Sadler's Birthday Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’d be late for something or other, but so painfully slowly when you were on your own. He sipped his tea, expecting it to be cold by now, but it wasn’t, it was still almost too hot to drink.
    Then he remembered Mrs Moore. She’d be coming at half past eight. Only another half hour and she’d be there. Unless it was Sunday. He couldn’t bear it to be Sunday and her not to come. He wasn’t hungry at all, but he knew he’d ask her to make him breakfast if she came because she’d have to stay longer if she made breakfast, and there’d be time for a chat.
    But Mrs Moore had said she’d have to stop coming soon. It was her legs. She couldn’t get about like she used to. And the stairs – they could do dreadful things to your knees, stairs could.
    â€˜You’ll have to find someone else, Mr Sadler,’ she said one morning, ‘it’s getting too much for me.’
    â€˜Too untidy, am I? Never used to be, of course.’
    â€˜Oh no, it’s not that, Mr Sadler. I just can’t manage this type of work any more. I’m too old, I daresay.’
    â€˜We’re all getting on. But you oughtn’t to think about it. Look at the dog. You’d never say he was a hundred and five, would you! Still wags his tail.’
    Sadler chuckled, but Mrs Moore only shook her head. ‘Poor little old fellow.’
    â€˜Happier than I am, Mrs Moore, you mark my words. He’s got me and that’s all a dog needs, a good master. They don’t miss the company of their own kind, do they?’
    â€˜Friends are of our making, Mr Sadler. If you . . .’
    â€˜All dead, mine.’
    â€˜Well, there’s Reverend Chapman at least. He’s a regular caller.’
    â€˜I never gave Jesus the time of day, Mrs Moore. Not since I was a lad and said my prayers in my mother’s lap.’
    â€˜Well, I’ve always said, Mr Sadler, God helps those that help themselves.’
    And Sadler was left on his own, pricked with the little needle of her spurious wisdom, sunk in gloom.
    She won’t leave, though, he told himself now. She knows I like the companionship. Don’t mind about the sweeping and polishing any more, it’s the company. He thought of the house now in the same way that he thought of himself. There was so little of it left alive – most of it had been closed and shuttered long ago. What mattered was to keep going the bit of it in which he still lived – a couple of rooms, that was all. You had to keep them clean and aired, even if they were cold and draughty in winter. You had to let them hear the sound of voices once in a while, too. Silence accumulated otherwise, like dust.
    He wondered suddenly how thick the dust was lying in his old room, the room with the child’s picture. I might go and see, he thought, must’ve been two years since anyone went in there. And he finished his tea, glad now that he had thought of something to do. If it’s not too bad, he decided, I’ll sleep up there tonight. It’d make a change and it might be warmer than the Colonel’s room. He got up and, trying not to wake the dog, tiptoed out into the cold passageway.
    He shuffled into the hall, up the wide stairs with their loose stair-rods and their worn grey carpeting and on to the first floor landing. Then into his bedroom to find his slippers, out and up a narrower flight of stairs to where the coconut matting began. ‘It’s hard wearing,’ Vera had said, ‘but you couldn’t call it smart.’ Even less now. Its edges were frayed and its colours were faded and spoiled.
    Sadler walked to the door of his old room, waited a moment outside it and then turned the door handle. It turned but the door didn’t move. Another of those wrong decisions, Sadler thought with dismay, made a year or more ago – never thought I’d need to go in there again, no doubt, shut the door and locked it and