12 DECEMBER 1987, Page 38

Takeover

In the bottom shed, a Guerlain bottle of rare Capacity, still briefly perfumed, across Evaporating decades, and a low chair Crippled with nursing, solaced in swaddling moss, Exemplify the so easily presumed, Long spent, two functions of the nearly dying Woman in the house's high and airswept room.

Her mind calls back the years for want of crying.

Her limbs once perfumed, lithe as sails on waves, Now brittle as spars dried in medicinal dust; Her clarity of response to life's displays Is bedlam fingering now for pills gone lost.

The fingers falter as the spirit soars - An exemplary departure from a life on loan To beds and floors. In the shed's untold remorse A grandson shatters a bottle with a stone.

Stanley Gardner