Through the cloud

William woke in his chair. The resulting stiffness and fatigue that would have beset a younger man went unnoticed, incorporated into the general feeling of physical discomfort earned over his 90-plus years.

He was clothed in yesterday’s suit, crumpled now – the soft folds undermining the immaculately pressed creases running from his knees to his ankles. He was momentarily puzzled, but the feeling passed almost instantly as he determined to ignore any small inkling of desire to solve it.

Energy needed to be rationed at this stage of life and, save for tending to the needs of a small family of nesting songbirds in his garden, he would not expend it unnecessarily. This much he knew, but nothing else. His days consisted of arduous hours undertaking prescribed, fruitless exercises to retrieve memories which lay preserved like fossils in the sediment of his aged brain.

He got up, entered the bathroom and instinctively set about washing and shaving. Methodically and mechanically he drew his razor over the day-old stubble. Some small rough patches remained – the eye and the razor not calibrated to the precision of previous years.

He opened his wardrobe – filled only on one side – and perfunctorily pulled on another old, but well-pressed, suit and placed a fountain pen neatly in his top pocket.

He looked across at his bookcase, filled with his journals – their smooth spines at attention, standing back to back in tightly ordered rows. He turned away. What point in trawling through the accounts of a past which had led him to waking alone and unable to recall it?

He picked up a notebook off the mantle and, irked by the crookedly hung frame above, thrust it roughly into his pocket.

He left through the back door. His gait uncomfortable, but not laboured to the point of hindrance, he progressed steadily through the narrow garden, glaring contemptibly at the weeds and thorns.

He reached a small table and chair overlooking a slow running stream. He paused, scanning the landscape – hawklike – with a slow, oscillating arc, waiting for some familiar stimulus to trigger his memory.

When spontaneous recollection did not occur, he reached inside his pocket and withdrew the small black notebook. Despite its fresh, smooth exterior the gently rounded corners at least evoked some comforting, tactile recognition.

He tore off with disdain a cheerily scrawled note affixed to the front of the notebook: Note down whatever you can remember – writing your name is just the start of the game.

Out of habit, his pen hovered over the top corner of the page, as he considered adding the day’s date. He decided against it – defined days, months or even years held no value to him without the context of comprehending his own relative position in the present.

The knell of some forgotten detail, long since lost and bereft of clarity, sounded internally. The futile wracking of his brain in the hope of unearthing some specific memory met an abrupt end in exasperation. He was resigned to losing the battle – and the war – and gained some comfort in knowing that by doing so the fighting would cease at least.

Invigorated, he determined that a better use of his dwindling time was to create the memories he’d wished he'd had – not the ones he had forgotten – if he had been the author of his own life, rather than the struggling documentarian.

--

Pen met paper with a magnetism that drew out pages of effortless prose, the nib claiming brief respite only with the frequent turn of the page. His preliminary scene set, he contemplated how he might thrust himself earnestly into the action.

Uncharacteristically, his synapses fired, generating detail after glorious detail. Yet he felt that the story still needed an injection of adventure – an unexpected foundation – to allow him to weave together the threads of his imagination into something active and coherent.

The nub of an idea formed, but he quickly dismissed it as gauche. After a frustrated pause, he returned and reluctantly pursued it, finding all other creative avenues blocked. It felt almost mercenary, but logically the story would need – he would need – cash.

$20,000 and a short letter in the mail, an inheritance from the father he’d never met. It would do, he thought. Nothing emotional, no expectations of being a good custodian of it, nor condemnation for spending it irresponsibly. It solved the problem. The shame an indulgence like this would have elicited in him in the presence of another passed unacknowledged, a small mercy afforded by his solitude.

He tried to think logically of what he would do as a young man with that sort of money, but was struck by the familiar grinding of gears that had earlier afflicted him. All thinking and plotting led to the same route. Instead, he let loose the pen on the page once more and allowed himself to flow through it. The ink clung to the page giving substance to feelings that had latterly lain dormant.

He raised his eyebrows at the fabrication of a young woman, surprised that such beauty could have germinated in his imagination. In one instant he felt compelled to name her but at the same time dared not risk imperfection with something that did not do her justice.

Everything seemed to unfold before him. Their first meeting: the gallery in which she had worked – the fine pieces dulled and dimmed comparatively in her presence, her composition surpassing anything derived from the palettes of the greats. His feigned interest in art used as an excuse to converse with her. Her evangelism for one specific piece so compelling and infectious that the $20,000 was spent just as quickly as it had been bestowed.

He tried to hold the image of the painting in his mind, desperate for more detail. What sublimity could transfix something as beautiful as she? Through the fug of his mind, he could just begin to make out the brilliant whites of a towering, snow-capped crest, the dense greens of a forested landscape, and a distinctively shaped cloud in the foreground – the very aspect that had so enraptured her with the piece – but like the wisps of mist around the mountain’s peak it all disappeared.

He returned to the page, seeing their lives and dreams stretching out before them, those first leaping sparks of romance kindling in them a deeper love, inseparable and permanent. Their dreams not just entwined, but irrevocably united, as though combined by the years of heads sharing pillows.

His handwriting had become frantic, his hand lithe in the process of creation. William replaced the pen lid and allowed himself a few moments to take stock. Energised, he felt a vibrancy and vigour pulsing through him. He leafed through the pages and admired the emotion he had managed to extract and pour into the elegantly scribed cursive.

As he returned the pen to the page for the last time, he slowed his writing to savour and extend the experience, sensing he had only limited resources left. He queried how he might fittingly end such a reverie. He inclined to embroider and fortify the lasting image of the couple, committed to being together, forever. A couple, he concluded, who would have traded all opportunity in the future for their memories of the past.

Like a signal being lost, the pen stopped and William’s attempts to write any further stopped with it. Old and alone again, the detail of the story receded as though accessible only through the act of writing itself. He walked back to the house, the warm feelings lingering where the detail did not. He noticed the first buds blooming on the roses, the thorns now just an unremarkable backdrop to the beauty that had always been there in front of him.

--

He placed the notebook back on the mantle. His eyes travelled up to the frame, still askew, then further to its contents. A majestic slate-grey ridge pierced the tree line, heavily dusted with the fresh flurries of a winter morning and there in the foreground – her cloud.

He softly raised his hands and caressed the frame back level. He retired to his chair, set directly opposite the painting, giving a slow nod and warm smile to acknowledge its presence. His breathing slowed, he closed his eyes and returned to her.