Finding a synonym for diminish

Diminish

To reduce a person or thing in standing or perceived worth

To cause something to be or appear less

To become gradually less

To dwindle

Lessen

Dim

I am having trouble with this word, as it doesn’t work in the phrase ‘watched his rangy figure diminish until he disappeared into the pub’. What I want to convey in my story is that the man’s wife watched him as he made his way to the pub and, in her eyes, his figure got smaller and smaller. It shouldn’t make the reader feel that she thinks less of him. One change I have tried out is: ‘watched his rangy figure get smaller until he disappeared into the pub’, but it just doesn’t look or sound right. I have tried shrink, dwindle and reduce, but none of them are appropriate. So I have to rethink the sentence. The curious thing is that I rarely have this kind of problem when writing poetry, because poems are so malleable. Prose has a rigid structure of sentences and paragraphs, whereas poems are words and phrases that bounce around and form themselves into a shape.

Aha! how about this?

‘She asked for a bottle of cold fizzy water, as she had agreed to drive the short distance home. Leaning forward to keep him in eyeshot, she watched him stride away from her, his rangy figure getting smaller and smaller until he disappeared into the pub. It was lit up now; a golden halo spread into the twilight. Glasses clinked and the buzz of chat and laughter mingled with faint strains of music.’

As it is my birthday today, we planned to drive up to Blakeney to see the seals. We even booked two seats on the boat and were looking forward to the trip, until the weather forecast blew it with promises of gusty winds and heavy downpours at the same time as we would have been on the boat. Because of the tides, trips out to the seals on Blakeney point are restricted today to two, three and four o’clock. So we will have to go when the weather is better, later in the week. Instead, we plan to go into Norwich this morning to look for a fridge-freezer to replace our broken one, and then go to Cinema City for a film – we haven’t been to the pictures in ages.

I’m off to open my birthday cards now…