V has been stewing over a remark the minister made at Robert Haupt’s funeral: ‘We should be glad that his tribulations are over.’ V said it was a ludicrous misrepresentation of Haupt’s whole approach to life. I agreed that it was a misrepresentation, but suggested it was an attitude integral to a Christian’s beliefs, which in his own church a minister has a right and perhaps even a duty to express. A fierce argument broke out. I retreated to the closed-in balcony where we eat (which V has from the day we moved in referred to, for some reason, as ‘the sewing room’), and sat at the table to sew a button back on my nightie. It’s nice in there, the cheesecloth curtains that I made puff and drop on a breeze. V walked through the room. Seeing me stitching away there he said in a soft voice, ‘Good room for sewing, isn’t it.’ I realised that to see me sewing, by hand or with the machine, releases in him a flow of feeling. While being touched by this I also secretly resolve to make use of it, if and when things get rough. I mean that I could sit down with a needle and thread, and bring about a lessening of tension.