“Do you think anyone lives there?” asked Crisp as we stood at the top of the lane.
“Who knows,” I replied, “everything in this country looks old as if it’s from some fairy tale.”
“Quaint, though,” said Crisp clicking off a few photographs.
“Probably inhabited by goblins I would think.”
“Or a wicked witch.”
“I knew one once.”
“A goblin or a witch?”
“Witch.”
“Really? I’ve been called one on a few occasions.”
“My brother’s wife, she once tried to turn my brother into a cane toad.”
“No luck?”
“No, he was already a doormat.”
Crisp wanted to know more about Ursula, my brother’s wife. Women with character she liked though she’d never befriend them for fear they’d give her the ‘evil eye’ as she put it.
“Witch’s are best kept at arm’s length,” she said as we moved on down the lane.
It was one of those nights where after a disagreement that wasn’t resolved she had gone off to bed, slammed the door and told me to go and sleep elsewhere.
I was hurt one because I had disappointed her and secondly because we had argued.
It had been over a trivial issue one of those she took umbrage at and told me she felt insulted by her behaviour. There had followed a ‘discussion’ in which I tried to argue my justification and her recounting how hurt my comment had left her.
Sometimes I told myself it was best to let things go and hope that in the morning, we could once again connect and sort each other out. Remorse, I had expressed, and she knew I was sorry for what I had done.
Around midnight and still awake, I went to look in on her.
Her body was spread across the bed, her breathing steady, and I looked at her naked form on the bed.
I was overcome with desire when I saw her there, the lines of her body reminding me I had long loved her and I was lost within her. Not just her beautiful body but her whole person.
“I had the oddest feeling of elation/fear/apprehension as I entered the courtroom/restaurant/ghost train.”
I had the oddest feeling of elation as I entered the courtroom though I didn’t know why.
I was guilty as sin. I knew that everyone knew that, but I had this feeling that everything was going to be okay.
There was nothing in my immediate surrounds to suggest this, the judge, a red-haired man with a face that bore the look of life’s burden, stared down at me with eyes that felt as if they were delighting in the punishment he was about to mete out.
There was a music track playing, the sort of music you expect to hear in movies as the guilty ascents to gallows. It was plainly my imagination getting the better of me after all I was there because of a complete misunderstanding concerning a parking fine I had incurred.
Despite that I felt my sense of elation rising, it would all be sorted out before morning tea, and I’d be on my way, chastised and most likely poorer, but no longer wasting the courts time.
There was a bang and a crash as the judge summed up the situation. “Mr Peters, you are a guilty man. Guilty men must be punished. You, Mr Peters, are the sort of man who keeps me in a job and I appreciate that. But guilt is guilt.
I look into your eyes and see elation, though I don’t know why. This is not a matter to feel elated about. This isn’t a matter for which you should feel guilt; society demands retribution, you will go to prison and rot there until you have learned your lesson and the elation you feel is wiped from your soul forever.”
There followed another bang and crash, and two large burly men appeared at my side and escorted me from the court.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Fear and apprehension suddenly arrived, and I could hear them inside me joking at the situation I was now in.
“Never did like that elation,” said one to the other.
“Always above itself,” replied the other to the one.
The serenity was there to be held, tasted, and clung to as a relief from the humdrum of everyday life.
“Can’t you feel it?” asked dad as another insect hit the insect catcher, and the silence was once again interrupted by the zap of the poor creature being exterminated.
Mum passed the plate of dip and crackers as we sat around, watching the sunset over the western sky.
It was part of our weekend getaway, the rush to get to the holiday house, a stop at the Greasy Fork for hamburgers and chips and then the customary sitting on the veranda admiring the beauty of the evening.
It never mattered that the electric transmission wires hummed overhead or the sound of the prawn boats out on the lake sounding their horns, and the voices of the prawners whose language laced with expletives wafted across to us because it was the serenity we all craved especially dad who could never get enough of it, or so he said.
Dad would sit out there long after we’d all gone off to bed, beer in hand and say he was just lingering a bit longer to soak up the serenity.
In the morning he’d be up early, as he believed the weekend was there to be enjoyed and we couldn’t waste a minute of it. He’d have his fishing gear all ready, wander through the house with his rooster call on his phone waking us and reminding us we only live once and we couldn’t go wasting a single minute.
Mum though got to sleep in; dad said she worked hard all week caring for us and making us meals that would invoke the jealousy of any restaurant chef, so she deserved a lie in till at least 8am.
Down on the lake dad would set us up with our rods, bait and fold-up chairs and it didn’t matter if we caught anything or not but rather that we were out in nature breathing in the fresh air and as he said on more than one occasion, as a high powered speed boat went by, ‘soaking up the serenity’.
They were great weekends, and we always went home on Sunday night refreshed and ready to face the rat race of another week knowing the weekend would once again bring us a healthy dose of serenity.
He read about it in the paper and believed he had it made.
From now on, he would rest on his laurels and let it all happen.
He still played, but he didn’t think he needed to practice, as his innate ability would carry him through.
That’s when it all began to go pear-shaped.
He missed goals; he found his game sunk from the best to a ‘good player out of form’.
But bad luck persisted. He laughed it off initially as every aspect of life had its highs and lows.
But in the back out his mind there lingered the doubt that what if his ability was fading, that he wasn’t ‘the next best thing.’
Privately it got to him. He found resentment in everything around him.
He’d go home and take it out on his wife, his kids; even the dog began to hide from him.
He changed from the excited participant to the nervous, anxious player who maintained his competitive face but underneath was falling to pieces.
His harsh reality made him face his demons, who made more and more noise in his head each day.
His family suggested he get back on the practice circuit, but he scoffed at their suggestion saying he was ‘the next best thing’, that he had skills and ability and all he had to do was play at the level he had played at before he read the paper so he’d appreciate it if they all got off his back.
One day he played terribly; he came last and felt humiliated. Lesser players had succeeded where he hadn’t.
There was talk, gossip, reasons for his downfall, financial issues; marriage issues his arrogance contributing to his continued decline.
At home, he buried himself in his study, surrounded by trophies and accolades from the past. It was here he took comfort in what he once was.
It came as a shock to everyone when he drove his car off a cliff and when they retrieved him, and the vehicle found it filled with all his awards. But in his hand, scrunched into a ball was the newspaper article flagging him as the ‘next best thing’.
Crisp my aged companion looked wistfully down onto the beach. She had her favourite puffer jacket on as there was a biting wind blowing in off the water.
“Seems a shame to call it a beach,” she said, “what with it being so cold it’d freeze the walls off a bark humpy.”
It only took a few minutes for my teeth to begin chattering. “Seen enough?” I asked, taking a step away.
“Crazy isn’t it,” she said, ”the sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky and as cold as charity.”
“Those people down there walking on the beach must be hardy types,” she observed.
“Probably locals thinking this is a warm day,” I replied.
“No sense some people,” said Crisp taking my arm and leading me towards the café at the end of the path.
I wasn’t sure if it was a discovery or something I’d not seen before despite it staring me in the face all these years.
It’s odd how that happens. You take so much for granted you fail to notice it even when you’re standing in front of it.
We’d been going to the park for years and walked under the magnificent trees hardly ever giving them a thought.
Then the last time one of us remarked how impressive they were.
Their canopy spread across the picnic area, their trunks strong and gnarled by the forces of nature.
We remarked how impressive they were then argued as to what type of tree they were.
A little way off the park ranger was chatting to some campers, and we thought if anyone would know what they were, he would.
“They are a species of pine,” he said. “They are over 180 years old.”
Their age surprised me, but they did look like they had been there a long time.
That surprised us as the leaves didn’t look pine-like but we resolved to go home and get Google on the search.
Google told me later that they were classed as Cedars of Lebanon, a unique variety of pine though we were still unsure as the leaves told us a different story, but then again, the tree had lived a long time and maybe as they were from a Mediterranean climate they had evolved over time to acclimatise to the local climate.
The discovery of their beauty and majesty was something we promised ourselves we would no long take for granted.
Morpethroad 