FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS I HEARD NOTHING FROM KARL.

Mrs. W. phoned every two or three days to ask after me, and keep me up to date. Karl was plumbing full-time now, eating “like there was no tomorrow,” sleeping “like a baby.” A complete change from the bad times. He spent his evenings in his workshop. He said nothing about what he was doing. On Sundays he went fishing. But he wasn’t seeing friends or anyone and she was worried in case he became reclusive and too self-absorbed. As someone who prefers to be on my own I had nothing to offer by way of advice or sympathy.

Fiorella hadn’t shown up again. Karl hadn’t mentioned her. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been in touch by what Mrs. W. called “virtual chat.”

Late in the morning of the fourth Sunday after our fish supper, Karl phoned. Could he come over and show me something?

He arrived on his bike at two. He had his backpack. When he came inside, he took out a cardboard box, which he set down on the kitchen table and out of which he took what I knew at once was the model of the sculpture for my front garden.

Attached to the base was a little paper plaque on which was written “Fishing for Words.”

I could see what he intended. Wires that would be metal rods rose up from various irregular points round the circular base. The wires were shaped like lines cast from fishing rods, curving up into the air at irregular heights, some caught in mid-flight and some turning down into the base. By their overlapping they formed a kind of net. Inside the base was a bowl, which, as I looked, Karl filled with water. Then I saw how the ends of some of the lines dipped into the water.

“It’s only to give you an idea,” Karl said. “I’ll make the lines of different metals, like black rods and stainless steel and copper so they catch the light differently. That’ll give it some colour. And I’m going to cut letters out of a sheet of metal, and I’ll burnish them to give them different tones as well, and scatter them in the bottom of the pool. And you see? The pool will be a birdbath. I thought of including a fountain coming up from the middle that would burst over the top of the lines so that there was a spray of lines of water as well, and that would make everything shine wet in the sunlight. I could plumb in the water supply.”

I said, “It’s brilliant!” And I meant it.

The model was only a hint. But I could imagine the finished thing and was touched and excited by the way he’d combined his love of fishing with my love of words, and the idea of writing being like fishing, and how he’d given the sculpture a practical use that included natural life. In a way, the thing was like a birdcage without being a cage. He’d planned the way the lines crossed and crisscrossed to leave plenty of spaces for smaller birds to get in and out without feeling trapped.

I said, “A lot will depend how big the real one is, and the proportions, don’t you think?”

“I wondered if we could work out how big it should be?”

We talked this over and ended up in the front garden with a couple of kitchen chairs, arranging them on top of each other and on their sides and upside down and all such combinations, measuring the results with a tape measure, trying to work out the best dimensions. Finally, we got some sticks of bamboo I used for runner beans and did what we could to mock up a grid the height and footprint we thought would be about right for the sculpture.

We were at it for over an hour. But at last felt we had cracked it. We’d agreed the precise spot on the lawn, the height and diameter, the area and depth of the birdbath and how to construct it. And came back inside after clearing up, feeling cold from the chill of the winter evening but sparkling with excitement.

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or of deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune.

I was glad Karl set off for home as soon as we finished planning. To have gone on would have risked blemish.