A SOLITARY PERIOD

A letter from Louis arrives, it's there waiting in the cold metal mailbox when I get back from another day pulling out ivy cascading down a rocky embankment. It's written over three postcards, numbered, and placed in an envelope.

1 - JR - The entries in the journal I've been keeping - Since coming here again - To look for Susie - Have been getting shorter and shorter - And it's not a matter of finding the time - Oh there's time - I'm still at the hostel, and there's an arrangement now for board in return for helping clean the rooms - Vacuum the halls - Sign in new guests - Oh there's time - But still the entries are getting shorter and shorter - So I've stopped - Stopped before I make an entry under a date that has nothing more than a question mark - Or maybe not even the squiggle of a question mark - Just a period, a solitary period - She's gone - Susie - I don't expect to see her again - Or at least anytime soon - Maybe she's somewhere in London after all - I don't know - It doesn't matter - Too late - And yet still an old scene plays over - As I hand over a room key to a couple of Swedish girls in shorts and long shiny tanned legs

2 - An old scene - Back in London - Before all this unfolding - This unravelling - Leaving our London flat one night to follow a lead - A meeting in a hotel - When Susie wanted me to stay and talk it out - Sort it out - But there wasn't time - I had to go - They were waiting - No she said - Something's not right - There's too much left unsaid - Something's awry - Awry she said - Her fine senses kept speaking to her - Prodding her - They wouldn't shut up - She yelled after me down the hall - We haven't finished talking she said - Don't walk away we haven't finished - But to me nothing looked as if it was going to be resolved - It's hard enough to argue with a woman at the best at times - Impossible when time's against you - Everything has to be explained - Clarified - Laid out fully - But the cab was waiting - She yelled after me some more - South Kensington I said to the driver - And left - And the following week I was on a plane to Sydney - Susie was staying with her parents - Or that friend in Clapham Common - I don't know - She was somewhere - It was hard to say - There was no note - And no answer when I called

3 - I thought keeping a journal would help me find her - I was looking for an answer - But I should have listened more carefully on that first day when I wrote that first sentence - Outside at a pub on a headland in the dot town of Tathra - Overlooking the sea - The great heaving sea - The great heaving silent sea - I should have known right then - I should have let it all go - Go over the edge - Into the great heaving silent blue - When I wrote down those first words - Never never never never - That's what I wrote - Shakespeare it wasn't - But it was a start - And I drove on from there - And now here I am months later in Melbourne - Washing sweeping wiping mopping - Smiling - Making do - Like a determined monk - LA

MAN ALIVE

Maida Vale, Marylebone, Paddington, St John's Wood, Queen's Park, Victoria, Westminster, Paddington, were the libraries most frequented by Boris on his walks around London. It had been a while since he had seen her, and then suddenly there she was again, sitting at a table across from him in Paddington, reading the same edition of the International Herald Tribune. He couldn't help but imagine that she was reading the same page as him, and not just the same page but the same article too, and not just the same article but the same part of the article, the same line, the beginning of the same word. Everything seemed to stop then. The light in the library took on a hue more akin to a dream, or at the very least a balmy dusk, when it was in fact midmorning. He knew he had to act. Now was his chance. He knew, but he did nothing. And he still curses, even now, his behavior that day, although the distance of time has, of course, made it all a lot easier. He can, in fact, actually laugh about it all now, and thereby proceeds to demonstrate. Ha ha. Ha ha. But yes, it still haunts him, like a hungry ghoul sometimes, he says. The ghoul can go get out of here. Go on, ghoul, go on. It's funny, he can remember the girl clearly, he says, and the day that his brother arrived in London too, and even how the city smelled that particular morning, whether at the airport or inside the library, but when it comes to trying to recall that book he was reading, that book whose lines still come to him every now and then, no, he cannot recall the name. At best he can scramble after a line once it appears in his thoughts and try with all his might to hold on to it, reach for a pen, if able, and jot down what he can, before it disappears once again into the aether. Then Boris changes the subject and says he hasn't seen me around much of late. I've been working on the other side of the village, I tell him, ripping up ivy which has overrun the garden beds near the hospital, climbing up and sucking the life from some of the surrounding trees. It's been a monotonous slog. And there's a resident nearby, I tell him, who doesn't appear to approve of me sitting under a conifer tree to eat a sandwich during lunch break. I overheard her the other day hanging out some towels to dry and saying as much to another woman, and that I shouldn't be entitled to a lunch break anyway, but that even if I was legally entitled to one, the least I could do would be to stand and eat my sandwich, if I insisted on being in view, for the residents of the village are, after all, helping pay a percentage of my wages, and by sitting under a tree it makes me look as if I'm lazy, which reflects badly on everyone, don't you know. Boris seems to know the woman in question, laughs, and shakes his head. German she is I'd say. So don't let it worry you. Some of them are still smarting from losing the wars.

RED RAW

He could barely meet her eyes. He was so, so timid then. Terribly timid. Often he'd shed weight in shame, it was really that bad. Such a strange, strange sense of self disgust. Often a run, only a run, a wild silly run, would do the trick. He would, afterwards, feel sort of clean again. So strange. Run run run. But never enough, to ever escape. Are you, Boris wanted to know, aware of the relationship between the word timid and the word intimidate? It was a horribly excruciating time, he said. Do you know what it means to be lonely? I mean lonely. I knew menus better than men, and yet I had nothing to pay. Eventually I forgot how to speak. Women looked at me like an untamed dog. And I never knew that that could be an advantage of sorts, not until it was too late. I was simply hungry, that was all. Clueless, and hungry.

WAS SHE WORTH IT?

One day, at Paddington, Boris spotted a  dark haired beauty, who he guessed must have been an Italian. Yes, she must have been a student of English, an Italian student of English who thought that the best place to learn the English language in all its glory would be the English capital itself. London. Of course. How could she go wrong. Oh. Oh. But he never knew for sure, no, Boris never knew for sure, he simply guessed, yes, she looks Italian, she's Italian, that's what she is, that's what she must be, Italian, yes, Italian, unless proven otherwise. 

MAKE THEM WAIT

I tell Boris he's the first Boris I've ever met, and ask if there's any Russian blood in his lineage. No, nothing at all, he says. Apparently his mother had a fondness for the works of Boris Pasternak. He was also close, he tells me, to being called Leon. Boris is a strong sounding name, I say, and I remember watching as a boy Boris Becker win Wimbledon at the record age of seventeen years old. Yes, he remembers that too, watching the match surrounded by two of his daughters, eating turkey pies and mushy peas. After a tea break, I watch Boris from a distance working on a wall. He's seated on a plastic milk crate, rolling a piece of rock around in his hand. Then he stops and reaches into his shirt pocket and takes out a pen and a piece of paper, which he unfolds carefully, as if it were a treasure map. He jots something down, recaps the pen, and folds up the paper again, and puts it away out of sight. A small smile comes to his lips, and then a slight shake of the head. I finish my tea and think about approaching him to talk, but something in me makes me think to leave him alone, I don't know why exactly, but there's something incredibly private about the way he's sitting, pondering, and wondering, and trying to imagine, I can't help but think, the next place to place his latest piece of rock ... He looks as if he's reminiscing, or in some kind of meditative state more akin to a monk. And then it's like he all of a sudden comes back again, it happens just like that, all of a sudden, from a private world of a dream to the public world of being - just being - and I seize my chance and walk up to him, and as I do so, I can't help but try to think of something suitable to say, and silly thoughts such as how much has he seen since coming here, to these parts, to this retirement home, come to mind, how many different people have come and gone, that kind of thing, and then, as I get closer, he seems lighter, younger, and I say as much, and for some reason add that he looks as if he's just found out that he's picked the right lottery numbers. That's nothing but another tax, he says, the stupid tax I call it. He tells me he's thinking of his brother again, he can't help it, it just comes, just like that. He remembers picking his brother up from the airport, Heathrow, or Gatwick, he can't remember which. And he remembers a book his brother brought with him, a book highly recommended that he should read. But Boris, for the life of him, can't remember the name of the book, no, it just won't come. He can, however, remember, and easily, what his brother was wearing, for instance - brown jacket, white shirt, red scarf - and the bags he brought with him too, just the couple, if he remembers rightly, one beige and leather, the other a dark canvas  ... But no, not the book, not the book at all ... Not the book that Boris can recall reading in one sitting once he had it in his hands, the book he felt as if he'd almost devoured, once it was in his grasp, no, not the book.

ALL THE FEATHERS

Unlike Boris and his cockatoos, the sound of a lawnmower, for me, is starting to sound like the end of the world. The upside, apart from the smell of freshly cut grass, is how you notice the slightest sound once the machine is shut off. It is the end of autumn here, some of the last of the fallen leaves get caught in a slight breeze, emitting dry, crunchy whispers as they hit up against and swirl around the corner of a wall. The lawn is mown again, likely one of the last times before the onset of winter and the sleeping of the grass. Hopefully the last. I keep checking the machine but can't figure out why the catcher isn't working properly, the result being that lines of grass are left behind, that remind Boris, he says, of the lanes in a swimming pool in London that he used to frequent, where most mornings he would swim lap after lap after lap. Looking back now, maybe I visited that pool so often in the hope of meeting some pretty girl that I otherwise never would have had the nerve to approach. But now there was an opportunity, we had swimming in common! Strange how such things can suddenly come back to you. He says he was in France for a while too, and starts to speak in French, to which I reply 'Oui. Ca va?' and he laughs like he's heard one of the funniest things in the world. He taps me repeatedly on the shoulder and then says he's going for a beer, before adding: Mind those birds, my boy. Today could be the day. 

GATEWAY TO HEAVEN

Boris has been a resident of the village longer than anyone else. He secured one of the units soon after completion, way back when, he says, around the beginning of the eighties. So he lives in number 2, having been beaten to number 1 by a whisker. A cat's whisker, as it turns out, for pets were forbidden, and it took Boris a little longer than expected to find a home for his moggie, since each of his four children spread around the country were reluctant to receive a fluffy ginger addition to their household, a daughter finally acquiescing on condition of a sufficient monthly financial incentive. She'll ask for it now one way or another. A cheque here and there. That first day just got the ball rolling. And the cat's now been dead for donkey's. But at least I get photos of my grandchildren. One of them could pass for my wife, she really could. Unless the weather is particularly foul, Boris can usually be found somewhere on the grounds, working on one of his dry stone walls. His inherent modesty prevents him from detailing his achievements, but according to Mrs Shearer, whatever wall you come across within the boundaries of the village, chances are Boris built it. He tells me that he was never a builder before coming here, that it was just something he picked up, bit by bit, as he found all kinds of rock left behind following the village's construction. A lot of it he moved too, bit by bit, to the unused space beneath his building. And then, bit by bit, he would start making little walls here and there. Something to accentuate a garden bed perhaps, or to add a little texture, or counter balance the boredom of the tarmac with some nicely arranged stones. It wasn't rocket science, he wanted me to know, but what was, apart from rocket science? Usually he'd just set off anywhere and start fiddling around. He'd pick a piece, roll it around in his hand, get a good feel for it, and then take it from there. He'd familiarize himself with the edges too, and essentially, he said, in the end, it was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, except that, more often than not, there was always more than one place to go for any particular piece. And so it became second nature after a while, a part of his day as important as washing his face with cold water in the morning, before a strong cup of tea. Besides, he didn't want to agitate himself with the superficialities of the newspapers or the nightly news anymore. The world is always ending. I may as well build a stone wall in the meantime. Often he lets the screeching cockatoos late in the afternoon signal the end of his day. They made him think, he said, of the sky tearing open in two, and he half imagined shiny brass horns to follow, almost as if announcing the final meeting of the world above with the world below. And then we would all be able to see how his walls held up.

BUCKLE MY SHOE

From a flier passed around during the last Friday of the month happy hour by the man in unit number 12.

Do you remember when

Water trickled down the butcher shop window

The postman blew a whistle

Petrol was sold on the curbside

The night cart never failed to wake us in the morning

Police on point duty wore a white summer helmet

A bag full of broken biscuits could be had for a tuppence

Bread was sold from a basket

Clothes were lifted from boiling water with a copper stick

STUCK IN THE TREE

Before the handyman leaves for the pastures of working in a state prison, I help him build a railing above an embankment, in case car passengers get confused, disembark on the wrong side and take a tumble down to the road. Then he's off to be trained in a life behind bars and I'm left to plant out a flower bed. At lunch I check out the library in town and make enquiries at the local nursery to see what would suit planting. Back at work again, and beginning to turn the soil, I hear a voice and turn to see a short old woman looking down from her balcony, the number 17 stenciled on the balcony base. I said now at least I'll get to see some colour from behind these dreaded iron grills. There are no restraints on her windows as far as I can tell, just the bars of the balcony that I can see, so maybe she's shrinking, I've heard that happening to women as they get older, yes, she's maybe shrinking and her view is starting to resemble more and more a prison cell. Then she says: I'll give you a thousand dollars if you break me out of here. It's tempting, but I decide not to act on it right away, in case it's needed further down the line. At least you're trying to make something beautiful. That's the very least we can do while we're here. But unfortunately your flower bed will be a small part on an otherwise enormous canvas irreparably damaged by an onslaught of grey. She calls me a sweetheart and says it wouldn't be so bad were the house she'd lived in for the past thirty years not six minutes drive away. Once her husband had died, her sons decided that she was in no fit state to be living alone anymore, and so arranged for her to be moved into this: old people's home. That's what it is. Why don't they just say it? You look like you need a whiskey. I tell her maybe later, and mean it. Alone. My sons don't know what alone is. I lived alone the last few years with Otto anyway. Otto? Her husband. Apparently he'd retreated more more the last few years of his life into the machinations of his increasingly muddled mind. She first noticed the change in him when he would suddenly burst out laughing for no particular reason. Then he started dancing in the middle of the street, usually dressed, and she ended up having to lock the front gate, but it never stopped him from trying to climb over. Often she would find him passed out from exhaustion under a nearby tree, impossible to wake, and far too large for her to move. So she would sit there with him, whatever the weather, and look at the tree stump which they had oiled together all those years ago, to preserve the rings, for they knew the rings would outlast them all, and it was the first tree they felled when they came to these parts to raise a family.

TROMBONES

From what I can tell, the majority of the residents appear to be female. And of the men, there are only a few with wives, the rest either widowers, or bachelors from the very beginning (as it's said, a bachelor knows a woman better than anyone - that's why he's a bachelor). I meet one of the couples when asked to deliver a repaired kitchen drawer. They're in unit 15. A white haired woman with glasses half the size of her head lets me in, and the moment I step inside I'm struck by heat and a wave of eucalyptus oil mixed with the unmistakable aroma of recently fried eggs and bacon. My eyes are soon stinging and I can only comfortably see when I squint. Across the room, a giant of a man sits in an armchair. A blanket covers his lap. A ventilator sits on the ground beside him. He waves me over with a hand the size of a bear paw. He used to run a winery, he says, almost single handedly. And then he makes me promise that I will look after my knees, in fact he makes me swear that I will look after my knees. Closer, closer, he says, I want to see the whites of your eyes when you swear to me. But I'm not sure there's any white left after the aromatic onslaught, but I lean in closer anyway and look at him, and yes swear that I will look after my knees. His wife reminisces about running their small farm, the children who would be running beneath her feet, the roast chickens, neighbors, friends and family who'd come round for Sunday dinner, their own proudly produced wine freely available, the bottles they'd leave for guests to take home. As she tells me this, he interjects every now and then to provide some names, and with some names would come an associated memory, a particular tractor or axe perhaps, the time they all built that barn together, him and his brother in law, his brother in law's best friend, Jeffery something, he may have just been passing by, passing by, why would someone just be passing by like that, right there and then, it doesn't make sense. The man and woman's sentences often overlap, seem to blend in to one and the same. Or else they simply speak as if the other is not speaking. Then he asks me to help him up, so I take hold of his forearms, gradually lean back, and pull him to his feet. His shoulders are stooped, and yet he's still a head and a half taller than I am. She smiles, speaks as if he's not even in the room with us anymore. He was the strongest man I'd ever known. The absolute strongest. And the kindest man too you'd ever likely come across. I've a photo of him somewhere holding our four children up in the air, one in each arm, one on each shoulder. The strongest. Without a doubt the strongest.