A Pennine Incident

"He’d woken needing to clear his throat, as usual. For months now he’d had the sensation of constriction in his larynx. Not much during the daytime, but always on waking, and waking had begun to occur at increasing intervals during the night. He put it down to catarrh. He always managed to clear the niggling irritation by protracted throat-clearings, which sometimes woke Jennifer who then usually left the marital bed and retreated to the spare room. He didn’t like that: after 38 years he missed the warmth and security that a sleeping partner provided. Not that there was any sex; there hadn’t been any of that for years, and cuddles were an increasing rarity, but the regular breathing and occasional sigh from the body beside him was reassuring when he had his dark nights of the soul at two in the morning. He couldn’t decide whether these night-time awakenings were caused by worrying about work and only then feeling the onset of the throat constriction, or whether it was his throat that roused him. Whichever, he then stayed awake, mind churning, fretting about some decision he’d made or had yet to make, and winding himself up into a twitching, thrashing fury about the arrogance or stupidity or clever-buggery or over-sensitivity of his colleagues. The incidents of the previous day assumed an overwhelming importance, an earth-shattering significance. Many nights he found himself alone in the bed, clenching his fists and grinding his teeth at the humiliations that had been heaped on him by his senior colleagues, or writhing in embarrassment at the ill-considered remarks he realised he’d made to the few juniors that he had. Once up and dressed, of course, the enormities that had caused him so much nocturnal angst shrank to become just another minor niggle of discontent that he hoped was the normal burden carried by middle managers in the workplace. But today, another more insistent worry assailed him as soon as he woke, and it threatened not to subside. This morning Jennifer was still beside him. He was congratulating himself on apparently not having disturbed her, when the tickle in his throat bade him its usual morning greeting, accompanied by a more strident demand from his bladder. Suppressing the need to respond to the former but unable to resist the latter, he eased himself from the bed, shuffled into his slippers and managed to negotiate his way to the door without stubbing his toe on the bedside cabinet or tripping over Jennifer’s discarded dressing gown. His wife remained asleep, snoring softly." "