The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Author:Christine Dwyer Hickey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

He hears his wife get out of bed, the pat of her feet across the bedroom floor and on out to the bathroom. She calls his name. He doesn’t reply. Just this page, he thinks, just till I get to the end of this page, this last drop of coffee.

And now the background movement of water: a trickle followed by a robust flush, a few feeble splashes as she washes her hands and then the pat of feet again.

Just to the end of this paragraph, he thinks. Let me just finish this paragraph.

And now she is calling out to him, something about flowers and something about the weather and this is followed by a long tutting complaint about the hordes of invaders choking up the streets of Provincetown.

Another few seconds, he thinks, just another few seconds in Marseilles, with this man who doesn’t mind cutting himself with the blade of his own honesty.

But she is back to the flowers again: ‘And so once you’ve collected them, then you could—’

‘I’ll be just a minute…’ he calls, hoping she will wait there and find something else to do.

But she does not wait. Her voice, nearer now, says, ‘Flowers.’

Over the frontier of the printed page, he sees her shape caught in the shadow of the doorway.

‘What flowers?’ he asks.

‘The flowers I ordered for Mrs Kaplan, of course. You were with me when I ordered them!’

‘The party is not until tomorrow.’

‘Yes, but I’m thinking Provincetown? Tomorrow? I mean, can you imagine?’

He looks at her blindly.

‘I’m trying to tell you something,’ she says, ‘and I wish you wouldn’t look at the clock any time I begin to speak.’

‘I wasn’t aware I had looked at the clock.’

‘It’s like I’m at the shrink or something, paying on the hour.’

‘This is not going to take an hour – is it?’ he says.

‘You have to go to the florist and much better you go today, that’s all I’m saying.’

She comes into clearer focus now, her hands on her hips, nightgown crumpled in the front, her hair sticking up as if it’s squirting out of her head. Like a precocious child, he thinks, who finds herself constantly exasperated by the stupidity of grown-ups.

‘What are you grinning at?’ she says.

‘I wasn’t aware—’

‘Oh, would you please stop saying that!’

He puts down the book. ‘Now why don’t you just tell me what you would like me to do?’

She pauses, takes in a small breath and – ‘Well now. I would like you to go to the florist’s and pick up the flowers for Mrs Kaplan. You can do it when you go out to collect the mail.’

She turns to go back into the bedroom.

‘I wasn’t thinking of going to the post office today.’

She spins around, her face pained and worried.

‘Oh, but supposing—?’

‘I told you what he said – he said not to expect any news before the end of the summer.’

‘But it’s that now. It is the end of the summer now – don’t you think? Monday is Labor Day – I mean,

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