Autumn Leaves
Chapter 1 Leaves and Levy
When the wind blows in from the north-west and he tramps northwards to the paper shop, 74-year-old George Bryant's left eye tends to water up and he has to stop and wipe the closed eyelid with a fresh handkerchief before the left lens of his spectacles steams up. That eye is his weaker eye and the tear ducts on that eye don't seem to have a stop cock that he can access to switch off. On the way back to the care home he believes he'll all right as far as the biting cold wind goes, as the cold breeze will only propel his spare skin and bones homeward that much faster.
However, if the sun is still out, heading back south-east, his left eye will still be leaking like some hammy actress clutching a golden Oscar to her silk-covered breast, while he'll be holding onto, as today it's Saturday morning, The Daily Mirror newspaper, the local rag The Songlebridge Herald, and the Racing Pigeon weekly to his chest, which is more than amply covered by his waterproof anorak, self-knitted cardie, buttoned-up cotton shirt and, bless' 'em, a trusty M&S thermal vest.
Now that George has reached the point where the railings, separating the junior school playing fields from the footpath, he notices that the raw freezing temperatures yesterday, followed by strong overnight winds, have brought down much of the autumn leaves off the trees.
It seems to George that the leaves appeared to have fallen somewhat early this year. He recalls when the railings were actually erected, around 20 years ago, shortly after he first moved into his lonely flat at the Songlebridge Lakeside Community Village & Care Home, not long after he lost his wife Molly.
'You could never live without me, Georgie dear,' Molly says softly inside his head.
"Oh, you can tell what I'm thinking now, even when I'm not talking directly to you, eh, Mole?" George replies out loud, trying to put an edge of fake exasperation into his voice.
He was, after all, out in the open, it was very early in the morning, as the paper shop was unofficially open as soon as the bundled newspapers and magazines were delivered from the tiny station in Holdover Halt, usually around 5.30 am; it was George's habit to wake early, rouse himself out of his flat in the retirement village and go collect his newspaper before even the early dog walkers were persuaded by their frantic pooches to leave their warm beds, especially as this was Saturday, the first day of working people's weekend, for doggies' necessary walkies and poopies.
'Of course I know what you're thinking, George, I always have. You're an open book, honey, besides, you're far too old and set in your ways to try and keep any secrets from li'l ol' me.'
George's late and only wife Molly has always spoken to him in his head, ever since she unexpectedly left him behind almost as soon as they had decided to sell up their tiny cottage. They had lived immediately behind the large fuel station and truck and car maintenance workshop they owned. They had sold both their home and business at the same time, with the intention of moving into the two-bedroom flat they had purchased with the proceeds at the Lakeside Village retirement home.
Molly had been having some mobility issues for quite a while and the upstairs flats at the retirement home were designed for independent retirement living and were serviced by lifts. Also, the ground floor of the complex contained a full service care home for when they eventually needed such a facility. A fall which resulted in a painful broken hip, forced Molly to be collected by ambulance and she expected a long hospital stay, before the hospital discovered that Molly was riddled with previous unsuspected bone cancer. Before George had even grasped the severity of her illness, she gave up her mortal existence. It all happened in only a matter of days.
In a daze, George allowed the sale of the cottage and business and the subsequent move to the lonely flat to wash him along like the unstoppable tide of time. Even before the cremation, Molly continued to guide his life in death just as she had in life by talking to him in his head and George simply went along with events. He was still holding conversations with his for-ever-loving wife a dozen otherwise lonely years later.
Shaking his head, knowing the truth of their sixty-plus long years' relationship, which was unblessed by Molly's inability to conceive, the loving couple had only drawn closer to each other with the passage of time. When they set up the business on all the land in front and to the side of their original post-war prefab bungalow, George had managed the truck and car servicing business, while Molly ran the fuel pumps and small convenience store in the prefab's front room initially. They built the two-bed cottage in the back garden as the store eventually took over the whole of the original bungalow.
Now George was walking on the crunchy fallen leaves that were strewn across the footpath. When the junior school put up the stout metal fence, was it designed to keep the kids in or keep the 'pedos' out?, George idly wonders.
Anyway, to erect the fence, the contractors had to cut down and take away the old beech hedge that once upon a time used to catch and retain most of the deciduous leaves from the thickly-wooded surrounds of the school field, which was made up, he noted, of sycamore, field maple, hornbeam, oak, horse chestnuts and a few ornamental Japanese maples. Nowadays there was nothing to hold the leaves back from the prevailing wind and the leaves were strewn all over the downhill footpath, trapped between grassy bank and uncut long grass strip beside the roadway, and looked dangerously slippery from the morning mist of early Autumn.
George could't cross the road at this point because there's only the single pavement on this side of the road and he knows that the mad buggers'll still dash down the hill in the cars and vans doing 50 instead of 30 because there's nowhere for the police to set up their radar thingymajig to catch them on this stretch. So he threads his way very gingerly through the thick carpet of crunchy golden autumn leaves.
'You should've brought your stick, Hon, you're nowhere near as spry as you once were,' Molly gently admonishes.
George didn't feel in a position to disagree. "Yes, I've forgotten my stick, you know, the old one I inherited from my old man who, like me, was usually too damn stubborn to use it."
'I know dear, that stick may be an antique it's as good as new. You know you should have kept up the football playing, you were so supple and agile once, as well as tall and commanding as centre-half in the school football team, I remember. Watching you leap and head the ball was like watching a salmon climb a dam going upstream.' Molly recalls, 'We were a sweetheart couple even at school, when you were 15 and I was 14. Happy days, honey, every single one of them back then and every single day ever since.'
"Well, my National Service at 18 put an end to my football days," George remembers. "Actually, we were actively encouraged to play sport in the Army and I did play constantly throughout my time in the REME, both during my two years' National Service and the four years I signed on for afterwards. And then when we set up the garage together that the car and truck servicing was its most busy time at the weekends and I had to give up sport altogether."
'Yes, signing up for another four years in the military, certainly meant a delay in us getting married until I was 23, by which time I almost considered myself an old maid,' Molly sniffs. 'It showed me that you clearly couldn't be trusted to make decisions on your own, George, in fact making any decision as important at that without me whispering in your ear.'
"You've certainly been making up for all that lost time, Mole," George chuckles, 'You've been metaphorically sitting on my shoulder almost all the time since."
'Having regrets about us, this late in life, huh, George?'
