There was one other practical consideration that could not be ignored. I brought out the largest bucket from under the sink, emptied half a bottle of disinfectant into it, and added some water. I got the bucket up the ladder and set it in a corner behind as discreet a screen as I could devise from stacked boxes and an upended decorating table.
It was now after five o’clock and the sky was yellow. Birds were already screeching. The new day was burning the condensation off the skylight and soon would be reaching in and pasting the mattress with a rectangle of buttery sunshine. I pulled one of the old curtains from the pile of carpet scraps and burlap and underlays, and rigged it up against the glass, wedging it in tight. It was patterned in red and yellow and green; light shone through and cast glowing jewels across our bed. Suddenly I feared that Arthur might wake and find me gone, so I hurried back down.
He was asleep on his back. My entering the room roused him. At once his eyes were upon me, searching and finding, and they closed again.
Ruth? he said, though he seemed still asleep. Ruth, Ruth. I whispered to him that it was time to wake up. His eyes opened, and closed again. His mouth wriggled and settled into a thin pout.
Come on, I said. Wake up. It’s time. I pushed the bedclothes back. He turned over, gathering what was left of sleep tight into himself. I stroked his arm and gave his earlobe a little pinch.
Wake up, Arthur, I said. It’s time.
I pulled his feet to the floor and drew him upright but he kept his eyes closed, and when I let go he sank back into the pillows. To the east on the other side of the house the sun was almost risen; through this eclipsed window the light had begun to gleam sullenly.
Arthur, wake up! Come on, it’s time to go.
He didn’t say anything or even open his eyes, but he allowed me to help him up again until he was sitting on the bed. I found his slippers and fitted them over his feet, as stiff and grey as dead flounders. There was a delta of purple veins reaching across both of his ankles. I pulled him up by the hands and he stood swaying and unquestioning as if he’d given up all resistance and all sensation in his desire to stay asleep. When I led him along the landing and indicated the attic ladder, he went on ahead of me without haste or curiosity. By the time I had drawn the ladder up after us and dropped the trapdoor in place he had crawled onto the mattress and was lying curled and still.
I expected Tony to be a man of eager habits and that we would not have long to wait. It was still early when I heard the doorbell. I waited for some other sound, fearing something rushing and cataclysmic, some rapacious incursion, but at first there was nothing, not even the key in the lock. Then came the sounds of Tony and his mother talking and moving, it seemed casually and at random, through the house: feet on the stairs, opening doors, calling from one room to another. By degrees, voices were raised and grew urgent.
Have you checked the bathroom? See if he’s got stuck.
Wait. Look in there.
Arthur! Oh, God, where’s he got to?
I’ll try the garden.
Maybe he’s had a fall.
Go and check the bedrooms again. Check the sides, in case he’s fallen out.
The sounds receded for a while but I knew the two of them were still there. They would be thorough. Even after they had finished searching, they would not leave. They might check the hospitals to see if somehow Arthur had been transported away in the night. They would probably call the police. We had hours still to wait.
I did not dare move for fear of the floor creaking. I watched Arthur, praying he would go on sleeping, but he shifted and turned, groaned and woke up. For a wild second or two after his eyes focused, he didn’t know where he was. I leaned across, smoothed the side of his face with my hand and quieted him with a finger to my lips. I pointed downward and pressed the finger to my lips again, and then placed it gently on his lips.
He nodded. Nosey parkers, he whispered.
They can’t stay forever, I said. They’ll go soon.
Then it’ll be just us, he said, smiling.
I reached for his hand. It felt dry and loose as if his finger bones were afloat in a paper glove.
Around us the attic air grew grey and silky, and the sounds of voices and movement resumed in a dreamy way and swam like warm dust in the ether. Later, there were new voices and more footsteps, and the searching began again. All this was progressing at a time when we were used to sleeping and so we listened only half awake, half dreaming, to these warnings we didn’t need, that below us, another day had got people in its crass and ruthless grip and was propelling them through the hours, using them up with things that didn’t matter. We listened, and waited, and rested together untouchable, answerable only to each other.
All is quiet. Arthur is turned away from me, on his side. Now and again his hand flutters on his hip and a soft whistle or scraping noise emerges from his throat. I lie awake in the stained glow through the curtained glass and think of the shimmering sky and the surface of life beyond the strange warm altar of our mattress. Around me the air ripens with heat, and atoms of dust spin and glitter in it, and I sense a thousand secret quickenings in our attic universe of abandoned things and all their gummy folds and crannies and crumbling fibres, all the microscopic barbs of disintegrating matter on which the tiniest living things will catch and cling. Below me the house sighs with solitary, daylong weariness.
So we sleep, or wake and lie looking at the slopes of the roof, and turn to each other sometimes, and twice we stir ourselves as if by agreement and sit up and eat together, shyly at first and then with the silent, slight formality of people accustomed to sharing food but a little reticent and tongue-tied about the sharing of pleasure.
Arthur and Ruth conduct themselves over their meals with the same good manners that would attend all their mutual habits, with a decorum that, whether governed by constraint or by orchestration, is certainly consensual. She unpacks everything and arranges it on the mattress. He looks to her to preside. He waits while she chooses what he is to have and passes it to him. He starts to eat before she has arranged food for herself, this being a picnic after all, but he waits until she has finished before he judges it not inconvenient for her to provide him with what he wants next. He points to this and that- another sandwich, a tomato, a biscuit with cheese-and eats them in that order. At the right moment he leans across and takes charge of the flask and cups. His fingers cannot grip properly. He brushes his hands across his chest several times and shakes them and blows on them to get rid of the pins and needles, and tries again to unscrew the top. He can’t see to pour properly, either, and a considerable amount of tea falls on the mattress and wets his clothes, which he dabs with a napkin. I am watching anxiously but I don’t interfere, any more than Ruth would step forward and relieve a tremulous priest of the Communion cup and bless the wine herself.
We sleep again, and later I wake to a darkness that presses on my eyes. Even though I think Arthur is still asleep I whisper to him to lie still until I come back. I clamber over the floor, lift the trapdoor, and send the ladder down on its squealing metal slope to the landing. I hear the thud as the feet hit the carpet but I can’t see anything clearly. I wait for a moment before launching myself down, each tread heaving a creaky sigh. From the bedroom window I see that lights are on in most of the houses in the road. It’s not nearly as late as it seemed to be in the attic. The sky is a milky violet and the trees along the avenue are restless in a breeze. A few doors down a woman comes out with a watering can for the hanging basket on her porch. A young man walks past under a lamppost, hands pushed hard into the pockets of his short jacket. Mrs. M has not drawn her curtains.
By now I can work well enough in the dark. I start to search out heavy warm things. Ruth of course keeps a methodical eye on the storage of clothing and when I reach deep into the shelves in the spare bedroom wardrobe I find paired thick socks, woollen sweaters put away for the summer, and winter blankets folded in plastic bags. I pack as if we were about to depart for another time and season which, in truth, we are; perhaps something different, something tenuous and icy and autumnal, has entered the wind tonight.
Arthur doesn’t wait for me. I hear him lurching down the ladder and meet him on the landing. Down here, he looks worse. His hair is swirled and matted as if he’s been half drowned. When I approach and press my lips to his cheek, he trembles, and his skin is sweaty and sharp with salt and a trace of vomit. His mouth harbours a sour, flyblown smell and would be dark and sticky inside. One of his eyes wants to close. He wants to speak, I think, but he has trouble controlling his tongue and so lifts a hand into the air instead. He is listing a little to one side and stays on his feet as if standing up were a painfully achieved trick of balance.
