Some woman phoned and said ‘Macon?’ It wasn’t Sarah; this voice was different. ’It’s Muriel. Muriel Pritchett, ’she said.
‘Ah, yes, ’he said, but he had no idea who she was.
‘You remember? I was just wondering how Edward was’
Macon looked at Edward, who was lying flat on his stomach with his legs straight our behind him.
‘He looks all right to me. ’Macon said.
‘I mean, is he biting? He ought to be trained, you know.’
‘Well, he’s four and a half now-‘
‘That’s not too old! Maybe I could just come around for a drink or something, and we could discuss Edward’s problems.’
‘Oh. . . I think, um, for now I’ll try and manage on my own.’
‘Well, I can understand that, ’she said. ’I’ll wait for you to get in touch, then. You still have my card, don’t you?
Macon said he did, though he didn’t know where it was. He hung up and went back to his guidebook. Generally food in England is not as bad as some people say it is. Nice cooked vegetables . . .
By September he had only written a few pages of his guidebook, and he began to feel he was falling apart. In the basement the laundry took days to dry on the line, and one morning he decided to re-connect the exhaust tube of the clothes dryer. Better to use a little more electricity than to get depressed over wet laundry.
He put some of the wet clothes into the dryer and turned it on. At the top of the stairs Edward was complaining. He was hungry, but not brave enough to come down the stairs on his own. Macon went up and carried him down.
He was near the bottom of the stairs when a sudden, awful howl rose from . . . where? Edward on the line, which knocked him back against Macon’s chest. Macon stepped blindly sideways, put one foot in his wheeled clothes basket , and went crashing to the floor, with his left leg bent double beneath him.
The car, used to coming in through the hold in the window, had met a hot, wet, whistling wind, but was determinedly trying to climb into the exhaust tube, howling desperately all the time.
‘Wouldn’t you think, ’Macon said to Edward, on the floor next to him, ‘that fool cat would know the dryer was running?’
In spite of the pain in his leg , he managed to turn off dryer and watch the cat escape safely, before beginning the long hard trip up the stairs for help.