The door was glossy with its second white coat, immaculate. It had two silver bolts, which he demonstrated would slide easily and slickly into the plates he’d fitted in the frame…
‘Better not shut it for another couple of hours,’ he suggested. ‘With luck the rain’ll hold off that long; I think it will, but if you shut it before then the piant won’t have hardened enough, it’ll stick to the frame when you open it again. So leave it to harden for as long as you can before you shut the door. ‘
I can recognise good advice when I hear it. This was what I neeeded to know.
‘Thank you,’ I said.’ Thank you.’
Helen Simpson is one of the best short story writers around. A natural successor to Mansfield, Simpson manages to explore the secret isolation of our daily lives, and the ways in which the ordinary can become a life saving epiphany. Here, the organisation of a new back door after a break in becomes an unexpected means of healing after the death of a married lover. The neutral, practical advice of the door fitter takes on a progressively meaningful aspect as the story moves on; and as the security door takes shape, so does the protagonist’s feeling of hope and unexpected normality. The revelation of hope through a vocabulary of ‘beading’ and ‘brass screws’ is brilliantly done and allows the protagonist the dignity of her ‘secret self’ whilst also communicating her metamorphosis to the reader. We are as reassured by the fitter as the narrator!
So hard to do and Simpson makes it look SO easy…
An umissable writer.