As she sat at the table: one bulb gone, I must fix that. She was reading. Two o’clock. And drinking. Poor Ben, poor tired kind. And drinking. Last year his heavy rough voice. Let’s go, what does it matter? and his shrug. And now sitting about in a dressing-gown, farting and groaning, wet-faced slack-lipped alone.
–Teyor aaa ’pmeh
And the right side of his face like a man after the dentist.
–Te yorrr
And the nurses coming, shifting him on to the bed.
–Yorr ’p meh
drawing the curtains.
On the table before her lay a debris of demands. She observed them remotely. The windows on to the street flashed again and again with the passing lorries. New Year. She puzzled at it, shivering, looking into the darkness.
The reality that was the darkness. As she thought of that. The silver candles burned again in their first house, their blueberry-painted slum flat in Panton street over the old girl; garrulous persistent deaf old bitch. They sat up half the night talking in those days. But she remembered. 2 days home from hospital with her first child. Her beautiful son, first man, her red earth, face open as a peasant, the delicate lips smelling of milk, and her own tiny breasts plump and flowing for him. She was proud. Of her shape, of her perfectly formed son, of survival. She chirrupped on the telephone as she nursed him. Flew about the house, feeling pale and light while he slept.
Talking. Talking. Even now she could feel the blood and the heat rise in her together that evening, the sudden faint blackness the stream of blood released down her legs, the surprising wetness.
Darling I’m bleeding. I seem to be. And lying on the bathroom floor the room she never tidied strewn with books and old clothes. Looking up at the cistern. The blood in great slithering clots flowing out of her. Don’t move. Don’t move. The great bath towel between her legs and Ben phoning, phoning. My love my lovely son not frightened very still looking into the darkness. And down the stairs and under the stars on a stretcher looking barely turning her eyes lying on the trolley rubber pipes down her nose into her stomach looking up at white mask and eyes. Darkness I don’t want to die I’m going to be happy. Praying. Into the darkness.
And the first day afte
