Sybil’s self-sufficiency was the basis of her contentment. Across the road from her flat was the grassland which she trod for her twice-daily walk. Her goal was always the first turreted building, distant but well before Connaught Avenue and the possible vulgarities of shoppers. The level green stretching before her contrasted with the changing blues and greens and violets of the sea below to her left. If she looked at all at this gentle beauty, she remained untouched by it.

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Happy picnickers, children playing, offended her sense of propriety. She remembered with satisfaction her rebuke, years ago, to a young woman running towards her in the early morning,

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‘No jogging on the Greensward!’

Sybil knew she had plenty of resources within herself, one of which was a tidy mind. A careful selection of programmes was marked out at the beginning of the week in the ‘Radio’. There was also her extensive reading, mainly biographies, and her complex geometric tapestry works.

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Sybil ignored other walkers. But one was on the Greensward every day. He had caught her irritated attention because he was often standing stock-still, very upright, apparently absorbed in the rolling hiss of outgoing tide; or the misty horizon, pierced by the city of windmills. Sybil gave a disgusted snort at the latter brutish invasion of the horizon.

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The man was nearer his eighties than she was, Sybil thought; always dressed in a neatly pressed, long-sleeved white shirt, narrow cotton trousers and a black-banded panama hat. Today she watched him walking, very deliberately, ahead of her. Sybil allowed herself a tight smile of amusement at the recollection of a phrase from years ago.

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‘Spindle-shanks’, her Irish uncle would have called him; he had no buttocks to speak of. Uncle Joe would have termed her, in turn, ‘a fine figure of a woman’, implying ‘stout’. But Sybil was pleased with her authoritative portliness.

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Sybil was not without imagination, and this man did engage it. Like her, she thought. Not a recluse, but solitary. Content with solitude. A thoughtful turn of mind, obviously, the way he stood and looked beyond things, wrapped in his thoughts. ‘We’re both intelligent and reserved’, she reflected. ‘Maybe I’ll address him – briefly – and if he responds…’

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He had turned slowly towards a steep descent down to the Esplanade. Sybil was disconcerted. Never her intended route. However, she followed. He was standing stock still at the top of the steps, gazing away from her. His thin shoulders like a coat hanger under his shirt. He turned a little and she saw the pallor of his face.

She took a step nearer at the same moment that he turned fully towards her. She saw, with horror, that his face streamed with tears, unchecked down the furrows of his cheeks.

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‘I thought you would speak to me’, he said. ‘I’ve seen you, and I felt you also had a loss, a grief, like me. My dear wife…But you are stoic…’ The tears flowed unabated.

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Sybil was ferocious in her dismay and disappointment. ‘Get a grip’, her voice was hoarse with anger. ‘Have some control. You are making a display, an exhibition, of yourself’.

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He flinched away from her in shock, then made a little bow.

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‘Madame, my apologies. Misunderstanding. Sorry to have annoyed you.’ He turned back over the grass and walked, a little unsteadily, but very upright, away from her.

Sybil gazed after him in unaccustomed turmoil. She hurried home, but there her normal sense of containment abandoned her. She methodically prepared her supper and ate without the usual accompaniment of the evening news. Unable to settle, she poured a tot of the excellent single malt she rarely allowed herself. Then another.

‘Just a poor old widower with no inner resources’, she thought. ‘Not at all like me.’

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Surprisingly, she slept almost at once. When she woke, it was only 4am, barely light. But what woke her were her own racking sobs, noisy and messy, her nose running and her shoulders shaking. She clambered clumsily out of bed to get one of her large white handkerchiefs.

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What was the source of this shameful display? She had not cried since she was a little girl. ‘Up you get. Brave girls don’t cry.’ Consoling hugs were not her parents’ way. Although they had been proud of her achievements and her determined character.

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But that harrowed face running with tears had not really been undignified, she thought grudgingly; if he could be brought to that dismal state by the loss of a partner, he was obviously not ‘his own man’. But he had not been convulsed and hiccupping as she had, for no reason that she could tell.

An unaccustomed feeling of shame crept up on her as she thought of her harsh words – to a stranger, too. ‘He will think me cruel. I shouldn’t care, but I do’.

Something had broken in her; through the cracks and crevices of her normal carapace.

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‘I will find him and apologise, explain…Explain what? No, just say I’m sorry. The possibility of rejection was there, but she determined to confront it.

Sybil showered and had her breakfast. When at last it was a suitable time to go out, she opened the door to the morning. Girding herself, she went across the road. Only a couple with a dog could be seen. When they drew near, she saw they were middle-aged and comfortable looking.

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‘Morning’, called the man, as they approached.

The woman straightened from throwing a stick for the dog.

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‘Lovely morning. Isn’t the Greensward gorgeous?’

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‘Indeed’, said Sybil, with an unpractised smile, ‘it is gorgeous’. She saw the man in the distance.