Sunbeams

At the oak table I know is oak because its maker carved an acorn into the top as a reminder, the space around that nutty shell collecting all sorts, grit, salt, Ava likes to pick at it, I slit the envelope and oh this: arriving down the old postal route, from Olaf, he tells me he’s restarting the heart of a French woman, well it sounds full of hope, brimful, over the banks they say in German, sweeping me away from other activities, the news (it is Olaf, I was hoping for Sven and that work on the windows) interrupting me from my latest hobby: mouthing words into a corner of the room, the pale cupboards, the old coat stand, nothing special, caramboulage I was speaking into the space, what a sound caramboulage, only moments before I had blisters and aghast, words I was in the middle of testing, searching for clues, are they useful, when the postman of all people—on his last rounds, heritage rounds they’ll be called soon—Barry the Mohican from the depot at Barnes, we call him Mohican on account not of his hair but the impending disappearance of his tribe, postal tribe, Mohican: those people of the waters that are never still, indeed, though I grant his all-weather shorts do run counter to the ethnic grain, Barry, a star turn, left his royal-red cart down the road to deliver to our door this new full of hope aflow with phase, eclipsing my outing in the corner by the coats cupboard, after an upbeat start I was admittedly rather lost there, words colliding when along comes this restarting the heart of a French woman by the name of Laurence apparently and if only I could see inside his mind, read between the lines, instead of reminiscing about how Olaf, Sven and I helped build the kitchen of a big hotel once, long before I knew Ava—thanks to us the skorsten in Malmös himmel chimney went rising by the day, into the Malmo sky, we could see across to Copenhagen, some church or other, soon after which Sven began his business fixing windows—and well, I was hoping Olaf’s expansive pages on restarting would paint the scene of a personal resuscitation on the shining floor of a bright apartment, in Paris maybe, St Sulpice, but what’s this he comes up with, some sandy place on a northern coast, behind the local administration building, what he calls the Kurverwaltungsbürogebäude, a holding place for cane beach chairs with a ticket machine, heavy old iron thing, he says, and between the building and the beach how could he forget, how she unbuttoned his jeans, following with both hands, Laurence and here’s a detail I’m not making up, Laurence melding martial arts with the calm of meditation steely and gently, so determinedly, that for Olaf she has shifted several irksome memories aside, which she would with her hands on him, understandably—for example memories of Betty, Betty who reckoned you could tell a man by his car, Olaf at that time had an old land rover of all things—at this greatly oversize hut with salt in the air they were at it, two bicycles propped up pointing northwards, against wooden slatted walls painted black, if you ask me it was her reviving his heart, as I dare say he glanced quickly at some pine trees, catching sight of blue jeans, so oh, the whole event, the procedure of love, he closed his eyes, his legs buckling Laurence mon dieu, mon dieu, there behind a Kurverwaltungsbürogebäude, scraping off flakes of paint, oh, I’d better turn back to the coats cupboard, now the postman has gone, I sort of rue not taking up his offer to get talking on the doorstep, discuss the metaphysics of emptiness he said scratching his forearm, there grinning on the gravel path, being Barry, half-rooted in his shorts, indestructible cotton and canvas, flecks of Royal Mail red in the stitching, just a chat, off the record he said, my refusal saddened him but by then the envelope had been truly slit, the door long been closing on the last of his kind, postmen and women, any day now Barry will be heading to the sunset, unshaven but head high, back here in the meanwhile look at it, a room with a window but not much of one, Ava’s old papers piled everywhere, the garden histories and Vogues and Ramblers, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, and oh, swathes of silk and cloth piled high on the cupboard, while at the table the vase of last month’s flowers, the Woodland Trust mug, cracked badly, beside it one mottled, well advanced banana, granola berry yoghurt more or less finished, call that a life? Olaf anyway shoots out hope, surging my way, only last year Ava reported him saying he fears he has mayonnaise in his ears, did he say that, and she, well that has all stopped now: now it’s Laurence, Laurence, six pages of … Laurence has pushed out the mayonnaise in favour of talk of concert visits, holidays in Albania—well I’m happy for them both, may they go ahead, talking much of the nonsense in the name of love, like sex is the glue, okay, there are other glues too, ask Ava, don’t leave me like my mother did she tells me, that’s a glue, fear is the glue, in the meantime who turning to their souls can find their focus, who, faced by fruit yogurt with granola from the Gourmet Tart company, I don’t stir the contents but Ava does, round and round and scraping the fruit up from the bottom and that’s only the starting point, she holds it on a spoon for minutes on end, forgetting it, the same way she forgets where she was up to organising the food on her plate, nudging the gravy off the chop and drawing up the potatoes for example, putting off for ever shoving the stuff in, she won’t put it in because she needs her mouth for the talk, she wants us involved in magpie rescue, say, then the peas drop off, she lowers the fork to begin again, the situation on the plate worse than ever … is food on a fork for ever a deal breaker or not, alarmingly I have stumbled into this phase of wondering is this a deal breaker, is that one, the word now a single word, dealbreaker, I would leave her straight off 50 ways, she on the other hand won’t because her mother has basically glued her to me, me to her, and there it is, I could have held my own on the metaphysics of emptiness but to what end, why do anything much on a doorstep except wave goodbye, look out for the Cherokees Barry, the Chiswick branch especially, duck if you hear an arrow coming, whoop back, don’t take any shit, cheerio you people of the waters that are never still, farewell.

Restarting the heart of a French woman I cannot help but envy you, Olaf, who wouldn’t give what to change places and get down on their elbows beside her on the parquet flooring, saying chérie and qu’est-ce que c’est, performing resuscitation with sweet talk and a drink, a snack or two, beyond the open window the majestic buses roaring past on their trusty routes, where I don’t know but Olaf has me sighing, sighing, that’s the life, far from the nearest dealbreaker, no inkling of peas on the floor, no relentless snoring, and what about the non-stop fidgets, the wayward twitchings, fingers busy counting and re-counting themselves, I just hope Olaf knows what he’s doing, but does anyone ever, and on the subject of ever, if the postman comes again I can seek his views on the many dealbreaker questions, if he has views, the mysterious Mohican, when he gets home is Barry in his shorts simply snuggling on the sofa beside some giant bag of American crisps, bingo on his phone, or there again, how is the harpsicord playing coming along, does he share every word set down by Kierkegaard with his wife, combing over paragraphs, while his wife on other days warms up some cello, and moving on: I’ll call Sven to see if he can start work on the windows, we have his sketches already, but before I face the mobile phone, let me go back one more time, I would like to present one deal-frayer, I say that into the corner with the coat stand and see how it sounds, dealfrayer, because: Ava, wanting water for the night insists on carrying glasses full of water another brimful up the stairs, not trusting the top floor supply, the same supply as at ground level; or Ava, wanting to send something to Australia, would not take Barry’s official Royal Mail word for the pricing, no, she said before any item can be posted to Australia the exchange rate must first be ascertained, to know how many Australian dollars are what in the home currency, only then can a stamp be bought, well, immediately she and I had a postage to Australia issue, and given our relations rest upon a branch you could hear the kurraakk right down the street, startling the foxes, and moving on further, to getting the windows renewed, Sven’s sketch identified windows from the outside, while describing a plan from the inside, which was confusing, undeniably, but when we also wanted windows to open inwards, so we could clean them, Ava insisted all outsides meant inside and insides outsides, which clearly did not help, but as ever she makes sweet work of any directions, always having been keen to call left right and right left, to be on the safe side, she says, and before window matters melted us to the floor in rage she had another thing, about upside down, upside down is horrid she says, better to turn everything up the other way, immediately, so as to avoid it getting upside down, and I was never to show her an old egg-timer, but enough of all that, returning to the stamp business: Ava has been told the postage required is £15.30 and says How much is that, do you know it crossed my mind I should join her in this personal sanatorium, get a room next to Barry, Barry the only one of us, Ava says, who can tell a proper story, like that talk of Petko Ganchev, Bulgarian footballer, club striker and legend, who was honoured with a minute’s silence by his former club but was not dead, the thing being, Barry continued, Ganchev is a common name and lines had got crossed, handing Petko a lot of tricky work telling people he lived still, not least his upset wife, driving him to brandy Barry added, yes Petko had been a club striker and a legend but there it goes, to most he will despite years of training, tackles, passes, half-volleys, headers and injuries, be known as the footballer who declared himself not dead, so oh, Ava relayed the whole tale, Ava who stood there with a white cloth drying her hair, looking Dutch and seventeenth century, while I had to sigh, thinking that is not the life but there it is, Petko, Ava, window fitters, international postage, glues and mueslis, and for once we agreed, hard cheese Petko we said, tough, to most fame comes a price, we said, in words. Words, words, caramboulage of words.

When they are not seeking calm in the old doorways of Copenhagen, Olaf towards the bottom of the next page tells me he and Laurence have signed up for line dancing and calligraphy together, ah, over breakfast (do not start me about jam pots) I relay this to Ava who says she’s glad it is this way, opening up, we should follow their lead, she feels inside her there are openings up, mysteries arriving, sunbeams Ava calls them—in the old days used to call them—you are walking from one room to another and the sun falls through the tall window of a third, undistinguished, between-places room, yellow light on the floor or redness if there are tiles in red, as can happen in old front kitchens for example, sculleries, I wonder, will I later remember things Ava said, like with Barry and Petko upsetting his wife by not being dead, Barry the Mohican generally says little but his bright blue eyes themselves seem to be saying something, while few wear shorts the way he does, day upon day, and now in the hands of myself and Ava, I fear, the oh so human Mohican is tapering, dwindling to a moot point, a purveyor of unfortunate information about postage to Australia and the Bulgarian footballing scene, as Ava funnels all we have into the moot points, rage or weeping waiting in the wings, Barry the Mohican has receded because Ava maintains I cannot have him be the Mohican unless I fully explain the origin of this name, or otherwise shut the fuck up, this is a common approach, I do not often and clearly enough shut the fuck up, that’s how far we’ve come, long ago now the days of let’s do it vibrating in the sunny motes of air Ava was keen on at the time, when her mobile phone wasn’t ringing, charging, dying, the word pyjama had not crossed the lips of us either, we shed our vestments just so, one or the other leaping at the mattress, the way you do, smoothly, none of the elbow in your face Olaf said he got from Betty, Olaf writing: there is everything to be said for long bike trips and then, late afternoon sunbeams permitting, in Scandinavian calm lying down and doing the very thing Ava and I no longer rise to, lying there and doing it.