A Paradise Lost
by
Michael Franklyn

Her house smells stale.  Her skin is soft and loose, hair thin and fluffed – she has been desexualized by age, un-gendered.  He is ashamed as she pours him his second cup of tea.  After all he reasons – she had no say in that; indeed he understands that old people do have sex, though the man would only climax through love or physicality, not desire, not how he felt it.  Either way he feels awkward but cannot fathom how to convey such apology, the throbbing increases in his ankle.  Held prison by an old woman until the ambulance arrives.  He observes row upon row of dust free glass, and immaculately clean cupboards; he had never thought to clean cupboards.  The paint though is cracking, and he notices, though he doubts she would, that the very top shelves are thick with dust.  The linoleum table at which he sits might sit well in the trendiest bar in the city – but for the dried picks of snot stuck to its underside - she lives alone, it is her prerogative, nobody is perfect.  He blushes again.  She waffles on.  He has not been around old people since he was a child.  There is not much light in this kitchen, only one small window that for all intents and purposes looks in upon the stove flu.  Another door leads outside, and another down some steps into a concrete floored…what he presumes is a laundry.  Steps, everywhere, this kitchen is set down two steps, the front door up two.  This house is so old.  Large men would have sat at this table, large, sweaty, capable men.  Simple men, in to fuel their bodies from hard day’s labour.  He thanks her for her help and nods to acknowledge his third biscuit, slightly stale, he eats it gladly – for her kindness casts into a stark light his loneliness; his independence.

He is enamoured with this view, briny eyes and numb-cold cheeks.  A boiling sea at new day, heaving and bluffing so far below, dark blue cum grey water, whilst sun rises far off.  It’s beautiful she whispers. And he agrees, though he thinks it fiercer than that.  He is in a conciliatory mood, he feels like an ermine in burrowed, furred sleep so quiet and small.  Did you have fun last night?  Sure he did.  He regrets asking her to come for a walk with him; this place has changed his mood, she just uses this scenery to fill the awkward silence.  He thinks it a shame she was there when he turned up, he likes to think he would not have come down had he known – but then he also knows the truth.  She smiles weakly at him, squeezes his hand and he considers how easily women deal with touch; and then she walks back to the house.  He imagines her exasperated sigh and rolled eyes.  He stands a big man on a cliff, an open sky and a broken heart.  His ankle is wet and sore but he couldn’t care less – he heaves in the air of the poets, he smiles.  The updraft forces the air up his nose, so cold and clear and fresh and alive.  A lovely morning at the sea edge, he notices for the first time the couple walking their retriever in fond silence, and the old woman feeding the gulls bread at the shit-white pine table-set.   He breathes in one last time and takes a step backwards and exhales.  He heard once that humans only expire about a tenth of their lungs at a time – he hopes so, he hopes he can carry some of this vital air with him until he can return.  It has begun to rain.

He returns via the party house to Melbourne, three friends in tow, a raucous car-ride to brighten his mood.  He is sad after drinking; his favourite part of the night was the morning down at the cliffs, though he laughs along with the rest of them at the vagaries of the party.  It rains hard and he looks forward to his house, to his room, and to his bed.  He must remember to send a bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Lanningham, though he is annoyed that she called the ambulance – it cost him far too much for a sprained ankle.  The rain has stopped, and Brunswick Street is coming alive at close of day.  There is a group of drunks on the corner of his street, they are swarthy bearded dribbling; adjacent is his local bar packed with drunks crammed onto just-dried seats next to pretty green flowerbeds full of cigarette butts.

He visits her on Sunday.  Something is different, she is revitalized; she has been to church.  Hair done, she has on a ‘nice’ frock.  She has communed.  Met with people who are her friends; she has spoken to people who aren’t receiving her money, or ringing to ensure she hasn’t ‘slipped away in the night’.  She tells him that her niece is a good person even if she is a bit of a busy body – she confides this last part as though it were a naughty lolly come upon just before dinner.  My god, he exhales, this is a good woman, this…if only she knew what he felt guilt for…my god.  It occurs to him that this is a fair judge of character, not what we do but what we don’t.  There is really nothing between them.  His ankle is progressing well, she had a lovely morning and the priest nearly dropped the child he was baptizing, which is uncommonly funny.  He doesn’t feel the same relief as the other day; the house is much brighter; the front and back doors open to let the breeze flow, gum nuts falling on the iron roof.  The teacups have saucers, he is a guest, she smiles, she is ok with silence; it is the act of having a guest that gives her pleasure, not the conversation.  Suddenly he is sad for her, this bright-eyed decaying woman, this, good-hearted anachronism.  He yearns to offer up his company to her every Sunday, to visit her, maybe even attend church with her – though that might be overstepping the bounds.  He cannot find the words.  He performs no grand gesture. He finishes his tea and makes to leave. She is wiser than he, and her thank-you seems to encompass all that he wanted to do as well as what he did.  He is still holding the flowers and presses them upon her, says goodbye and thank-you and limps past the concrete beds of roses and the grapefruit tree and out onto the street.  

He is lying on his bed, he can hear his housemates beginning to stir; they were out late last night.  He decides not to change his clothes just yet; decides that he likes being ‘Sunday best’ at least for the moment.  He opens the window and lets the breeze in,  expires the last of the cliff air, and smiles.


2.

The priest notices him, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot; slightly pigeon toed, the order of service cylindered in his hands, and nods a greeting.  He acknowledges with his best effort at congenial sorrow and the priest smiles.  Isobel's son? he offers, Clare was your great aunt?… No he says; I just knew her; she helped me once and then to break awkward silence, what happened? Her niece found her…Isobel, the priest motions with his head to the plump woman wiping a small child's nose, she had been dead some two days, in bed, reading lamp still on and her bible still clutched in her hand.  She died peacefully they said – a true believer until the end. The priest smiles benignly again and moves on as only priests can.  He wonders at the impassive earth still rotating, sky blue and cloudless, at the implacable passage of time; at this sad life lost.  She never got to Venice he thinks, that great decaying city, mired in a new world lagoon.  She never got to Venice; he bets neither the priest nor Isobel knew that about her, that was for him alone.  Self-consciously he smiles and shakes his head at his indulgence, for him alone! How absurd, this woman who probably forgot him the second his flowers wilted and were thrown out.  Again, like he's seen done in movies, he affects a rueful smile and hangs his head, toeing the ground – irony is the only way his presence here is ok, though he's not sure of its source.  The sun shines brightly and warms his back, a soft breeze cools a sweated brow.  Somewhere a dog barks and a bell rings for recess at the school next door; he closes his eyes.  He remembers the third and final time they met.  Awkward at first, she had greeted him at the door, the cool dark hallway still behind her, kindly but with slightly furrowed brow she had asked him what she could do for him; not what he wanted, but what she could do for him.  He wanted to talk, and that was enough for her, she let him in and they stood for a moment in the hall, his eyes adjusting to the light.  An old man's fedora hung on the hat stand, though she had said she'd never been married.  You're in luck she had said, I've just made tea.  He had followed her along the long red carpeted hallway and into the depths of her house, and out into the bright utilized kitchen.  Draw the shutters and oscillate day and night, and day in Venetian half-light smiling as she remembers a line from an old poem as she opens the blinds.  I've always been fascinated by Venice she confides in him, as much to fill his awkward silence he suspects as anything else.  That city, which burned so brightly in history’s tomes, now sinking into the dank green night of its lagoon, a gilded shutter to a golden epoch….all will kneel before and crumble and blow away before time’s last night is come, she recites some more of the poem, and magic comes into her eyes.  He wonders who had told her that poem; he sits entranced as she sways gently, this banal old woman, her eyes closed, the window's sun bathing her sere face.  I traveled through a lot of Europe, but I never did get to Venice.  The kettle is boiled and she snaps back to reality.  Sorry she apologises, I forgot myself for a moment there, she smoothes her skirt.  And just like that, for an instant a bright, vivid, beautiful woman had emerged with a whole rich life behind her, a whole life that he had never known.  They talk some of their respective travels, and he urged her to travel again, to go to Venice, it's never too late he was almost desperate…No, she doesn't think so, almost curt and he abashed for the umpteenth time in her presence, the moment had passed.  

Clare, he never did know her name in life; not for the first time he wonders at her as a young woman – if she had been but half her wisdom, half her kind eyes, half her knowing smile; he wonders.  He begins to feel slightly dizzy, and snaps open his eyes to the bright day, the priest motions him over, This is Isobel; he introduces himself.  Your Aunt helped me when I broke my ankle he says, she was very kind he adds.  Thankyou. And thankyou for coming it's very good of you.  But he didn't come for her.  Isobel asks him whether or not he'd like to come to tea and cake in the presbytery next door, but he declines.  Where will she be buried he asks.  Narrowed eyes tell him he's out of line…Kew Cemetery she says and relaxes "Well thanks again and nice to meet you." And they wander off, following the small brood of great nieces and nephews and hobbling 'church ladies' to the wake.  The sun is still so warm it permeates the very air, and spring flowers waft their scent on the breeze and he resigns himself to having found her too late.