I have been practising merging voices, layering, echoing, and layering again. In life we are all subject to the rumours of existence. It’s a miracle that any of us believes the other still exists. Did he say he would make a cup of tea? He left the room half an hour ago, where is he? Without him I do not know who I am, and nor does she — the writer —- who can quite easily forget everything.

So many writing projects, so many novels, we are all scribblers. But who is truly taking stock? Of all of us, I would say Dorothy behind the topiary, keeping out of sight. Keep yourself to yourself and no one will doubt you. And behind the topiary it is Tuesday, and Dorothy knows but doesn’t know that the Man said he would come back on then. She has a sense something is missing, but he hasn't been around for long. She asked him once if he had a family and he looked straight at her and said nothing, but his eyes said, 'once upon a time.'  

Now he looks more comfortably, and she looks back. Pond Man she would call him, the man who built the pond. She would like him to come back in the winter too when the water is cold. ' ‘To break the ice on my pond. They say the cold is good for circulation.' He smiled.  

She'd read about it somewhere in a book filled with mountain pictures.  

'Mountains, you need mountains and fresh air, cool spas and springs, I shall take you to Switzerland,' announced Henry. Switzerland because that was the place she'd seen in those brightly lit photographs. Yawning valleys and snow glistening peaks, and cows mooing around perfectly formed chalets, lying down in meadows filled with buttercups and daisies. They have the same flowers in Switzerland as we do thought Dorothy. How comforting.  

But the mountain peaks looked terrifying, and she got dizzy. So they decided to stay down in the valley where Dorothy could look up and find the peaks pleasing. Just once they took a cable car, and Dorothy had held her husband's hand so tight by the time they got to the top both hands were frozen stiff, and all the blood gone. She had stood around dazed and hadn't known what to do next, until Henry ushered her towards the little bistro where they held hot chocolate and sat with their faces over the steam. 

The past is difficult, but she must put it away, she didn’t mind his face, the man who came to fix the pond with his chequered shirt on. She couldn't tell how young he was, nor how old, she liked that. She liked he didn't tell her things; she liked he didn't seem to mind anything much at all.

It was just after 11 o’ clock on Tuesday sometime in early June. She was sure of that because the roses were out along the far wall, they were sprawling. She would ask the man if he might do a spot of watering. Usually she would do it herself, but she liked to watch him. She might ask him to plant some plum trees.

Dorothy had a penchant for plums because they come all at once, thick and hard like hail, like money, and then she thought of Henry. I cannot leave him. I cannot leave dear Henry. Whatever would they think. Hilary and Granny, those women who made her, the original prints. Granny with her stiff arch back, so august, especially in company, and always when offering her hand. I cannot leave him because they will not approve of me being so stricken. You cannot live like that, you cannot, says Granny looking stern and arranging her hair. It is dinner time, the lights are dimming, they will go downstairs soon. Henry will be there. But perhaps I can, said Dorothy, and perhaps my plum tree is wicked after all; she is dropping fruit on me.

The plums fall heavily in June, when we are away, yes, we are away when they fall. Always on one of our little holidays, clambering over rocks, watching the tide drag in and out, because Henry insists, I must have a rest.

And so I rest, and there is a sea of plums fat and squashed for the birds to feast upon, because we are away, we are away, Dorothy’s voice grows faint. She is clambering over rocks, distracted by the shore. Someone is always away on holiday, along the coast where the air is softer, where Dorothy squeezes his hand more often.  Dorothy, his lovely wife, who has been away for so long. You have been away a long time. Visiting children and grandchildren, rescuing one marriage or another, a muddle, a mess, an unfortunate affair, such poor timing. Which leads to nasty accidents you know, and so the plums fall wickedly and smile with their own significance, and we are too late to feed from them properly, so they rot, they run away to find the worms. And it is a metaphor I find helpful for living because it is all in the timing, in the lines you deliver, when and where. To whomsoever is listening -- to the air -- and Pond Man nods his head.

FROM POND LIFE, A WORK IN PROGRESS.