We did see our friends and Percy was merry in their company, and our big hikes across Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire were a success. We stayed in old inns and looked round ancient churches and in warmer weather swam in rivers. He often told me how much he loved me. I read him short poems. The shorter the better, he would say. Emily Dickinson suited him well. At home, we cooked together from intricate recipes. He found that red wine was unpleasant and he developed a taste for white. He listened to old Beatles records. He took pleasure in young Peter’s visits. They made a special bond and had ludicrous intimate conversations.

  Folded into these pleasures was the long retreat. By stages, his violin work dropped away and was no longer mentioned. When he was confused, he became irascible. He began to resent it whenever I went out. However often and clearly I explained where I was going, for what reason and when I would return, he would be angry when I came home and would accuse me of going off without warning, of deceiving him. That hurt, because those evenings when I was not at my Italian lessons, he was right. The pleasures we had at the beginning were no longer possible. There should have been something both dark and grand, even dramatic, in witnessing the person you love cast off, piece by piece, all the elements of their being in relentless disintegration. But the day-to-day reality of the process was its banality. Percy’s consciousness was a closing door. He became simple, boring, repetitious, unlovely. By common standards, he was grossly unfair, sometimes abusive, then weak, then demanding. But those standards were what he had also cast off. I lived by the irregular clock of his moods. Worst of all, he forgot he loved me. I was the presence who looked after him, fetched things, tried to explain, reassure, comfort. Now and then he had trouble with my name. After some effort it would come, but he had forgotten who we once were. I tried to keep it alive, but it was a lost cause. I went to look around a state-run care home and that was when I remembered how much I loved him and that I could never leave him in such a place. I decided to take extended leave from teaching so that I could look after him properly.

  The days of insight, suicide conversations and river swimming, lumpy mattresses in old pubs and declarations of love were two years behind us. Percy had crossed his frontier and I crossed it with him. His journey was mine. There were many milestones of deterioration ahead of us and most decayed in memory as soon as they were passed. But one remained fresh. It was a September afternoon. I was in the garden clearing up the dying summer’s growth. My best resource apart from Rachel’s respite visits was Percy’s newly developed taste for daytime television. There was nowhere in the house where I could escape its gaudy clatter but that was a small price. At least I could be on my own in the garden knowing that he would not be moving from his armchair. I was lifting withered plants, shaking the earth from their roots and tossing them into a wheelbarrow. I went indoors for a glass of water in the kitchen and checked on Percy. He was in a state of high excitement. His game show or whatever had been interrupted. The screen showed a jet passenger plane flying into and slicing through a tall building I immediately recognised. Then a cut, and a second plane hit the adjacent tower. And now, another jump in time, a long-lens view across the East River and the second building sinking into itself as though in slow motion. I stood frozen in horror. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people in that building. We were watching their deaths. Then we were back in Manhattan. A colossal cumulus of dust rose up and surged through side streets and people fled before it. And now we were watching the first tower go down, and again, the second tower. I could not speak. But at each new shock, at the two impacts, the twin collapses, Percy punched the air and shouted ‘Wow!’ And ‘Brilliant!’ And ‘Again!’ He turned to me, his face flushed and contorted with joy. He was scanning my expression, wanting me to share his elation.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ he shouted.

  I left the room and went back into the garden. I assumed that people were sharing their anxiety that what had happened in New York was about to happen everywhere. I called Harry on my Nokia. Like me, he had seen it late and we exchanged shocked impressions. Everyone was doing the same that afternoon. I wanted to see him, but there was no chance. He was in London for work. I called my sister and then my friends and repeated the conversation – it was important and reassuring. I could hear from inside the house Percy’s happy cries as the footage was shown yet again. By remaining in the garden, I was keeping away from his infantile insufficiency, the high wall of stupidity that the disease had built round him. Shocked reporters were speaking into microphones, the urgent drumbeat music announced that this was news, global news, and history must surely bend to a new direction. But Percy understood nothing. His grisly joy made the catastrophe appear even more horrific. Irrationally, I felt shamed by him. While others embraced loved ones for mutual comfort, my husband squawked with delight, like a toddler out of control or, for all I knew, like the mastermind of the attack, watching from a mountain hideout. Yes, yes, I knew that his brain was dying, his mind shrivelling. But the habits of ordinary personal exchange die a slower death. Until I made the effort and intervened, my automatic responses to Percy were moral, not clinical. In the instant, I could not help judging him by what he said or did, as I would anyone else. Then I would be furious with myself that I could momentarily forget that he was ill in a special way. Not with a fever or cancer or a tricky heartbeat, but through a transformation into a lesser being of – dare I name them? – lower intelligence, few interests, diminished sympathies, a man unable to act coherently in the social world and with an enfeebled grasp of the actual.

  On three occasions, before it became too difficult, I went with Percy to a support group run by the city council in a room in the town hall by Carfax. He did not speak but sat calmly and seemed to be following the discussion. The atmosphere was kindly, and I learned a few useful tips and spoke up a couple of times. There were around fifteen of us carers, two-thirds of whom were men. I could not agree with the lady who described the husband by her side, with some maternal fondness, as ‘adorably childlike’. A child is in a constant state of becoming. Its curiosity is instinctive and its world is expanding. I said nothing and smiled supportively like the rest. I gathered from the group that Percy had deteriorated at the same rate as the others. The carers confirmed what I had begun to suspect. Alzheimer’s patients can reach a plateau. For a long while their symptoms do not worsen. For a year or two or even three, they are trapped in their condition and make no advance towards their final release.

  Stasis or decline, it was a vile prospect and I counted more and more on Harry to keep me sane. At the beginning, it had been easy enough to drop the pretence of the Italian lessons and leave Percy on his own. When that became impossible, I depended on my sister’s overnight visits at weekends. We did not talk about it but she knew what I was up to. She and Peter were happy to spend time with Percy and allow me a break. I knew she was glad to get away from her needling, bossy husband, Michael. He had never approved of her career as an airline executive and now motherhood had taken its place. My few hours at the top of the Banbury Road swelled in importance. Sometimes, Rachel had to cancel because of her own health, or Percy’s needs were too pressing and I would have to let Harry down on the day. He was always understanding. As my visits became irregular, I came to resemble the cloying lover I used to run from. I was attentive, I brought him little gifts, I insisted on more than my share of the cooking. I became sensitive to any perceived slight. That he was so kindly whenever I had to cancel made me suspicious. My changed and somewhat neurotic behaviour was getting in the way of our pleasures. Our amused and ironic exchanges faltered. I suspected he was being careful not to upset me. Even as I saw all this, I could do nothing about it. It made me more desperate not to lose him. If I did, I thought I would go mad.

  The network of gossip within and between the colleges was a finely wrought construct. On the phone with a colleague one morning, I heard the latest. Harry Kitchener’s marriage was in trouble. He had a lover and Jane was throwing him out – not for the first time. In another call, a friend confirmed what I already feared. This lover was not me. She was a young editor at Turnbull’s. Everyone there had known about it for a year. Two days later my mobile rang. Certain it was him, I fumbled with the buttons and by mistake cancelled the call. When it rang again, Harry said he was in the lane by my back gate and wanted to see me. Percy was watching TV. I ran down the garden like a fool, as if I was rushing towards good news. Rumours are not always true. Harry had brought his car up the lane and was standing by its open door. Jaunty piano music was playing on its radio and that annoyed me. He didn’t waste time on greetings though, oddly, he was smiling at me. He had come, he said, to tell me what we both knew.

  ‘It’s this, dear heart. We’ve run our course. Pressures on me, bigger ones on you. I thought I’d get it out before you said it to me.’

  This was supposed to be disarming. I said, ‘Please turn off the radio.’ My only concern was to keep face.

  He reached into the car. ‘Begone, Fatso Waller.’

  The sudden silence did not help me. I said, ‘I haven’t been myself lately.’

  To concede like this was to risk throwing away the one lively element of my reduced life. But I kept an expressionless look. Perhaps it appeared stony.

  He was standing behind his open car door with his arms resting along its top, still smiling, as if he was enjoying a pleasant chat over a five-bar gate. ‘Agreed. But let’s not forget. It was a lot of fun for a very long time.’

  My lower lip was starting to quiver. I sucked it in and managed to say, ‘Yes, it was.’ Dignity was all.

  ‘And we got away with it.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  He stepped round the door and approached me ‘So … dearest, “since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part”.’

  The old quotation game. I could not suppress a puny dry laugh, which I thought might push me over the edge into tears. I said in a flat tone, ‘“Passion speechless lies.”’

  ‘Never once caught you out,’ he murmured just before we kissed lightly on the lips.

  ‘I should get back to Percy.’

  He nodded and turned towards his car, and I went back through the gate, determined not to watch him drive away.

  *

  This laconic dismissal coincided with a shift in Percy’s condition. He was still crossing his plateau and it was not so much decline as a subtle intensification of his symptoms, of what was there already. His repeated questions and remarks were more frequent and expressionless, as though he too were bored by them. When he followed me about the house, he stood closer, his great bulk a reminder of how constricted my days were. The upsets and tantrums were not more frequent, but they were louder. He wanted to hold my hand. At first, I was touched but he insisted at inconvenient moments, like when I was cooking or making the beds. When I pulled my hand free, he was tearful. These minor upsets made me irritable and I tried hard not to show it. Instead, I turned on myself. I had good material for self-loathing and I should not have needed a demented husband to bring me to it.

  I was outraged by the way I had stood there, sweet and decent sort, mousey and passive, obliging with my nervous laughter while Kitchener preened. So determined not to play the victim that I became one. I let him dump me unchallenged. Long ago he had moved on to his young editor, retaining me until it was inconvenient. How smooth he had been this last year in his deceit. That I had been cheating on Percy I set aside. That cheating had been my and Harry’s daily bread I did not need to consider. In the lane I suggested I’d been poor company. All my fault! I let him kiss me. I played along with his stupid Drayton quote. I should have called him out on his ludicrous oily manner. I kept myself awake at night refining the terse remarks that would have cut him down. At the very least, when Harry claimed that ‘we got away with it’, why could I not have said, ‘I hear that Jane has chucked you out’?

  Our conversation out the back lasted barely two minutes and was such a humiliation that I couldn’t let it go. I squirmed at the memory of standing on the edge, the shore, of a puddle in house slippers and lumpy corduroy skirt, while he lounged by his car in pressed suit and starched white shirt playing the dandy, on his way to Turnbull’s, wearing the tie I had given him a month ago. After all that had passed between us, how dare he toss me aside in seconds. It was a relief to direct my anger away from myself. I loathed him. Next stage, I wanted to do something about it. As the weeks passed that resolve did not fade. It swelled. I was learning something about myself. I had a capacity for bitterness that surprised me but kept me from self-pity or depression. I considered what I would do in the real world, a parting shot that might extinguish his insulting smiles from my thoughts.

  The solution came by post in the form of a handwritten note from a friend, Shelley, I used to work with, arranging literary events. She was inviting me to an evening at the Sheldonian. The poet Francis Blundy would be reading his work and talking about it with his brother-in-law and friend, the editor, critic and poet Harold Kitchener. I had once met Blundy at a conference. I remembered a combative five-minute conversation about poetry in translation. I had two weeks to prepare, time enough to arrange a respite visit from Rachel and Peter.

  Percy’s need for sleep at the end of the day was growing. Perhaps his plateau was gently tilting downwards. Into the late evenings I read Blundy’s work with pleasure. I still had the knack of committing lines to memory without effort. I read up on his private life, many affairs, a messy divorce, and the poets he valued or dismissed. Hard to explain or excuse the happiness I felt in those days of preparation. I wondered if I was becoming someone else. I had never experienced such impatience for revenge. Having a purpose, however base, made it almost tolerable, my life with a man whose brain was infested by ‘amyloid plaques’ and ‘tau aggregates’, whatever they were. It was glorious to leave those microscopic assailants behind. In the early evening of the big day, I waved goodbye to my husband, sister and nephew as I got into the taxi I was taking to Broad Street. I had a toothbrush and fresh underwear in my shoulder bag.

  I arrived in good time. A long queue was already forming in the courtyard. I went straight to the front and walked in. I knew Shelley’s assistants from public lectures I had arranged in the past. I was shown into the auditorium and had my pick of viewpoints. I chose an aisle seat four rows back, dead centre, to be in Kitchener and Blundy’s sightlines. Ten minutes later they let people in. It was going to be a packed house and the place filled rapidly. I spotted a few colleagues, but if they saw me, they pretended not to. I understood and felt for them. They knew that Percy’s condition could only worsen. They would have to lower their spirits with polite enquiries, and such conversations are hard to terminate. I was relieved not to be talking about the business I most wanted to forget for an evening. I sat snugly in my isolation as the din of conversation rose around me. Impossible to explain to anyone the elation I felt at being out of the house, away from my caring role, at a cultural event in which I was to play a part. I might have looked like one more member of the audience, but I was an agent, an angel of justice. For the first time in over two years, my little cup of self-worth, once habitually full, was overflowing.

  Shelley came on stage to make housekeeping announcements that included fire exits, future events and thanks to sponsors. She did her best with feeble jokes at which the audience tittered generously. Her halting speech was earnest and decent. Mr Blundy would not be signing books afterwards. Instead, there would be signed copies on the bookshop’s table. All the better, I thought.

  At the organiser’s cue, the two men strode out to loud applause and cheers. All that I once admired in Harry, I now loathed. His height and stoop, his fraying grey hair, the affected vaguely ironic way he waited for his guest to sit before he lowered himself into his chair with a mock grimace. From there, he launched into his introduction of overheated sloppy praise. I alone knew how jealous he was of his brother-in-law’s enthronement as a national treasure. We were in bed together once when Harry read me his parody of Blundy’s style that he dared not publish. The target was a spoof of a supposedly typical dissection of some small human moment. I told him it was funny, bang to rights and so on. I had no choice when we were about to make love. But Harry’s poem was too bitter, too vehement to be a decent parody. I remembered a line by Dwight Macdonald to the effect that the good parodist does not go hunting with a machine gun. Unspoken admiration, not contempt, was a more effective motive. In Harry’s case, envy blackened the page.

  He rambled on in his louche dishonest way while I continued to look at his face, his eyes. He appeared not to see me, even though I had edged my chair sideways several inches into the aisle. When Kitchener finished and Blundy stood to go to the lectern, the place went wild. Very un-Sheldonian. Not since Mark Twain received his honorary degree here in 1907 had there been such a friendly eruption. The younger half of the audience would have been made to study Blundy’s poetry at school, and now took a more benign view than they probably did at the time. Like many famous people, he seemed smaller than his publicity photographs, and better, I thought, more sculpted about the face and grand in the way an eagle is grand. Sitting or standing relaxed, he looked as if he had filled his lungs with air, ready for a confrontation. He was compact and muscular. You would not have wanted to try out one of your newfangled fashionable opinions in his presence. He started by thanking Harry, his ‘loyal friend’, and said he was pleased to be back in the Sheldonian. The last time he came it was to listen to Philip Larkin who, it turned out, had not been invited or scheduled. On being told this at the door, young Blundy had left in disappointment, in no mood for a lecture on the military strategies of General Philippe Leclerc. ‘I must have misheard the night before. I might have been drunk.’ There was laughter and the beginnings of applause.