My Ex-Husband's Landlady

My ex-husband’s landlady is 77 years old, five feet nine and a quarter inches tall, with broad shoulders, size seven feet and hair as wild as the kind of unidentifiable weed that you might one day find growing at the top of some steps. She lives at the crest of an important-looking hill in a tall thin house, which I personally believe is far too big for her, even though she, herself, is bigger than most women of her age. Directly below the important-looking hill is a much smaller hill. Balanced precariously on top of that is a squat, undistinguished building which also belongs to my ex-husband's landlady and which, for the last couple of years, my ex-husband has called home. I think I am correct in saying that, at some point in the mists of time, prior to my ex-husband’s landlady converting it, the building was used to protect goats from the rain. It could, however, have been sheep. You would have to verify this with my ex-husband or his landlady. Both of them have spent time with numerous animals and are good with information.

The day my ex-husband moved into his landlady’s house was one characterised primarily by sunlessness and the kind of cloud that has nowhere to fall because it is already all around you, sagging against the ground: not the kind of day that seems to herald any bright new beginning in a person’s life. My ex-husband was not yet a whole season past his nervous breakdown by then and I helped him move his things, although, to be honest, this was not an arduous or lengthy job, due to what he called his “new minimalist approach” to life. “Have it all,” he had told me, during the final death rattle of our marriage. “I am past caring at this point.” A more mercenary person than me might have taken him at his word but, knowing that my ex-husband has a habit of making spur-of-the-moment decisions he later regrets, I was careful, while dividing our possessions, to separate some for him: a cake tin, an outdoor dining set once belonging to his late parents and a couple of my least favourite armchairs, amongst others. As my ex-husband and I moved all this paraphernalia through the clammy air from his small rental van to his new home I was struck by how diminished and stringy he seemed, in his moist clothes, as if now he was no longer propped up by my larger personality and income, all that was really left was a scarecrow in a pair of spectacles. I had just noted what an impractical my-ex-husbandish position he’d placed his new dining table in and was starting to move the table when, at the kitchen’s threshold, I saw the unusual amalgamation of hair, eyes and herbal tea smells which I soon understood to be the building’s owner.