Margaret? No, I couldn’t really understand her. I have said she was like me and, having said it, cannot remember the reason. Undemanding, unobtrusive: I am that now but I wasn’t when I was Margaret’s age. Those of us with any health in us at all change as we grow and I wondered how Margaret would change, or whether she would stay as she was and simply, in the course of time, wither. Either way, as I considered it, it did not augur well for Syl’s peace of mind or his contentment. Then I told myself I was guilty of that male fault of over-analysis, of pointless prognostication, and turned, as it were, to look on the bright side again. The old are too prone to misgivings. It was true that Syl was over-protective towards her, over-indulgent, and sometimes over-attentive—although not always. Once he took her away for the weekend to stay with a man he’d been at school with. The man had an adopted son, who was about Margaret’s age and very full of himself. I told Syl I did not think this weekend a good idea and he stared at me in wonder and asked why. I said feebly that if past form was anything to go by he and his friend would spend the time together engaged in manly pursuits and Margaret would be bored. What I really feared was that youth, as they say, would call to youth, and Margaret would come to her senses in the presence of the lad who was, as I remembered, a lively, attractive boy despite his conceit. ‘She’ll have the kid to talk to,’ Syl had said. ‘He’s going through an anti-blood-sports phase, and sits around indoors all day.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say. How do you explain to a man that you fear a younger man will cut him out by being lazy and gentle in what could be construed as a feminine fashion, while he himself is ploughing across the countryside proving his masculinity? There is no meeting-ground here. I have never met a man who could see that wit and a kind of reticence—which could almost be called cowardice—make up a combination which, in some men, and perhaps in some women too, is virtually irresistible. Physical prowess has in it an element of boastfulness—‘Watch me’—which inevitably, albeit unjustly, gives its owner a certain appearance of boneheadedness. The sly smile of the aesthete has got more people into bed than the triumphant grin of the long-distance runner. I know. I wondered hopelessly why, after all this time, men didn’t know that as well. I see that I have said I feared that Margaret might ‘come to her senses’, and have exposed my reservations. Another girl of her age might not have been too unsuitable for Syl, but she was.

I put these unpleasant thoughts aside, as is the way of human kind. Increasing age does not increase one’s acceptance of anything, not even death.