‘Are you going my way?’ he said.
Then he turned and walked on, the dog still pulling ahead, and the footsteps started after him again, but more softly now, as though the person were walking on toes.
He stopped and turned again.
‘I can’t see you,’ he said, ‘because it’s so dark. Are you someone I know?’
Again the silence, and the cool summer wind on his cheeks, and the dog tugging on the leash to get home.
‘All right,’ he called. ‘You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But remember I know you’re there.’
Someone trying to be clever.
Far away in the night, over to the west and very high, he heard the faint hum of an aeroplane. He stopped again, head up, listening.
‘Miles away,’ he said. ‘Won’t come near here.’
But why, when one of them flew over the house, did everything inside him come to a stop, and his talking and what he was doing, while he sat or stood in a sort of paralysis waiting for the whistle-shriek of the bomb. That one after dinner this evening.
‘Why did you duck like that?’ she had asked.
‘Duck?’
‘Why did you duck? What are you ducking for?’
‘Duck?’ he had said again. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’ll say you don’t,’ she had answered, staring at him hard with those hard, blue-white eyes, the lids dropping slightly, as always when there was contempt. The drop of her eyelids was something beautiful to him, the half-closed eyes and the way the lids dropped and the eyes became hooded when her contempt was extreme.
Yesterday, lying in bed in the early morning, when the noise of gunfire was just beginning far away down the valley, he had reached out with his left hand and touched her body for a little comfort.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Nothing, dear.’
‘You woke me up.’
‘I’m sorry.’
It would be a help if she would only let him lie closer to her in the early mornings when he began to hear the noise of gunfire.
He would soon be home now. Around the last bend of the lane he could see a light glowing pink through the curtain of the living-room window, and he hurried forward to the gate and through it and up the path to the front door, the dog still pulling ahead.
He stood on the porch, feeling around for the door-knob in the dark.
It was on the right when he went out. He distinctly remembered it being on the right-hand side when he shut the door half an hour ago and went out.
It couldn’t be that she had changed that over too? Just to fox him? Taken a bag of tools and quickly changed it over to the other side while he was out walking the dog?
He moved his hand over to the left – and the moment the fingers touched the knob, something small but violent exploded inside his head and with it a surge of fury and outrage and fear. He opened the door, shut it quickly behind him and shouted ‘Edna, are you there?’
There was no answer so he shouted again, and this time she heard him.
‘What do you want now? You woke me up.’
‘Come down here a moment, will you. I want to talk to you.’