Old Paths

Old Paths

After fifty years, the path was a stranger. The birch, oak and lime
trees now looped high overhead, reducing the sunlight of memories to
torch beams across the brown-green backdrop. The grass where we'd
frolicked was a sprawling mass of nettles and brambles to be carefully
negotiated, and the path itself had shrunk to a ragged narrow
groove.
I moved on, searching. But it wasn't there. The oak tree where John
had proposed was reduced to a rotting, moss-ridden stump. I wonder if
his carving is now part of someone's chair or table. "JW loves SB"
inside a lopsided heart. He'd done that two weeks before Ben was
born... Poor Ben.... Five years ago John had carved something similar
on another tree halfway round the world. A tree close to the year-old
carved marble tablet: "John White. 1922 - 1997", loving husband of
Sandra." Loving husband... If only I'd known.
I moved on. The gate was still there, sagging and rotting. You
wouldn't want to pretend it was a fairground ride anymore. The shed
behind it was still there, too, though some of its drooping and rusted
corrugated panels had fallen off. No longer a place to lie and love it
still drew from me the smell of fresh straw. At least he took no-one
else there... I think.
I think... I'd thought a lot over the last fifty years. How much of it
was true? Which of it was true? Was any of it true? But the truth lies
under that far-off marble tablet and truth hadn't spoken to me in a
long time - if it had ever.
I moved on, still searching. Somewhere ahead, a blackbird shrilled its
warning and the wood fell silent. Silent, that is, except for the sound
of my own footsteps treading the path of memory.
"Don't throw stones at blackbirds!"
My shout startled him and he paused, his raised arm haloed by a shaft
of Mayday sun.
He turned, grinned, and gently lobbed the pebble towards me in a slow,
high, parabolic arc, applauding politely when I pulled it from the air
with a swift upward grab of my right hand.
"Hello," he said. "Who are you?"
"Sandra".
"I'm John." He thrust his hand into the left pocket of his grey
flannel shorts. "Want a humbug?"
"No thank you."
He stuck a hand into his other pocket. "What about some sherbet,
then?"
"No thank you." The humbug looked as if it had been dribbled along the
path.
He bent down and studied the ground. The blackbird shrilled another
warning.
"Anyway, what's wrong with chucking stones at birds?"
"It's not right."
"Why not?" He straightened, his left hand closed.
"It just isn't."
"Well who's going to stop me?"
His grin irritated me. "I am."
"Oh Yeah? How?"
"I'll tell your Mum."
"You don't know who she is."
"Yes I do."
"No you don't - we don't live round here."
"I'll find out, then."
"How."
"Wouldn't you like to know," I stuck my tongue out at him. "And if
you're not from round her, what are you doing in my woods?"
"Your woods?"
"Yes."
"Do you own them or something?"
"My Dad works here."
"I bet that's nice." He looked around, almost three hundred and sixty
degrees. "I wish my Dad worked here."
"Why?"
He shrugged and tossed a pebble into a nearby bush. He listened to the
clattering echoes for a moment then shrugged again.
"What does your Dad do?"
"He works in a rotten old factory."
"What sort of factory?"
"Just a factory. He doesn't make anything - he just sits at a
desk."
"So what are you doing here, then?"
"I got fed up of playing in the street, so I hitched a lift out of
town."
"To here?"
"To anywhere."
A blackbird hopped out of the undergrowth on to the path a few feet
ahead of me and cocked his head at me as if wondering what I was doing
in his woods. They hadn't been my woods for decades. I think I
half-guessed way back then that John had wanderlust. Getting a lift to
'Anywhere' became a habit when he left school. Until the day he
appeared without warning on my doorstep when I hadn't seen or heard
from him for nearly two years. Mum and Dad never understood why I
agreed to go to Australia with him instead of becoming engaged to
Andrew.
"Marry my daughter! You!" A vein visibly throbbed in Dad's temple - a
sign to make yourself scarce.
"I've got a good job in Australia-"
"Australia!" Dad's voice could have shaken Jericho. It was the only
time I ever saw John flinch from anyone or anything.
"Yes, sir. It's well-paid and I expect a promotion soon. I can afford
to give her just about anything she wants."
Shortly after that, Dad threw him out of the house. Andrew proposed
the next day. I've always wondered if Dad had tipped him off about
John. I told Andrew that I'd think about it. Dad was delighted, but Mum
went quiet, though. "What about John," she asked when Dad had gone to
the pub. As soon as she asked the question, I knew for certain what I
wanted. Poor Andrew, it was a bad time for you. I was delighted when I
heard, a couple of years later, that you'd married Pamela.
We didn't get married for a whole year, until I was twenty-one. Dad
refused to go to the wedding. Mum sorted that one out. Just before we
left the reception, Dad came up to us.
"You know what I think about you, young man. Well, now you're wed, I
won't hold any grudges," and with that, he thrust out a hand for John
to shake. However, Dad never really warmed to John, never forgave him
for whisking me off to a distant land and never forgave him when Ben
was lost. Then when Pamela and Andrew split up, I think he mentally
discarded everybody except Mum.
Pamela? Whoops, I'd better be heading back; she'll have tea ready
soon. Afterwards, we're going to visit our parent's graves; I haven't
been there since before Mum passed away. I wonder who'll tend the plots
when Pamela comes to live with me in Australia. She's on her own, you
see. She and Andrew never had children and their divorce cut her off
from the rest of his family.
I turned, causing the blackbird to shriek a brief alarm and scuttle
back to shelter. If I had wings, I'd never walk. As I set off, I kicked
a stone, sending it tumbling down the path ahead. For a second its
echoes raised a vision of a grinning flaxen-haired boy haloed by a
Mayday sun.
Feeling every inch of my age, I trudged back into the bright
sunshine.