She was knitting for a boy she called Alfie. It was not something she had intended but the sleeves were now long enough to stretch over the boy’s slender wrists. He would like the scratchy wool with its flecks of scarlet. Somehow he would know he was invincible in this.
But she had not written for days and her pen lay for dead, choked up on ink. Words haunted this room. She could hear them murmuring in low voices, calling across her, remaking her head’s shape. Just picking up her pen used to make her more orderly and would give each step across a room special significance though she would never know why until she had finished the story and sometimes it was after that before the truth could venture out.
She lifted her head from her knitting and reviewed the room. Not for nothing had her occasional friend labelled her a cat for she felt feline, her slow blink with a hint of calm malice. He was sat at right angles to her, dressed in green corduroys with his college boy jumper that kept him young and removed from her.
Perhaps it was his particular presence today, but she found the man across the room reading a source of darkness, something that contaminated even her shadow. And then he had told her it was a very long book as if the length would impress her and make her feel his potency. He turned the page as if he was adjusting an admirer’s clothing. He smiled at a phrase that was probably in his own head and his wife looked through the garden window and saw the future, without him.
She crossed the needles again and imagined Alfie. He was tall she decided and the hair would be swept loosely over his forehead like her brother’s. His voice would be be deep and far away and his feet would occupy wide spaces of carpet, I am here they would say. I am here. That was something she missed above all until she had decided upon Alfie, she had missed the easy regularity of her brother. ( Funny how it was still so hard to even think his name.) Her hands came to a rest on her lap and she shut both eyes remembering that breakfast and then the smell of his hair. Deep within his scalp ( his two crowns she reminded herself) there was a timeless cedary sweaty smell she missed more than her whole life, for his going had left her this permanent sedimenty taste and the conviction that she was in a waiting room and love had gone.