A Place Of Safety(116)

‘All done, darling.’

Joyce had handed five pounds over and was getting out of the cab. Around them, silence. Barnaby’s neighbours had retired, the other five houses that made up the crescent were dark.

As he put his key in the front door, Barnaby came to a decision. He would let the day go. He would let the whole idea of celebration go. He was a 58-year-old man, not a child to expect magic and fireworks just because he was living through a specially significant twenty-four hours. Anyway, wasn’t all of his life significant in some way or other? The very ordinariness of it was in itself cause for celebration. He had everything a person could possibly want. Cultivate your garden, he told himself sternly. Grow up. Count your blessings.

In the kitchen the dirty glasses and champagne bottles were still on the table. Everybody took off their coats. Joyce asked if anyone wanted a cup of tea. Cully yawned and said if she didn’t lie down soon she’d fall down and Nicolas said the evening had been great and thanked Tom and Joyce for a wonderful time. Barnaby gravitated to the kitchen window and gazed out at his garden. Enjoyed the beautiful illumined plants, was impressed by the magnetic pull of dark shadows.

He blinked, looked and looked again. Something was standing in the middle of the lawn. A very large thing, glowing with a pure dazzling radiance. He shifted his face closer to the glass, squinting. Became vaguely aware that someone was opening the kitchen door and wandered outside.

It was a lawn mower. A silver lawn mower. Every bit of it had been painted silver. Handle, wheels, grass box - the lot. Attached to the crosspiece of the handle by shining satin ribbons were lots and lots and lots of silver balloons.

Barnaby tilted back his head and looked at them, bobbing and moving gently against a dark sky, soft with stars. The heart shapes had writing on them which for some reason, just at this minute, he couldn’t quite read.

And there was music flooding from the open windows of his sitting room from which his daughter and her husband leaned out, smiling. The Hollies, ‘The Air That I Breathe’.

‘I think I’m coming down with a cold,’ said Barnaby to his wife who was walking slowly across the grass in his direction. He produced a large white hanky and trumpeted into it.

Joyce took his hand and murmured softly, ‘If I could make a wish, I think I’d pass . . . can’t think of anything I need . . . no cigarettes, no sleep, no . . . Oh, Tom! I’ve forgotten.’

‘No light . . .’

‘That’s it. No light, no sound, nothing to eat, no books to read . . .’

‘Making love with you . . .’

He put his arms round her then and she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. They stood quietly as more and more stars gathered, holding fast against the relentless movement of time that changes all things. And then they began to dance.