Barney didn’t know why he liked the post lady so much, but each time she called, her smile and those eyes glistened the lowest depths of his existence to levels of enthusiasm he’d not experienced since he was much younger. He stood by the window for almost fifteen minutes as she pulled her truck along the lane, pausing intermittently to open a gate and deliver the mail, always smiling and always happy. He only ever received bills and ‘Junk’ letters, so calls to his front door were scarce; that was the reason he was always by the window to wave a cheery ‘Good Morning’ and bathe in that smile, even before his first cup of tea. His eyes widened gleefully as he caught her glance, waving a couple of envelopes in the air, beaming one of those smiles as she opened his gate. He rushed to the door.
“Good morning, Barney. Just bills, I’m afraid.” She almost bounced as the door opened.
“They have to be paid.” He responded, cracking a broad grin. “At least you make them pleasurable to receive.”
“That’s lovely, Barney, thank you.” She spoke with another of those smiles that dissolved him. He wanted to ask her inside to chat, but instinctively knew she was busy and would decline.
“If I were twenty years younger?” He spoke in a tone of bravado, regretting his words instantly.
“Twenty?” She spoke with an inquisitive grin.
“Well, perhaps fifty, or maybe sixty.” His mind questioned his motives —the wrong impression? Perhaps offensive? The last idea on his mind.
“Barney, I love seeing you every morning, just the way it is. It makes my day brighter and much better.”
Then, with another smile, she waved again, pulling her truck onward to her deliveries. He returned to the window, watching her move along a secluded Meadow Lane with its single row of houses, overlooking farmland that largely shielded the sounds of the countryside from the heavy traffic noise of a surrounding motorway.
He berated himself as he brewed his tea,
“Why did I have to say that?” he questioned. “It’s not as though there’s any relevance to that comment. I’m more like a grandad to her.” He spoke out loud. “Stupid.”
As he grilled bacon to make a sandwich, he kept telling himself off, muttering aloud, until his breakfast was ready and he decided to sit in the front garden, where the morning sun cast a first warmth to the emerging July day.
“I don’t know, Barney. You’re a lost cause.”
Those words often entered his head. Recalled whenever he did something, said something, or upset someone with needless comments that proved harsh or offensive. It was never intended, but people often expected things of him that he couldn’t deliver. He settled at the small wrought iron table in a sheltered corner of his front garden with his cup of tea and bacon sandwich, his mind trailing memories. He’d thought those words upsetting when they were delivered tearfully by his first wife, Maureen, standing at the open front door with her case packed. “I don’t know, Barney. You’re a lost cause.” She spoke, trembling with heartbreak as she walked away in frustration after twelve years of feeling unloved and disconnected from someone she adored. They had about fifteen years together, and he thought they were happy years, but there was always something from the past. Tucked indelibly inside his heart, alert for any glimmer of abandoned hope. Always there, waiting and yearning.
It had been the same with Jo, his second wife. Almost twenty years, but always that longing for something more. Both of his ex-wives were lovely, people who truly held his sincerest love. But always that nagging desire, strapped tightly somewhere inside him, always there, rising like a spectre to haunt another relatively content period and chase residues of happiness, hopelessly through his door. She was so upset, asking questions he refused to answer, turning them into a defence against having his very private and personal things interfered with. As he absorbed, yet again, the lamented history leading to his present loneliness, the newspaper van arrived from the village, and he met George, the newsagent, at the garden gate to collect his morning paper. After a brief greeting, George was back in his van and away down the lane, and he returned to the garden seat, still considering Jo, his second wife, and still regretting her departure every bit as much as he did his first wife.
“She was troubled, not angry.” He mused aloud. “I was angry; that box was sacrosanct. Mine, not for the eyes of others. Mine. His thoughts returned to the day when Jo found the box with brand-new baby clothes and a single bootee in its secret hiding place on top of the wardrobe, tucked away behind Christmas decorations. She was concerned, if anything. He recollected in an effort to justify the disastrous ending, which otherwise might’ve been happiness. Then, almost naturally, Maisie was in his head, still the fresh-faced seventeen-year-old who captured his heart with a single glance in his youth. He was eighteen, in a first love, with the intent of a bomb disposal officer dismantling an explosive device or the passion of an old master producing a work of art. She’s always there, at the back of his mind, which still carries the scars of the devastating day she disappeared without warning. The brutality of seeing both Maisie and the newborn child together in spite of her parents’ disapproval over four weeks, traumatised Barney to the point of aggression. Maisie’s Army-based parents, who, unknown to Barney, were en route to Hong Kong, disappeared immediately after the child was handed over for adoption, taking their young daughter with them. He was denied entry to the home, holding the ‘00’ sized cardigan, Babygro and day dress he’d saved money for, in a bag sporting the Mothercare logo of the fairly new shop on Piccadilly bus station. He was devastated. The nurse he spoke to refused to discuss any details other than telling him that the child was adopted, but asked him to wait while she returned inside, slamming the door in a gesture of finality, before returning with a single pink knitted bootee that Maisie’s mother had left behind for him. The same bootee, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, and enclosed with garments destined for the daughter he only briefly knew. Barney’s newspaper absorbed blotches of grief increasingly evident through watery headlines that were unreadable, before he shook reality back to the present time, wiping away uninvited tears that streamed down his face with a decision to catch the bus at the end of the road into town, where he would access today and the life he was leading.
