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people once more. No one was going to take away the peace in Observatory Mansions, no one was going to change our lives, no one was going to infiltrate flat six. I looked around my bedroom, soothed by what I saw.
    Lined up by the foot of my bed were three wooden boxes. The boxes were the same size. They were made by a carpenter to my specifications. Eight inches by thirteen inches, thirty inches in height. In all three boxes there were two vertical slats of half an inch thickness which divided the interiors perfectly in three. Two of these boxes had already been filled. They contained my gloves. My old, obsolete gloves. The two full boxes each held a total of six hundred pairs of gloves, two hundred in each compartment. I was still using the third compartment of the third box. The third box would be full in twenty-three pairs time. Between each pair of gloves I laid a piece of tracing paper and wrote on a small piece of watercolour paper, two inches by two inches, the date that I began wearing the gloves and the date that I finished. This was my glove diary. From the dates written on each piece of watercolour paper it was possible, by referring to the relevant school exercise books (numerically stacked in rows underneath the bed), to discover what had caused me to cease wearing them. I never allowed myself to wear gloves that had become remotely dirty, my hands were always to be an immaculate white.
    The new resident would be encouraged to leave the next day. Everything would be as it was.
    No one was going to touch my glove diary.

Looking at Mother .
    Mother’s bedroom had always been a bedroom, it was a bedroom when Observatory Mansions was a country residence, it displayed old-fashioned crimson flock wallpaper which had been decorating the walls undisturbed for over sixty years. My mother’s bedroom contained a mother, a bed, books, paintings, photographs, hats, shoes, mirrors, knickers, bras, magazines, gramophone discs, empty bottles, umbrellas, pressed flowers, teacups, sherry glasses, a man’s wristwatch, a walking stick, an abacus and many other things besides. The curtains in Mother’s bedroom were closed; they were always closed, day or night. On a small teak table stood a porcelain night lamp designed for infant children. The night lamp, which was never turned off, was in the shape of a mushroom and had a hollowed-out centre where a small porcelain rabbit resided. The porcelain rabbit held up a porcelain lantern which contained a tiny twenty-watt bulb. This lamp was mine, it was given to me when I was a child.
    The objects about Mother’s room were her aids to memory. Each object opened up for her a passage of time. When Mother could not remember her happier days naturally, she opened her eyes and looked around at the objects in her room. Her looks stroked them, she closed her eyes and retaining the image of a particular object took it with her, back into her past. Mother never opened her eyes to a person, only to objects, those certain objects collected in her room. Ihad not seen my mother’s eyes, which were blue in colour, for some years.
    So when, the next morning, I went in to tell Mother of the new resident and to ask her for advice, she did not even acknowledge me. I would often go into her bedroom to speak to her, to tell her all my fears and, though Mother never spoke back, I felt comforted, that she was – by simply being there, quietly breathing, never interrupting – calming me. But that morning, with such news, I hoped she might say something to me, I hoped she might at least move to indicate her alarm, I hoped she might somehow show that I had her sympathy. But she didn’t take hold of a gloved hand and squeeze it tightly, she kept her eyes closed, kept her long grey hair still on the pillow, kept her breathing regular.

Motion .
    The new resident didn’t leave her flat all morning. I listened out for her footsteps for an hour, and even twice went up to the third floor, listening at her door