Nostalgia (Part 12)

We both sipped our brandy in silence. In the increasing coolness of the night air, language no longer seemed appropriate, almost intrusive.  I gazed around at the plethora of flowers; annuals, orange and yellow marigolds, punctuated by small clumps of red ‘hot pokers’; perennials, the tall delphinium spikes, cobalt blue in the gloom, the deep crimson lupins, now fully opened, and the titanium white of the oriental lilies. I watched her from the corner of my eye. She seemed more at ease, sanguine, I might almost say serene but how much of that was to be held to tiredness’ account, I could not say. I stood up and straddling her legs, offered my hands to help her to stand up. She grasped my forearms, and I hers, and I lifted her upright. As she sought to find her feet, she pitched into me and I once again felt the warmth of her breasts and her breath against my cheek, yet for a moment, I thought that we were both set to tumble. However, she regained her footing and bent to retrieve her cane.

Confident that she was balanced, I picked up the brandy bottle and the glasses with one hand and with one arm, carried the table with my other into the kitchen, leaving her to follow. While she was locking the garden door, I rinsed the two glasses and left them on the draining board.

She shuffled into the kitchen.

“Right!” I said. “Put the brandy away in a cupboard for a rainy day. Ah, a white board!” I took the pen from its holder, removed the cap and began to write. ‘Dom, Mob 07890 234 518’; if you have a need to call, call! Do you have a phone in your bedroom?” She nodded. “Good! Twenty minutes after I leave here, call that number and let me know that you have safely navigated the staircase, with or without the stairlift, and that you are tucked up in bed. OK? I would wager that you have had more alcohol tonight than you are used to.”

“I was rather hoping that you would deign to tuck me in yourself,” she said with a smirk. “Dominic, I am truly grateful for today as unwished for and unexpected as it has been; I do hope that we can perhaps do something together another time. Perhaps I shall find you hanging around the recycle bins once again but this time without my wheelchair. I would bet that those bins could weave some pretty stories; tales of intense love, redemption and two Danish pastries.”

“Gary Oldman,” I replied. “However, I do not relish sucking the blood of virgins!”

I scooped up the table and I walked to the lounge and left it where I had found it. As I entered the hallway once more, she was already undoing the latch to the door.

“Good night, Dominic,” she said. “Please remember to close the gate after you; otherwise the foxes will get into the garden and will poop all over my roses!”

“Good night,” I replied. I kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite!”

I sauntered down the ramp and out through the gate. As I turned to close it shut behind me, I could see her face outlined in the half open door. I waved and made my way down the road to the bus stop.

A singular day, diary; a most singular summer day; such a day as the very stuff of dreams is made of, diary.  Who would have thought it, outside the supermarket? As I approached the bus stop, I could see that the time to the next bus on the indicator board was seventeen minutes. I decided that it was too long a wait. I was stiff from all of that sitting down on the grass; the walk would do me good. I would still be home inside of twenty minutes.

As I marched on down the road, the temperature was still a comfortable one for shirt sleeves. I could just make out the lights of the supermarket in the distance; that great, glazed Nissan hut on stilts. Why did this happen today, diary? Why not last week, last month or last year? For all of the teasing, the bravado; the devil-may-care and he can take the hindmost attitude; the naked vulnerability; the strange touching of our fingertips, oddly alluring; that smile, that laughter; why today?

And yet for all that I found attractive in this strange woman, a victim of circumstance, happenstance gone awry, still the inner voice would not be silenced; it spoke to me even now in words that still ring in my ears . The voice with the plum lodged firmly in its cheek; the voice at home with either Greek or Latin; the voice of a thousand dinner parties; the voice of affluent privilege; a voice full to the brim with arcane knowledge and cutting-edge research. A voice which seemed to intone the very mantra of my own despair; how long?

It was difficult to be precise, the voice had said in its monotonic fashion; with treatment, perhaps a year, maybe more, without treatment, perhaps a day, a week, perhaps as long as three months. Life expectancy is not a precise science, however much data is accumulated and new research always offers the hope of new treatments. The important thing is to hope. 

This is all very well but it is of little comfort to the individual whose sole priority is not where you can buy some Château Pétrus at under £1,500 per bottle.

Our concerns are only for the more mundane, the more quotidian; the prosaic.

I should have left when I first intended, diary. I seem to have given hope or, perhaps, merely comfort where I have none for myself and where little or none existed for me before. Have I seriously erred, diary? I should perhaps be in Geneva when, if, she calls after today. Important experiments, I must not lose my ‘slot’ on the LHC; Brian will be very disappointed. Perhaps I should have just shouted: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ I could feel no worse than the Prince of Denmark and, perhaps, that is all that I deserve. Damn your eyes, damn that smile; for I am smitten, although it is of little use to either of us.

Next week, the voice will speak once again. Perhaps I should just tell the voice to stick it up his arse; in spades, doubled and redoubled!