I check my phone’s got charge, even though the carer’s more than capable. Amy should be asleep for the next couple of hours anyway. She’s at least kept that small element of her routine. Afternoon nap, and eight hours at night. Everything else may be falling apart in her head, but that has mercifully remained a constant.
At the front gate I run my fingers along the tiles. They always make me smile. TDS on mine, for Terry David Simmons, with the hand-drawn rugby player on it. I was mad for rugby back then, dreaming I’d make it to play for England. I did play at uni, but other things got in the way. Well, not got in the way. I’d never say Amy got in the way. Just appeared in my life like a tornado one day, and never left. Until now.
Next to my tile is the second one. HRS, for Harry Richard Simmons, with the racing driver motif. He never became that either. We’d been inseparable once, but he only flew back for two days for Dad’s funeral. The only communication with him in the last six months was a cheque settling his half of the estate so I could keep the house. We aren’t close now. And with no kids — a mercy, I suppose, since Amy’s condition is genetic — that leaves me. Rattling about in a house that I love, that holds so many happy memories, but that’s all it is now. I walk from room to room, the past oozing through the walls.
Over the way is the old garden, where Harry and I used to race our bikes, through the undergrowth before it got overgrown. There’s a pond at the far end where we’d do an obstacle course, over a little bridge, down into the pond — never containing water any more — just mud sometimes — and then back up onto the pathway and round the tree. Whoever got ahead first always won — it was impossible to overtake — but somehow we didn’t notice that at the time. Weird what you don’t see.
I like the area now. They’ve starting using it more, for kids. Nice to see people playing. Sometimes there are scouts, sitting in a big semicircle, each on little stumps of wood, eagerly listening to whatever practical skills — we called them fun in my day — the scout leader is imparting today. Some of them must have been learning to make a shelter, because there are sticks leaning up against a branch making some kind of den. They’ve put logs along the edges of the paths to make it easier to follow them, which is good. You could probably even come round in a wheelchair. I could bring Amy, although this is more my place. My quiet place where I get away and forget.
That word brings me back. I’m forgetting her forgetting.
I shouldn’t forget, not even for a second. What I’ve got now is the best I’ll have. The most I’ll have of her. I’ll always have memories, but occasionally some odd connections form in her brain, even now, and something comes out. She started singing the other day. “There’s a snowman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us…” and then stopped trying, just humming the tune. It makes sense, really. The snowman did fly. Perfect sense. She’d probably have sung that wrong ten years ago. I tormented her once when she forgot the lyrics to something — what was it? “Saved by a woman.” I don’t know how she forgot, but I’d sung some different words, like “attacked, by a woman” and she couldn’t remember what it was supposed to be. She got quite angry when she realized I knew but kept making up dafter and dafter versions. I even managed “shaved, by a woman” and she still didn’t get it.
There’s a little bench by the pond now. This is a peaceful place.
“It wasn’t always.” A voice behind me.
I don’t jump. It’s a calm voice. Almost inside me. I keep watching the pond. There’s a squirrel racing along the far lip of it, heading for an old shed beyond.
“Children used to play here, once,” the voice continues.
“I know. I played here. With my brother.”
“Ah yes.” A man walks past me, over to the little bridge, and sits down on it, dangling his legs in the non-existent water. “I remember.”
I watch him, staring down into the bottom of the pond. His eyes are flicking back and forth, seeing something I can’t. He hears my thought.
“Do you want to see?”
“See what?”
“The children. The children playing.”
I look around, nervously, but nod. He doesn’t look at me, but he reacts anyway.
“The pond has to be full, you see. The natural spring that fills it, back beyond the fence, is still there. It can be brought back up again, and this could be fresh running water. I don’t suppose they’d approve, these officials, but it would flow here without even a pump, you know. Look…”
He waves an arm, as if painting the space. Water appears in the pond, flowing from behind the bridge into the pool, then draining out of a little gap in the concrete at the other side. He waves again, and the place transforms, with half a dozen children taking it in turns to jump in and splash each other. The old man shuffles sideways to let one jump off the bridge, cannonballing into the water. I can’t hear them, but I see the splashes, and shouts, and laughing. It’s infectious, even without any noise. I haven’t laughed in a long time. Not since Amy sang about the snowman.
I look at the old man. He’s laughing too, but I can hear him.
I find myself laughing and crying at the same time.
He looks over at me. “Your wife would like it here. You should bring her.”
“She doesn’t like new places.”
“This isn’t new. This is an old place. Besides, she could watch you.”
“Watch me? Doing what?”
“Well, there’s always work to be done.”
I notice the water has faded away, along with the children.
“It was fun,” I say, “when I played here, but with water too… Must have been an amazing place.”
“It will be, yes.”
“Will be?”
“Oh, sorry. That wasn’t the past. Children did play in the water, decades ago, but that’s a distant memory even for me. No, I showed you the future of the garden. That’s what Socrates said.”
“Socrates?”
“Civilization is when you fill a pond that only your grandchildren will get to play in. Or something like that.”
“I don’t have any…”
“I know. But that doesn’t matter. You need to look outwards. Your world only shrinks if you hang on to it. Bring her here, volunteer to clean me up, and you’ll embed good memories, good works, and happiness. You’ll thank me for it one day.”
I look into the empty concrete. The words run back through my head. Clean me up? Me?
I look over to the bridge, and he’s gone. Of course he’s gone.
But the garden hasn’t. The garden is only just beginning.
When not writing, and not suffering the burden of a very much less creative day job, Robert is usually upset about the lack of a single Russian oligarch with a preference for recreating zeppelins over buying English football teams, accidentally collects whisky, or rants about the vagaries of modern life at Philosophical Leopard. You can also find his longer works here.
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