so used to it that it was not important.