Three to See the King

enjoy the brief period I had the place to myself.
    On these occasions I would sit and think about what had happened to me. It was quite remarkable really. One day I’d been living alone in a house of tin, minding my own business. Then suddenly this woman, this Mary Petrie, had moved in, and everything had changed. Now I was subject to rules, such as where I could sit and when I should sweep up, and there were matters I was not allowed to discuss, or at least go on about too much. As I waited for her return it also struck me how swiftly I’d adapted to my new situation. To be fair I suppose Mary Petrie had adapted too, in her own way. She was the last person I would have expected to live in a house of tin in the middle of a vast and deserted plain, but I had to admit she was trying to make the best of it. Those long walks, for example, soon became an important part of her day. She always began by heading for a point in the distance, and then she would turn and follow an encircling course right around the house. She varied it by going clockwise or anti-clockwise, but she made sure she never went completely out of sight. Her starting point in the circle seemed to be chosen at random, and each time she set off I would look with interest to see whether she first went north, west, east, or south. Sometimes, when I was watching her move along in the distance, I would see her stop and then appear to be examining the ground. On these occasions she would return and show me a stone she’d found whose shape she thought interesting. Or maybe an unusual glass bottle. Generally she’d be in a better mood when she got back than when she went out, but she’d also be quite cold, so I always made sure the stove was fired up in readiness.
    The walks weren’t the only way she adjusted to her new life. Before long there was a vase on the table containing an arrangement of dry grasses she’d collected. Meanwhile, the upper walls were hung with pictures, each depicting a dancer standing in a different pose.
    She had plans for the shutters too.
    ‘We’ll have them open in the spring,’ she announced one breezy afternoon. ‘Once all this sand has stopped flying about.’
    I knew, though, that spring would be a long time coming. She hadn’t spent a whole winter here before, and had no real idea how long it might last. There wasn’t likely to be much rain or snow, I was quite sure of that, but we could expect several more weeks of high winds yet. From my own point of view it didn’t make any difference if it was winter, spring, summer or autumn: all of them were equally interesting to someone used to dwelling in a house of tin. On the other hand, when I saw Mary Petrie being buffeted daily by the gales, I wondered just how long her endurance would last.
    I also feared she might get bored after a while. She changed her clothes several times a day, and told me it was so that she’d have suitable attire for whatever she happened to be doing. Privately, though, I suspected she was attempting to break each day into shorter spans.
    Another sign of boredom was when she amused herself by teasing me. Usually I wouldn’t have minded this, as I can take a joke same as the next man. Unfortunately, she often chose to raise the subject of my failed plan for living in a canyon. She seemed to have grasped that this was quite a sensitive matter with me, but instead of avoiding it she brought it up in conversations all the time.
    One day, for example, she said, ‘You know that canyon you wanted to live in?’
    ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘What about it?’
    ‘Would there be a river in the bottom?’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘Cos if there was you’d need a canoe, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Suppose so, yes.’
    ‘But you haven’t got a paddle.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So you’d be up a creek without a paddle!’
    She then dissolved into a fit of giggling, while I was supposed to sit there and smile politely. As I said before, I can take a joke the same as the next man, but I didn’t really like it when she kept reminding me about that canyon. To avoid the situation I tried to think of ways to stop her from getting bored, and the solution I came up with was to offer to accompany her on her walks. We tried this once, only to discover that we both went at completely different speeds. I ended up arriving home about half an hour before her, so we decided not to bother again.
    ‘Besides,’ she pointed out. The whole idea of the walks is for me to get away from you