Spotted II

Benoit and Loic arrive in an old post office van. Their buckets stacked with tools, they’re ready to pick up where I was forced to leave off; cut off in my pointing prime by a merciless plague of nasty, red, itching spots.

I’ve been banned indefinitely from the upstairs’ rooms.

The anti-histamines had appeared to be working, but five days into the course and the little red spots have returned. They are on my face, legs and my hands; they are racing around the back of my neck, late for a rendezvous with the brace of bumps shifting up my arms.

I feel useless; a brooding, sulky, scratching invalid, banished to the corner of the living room as far as possible from stones, dust and gaping holes.

I watch from the sofa as Benoit and Loic carefully negotiate basins of pointing around and up the stairs.

And they insist on taking off their shoes.

“Madame, it is raining outside. It would not be right for us to make a mess.”

They are diligent, precise, tidy. Filling, brushing, smoothing, blocking out the cold. I feel jealous and useless; my spots prick in itchy indignation.

“You could always paint or something,” offers my partner. He means well. But I don’t think he understands my devotion to the tens of thousands of stones that make up our home. I ‘d wanted to touch every one; in the scheme of things I’ve barely felt a handful.

He sighs. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

I catch a glimpse of the sun. It’s trying to squeeze itself through a narrow gap in almost a week of slate-grey skies and rain. The lawn is dense with custard-coloured leaves and muddy, gritty clumps of pine needles.

I can’t hear the birds. I can’t hear the winds that ruffle and sway the plum trees.

AlI I can hear is Benoit and Loic whispering to one another and the careful, sludgy trawl of trowels through pointing.