“We prayed for Philip Downes,” he said, turning out the light.
The whining voice from above-stairs took on an acid edge. “And you never thought about your poor suffering wife at home all alone. I suppose it never occurs to you to pray for me!”
He stood in the darkness, waiting, unwilling to climb the stairs until her complaints had worn themselves out. The voice again: “Samuel, are you there?”
“Yes, Annie.”
“Why don’t you answer me? Isn’t it enough to have to lie here helpless and miserable?”
“I was turning out the light.”
“Well, I want the hot-water bottle. You’ll have to heat water. And make it hot, not just lukewarm. It’s worse again. It’s never been so bad.”
As he went off to the kitchen, fragments of her plaints followed him: “I should think you’d have remembered about the hot-water bottle!” And, “If you’d had such pain as mine for fifteen years....”
Yes, fifteen years!
For fifteen years it had been like this. The old wicked thought came stealing back into his mind. If only he had a wife like Emma Downes or her daughter-in-law, Naomi ... some one young like Naomi. He was growing older, older, older....