Memory of Love (9781101603024) Read Free

the work of others than for the creators. Surely it hadn’t always been so. I wondered when the balance had shifted and whether it would flow back again.
    There I was, with my feet in the sand, foolishly trying to pretend that I was outside, or perhaps even above it all. That the world could not reach me or impact on my life. But there was no escaping the reality of the rest of the world. I was part of it by my sheer physical presence. This remote place where I existed was connected to the rest of the world in ways that I could not influence. I could ignore the world as much as I liked, but it would still be there and it would continue to affect me and my environment regardless of what I thought or did.
    Behind the house was my small garden. Too elaborate a term perhaps for the small sandy patch where I grew tomatoes, lettuces, onions and herbs. And where my lemon tree lived, thwarted by the constant wind but still yielding its scrawny fruit generously. It must have been very old, older than the house. Older than me, probably. Its short knobbly trunk was wide at the base and carried scars where branches had been trimmed off. There was a grapefruit tree and a feijoa beside it, but they were new companions to the lemon tree. In the early days I had considered planting potatoes and kumara and becoming more self-sufficient. But the idea of being restricted by the demands of a proper garden hadn’t appealed to me. As it was, I could leave it for weeks and little happened. The tomatoes needed watering of course, but their resilience had surprised me when I had had to leave them unattended for several days.
    Apart from my garden and my cat I had very little company. I met Sophie every now and then, but not very often any more. The whole idea with our shared surgery had always been that the one of us who was not on duty should be genuinely free. She was much younger than I and she had three young children. We had shared our surgery for several years and it had worked well. I had enjoyed my work, and perhaps the social side of it, the contact with my patients, had been a replacement for the private life I largely lacked. But then there had come a day when I had decided to retire. Spend more time on my creative work. We had changed our arrangement and I served as a locum from time to time. It seemed to be less and less frequently. My life became lonelier in a way, but also richer. I had very little in the way of human intercourse but I enjoyed the sense of freedom. I had arranged my life as it pleased me and it had felt like a state of being I would enjoy until the end of my life. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that.
    My nearest neighbour was a farmer up the hill on the other side of the road. George Brendel. I didn’t know much about him but I had always been aware that, like me, he was not a local. He spoke with a slight accent that was evident only occasionally. He owned a substantial piece of land but he kept no other animals than a flock of sheep. Like George and me, they stood out too – they were not quite right in this environment. Firstly, sheep did not really belong in this part of the country. And also, George’s sheep were small and had black legs. I had only seen such sheep once before – in Gotland in the Baltic Sea. It was a mystery where George’s flock came from. They grazed under his olive trees – another oddity, as nobody grew olives here. Like their owner, the sheep had slowly claimed their right to exist here, not as proper locals, but as a tolerated oddity.
    George’s shortcomings as a farmer seemed to have one main cause: he had money. I had no idea where this notion had come from, but it seemed to be a common assumption: George Brendel was an incompetent farmer because he had money. He had lived here much longer than I, and over the years he had come to earn a kind of respect, if not as a farmer, then as a person. He was active in the community and he was on the