‘So that’s why you like this room,’ I said. ‘Have you seen anything good?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘If I’m to get my telescope down the corridor without being ushered back to bed like a schoolboy, I’ll need to know their night staff rotations.’
‘You know, you could just ask if they’ll let you take it in.’
‘And have them need to fill in a health and safety form? No chance.’
‘Have you met anyone nice?’ I asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ I gave his knee a squeeze.
He looked into my eyes and there was a moment that I couldn’t identify or define, but I know that it didn’t feel good. His beard was neater than it was when he left. I wanted to ask if they’d done that for him, but I knew that if they had, it would be the last thing he’d want to talk about.
‘So,’ I said, ‘your bedroom faces the courtyard?’
‘There are two floodlights that light it up from six p.m. to six a.m. I can’t see a bloody thing.’
‘Could you ask to be moved?’
‘I did. Not for three months, they said. Three months without seeing the stars. I’m going to go mad.’
‘Come home, then,’ I said, before I had time to think about whether it was a good idea. This, I thought, must be how parents who send their children to boarding school feel when they visit. Guilty and sad, and like each time you see your child they’ve become someone else, and the next time you visit they’ll be another someone else entirely.
I waited for him to reply, but he didn’t.
‘It’s fine. Shall we play dominoes?’ he asked, and I wanted to cry.
‘What if,’ I said, once he’d finished gloating about winning at dominoes, ‘I watched the stars for you?’
‘Hm.’
I pushed on, regardless. ‘I’ve got the big telescope still set up. You tell me what to look for and I’ll do it, and then I’ll—’
‘Telephone me,’ he said. ‘Describe what you see.’
‘Shall we try?’
‘Yes. I’ll be like an alcoholic getting calls from his sommelier.’
So every evening, I sat down and telephoned Humphrey’s bedroom and reported as carefully and accurately as I could everything I saw in the sky. He would ask me questions, tell me to move the telescope a degree here or there, or remind him if something had been in the same place in one of our last calls. I could always hear the scratching of his pencil as he wrote. Even once he’d been moved to a room with a much better view of the sky, at seven thirty on the dot I’d call him and tell him what I could see, and he would tell me if he could see it too. We were connected because we were looking at the same point, millions of miles away.
And then, on a Tuesday in February, I called and he didn’t answer. So I called again.
‘Hello?’ a young woman answered.
‘Yes, I’m trying to speak to Humphrey. Humphrey James?’
‘Oh, who am I speaking to?’
‘Margot … I’m his wife.’
‘Margot, Mrs James, I was just about to call you. Humphrey had a bit of a fall when he was getting out of the bath. He’s with the doctor now; we’ll update you as soon as we can.’
‘Should I come and see him? Do you need me to come over?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs James, visiting hours are over for today, but if the doctor alerts us to anything serious, we’ll make an exception. Please hold off until we know more.’
The next morning, I drove over to the care home. ‘Just bruising’ was the verdict. But I felt betrayed. He’d promised me we would never get that old. And now he needed help bathing, he needed to have a bath with a door in it.
The nurse, who seemed far too young to be a nurse and had covered her cardigan in badges for various charities, led me to The Field. ‘This is his favourite space,’ she said.
‘I know.’ I tried to smile, but it felt like my face was trying to do something it had never done.
‘So, just to warn you, his leg has a bandage and we are keeping it elevated to bring down the swelling, but other than that he’s fit as a flea.’ She smiled and held the door open for me.
He was looking out of the window, his leg, as promised, elevated on three cushions, and his shin bandaged up.
I sat beside him.
‘Darling. How are you? They told me about the fall,’ I said.
He turned to me. ‘Everyone saw my penis!’