I’m at that age where I enjoy a nap in the afternoon, about 25 minutes or so, to shut the eyes, reflect, recharge and face the rest of the day. I could choose the settee in the living room, or I could get into bed, or even the office chair. In winter, the Middle East winter, that is, I could even lie on a garden chair or lounger and soak up some of that weakened, fleeting sun. But none of these will quite bring the kind of calm, restful, almost psychologically perfect nap that I can have on my wife’s battered old Chesterfield. 

If you will permit me to digress for a moment, I will explain how this came to be about. Children have long since departed, so there are a number of luxuries or indulgences that we feel we have earned. One such extravagance is my wife’s dressing room. A bedroom, turned over to the trying on, mixing and matching, selecting, rejecting, selecting again of myriad outfits to suit a host of possibilities: office days, lunches, dinners formal and informal, theatre nights, and, well, you get my drift. Here, she can shut herself away from the rigours of the week, and make a mess if she so chooses. She will primp and preen, pick and choose to her heart’s content, surrounded by tall wardrobes, with full-length mirrors, allowing for close critical inspection from every angle. In the middle of the room, is a low table on which sit perfume bottles and a little tree-type thing for hanging necklaces and a porcelain hand for rings, although it loosely holds a Spanish fan. Back to back with this table, is a Chesterfield. It is a three seater, ancient and battered in green leather, cracked from age and wear, but still, in its dotage, remarkably comfortable, although it is too short to stretch out completely. It has one leg that will always fall out if that end is lifted and it takes an age and a world of grunting and wheezing to get it back in, but I forgive it these elderly foibles because I gravitate to it, to take my nap, and it always responds, faithfully. 

This room is more than the sum of its parts; I snooze here, in diffuse afternoon light, with the heady aroma of Yves St Laurent, or Bulgari, or Paco Rabane, or an interfusion of them all and it is as if the Chesterfield too understands the tranquillity. I know it is her place, and she knows that I go there to nap, but all is good. The atmosphere is one of absolute calm; nothing seems to intrude. Sometimes one or both of the dogs will come and lie at my feet as if to affirm my choice. 

Perhaps it isn’t the Chesterfield that I am drawn to; maybe it’s the essence of her, the scent of a woman, evoking warm contentedness and enabling a short happy slumber, but without it, I would have no reason to enter, except on an errand. I touch nothing, I am an intruder, but not unwelcome.