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things that have happened, she looks like a cat that’s had all the cream. Can’t she forgive me for being old and stupid?
    Shirley was tugging off her beautiful coat, pale camel wool with a big shawl collar. She folded it, lining outermost, and tucked it at May’s feet, in the lee of the bed. She was a good girl still; clean, careful.
    Shirley sank down gingerly on Alfred’s bed. She was heavier than May. (Should she tell Shirley not to sit on the bed? She didn’t want to annoy her further.) The metal frame creaked, and the two women stared at Alfred anxiously.
    ‘Is he going to wake up?’
    ‘Well I hope so. I’ve got all kinds of forms and doings for him to sort out.’
    ‘Why are we whispering then?’ asked Shirley.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said May. (They had always whispered, when the men were around. Trying not to disturb them. Not to upset them. Not to let them know what they were getting up to. But now they didn’t have to whisper any more. It was too late for whispering. He hadn’t time to sleep.)
    ‘Alfred,’ May whispered, then made an effort. ‘Alfred,’ louder. ‘Alfred, wake up.’
    Sleeping like that, he was unprotected, naked as a baby despite his blue pyjamas, the fragile bony bridge of his nose, so near the skin, such taut red skin, the strands of white hair lying neatly as always like hanks of bleached rope across his naked crown.
    She loved him completely for making an effort. Alfred would never let her down. He was probably ready hours ago, hair combed, clean pyjamas, shipshape bedclothes …
    ‘Your Dad is wonderful,’ she said to her daughter, as Alfred stirred, and coughed. Her heart swelled with love; Alfred, alive. Still there for them. Husband, father.
    ‘Hmm,’ said Shirley, half-rising, then sitting again, nervous, as ever, of being in the wrong, in the wrong place (which she was, of course, and her father would certainly let her know it) with the wrong clothes and the wrong boyfriend.
    ‘Why’s Dad so wonderful all of a sudden?’ she asked, and it came out louder than she meant.
    May frowned at her. ‘Well he’s shaved,’ she said. ‘In his condition. All combed and shaved.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Shirley blankly. ‘Good for him.’
    When they least expected it, one of his eyes opened, surprising as the eye of a waking elephant, liquid and glistening in its helmet of leather, large, war-like, shot with blood.
    ‘Not a rest-camp,’ he said, indistinctly. ‘Not a bloomin’ rest-camp, is it?’
    ‘Well there’s a café if you want something,’ gasped May, who had been getting deafer for years, on her feet in an instant, taking his hand. ‘It’s not exactly a restaurant, but it will do. Shirley’ll go for you. She’s young.’
    Now he was fully awake, stretching up, irascible, grasping the aluminium frame of the bed, finding he couldn’t do it squarely and turning away from May and Shirley to pull himself up from the right-hand side, clutching the metal with stiff red knuckles that whitened with the effort, panting, straining, and surely his hands were too thin, like claws, his giant beak like a wounded eagle –
    He clasps the crag with crooked hands
    Close to the sun in lonely lands …
    ‘I said, it’s not a rest-camp here,’ he repeated, looking accusingly at the two women. ‘My daughter doesn’t seem to know that.’
    ‘She’s come all the way from the West End,’ May rushed in, nervous, protective. ‘She’s brought you some chocolates from Selfridges.’
    ‘Well,’ he said, more forgivingly. ‘All the same, she’s got to get off the bed. These beds are meant for ill people.’
    ‘She’s come all this way,’ May repeated, stubbornly. ‘It’s a long way. She’s a good girl.’
    His pale blue eyes, watery, sharp, the eyeballs caught in a net of red veins, veered briefly across to the neighbouring bed before he said, as if nothing had happened, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your old father, then?’
    Perhaps he sensed heads turning towards