CHAPTER 1
The dispatch manager at Olsen and Wells Fine Jewelry was given the choice of moving to the downgraded position of dispatch senior clerk at HQ or take early retirement. At fifty-five and only just settled into the suburb of South Mole, Charlie Walters didn't wish to move to Sydney. An unwilling casualty of economic fallout, he was given a drunken send-off party and left with a fat payment.
Charlie had lost Meg nine months earlier to cancer and although lonely had taken to his new community, popular with mainly retirees wishing to live by a lake and young couples taking up a mortgage to buy their first home to get them away from their mothers but not too far in case weekend babysitters were required.
Jobs were scarce. Charlie made a couple of embarrassing attempts to secure employment, once as a security guard where it was obvious they were looking for someone twenty-five years younger and as a courier driver. When the courier company recruiter asked had he ever been booked for drunken driving, Charlie said confidently only four times. The ha-ha lady (HR woman) said once would have been too much and the rude bag told Charlie to close the door behind him as he left.
Early on the first Monday morning in retirement, Charlie had read the Sydney Morning Herald and downed four cups of black coffee and was felling bilious and disoriented. He always watched his team wrap diamond rings at this time of morning on Mondays, watching for the thieving bastards to try to exchange a real ring for a paste one or even a photograph of a real diamond ring.
He went to the John for the fifth time but it was another dry one.
Charlie concluded he was bored. Then came an idea. He pulled on sneakers, swapped his polo for a t-shirt with the huge logo 'Sydney to New York Marathon' he'd picked up cheap in Thailand three years ago and jogged down to widow's Patty Duke's drinks trailer parked beside the lake at the intersection of Main and Emu.
"Bottle of water thanks Ducky."
"God Charlie I didn't know you were a runner and what's this not been at work on a Monday."
"I was too efficient for the company and so they had to let me go because I was showing up all the other lazy slobs."
"Oh yeah?" Patty grinned, showing yellow teeth, a big one in the top front missing. "Run off some of that beer gut Charlie and I could be interested in having a piece of you."
"Nah I'm not interested in going after your St Bernard," he quipped and Patty cackled like a laying hen.
Charlie went down to the slope to the fine gravel topped track that followed the indented contours around Lake Watt (named after English explorer James B. Smith who reputedly said 'Wot is that a lake?). The signboard, warning joggers to watch for mothers with babies in strollers and young dogs hauling old women, also indicated the circuit was exactly 8 miles long. Charlie had done the circuit a few times and knew a circuit would take him 40 to 45 minutes when not in a hurry.
He set off and immediately heard a woman call, "Hey wait up."
Charlie slowed and she caught him and looked about his age with floppy tits.
"May I run with you?"
"If you must."
"Oh hi grumpy, I'm Alice."
"Hi, call me Charlie."
"Oh god you're not Charlie Monk the infamous prison escaper?"
Charlie scowled and said he though he'd escaped the world's last champion motor-mouth woman when his wife died.
"Omigod you mean Meg Walters don't you. Her husband was called Charlie although she claimed he was a lovely man. Sorry I didn't get to the funeral Charlie. I'd broken my top denture and had gone into Sydney to have a new one made and without it was feeling a right nit."
"It's okay. Meg wouldn't have known you were there. I almost didn't go for the same reason but my two kids dragged me along. I would have preferred saying goodbye to Meg quietly, like when running around this track."
"But without me nattering?"
"Yeah without you nattering. You're a smart kid Alice."
She laughed and said he was funny and not at all off-putting.
Alice had to stop at Fallow's Point to have a splash in the trees.
"Thanks for waiting for me."
"It was the polite thing to do."
He handed her his water bottle and she drank from it without wiping the top.
"You should have wiped the top."
"I don't fear catching unfavorable bacteria at my age Charlie."
"How old are you?"
"Sixty-two."
"Oh just a kid."
Alice loved it; he admired sharp people in old bodies who continued to exercise.
As they parted he called, "Same time tomorrow?"
"Oh yes. I thought you'd be arriving an hour earlier to ensure you missed me."
"Same time tomorrow. Don't be late or I'll go without you."
She moaned how could he expect a woman to be on time but there she was next day already waiting for him.
She looked at the water bottle and said she'd pay half.
"Nay, my treat. Keep your money for your kids."
She said she didn't have anyone and they began their 5 mph pace that suited them just fine.
Alice stopped to have her splash among the trees and then drank water.
They chatted of course. Charlie learned that Alice had farmed on a small sheep station that became unprofitable and so they sold it. He husband Alec was unsettled in town and died within a year."
"Of a broken heart?"
"I think so Charlie. Five years ago our only child Evan drowned while going into a flooded river to try to save a young bull. We had little or no rain for five years and then that damn flood. But if it wasn't like that everyone would be out there farming and pushing up prices and over-stocking the land."
On Friday, their fourth run together, Charlie followed Alice into the trees and asked could he watch."
"I think so Charlie. Why did you ask?"
"I've never seen a woman pee."
"Oooh, I must close that gap in your education Charlie."
He stood calmly and watched, Alice ensuring he saw it all.
"There's nothing wrong with your waterworks," he laughed and wondered what she meant when she said he shouldn't be too sure about that.