The Wind Chime on the Plane Tree
A Short Story
On a blue summery night, outside a raucous pub full of early drunks, all drinking to soak their drudgery and companion themselves, a lone star shined high up in the sky.
It had been raining for weeks on end in Southport and the air was wet with droplets. Cool and inviting during those afternoons when, over piles of paperwork, the lights in offices shone bright. She glanced at herself as she walked by shop windows outside the Victorian arcade; the oils on her skin shone and exuded their perfect fragrances. Raindrops sprinkled the flowers on a terrace garden from far up in the sky, where they were icy cold. As they entered the garden, their coolness mingled with the steaming earthen walkways and pavements down below.
She put her coat over her shoulders and walked out to see if the rain felt warm or cool. It was just a drizzle and it was cool.
“Are you looking for this?” came a voice.
She turned around to see a tall man with graying hair and a pleasant face holding a red scarf in his hands. It was wet and his hand gleamed in the light that was reflected from the shops.
“Thank you. It must have flown off” she replied, taking it from him. She walked somewhat briskly back to bus stop and boarded the bus home.
A few days later, she was watching music videos from the 80s, being a fan of the days when Material Girl and La Isla Bonita were on everyone’s lips. In one of the video clips, she saw a man in a black suit in a train, among others with the singer walking through the train. It suddenly seemed very familiar; there was a certain je ne sais quoi about this clip. It seemed as if she knew something about it only too well … then suddenly, it flashed through her mind. She thought about the man with his pleasant face, graying hair and his gleaming hand holding out her scarf. She looked at the man in the video clip…It was him! He was the man with the scarf!
This was odd, she thought. Feeling a bit unnerved, she opened the doors to her beautiful Spanish inspired living room, and thought about this video clip and what it meant. ‘Was he an actor?’ she thought. She wondered if he knew about her job at the casting agency. She got distracted by the DVD collection and decided to watch Hideous and Kinky. She followed the desperate search for identity of a young woman from the West in the Middle East and her passionate search for the meaning of existence for the next hour or so, getting up only to re-fill her cup with more scoops of fig and ginger ice cream infused with honey. In the end, she took Kate Winslet’s anguish to bed. She murmured with her heart a while and slept.
It was afternoon the next day when she decided to get up. She sat with her coffee mug in front of the old Steinway upright and played Elise with her own improvisations to the version she had learned as a child from her grandmother, when she was living with her for a short while in Emeryville. She had been presented with it as a graduation gift and moved it to the Burtons’ family home. Her grandmother told her to treasure it, for the many years of love it still had in it.
She thought of her grandmother fondly, although as a child, she remembered she was never allowed outside for too long. Grandmother would tell her to be weary of strangers and was quite over-protective and only much later upon growing older, she realized the reasons why. Grandmother had had seven children, and four of them had moved overseas. She had lost her youngest son a few years before and had never really recovered from the shock.Her father and two other brothers lived in different cities and visited her once in a while. As a child, she never really saw much of the family, but did share a strong bond with nanna, as she called her grandmother.
The afternoon sun waded in through the French windows and she found herself recovering from her reveries and in the kitchen garden, picking basil leaves and stripping the rosemary. She cooked up a salmon steak, thoroughly enjoying making the hollandaise pour over for the asparagus. The neighbor’s cat popped in to say hello and she knew it was for those brightly striped seafood highlighters. They lazed about after lunch together doing what she loved doing: sleeping and dreaming.
Two days later, she was relieved it was Friday. She looked forward to the weekend ahead and re-decorating the garden shed so she could use it as an art studio. She walked past the coffee shop and picked up the daily paper. Then, she saw him. He was leaning against the wall behind the bus stop and looking straight at her.
She realized that she had seen him before, out of the corner of her eyes, sometimes in the grocery store, sometimes in the library, sometimes in the park when she went jogging on the tracks.
She thought about the video clip. She was feeling a mixture of curiosity and queasiness; she wanted to know what the missing link was, or worse, if he was stalking her. Then she brushed these thoughts aside. Maybe he was just a traveler who happened to return her scarf, or maybe he was just one of those quiet and slightly weird people that every neighborhood had. Maybe he resembled someone on TV, or maybe he was on TV but didn’t really become famous. He didn’t move and she realized she was staring at him.
The bell at the town hall struck eight am and the bus arrived. Everybody made a bee line to board it. She turned to board the bus, bought herself a ticket and sat at a window seat. Suddenly, she found herself staring at the wall, mouth open in disbelief. On the wall behind the bus stop a sign was painted in black. It read ‘Come to the playground in the park this evening’. There was a paint bucket, but no one around. The man who stood there only a few moments before had disappeared.
She turned her attention to the paper in hand, in a vague attempt to bring herself back to reality. What was happening? Was the sign meant for her? If so, why her? She tried to keep busy at work all day, but found her mind wandering to the end of the day, steering her physically to the balcony of her office on the 18th floor. She found herself staring at the city below her from the glass windows and wondering what she would do.
She decided she would go to the park, if only to find out what the connection was between the video clip on TV and this man, if there was one. And she intended to find out whether he had indeed painted the sign.
At six pm, she found herself at the entrance to park. People were coming in on their evening walks. Several mothers pushed their prams together and jogged around the tracks, exchanging words of advice on baby management. Many more crowded around the glasshouse with bottles of beer and set up snacks and paper plates on a blanket for a picnic. They looked at her but they were looking for friends who’d promised to come. They returned to their tasks when it was not who they expected to see.
She could see the playground now. There were a few children with their parents pushing them on the swings. There were some older men and women practicing tai chi, but no sight of the man from that morning. For a moment, she stopped to assess what she was doing and found herself smiling, somewhat bemused by her reasons for being there.
Just then, a young boy came racing down the track, ringing the bell on his bicycle. She moved out of his way. But he kept ringing the bell and came directly at her. ‘What are you doing?’ she yelled.
‘Hey… Are you looking for the tall man who asked you to come here today?’ he replied, shouting over her.
‘What?? Yes…But how do you know about that?’ she said. The boy came closer and handing her an envelope, he said ‘Here, this is for you’.
He briskly cycled along, before she could open it or say another word. She called after him, to no avail. Feeling more and more curious by the second, she opened the envelope. Inside it was a one page note.
‘7 Poolbend Ave Lakeside West. Follow the bicycle trail.
There is a plane tree with wind chimes in the front yard. Let yourself in.’
She looked up to see where the bicycle tracks led. It seemed to end at the west gate of the park, but she walked on to find out that it continued between the native bushes. She knew from memory that Poolbend Ave was not far. In fact, she remembered using the launderette there when she was new in the neighborhood. ‘Does this man know me from there?’ she wondered. As she got closer, she could hear the wind chime and a dog barking from a house a few doors down.
As the note said, she saw the plane tree with a beautiful wind chime hanging from it. She let herself in through the gate and walked through the front yard. She found herself in a beautiful garden, with a bird of paradise blooming by the door. It was open; she let herself in.
‘Hello? Anyone home?’ she asked, as she entered. There was no answer.
The lights were on in the hallway and the living room. The door was still open and a cool breeze drifted in. Outside the wind chime tinkled aloud. She walked into the living room and stood near the coffee table. There were fresh flowers placed in a Japanese vase on it.
Her attention turned to the piano in the corner and she instantly walked towards it. She saw a picture framed in a plaque on it that was unreadable from the glare. She turned it a little sideways and it was a picture of the man from the morning at the bus stop. He was in a soldier’s uniform. She held it to the light to read the inscription on the plaque.
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