The Warm Hours

Dear Len,

I opened the panel behind the airing cupboard this morning and found your adjustable spanner where you said it would be. You were wrong about the mice. They had eaten the envelope around it, but not the note saying DO NOT LEND TO PETER, so your reputation for sound judgment survives.

The trouble was the bedroom radiator. It had begun clicking before dawn, not the usual Bracken Court orchestra of coughs, kettles, and somebody dropping a shoe. This was a patient little click, followed by three quick ones.

I tightened the valve. It clicked again.

You would have blamed the pipes. You blamed them for everything except the election and my mother, and you gave serious thought to both.

I mentioned it to Mr Venn downstairs. He came up after lunch with his torch and the expression he reserves for tenants who own screwdrivers. He took off the grille, burned two fingers, and said the riser was behaving perfectly. Then he put his cheek near the metal.

“Someone laughing,” he said.

I heard nothing but the lift cables and Mrs Tolliver scraping carrots next door.

Mr Venn went pale, though he denied it. He told me not to touch the valve until morning. This was poor advice. At half past six the radiator smelled of scorched toast.

Not warm metal. Toast.

The smell filled the bedroom exactly as it did in our first flat, when you tried to make breakfast under the grill and forgot it because the football results came on. There was even that faint sweetness from the marmalade jar you broke. I could see the old yellow curtains as plainly as if someone had hung them inside my eyes.

Then the pipe gave one slow knock, three quick ones.

Do you remember our code? Of course you do. One and three meant, “Still awake?”

We invented it because the walls in that flat were thin and you disliked shouting from the sitting room. One knock for yes. Two for no. Three for tea. Four meant your mother was on the telephone.

I tapped once.

The radiator went cold beneath my knuckles.

That was when I remembered the night after we moved in. We were lying under both blankets, complaining that the heating had failed, though the pipes were hot enough to blister paint. You sat up suddenly and listened.

“Someone’s answered,” you said.

I laughed at you. I said there was nobody on the other side of a radiator.

Len, there was.

It was me, this morning.

All that cold in our first winter was not a broken boiler. Bracken Court was taking the warmth then and giving it to me now, after you had no further use for it. We lay shivering beside each other so that I could stand alone today in a warm bedroom.

I am sorry I complained.

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The radiator has been quiet since sunset. I have put the spanner back, along with this letter, though I know cupboards are no better at delivering post than radiators are supposed to be at keeping appointments.

Before bed, I tapped our whole code into the pipe. The rude parts too. Especially the rude parts.

For a long while there was nothing.

Then came four knocks.

Your mother has been dead longer than you have.

The telephone in the hall has just begun to ring.