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Marian EldridgePATERSON'S FLATSLOCKING HIMSELF IN THE bathroom's neat suburban safety, Paterson sulked.Women! Deliberately the old man avoided the plug, poking his fingersone by one under the gushing tap. "Remember, father, only to the bathroomand then straight into bed," his son's wife had fussed when she camein to strip his bed and found him standing by the window, staring down atColin's concrete lawn. "We'll do just what the doctor says, darling, and we'llbe back on our feet in a flash." Soapsuds trembled through his flngers. Onhis feet, she said. Didn't she know he'd been trying his whole damned life?If at first . . . He sucked his gums with excitement as a scheme suddenlysuggested itself. Steadying himself against the handbasin, he thrust out hisjaw at his enlarged image in the shaving mirror: Today he would beat thatbed.But hurry. Teeth—he fumbled them from their beaker, wiping them acrosshis lapel before plunging them into his gums. He grinned. She would haveapproved . . . eat with your teeth in . . . shave every day— shave! He glanceduneasily at his razor. If he hung around any longer Margaret would havefinished his bed and his scheme would be ruined. Hang shaving.In his haste to escape he brushed against the passage walls and the doorwayof his bedroom. "Sit down, father!" panicked Margaret, dropping a heapof bedding and pushing him into the chair by the window. "I'm so sorry—I haven't quite finished .""Beat you, did I?" grinned Paterson, easing his old bones into the comfortof the chair. Its foam cushions sighed with success. This was the life, here bythe window. Above the high brick wall that his son Colin had built to shutout the roar and thrust of the traffic, Paterson could just glimpse the sky.It was full of stones. Stones were a sign of good soil, they said, if you waitedlong enough. Not an acre of sky could he ever see from that coffin his bed.When Margaret turned around and saw how much happier he was out of it,the dear kind girl would gladly let him stay up for his aktavite and—^his chesthurt with cunning—by drinking the foul stuff slowly he would have all themorning to sit watching that old dog the wind at work. "He'd a'been a championonly I never got round to training him right," he muttered. Margaretlooked at him kindly. There was such a bustle and bleating in his ears thather voice grew distant, like Kate's thin shout from the house to the yardswhen she'd want something, "I'm out of wood!" or "Dinner time!".WESTERLY, No. 1 of 1967 21