A Thousand Trembling Leaves

A thousand trembling leaves, like a thousand giddy moths around a flame; each tree in the park was betwixt and between summer and winter. Joseph rested on his stick and watched the autumnal wind play with the last, stubborn leaves on the tree. There were many trees in the park. If anything, some said, there was an overabundance of trees; but this particular one was his favourite. There were several reasons why Joseph should have liked it less than others but he felt empathy for this tree for it demanded nothing of him, or anyone else for that matter. The sycamores, those foreign imports of several generations, were eager for his attention and waved at him as if saying "Look at me! Look at me!" There were a few stoical oaks on the other side of the beck but they tended to be silent and standoffish. The beech trees were just as bad. They, like the oaks, had outgrown mortal man and, as a consequence, they took their position a little too seriously. No, this simple alder was his favourite, demurely situated behind the giggling birches, content to just be.
Everyday, weather and asthma permitting, Jpseph would make a point of walking around the lake in the Country Park. If the weather was fine then so much the better for, then, there might be school children having canoe lessons on the lake. They were always worth watching. If the weather was not so good, but still within acceptable parameters, then he could almost guarantee to find the lake dotted with sheltering wildfowl and sea gulls. Not long after he'd started to come for his walks a pair of swans made the lake their own. Feeding them became just as much a part of his daily routine as combing what little hair he had left. Now they knew him well; old Joe and his stale bread. Out of the water they'd stagger and waddle over to him, rocking from side to side. Like Joe, they fast became creatures of habit, always standing the same distance from him, then bowing their long necks before taking his bread. Every year they would have three or four cygnets and as long as this ungainly brood kept their grey plumage all was harmony and their parents would teach them how to beg, and fend off boisterous dogs. Once the cygnets became white, however, Joe did not see them anymore.
"Been driven off," explained the park warden. "Had to go and find their own stretch of water," he added. To Joe this seemed such a tragedy but, then, he'd never had children of his own so how could he know about such things. Perhaps that's what all parents had to do. His own mother had died before he was old enough to leave home and he'd never really known his father. He'd married and there might have been children but his wife hadn't wanted any. Later, she'd even admitted to having an abortion. That he couldn't understand; putting your life at risk in some dirty back-street room just because you didn't want a child.
There were othr days, depending upon the time of the year, when the lake would seem overcrowded. Mallard would be everywhere, along with dozens of voluble and argumentative coot. Shy moorhen and the more sedate tufted ducks kept their distance. Joe liked the tufted ducks for they had dignity and their demeanour, and black and white colouring, reminded him of all the local government employees he'd worked with at the town hall. He did miss all that sober conformity; the familar smell of leather desk-tops and correction fluid. Gone was that daily reassurance of sitting at your own oak desk and knowing that a succession of quiet little rituals would break up the day into manageable slices, like a much-loved Dundee cake.
During early spring, when the mallards were most active, he'd found amusement in the antics they employed to secure a mate. They were forever shouting at each other and arguing over who was going to go with whom. Most unseemly, thought Joseph, remembering his own adolescent school-yard passions; but he did what he always did and kept his mouth shut and just watched. Sitting on his favourite bench day after day made him invisible, he decided, for most other people ignored him. He'd become an anthropologist: thr Margaret Mead of Bog Row Country Park.
Summer meant young mothers with their toddlers out for an afternoon's escape from confinement within four walls and away from the television. They were there to feed the ducks. Ducks were always comical; God's joke with the added audacity that they laughed at themselves, or was it at the humans who were there to entertain them. Chubbly little children would wobble their way to the water's edge clutching a slice of bread. Sometime they were guided and duarded by their anxious mother but, on one occasion, the mother hadn't got there in time and the child had fallen in. She'd called out the child's name: Joe he was called, but this little Joe had ignored her. There had been shouts and recrimination as the mother rushed from the park placing the blame firmly on the child, and leaving a trail of dripping water in her wake. Some vague memory stired in old Joe's mind. As a child he'd tried to walk on water at Peasholm Park. As a child there had been regular trips to Scarborough with his mother. He'd see a boat on the lake that he'd wanted. The concept of private ownership had yet to become part of his consciousness nor had an understanding of the physical properties of water. Mothre had been angry with him; that he remembered very well. She'd shouted and then held him very close. He could still smell her Palma Violets.
Mothers and their children were rarely in the park of a morning. Joe always assumed that there was too much to do with nappies and feeding and the like for mothers to be free to enjoy the park. In the mornings it was grandparents who sauntered around the lake pushing buggies. If anyone else was about before lunch then it was usually retired old men like himself or dag-walkers. Most ignored him and this was fine by Joe, but some nodded in his direction and others might even stop for a chat. These were generally old men with Jack Russell terriers and it would be the dogs that made the first approach, usually tempted by the bag of stale bread.
"Here again," they'd say. "Must be nice having this on your doorstep, come here whenever you want." Some told him it was good to keep fit especially at his age and he'd nod in reply and mumble something. Clarity of speech depended upon how he felt and whether he wanted company or not. On the whole Joe prefered solitude.
Why was it, he thought, that some of the grandparents would grumble so? Many of them seemed only too happy to take care of their children's children but there were others wo resented the ties of family that bound them to the park, robbing them of their long-for freedom. What an imposition they said; just at a time when they wanted to travel and sit in the sun.
"so, you've no children," they'd say. "That must be very sad for you; all alone, like. Children can be such a comfort when you get old, I always say." And Joseph would nod and wait. "Not that mine are a comfort!" Again, Joe would nod. "Selfish, that's what I call them. It's all money these days; they're not prepared to wait for all the bits and bobs, not like we had to, in our day. That's when you knew the value of things 'cos you had to work bloody hard for them."
On wet days he would often go the library and sit in a corner and read. He'd read anything: the local newspaper, information booklets about municipal projects and courses in Irish dancing and flower arrangement. At first the librarians left him alone but, as his face become known to them, they would take pity on him and talk thinking him lonely. After a while they began to read his moods and, though he was always polite with them, they chose whether to speak or not.
Then the council installed computers in the library and it became an electronic village hall and Joe felt out of place. School children would come to do their homework and turn the place into an extension of their bedrooms. That was the point when Joe would leave.
There were few othre places where Joe could go during the day. A senior citizen bus pass meant he cvould go to the local shopping centre and visit the multiplex cinema. He could buy an OAP's ticket for next to nothig and pass an afternoon in the dark but there weren't many films he wanted to see. Besides, his knees started to play up and he wanted to go less and less to the cinema.
At some time in the day he would have to go home. His house was half-way along a quiet street. Trees grew along the pavement and sometimes children would ride their bikes up and down. With little front gardens he often found his neighbours sitting out when the weather was warm. They would nod as he passed by and some of the children even called out to him. Once he stood in front of his door he would hesitate before putting the key in the Yale. The lock was stiff and the door resistant to his touch. Inside, the hall was cold a d dreary. A pile of junk mail grew like a stalagmite from the floor. Ignoring the front room Joe would walk to the kitchen and make himself a cup of tea. If the day had been a long one he might go to another wall cupboard and help himself to a glass of brandy. Still in his outdoor clothes he would light the fire and turn onthe television. He never really watched it but the noise was company and the voices of the people challenged the silence in the rest of the house.
Later on, Joe would curl up in a large easy chair by the fire and fall asleep; the television still on chattering away to itself. Apart from the bathroom, this was the only part of the house he ever used. Joe rarely went upstairs (only for the obvious calls of nature) and he kept the front room locked.
Intonhis dreams would creep the children. Young Joe, wet and crying, would often be there. Sometimes there would be another child, one had had never seen but know was his own. His wife would be there, coming from the dark shadows at the back of his dreams to laugh at him and call him a sentimental fool. "I never wanted children" this dream wife would say. "What good are children; they only tie you down, ruin your figure and suck you dry." The voice would drone on as the face itself became more and more like the mask of a taunting harpy. If you wanted children, said the mask, you should have married someone else. But he'd loved his wife, for a while anyway; until the taunting became too much for him and he'd placed the pillow over her face and stopped the taunting for good.