217 Babel Street | Apartment 7
Margaret forced down her painkillers in a wash of tepid tea. Outside, rain spat. The beach was abandoned except for two boys in parkas struggling with a beagle on a lead. She touched her fingers to the pane. The detector-man had not yet appeared. Nor had he come yesterday.
The burials on the beach had started as a bit of mischief. Harry was almost jaunty, bouncing in his step as he entered the flat after each deposit, his cheeks ruddy from the sea breeze. Sometimes, sorting the Monday wash, she found pebbles and shells in his pockets, as if he became a boy again in those few wayward minutes on the beach. As for her, shut in as she was, the daily ritual had grown into a delicious one-man pantomime glimpsed through the crumbling proscenium of the bedroom window.
But now as she scanned the beach, her heart swam in her chest. She had to gulp back the lump in her throat. She took another mouthful of tea. Already she missed him. That's what the matter was. She missed the red splash of his woollen cap, the solid square of his shoulders beneath the old anorak, and his head bowed humbly beneath those ridiculous earphones. In spite of herself, she had started to rely on him, on his patience, on his stoicism, on the way he believed, even in obvious middle age, that the world was mysterious; that it had meaning; that it might reveal itself to him.