Free The Tenement by Iain Crichton Smith

well.”
    He sat down opposite Trevor, holding a stick in his hands. “She used to make a cup of tea and bring me my messages.”
    His keen blue eyes stared unwinkingly at Trevor. There were soup stains on his jacket.
    â€œShe was younger than us of course. I always felt better for talking to her.”
    What did they talk about?
    â€œOh, I used to be a seaman. We talked about ports, Hong Kong, Auckland, places like that. I been all over the world. I think she wanted to move.”
    â€œWhat are you saying, you old bastard,” said Trevor under his breath. “She often wished she had a proper house and a garden. She talked about Devon. She talked about her son and her grand-daughter. She missed seeing her grand-daughter.”
    And all that time she never told me, thought Trevor. She wanted a part of her life which she could have for her own. He felt angry that she should have confided in this smelly old man.
    â€œA good woman,” the latter was saying. “She never complained. My legs is bad, you see. I have trouble climbing the stair. Would you like a cup of tea?”
    Two old men together.
    No, I don’t want any of your tea. Trevor felt obscurely jealous of the old man, of the conversations that he had never heard. It was as if there had been a side to his wife that he had never known about, and it bothered him.
    â€œShe would have made a good nurse,” Butcher was saying. “She told me once she’d wanted to be a nurse, but her parents were against it. So she became a secretary instead. That was how you met, wasn’t it, at school?”
    â€œYes,” said Trevor between his teeth.
    In a short while you’re going to say, How old do you think I am? And I’ll say you’re sixty-five though you’re nearer eighty. The old man’s teeth lay in a cup on the window sill like sharks’ teeth under water.
    â€œShe said you was very busy. ‘Always busy,’ she said. ‘A Head of a Department is always busy,’ she said.”
    The tears came into Trevor’s eyes. So that had worried her and yet she had told him it hadn’t. When they were romancing in their youth she had told him that they could live happily in a cottage together. Yet all this time she had been worried about a house and a garden and his position. A bee buzzed in the old man’s room, trying to get out. There were ships in bottles on the sideboard. So much he had seen of the world that Trevor hadn’t. All he had seen were the grey ships on wintry nights while below them like mice under floorboards the U-boats patrolled restlessly.
    He was furious with the old man. God damn him! What was that about being Head of a Department? His wife had gone to him for talk like a beggar, she had felt the time long; it was she perhaps who needed therapy.
    The old man limped over to the window and opened it. The bee still battered itself against the glass. Stupid insect, blind, blundering, honeyed.
    â€œI was shattered when I heard of her death. Of course she told me she had cancer. But she wasn’t frightened. She had worked out how long she had. She was a brave lady. Nothing but cancer wherever you look. I’ve no reason to complain. I’ve only got arthritis.”
    No reason to complain. The sentimental sweetness of it. We are summoned into this world, catapulted on our mission as if with a parachute: youth deceives us, age makes us cynics: the grandeur departs and we lie in harbour becalmed.
    There was a verse of poetry above the old man’s side-board.

    Build a little fence of trust
    around today.
    Fill the space with loving work
    and therein stay.
    Look not through the sheltering bars
    upon tomorrow.
    God will help thee bear what comes
    of joy or sorrow.

    What immortal poetry, what resonance, what Miltonic sonority! And yet it had probably helped the old man more than Shakespeare would have done.
    â€œMy own wife died two years ago. She didn’t know me