My thanks go to my proofreaders LadyCibelle, and my friend SH, for attempting to sort out all of my co... foul-ups! But I must remind the reader that I still retain my annoying habit (Well I would be surprised if I doesn't get right up their noses, after all the effort they put in on my behalf!) of fiddling with my tales of woe, almost every time that I open them. So blame for typos, spelling mistakes and all grammar foul-ups, should be laid at my door.
For clarifications of Tow-path, Bedsit or Wobbly; please see the story's end-note.
The River
I didn't often walk along that towpath by the river any more. I'd enjoyed the tranquillity of the place since I was a child, and in my younger days spent many happy hours fishing there and watching the waterfowl raise their young. To see the transformation from cygnet to swan take place over weeks and months had been my idea of heaven as a child. It could have been that my fishing expeditions to the riverbank -- which were never very successful - were an excuse to sit and watch the swans and all the other waterfowl. Bird watching -- as it is euphemistically called -- wasn't really a pastime that was readily accepted by my peers back then; well not the kind of birds with wings on them anyway!
As I'd got older, I had got into the habit of taking a stroll along the towpath almost every day. Even when we started courting, Mary and I spent a lot of our time on the riverbank. Not exactly what you could truthfully describe as bird watching or fishing by then though; Mary and I enjoyed that grassy riverbank for its... yeah well, I don't have to spell it out to you, you know what I mean!
Once I'd lost Mary, I tended to walk there nearly everyday. I suppose recalling my childhood and the many happy hours Mary and I spent there together. That was until the day I looked into the water and saw those eyes staring back at me. That young woman's face has haunted my dreams ever since, and maybe I feared that I would see it looking back at me again if I walked by the river again. Look, maybe it's best if I go back to that afternoon again and I'll try to explain it in a more coherent manner.
Back then my life was in a kind of limbo and had been for many years; my mind remained in a kind-a fog of memories most of the time. I was literally drifting through life day to day. Anyway, it had been my routine to take a long walk after work everyday; it didn't really matter where I walked, as long as it kept me from sitting in the house alone. I'd vary the route I took quite often, but it always took me through the cemetery where I could say hello to Mary and Loretta.
Mary and I had tried for years to have a child, but her pregnancy was to bring an unexpected end to our happiness. I suppose it's unusual in this day and age, for both the mother and baby not to survive a birth; but it does still happen when complications set in, and I'd been the unlucky husband and father that it had happened to.
I suppose I sort-of withdrew from the world after the funeral. Of course, our friends had tried to be very supportive, but they were flogging a dead horse really. I just didn't want to be around anyone, let alone married friends and their children.
Over the years, my life dropped into a routine of work and long quiet walks alone. Maybe I should have sold up the house and moved away, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to sell the house Mary had loved so much. But just being inside that great big Victorian pile, reminded me of all the work that Mary and I had put into it together to make it into the comfortable modern home we intended to spend the rest of our lives together in, and her enthusiastic excitement as we'd converted the smallest bedroom into a nursery.
"Three!" Mary had said, "Three children are going to begin their lives in this room and grow up in this house!" she'd grinned when we finally finished decorating it.
As the years rolled by we'd began to think that children were never going happen for us and then eventually she fell pregnant. Mary and I were both ecstatic at the news.
But less then eight months later my life just stopped!
Now the door to that nursery room stays permanently closed, as does the door to the room Mary and I once shared together. I never did sleep in that room again after... It held too many memories!
Anyway, I've digressed; Mary really has nothing to do with the particular day I was telling you about - you'll please forgive me if I keep referring to her though - other than the fact that as I did every day I had visited the cemetery and had my little daily talk with her and our baby Loretta, before I headed down towards the river.
Although it was a warm spring evening, there were very few people about as I took the steep path that led down from the bridge to the towpath beside the river below. That path is narrow and quite a claustrophobic place, with almost vertical banks either side. Those banks did strange things to the sound of the traffic on the road above, sort-of deadening it and distorting it at the same time.
I suppose that I must have been three quarters of the way down the path when a strange sound caught my ear. For some reason -- probably the distortion caused by those steep banks - I had trouble working out what the noise was at first; eventually coming to the conclusion that someone had thrown something - probably some rubbish - into the river from the bridge above. What I'd heard was the distorted sound of the splash as it hit the water.
"Arsehole!" I called out loud. Not that there was much chance the miscreant would have heard me.
It amazed me even after all the time and effort that had been put into cleaning the river, from the environmental disaster area it had become. People would still used it as a convenient dumping ground for their crap; rather than take it a few miles up the road to the official tip.
Probably still annoyed about the idiot's thoughtlessness, when I eventually got down to the towpath, maybe a minute of so later, I found myself studying the surface. Looking back, I suppose I was hunting for any clue as to whatever had been dumped in the water. But all I could see were the usual ripples in the surface as the water moved slowly along by the current.
Proceeding on my way along the bank, my mind noted a young courting couple walking towards me, maybe about a hundred yards away. And I think I wondered whether they'd spotted what had been thrown into the water. But having second thoughts, I realised that, like Mary and I had been all those years before, they looked far too into each other to notice anything. It was doubtful they'd have noticed if the QE 2 had steamed by.
"Remember when Mary and you, used to walk along the towpath arm in arm together like that?" A little voice - that I didn't want to hear - said somewhere in the back of my brain. A lump immediately formed in my throat, as I tried to ignore the voice. I didn't want to get into conversation with that voice again; those conversations always ended with me feeling even more melancholy.
Instead, I turned my attention back to the water, looking again for any sign of the detritus that I was sure had just been added to it. What I saw took my breath away for a second; two eyes just below the surface, staring back at me. Christ! The sight of them gave me such a shock, that I staggered backwards for a few paces.
But then, taking my heart in my hands I moved back to the bank edge and looked down into the cold water a little more carefully. Sure enough, there was a face, just below the surface whose pleading eyes were staring back up at me.
Things kind-of happened quite quickly after that, as I moved into a kind of automaton mode. Look, I'm no hero and I believe if I'd stopped to think about it, I most likely would have stood there and yelled for help. But I wasn't thinking, my mind was concentrating on or captivated by the pleading expression in those eyes..
