Strange Messengers of Fate

Spring crept in ... hazy sunlight finally filtering through the bleakness of February. March, like a Lion, came blustering. Sharp chill winds rushing across the Common, through the Park. Jennifer, Mark, wrapped up tight for our every morning stroll, Hardly ever imagined would be pushing a pusher at forty three years old, having shoved my sister round the same paths up the same hills, and down to where the river winds its languid way to the Thames. Nothing had actually changed, so far as I could ascertain in those long intervening years. The only remarkable difference, was the total lack of people, hordes of screaming children, gone ... Lea View ... still overlooking the scene, now crumbling badly at the very seams, like the rest of the Inner City. Only old people to be seen, their progeny scattered over the Planet. Only I had returned.
Just the three of us, the park to ourselves, perhaps one or two people with their dogs, as the last comfort.
No regrets, my disappearance from Australia had taken a great deal of nerve and strength ... never have done it other than leaning heavily on Charlie.
Without being fully aware of it had been through a severe nervous breakdown, in those days such disorders were not only unmentionable, but unacceptable. My wife's answer to my illness was "How could I be so inconsiderate and take to the bed!" Typical of everyone that has been associated with me through the three breakdowns I have suffered in my life. My daughter in law was to say, "Pull yourself together" the classic phrase all people use when they hardly think you are worth bothering about. Have had the satisfaction of living through these three traumas and recovering with no thanks to anyone other than my Sister, Charlie, Moira and Myself ... The rest, have cursed to Hell with quite good results. My Sister, adamant that I possess the "Evil Eye" from my Mother, who could strike, a not immediately apparent, fatal blow, by simply looking directly at people who severely upset her.



There were other currents stirring deep inside Jennifer that I knew little of, nothing of. One evening, appeared insistent that I should take her over to my mother's. unusual in itself, she pointed out how lovely it was outside, how she and Mark had not been out that day. Dutifully carted the pusher and Mark down the stairs crossed the road onto the Common, down the hill, into the Park. For once, not moving fast enough for her seemed slightly off balance, urging me to take the 'short cut' to my Mother's. Went into Lea View, Sun hanging red above the high roof, past the dilapidated tennis courts, the old laundry, once the pride of all Hackney, now a jagged wreck, broken glass, sagging doors, the plumbing long torn away for scrap. Remembered how my sister had caught her arm in one of the new electric mangles ...three years old... such a commotion. Everything now gone. Suddenly we came face to face with a very young, tall, bearded man. Long blond hair, his face with a very vaguely familiar air, faintly mirroring my own. Unthinking further, went to walk past, Jennifer's arm holding me still. She watched the situation, an odd smile on her face.
Suddenly, as falling into a dream, the Sun iridescent about the four of us. "Mark" I heard her say "This is your brother".
Saw my Mother standing at the verandah, motionless, felt the wave come tumbling over me, chest tight, starting to cough with the stress pouring through my system, out of control.
"Well" she persisted "Aren't you going to say Hello to our son?" ... to me ... pulling my arm.
All that Australia ever entailed came rushing out, out from the carefully concealed compartments in my consciousness. Everything, so tightly locked away over the long, interminable years, now laid bare before my eyes, the past staring me in the face. Traumatised by the abruptness of this inevitable situation, something I had known would happen one day. That day was here, now, another split moment in eternity had arrived. I, totally unprepared, all unknowing, had been led into it by a young woman with our young child, strange messengers of fate.