Someone Like You

Why, when he put out his right hand in bed at night, could his fingers not feel what they were touching? He had knocked over the lamp and she had woken up and then sat up suddenly while he was feeling for it on the floor in the dark.

‘What are you doing now?’

‘I knocked over the lamp. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh Christ,’ she had said. ‘Yesterday it was the glass of water. What’s the matter with you?’

Once, the doctor had stroked the back of his hand with a feather, and he hadn’t been able to feel that either. But he had felt it when the man scratched him with a pin.

‘Shut your eyes. No – you mustn’t look. Shut them tight. Now tell me if this is hot or cold.’

‘Hot.’

‘And this?’

‘Cold.’

‘And this?’

‘Cold. I mean hot. Yes, it’s hot, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ the doctor had said. ‘You did very well.’

But that was a year ago.

Why were the switches on the walls, just lately, always a few inches away from the well-remembered places when he felt for them in the dark?

Don’t think about it, he told himself. The only thing is not to think about it.

And while we’re on the subject, why did the walls of the living-room take on a slightly different shade of colour each day?

Green and blue-green and blue; and sometimes – sometimes slowly swimming like colours seen through the heat-haze of a brazier.

One by one, neatly, like index cards out of a machine, the little questions dropped.

Whose face appeared for one second at the window during dinner? Whose eyes?

‘What are you staring at?’

‘Nothing,’ he had answered. ‘But it would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’

‘Robert, what were you staring at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why were you staring at the window like that?’

‘It would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’ he had answered.

He was going past the place where he had heard the horse in the field and now he could hear it again: the breathing, the soft hoof thuds, and the crunch of grass-cropping that was like the noise of a man munching celery.

‘Hello old horse,’ he said, calling loud into the darkness, ‘Hello old horse over there.’

Suddenly he heard the footsteps behind him, slow, long-striding footsteps close behind, and he stopped. The footsteps stopped. He turned around, searching the darkness.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘You here again?’

In the quiet that followed he could hear the wind moving the leaves in the hedge.