Memory of Love (9781101603024) Read Free Page A

board of the local council.
    I had been to his farm, but never inside his house. I didn’t think he had a family, but I didn’t really know much about his private life. He kept saying he admired my art and when he bought something, he paid for it in meat, olive oil or favours. Always too generously. I regarded it as charity. Perhaps it was something entirely different that I was not keen to analyse. As we had slowly got to know each other a little, he sometimes lingered on my doorstep when he came to visit, as if there were something he wanted to say. Oddly, it didn’t worry me, but I didn’t encourage it either. I had never asked him inside. There had been a time when I wouldn’t have been able to accept his gifts. And certainly would not have allowed him to linger. But over time I had come gratefully to accept his offerings, material and otherwise. It happened that I caught his gaze occasionally and held on to it for the briefest moment. But there had been no obvious response. He had taken no initiative, no action. Just that uncertain lingering on my threshold.
    There were a few other neighbours who occasionally would give me fish and sometimes a crayfish. Even oysters and scallops. I suspected they pitied me and didn’t think I was quite equipped to manage on my own. They were probably right. For many years my house was just a place where I slept after work. And a monument to my relentless grief. Years that had become a blur. It was only since I had taken early retirement and begun to invest more time in my art that I had started to live here properly. But even after all these years I had not become one of them – someone who could rightly lay claim to this place. To them I was still a temporary visitor. Someone they needed to look after.
    And it suited both parties.

2.
    For some time I had been filled with a growing sense of urgency. It hadn’t happened suddenly, more like a slow progression of steps so minute I had not taken notice. But one day I became aware of a feeling of restlessness. As if there were something I urgently needed to address. I felt a strong need to put aspects of my life in some sort of order. It didn’t concern anybody else, but even though it was something I needed to do just for me, it did feel acutely important. Why, I couldn’t quite understand. My life had been the same for years, and I didn’t expect any dramatic changes. Nothing had happened to prompt this shift. This sense of urgency.
    But something
had
changed. And it must have been me, because everything around me was the same. Perhaps it was all just a natural consequence of ageing, a growing awareness of the finiteness of my existence. And it was inexorable – an inevitable process that I could not escape. Not that I felt a need to. In fact I embraced it with something close to anticipation.
    When I say nothing around me had changed, it is not quite the whole truth. There was the boy. Ika. He had entered my life, and I didn’t know exactly what to make of his presence. How it would affect me. Had already affected me. I took it one week at a time. But I had to admit to myself I had begun to look forward to Thursdays.
    The space where I lived had undergone a subtle change too. Perhaps the sense of unease had something to do with this. There seemed to be a change in my perception of myself and my place. Although I suspected it must be the result of a long process, it was only recently that I had come to realise what constituted the difference: suddenly I had a sense of a view. A perspective that I had previously lacked. For the first time in my life I began to see myself in some kind of context. And in a strange way I felt as if others saw me differently too. Not in a real sense – there were very few people in my life – it was more that I had become aware of the potential. It felt as if I had always lived in closed spaces before. Until now there had been no view – from the