I’m rather taken with my new binoculars. When you’ve finished using them they sort of fold up into themselves, and are altogether quite ladylike – in that they’re not so big that if you happen to spin around when they’re round your neck you’re likely to take anyone’s eye out. Not that I’m ever in close enough proximity to anyone these days to have to worry about that. Having the chap in the shop hand me three different pairs of binoculars this morning was about as intimate an encounter I’ve had for quite some time. Close enough, certainly, for me to detect the distinct whiff of cough sweet about him as he talked.
I’d actually prepped myself with the names of a couple of wading birds, which I’d picked out from some identification chart I’d found in a drawer here at Widow’s Cottage. But as I stood there among all those quilted waistcoats and Barbour jackets I explained that I was only a budding birdwatcher, so he couldn’t have expected me to be especially knowledgeable. And within a couple of minutes we’d narrowed it down to two or three models and I was standing on the shop’s doorstep trying to read the road signs at the far end of the street.
I found my focus drifting onto pedestrians – a couple of youths … a woman pushing a buggy … some old chap standing waiting with his dog. There’s something very pleasing (and, of course, entirely reprehensible) about observing people when they’re not aware of it. Although, when you’re out in the street you always accept that you are, to some degree, on show.
‘And you know the first rule of birdwatching?’ the salesman asked me.
I brought the binoculars away from my face. I don’t believe I did.
‘When you spot something interesting, with the naked eye …’ he said and pointed across the road, as if the year’s first yellowhammer had just alighted on the post box, ‘… you keep right on looking …’ which he did, with great intensity, like Superman burning a hole through a piece of steel, ‘… then bring the binoculars up to your face.’
He slowly raised his cupped hands, which held a pair of invisible binoculars.
‘Otherwise, you’ll lose it,’ he said. ‘And by the time you’ve worked out where you were meant to be looking the bloody thing’s halfway back to Africa.’
To be honest, this sounds like the kind of hokum only a non-bona-fide birdwatcher would be spouting. Rule number one for proper birdwatchers would, I imagine, be something to do with finding a decent location. Or not wearing scratchy-sounding waterproofs. But you got the idea that he was the kind of chap who if you did anything but agree with him you’d be there all bloody day.
Anyway, I really am very pleased with my purchase. After lunch I took them out for a little spin on the saltmarshes. I stared out towards the horizon. Then east and west along the coast. On my way home I stopped and scanned the low hill between the villages. There are one or two large houses up there in the trees. No one was out and about. If they had been I’m fairly confident that I would have seen them. Would’ve probably been able to pick out a fellow human being within half a mile of me. And quite right, considering the amount of money they cost me. By my reckoning, the local exchange rate is roughly three pairs of binoculars to one second-hand car.
*
Physical intimacy, it almost goes without saying, has been all but absent for a little while longer than these first few months of widowhood. Over the last ten years things have been pretty quiet, carnally. There may have been the odd week here and there when we seemed to rediscover the joys of a bit of intercourse, and I’d find myself thinking, ‘Actually, this is rather good fun.’ But then something would interrupt it, the ennui would creep back in, and the one night when you’re in the mood he isn’t, and vice versa. Even if, by then, the rejection is partly out of spite for having been refused yourself a few nights before. Until the not having sex becomes the norm again. And, all of a sudden, you can count the months since you last did it, and the years since you did it in anything but the most rudimentary way.
But we always shared a bed. From time to time, after the lights went out, one of us would whisper, ‘I love you.’ And mean it, despite it sounding so desperate. Especially in the dark, when there was a good couple of feet between us. And hearing those words would do nothing but remind us how our relationship seemed so lacking in anything like real love.
John would fall asleep in a matter of minutes. Once the lights went out there’d be the double-cough, then the long sigh/exhalation. Two minutes later he’d roll over onto his side, so that he was facing away from me. Then he’d be gone.
It’s hard not to resent such a capacity. Especially when, within a couple of minutes, his snoring would be contributing to my being awake. Sometimes I’d get up and tiptoe off into the spare room, to read or listen to the radio. And, of course, if I’d wanted I could have stayed up all night, listening to some unabridged Austen or Brontë. Or making endless lists. I could’ve quite easily kitted out one of the spare rooms properly and moved in there wholesale. But, to be honest, it wouldn’t have felt quite right. I’ve got friends who have perfectly loving relationships with husbands who now sleep in opposite ends of the house, either because of the snoring or the different hours they keep. But with me and John it was always important for us to maintain the conjugal bed, even if there wasn’t much conjugation to speak of. It was just where we retreated to at the end of the day. And the fact that our relationship had changed, and possibly even failed, in all sorts of ways was put to one side. We just liked knowing that the other person was there.