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Show 23 women, not couples, and one in every is unable to walk." " of people over 70 have rheumatoid arthritis," says Robeck who has clearly recited these figures before. "One in is missing at least teeth. One in can't hear. One in can't see well enough to read a book." He says these figures automatically, as if he has learned them by rote. "We don't want that," Annis says. But then they had moved into the living room: brandy glasses by a receding fire, a light wool blanket which Polly and Annis had drawn up over their knees, the way the furniture is drawn up together suggests a kind of strong and sentimental intimacy, rare and prized and lasting well into the night. Here, all secrets are undone; all past experience relived, all future hopes explored. But there is a paler, rectangular patch on the wall above the fireplace; the large and treasured painting of Mont Blanc which has always hung there has been removed, and Robeck is in the kitchen swathing it in paper. "We want you to have it," Annis is saying, "You always loved it too." It is true; they have loved the painting. Robeck and Max, both climbers in their earlier years, had both been members of a Mont Blanc expedition, now forty years before. It had been a difficult though not disastrous expedition: no one had reached the top, and Robeck has lost the two small toes of his right foot to frostbite; still, the mountain had represented something special in their lives. They had often sat in the evening of the quiet living room, swirling coffee aroung the surface of a cup, following the contours of the south col, the north face, the traverse they were unable to make. |