The Widow's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

but it’s something to cling onto. The alternative is just to surrender and let it ride roughshod over me.
    Whatever – the whole thing is deeply distressing because … well, because blindness, even temporary, partial blindness, is bound to shake you up. And today, when I finally worked out what was happening I suddenly felt incredibly insecure and alone up here, without anyone near me that I could call on, just to hold my hand.
    I know that every previous episode has passed and that my sight has always been fully restored, but that doesn’t stop me worrying that this one might prove to be unshakeable. By the time I was back at the cottage, half my vision was gone. I almost clattered into a couple of people on the high street and only succeeded in getting the key into the lock on the front door by looking off to one side in order to line it up in my periphery.
    I should probably just be thankful that I don’t have those real head-banging, debilitating three-day migraines that some people suffer. For them the flashing lights are just the beginning. Like the flashing lights at a levelcrossing. The barriers come down and they know that it’s going to be one very long and uncomfortable wait. With me, it’s usually over within forty-five minutes. In the meantime I can keep my eyes open and watch as the blind spots slowly evolve from fizzing little chains into great blocks of oblivion – and gradually recede from the centre of my vision. But it’s a show I’ve seen too many times already. So I tend to put a damp cloth on my neck and lie down in a darkened bedroom and listen to the radio, or try to doze for a while.
    Now, here I am an hour or two after the event, and my thoughts are still a little jumbled. If I’m in company I often experience some difficulty arranging a sentence, as if caught up in a mildly dyslexic fog. A bit like being hungover, but rather disconcertingly, without having had a drop to drink.
    This morning, as I desperately splashed cold water over my face up in the bathroom, in a futile bid to head it off, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. What I saw was not unlike those vandalised saints I’d seen earlier on at Salthouse, with their faces completely obliterated and all their features gone.

Those first couple of years we used
    T hose first couple of years we used to have the most incredible arguments. Proper plate-smashing, snarling, spitting, cat-and-dog sessions. Like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? . For some reason Friday nights used to be our preferred evening for a bit of a dust-up. We’d spend an hour or two loading ourselves up with booze, then off we’d bloody well go.
    Of course, I can’t for the life of me now remember what it was that so exercised us. Quite possibly just the uncontainable rage of two people suddenly confronted with the fact that this was it. This spouse, with their infuriating little habits and boundless ignorance. God, no! we must’ve been thinking. Not fifty years of this. Let me out!!
    After two or three years our scraps died down a little. I’d like to say that we learned how to properly appreciate one another, but it’s just as likely we simply resigned ourselves to our miserable lot. We would still have the odd set-to now and again, just to keep our hand in, but we tended not to go in for so much of the histrionics – the whole yanking-down of curtains/upending of tables/etc. Why bother, when a couple of choice words or a well-timed grunt could do just as much damage? And by thenwe weren’t necessarily trying to provoke another round of screaming and shouting. All we wanted was to gently rake over the coals of deep despair.
    If, five years into a marriage, you still don’t know how to get under the skin of your spouse – how to plug straight into one’s loved one’s battery of insecurities – then you really haven’t been paying attention. Similarly, when you’re on the receiving end, you learn soon enough