The house has gone quiet of late, and I wish to state, for the archive, that I approve. I have waited a long time for this household to arrive at quiet. I did not expect it to arrive quite like this.
The youth have set down, for the most part, their nonsense. Winnie has redirected her considerable volume into a single occupation and holds to it with a devotion I would call surprising, had I not always known her to be, beneath the noise, a serious person. Harvey keeps the nights. Salem carries things upstairs in his soft mouth and lays them down as though they might help, which — I have concluded, and I do not concede such things lightly — they do. Even the newest members of this house have rearranged themselves inward, toward the one room, without a word from me. I had prepared a number of instructions. I have not been obliged to give any of them.
I have taken up a position at the end of the bed. It is not the warm chair. I have, for the present, relinquished the warm chair, which those acquainted with my attachment to it will understand is not a small concession. But the end of the bed is where the work is now, and I have always gone where the work is, at my own pace, in my own time.
There is a thing the young have not yet learned, which is that love, in its most advanced form, is mostly just staying. It is not the greeting, nor the gift, nor the announcement. It is the long, unglamorous remaining. I have been remaining, professionally, for a great many years. It is, I flatter myself, the one thing I have always done best.
I will not say what the quiet is about. One does not. One keeps it, as one keeps a rota, and in the keeping of it says the thing one has decided not to say aloud. The house is gentle. The dogs are good. The afternoons are being returned — all of them, by every one of us — in the only currency we hold, which is presence.
I shall be at the end of the bed should I be required, which I am, and which suits me entirely. Mmh.