Making Things Better Read Online Free PDF Page B

requirement, had embodied all his fantasies about companionship, stored up from youth. It was even simpler than that. She was robust, practical, normal, and in the early days she had seemed to have normality in her gift, so that he himself felt healthier, heartier, more optimistic, more enthusiastic as he went about his various tasks. Above all he did not have to compensate her for anything, console her for unhappiness, make things better . . . Although it was she who had demanded the divorce he knew that the fault was his, the original fault, like original sin, which might not have been detected at first glance. They were mismatched, but not in any obvious sense, despite their utterly different backgrounds; they were mismatched by virtue of their needs, though these needs had for a time been miraculously met. That he had failed her was abundantly clear, even though he was not technically guilty of any misdemeanour. Others perhaps were guilty, but he could not entirely blame those others. He reflected that to act out of need is always fatal. He tried to give himself some credit for not letting his own need compromise his sense of fairness. In that way he was still able to look forward to his next meeting with his wife. Their affection for each other had not soured, had if anything increased now that need no longer entered the equation. He sighed as he thought of the long week to be got through before he saw her again.
    They had met in circumstances that had been so unexpected, so mysterious, and yet so humdrum that it seemed appropriate to mention fate. He had not at first paid much attention to the woman standing in front of him in the queue at the bank until she had asked if she might borrow his pen to write a cheque. Conscious of the shop’s takings, which he had in a canvas bag kept for this purpose, he had smiled briefly but had made no attempt to engage in conversation. It was only when they left the bank at the same time that he sought to offer some acknowledgement of her presence. After a couple of anodyne remarks (‘Lovely day’, ‘Yes, isn’t it? At last.’) they were alerted by a crash in the street beyond the bank’s double doors, and instinctively ran out together to see a young man on the ground and a taxi driver standing over him. A large fuming motorcycle on its side, just in front of the taxi, explained the crash, though the taxi driver’s part in it was, and was to remain, unexplained. One or two people had gathered, and there was talk of the need for an ambulance. ‘Let me through,’ said the woman who turned out to be Josie. ‘I’m a nurse.’ She bent over the boy, who seemed to be eighteen or nineteen and was clearly concussed, and asked, ‘Can you hear me? What’s your name?’
    â€˜Richard,’ was the very faint reply.
    â€˜Don’t worry, Richard. We’ll take care of you.’
    Already someone had issued from the bank, saying proudly that an ambulance was on its way.
    â€˜Don’t touch him.’ Her instructions were given in a kindly but authoritative manner. ‘I think he’s broken his shoulder.’
    It seemed entirely natural that the two of them should join the boy in the ambulance, and even wait in the hospital until he had been found a bed. With the arrival of a doctor (exhausted, and looking about as young as the patient) he put his hand under her elbow and steered her away. The incident seemed to have taken place in a dream; already he felt he knew her as well as he knew anyone.
    â€˜Would you like a cup of coffee?’ he asked. She declined, saying that she had to go to work. It was with a feeling of regret that he saw her go.
    After lunch he sent his father upstairs to the as yet untenanted flat above the shop for a rest. This he did every day, aware that what had become routine for them both confined him until the late afternoon, when his father would make an increasingly mournful appearance,