Can you alter the past?, the poet says. Sometimes, he would like to alter it, the past. He's frightened of the future, he says. He doesn't understand the present. But the past, now, the past ...
It's growing in his memory, he says. It's coming closer to him, as though it were asking for something. Coming closer, nervously forward, like an animal that didn't quite trust him, but that wanted, still, to trust him.
For a long time, as he was getting iller, but before he moved into sheltered accommodation, he thought he would meet Ann by chance at the cafe, or on the streets. He thought he might see her outside the secondhand bookshop she liked to visit, or buying something at the Italian deli.
He anticipated running into her, smiling, and seeing her smile in turn. - 'So, how are you?' And it would take off as they left it, their not-quite-friendship, their never-yet-a-relationship. Wouldn't it be through the coincidence of a meeting that it might begin again?
They might decide to walk. She would leave her new book or her pot of pesto in the front seat of her car, and they'd set out again: that's what he imagined. We'd be off, talking, and conversation would be ease itself; they'd let their speech alight upon this, upon that. It hop about, their conversation, as bright and agile as a robin.
He wanted to leave them to chance, their encounters. He didn't want to arrange a meeting with her. He didn't want to phone or to text. Ann wasn't to feel acted upon, invaded.
He'd called her once, he say. It was a terrible mistake. Once, only once, and she sounded distant. He'd interrupted one of her activities with his phonecall, his dreadful phonecall. He saw it in his mind's eye: she'd begun some business of DIY, and there it was, her ringing phone. She pulled the phone from her pocket, spoke. 'Hello?' And it was him, just him, and what had he to say? Who was he to summon her from her tasks?
He liked her independence, and the sense of the separateness of her life from his. He liked the idea of meeting her when she was midway through some task or another. With a bag of shopping, for example, a tip of baguette poking out of her bag. She was busy, she had things on, but there she was. And there he was, who was likewise busy, likewise out on his errand, before her. A coincidence: 'how's it going?', 'fine, fine ...' Light words. Frothing words that never settled, like a rushing stream. "I've been shopping ...": those words like rapids, quick with light. Words that caught the light and flashed it back.
He always delighted in ordinary speech, the poet said. In exchanging politenesses. Of asking how the other person was, and replying, 'fine, thanks', when asked. What did it matter what was said, or who was saying it? Speech like an impersonal babble, a brook bubbling along, as though the aim was to help speech along without detaining it. To let a spurt of water - a word, a phrase - glint with light.
Better still, he said, was to be party to a conversation, on the verge of it, listening to the voices of others rise and fall. To hear gossip about people he didn't know. To hear rumours about unfamiliar events.
For a moment, he had the fantasy of meeting someone when he was with Ann: a friend of hers, perhaps. Of meeting the friend, and listening to Ann and her talk for a few minutes. Enjoying the flashing of their conversation, a river in sunlight.
Would she introduce him, Ann? Would she feel the need to introduce him, to place him for her friend? In his mind, she said nothing. He was there, at the conversation's edge, but remained unintroduced, part of things, but at the edge of them. And when the conversation stopped? When Ann walked away? He would walk with her. He, the poet says, would walk with her.
But Ann wasn't with him. Ann was nowhere.
The field of chance was the afternoon, the open afternoon. That's where he rolled himself like a die in the afternoon, hoping that she, another die, would be rolled in his direction. Would they meet, he and Ann? Would she appear because it was what he wanted? He asked God for it to happen. - 'Make it happen', he prayed inwardly. But he didn't believe in God, not really. But if he did see her? He'd thank God, he says. We need to invent God sometimes to have someone to thank, the poet says. Thank you, God: that's what he'd say.
But he didn't want Ann to search him out. To call him, for example. To knock on his door. He never liked visitors, he says. Even now, he doesn't like them. Especially now, with his visiting Dane and his dictaphone!
When he is alone, he likes to be no one at all, the poet says. Likes not to belong to himself. That's what he means by solitude, he says. That's how he enjoys it. Lightness, diffuseness. Being committed to nothing, holding no opinion. Paying attention to neither this nor that.
Yes, that was what he wanted when he was alone, indoors, in his flat. But outdoors? When he was outside? He used to love the street, he says. Loved walking down it, with the sense that anything might happen.
The street is open to all, the poet says, and to every kind of encounter. And the cafe, which spilled out onto the street? The meeting place above all meeting places, the poet says. That place set aside for meeting, for allowing meetings.
Was it a coincidence that they used to gather, people he knew, people he half-knew, at four o'clock in the afternoon? Four o'clock: that was the time; it wasn't pre-arranged. Four o'clock, most of the way through the day. You could have got things done. Could have a little sense of accomplishment. And now it was the time to pause and take the air. Now to stand aside from the street, although you were still a part of it, the street, but set back from it. You could rest in an inlet of the street, some place still part of its streaming, but sheltered, restful.
That's where he used to meet her, Ann. That's where they used to meet, by chance, always by chance. She would appear, and he'd be there already, sitting with others, or sitting alone. Or she would be sitting there, talking to others, and moving her bag from the chair for him to sit down.
They used to meet. And before they met - what bliss! - the anticipation of meeting. He had rolled himself across the afternoon like a die. And she, too, had rolled herself. Two sixes: they'd won. They'd both won. Everything led them to one another. Their winding paths wound no longer.
Fate: to affirm what had arrived to each of them by chance. To set off on their adventure. To walk out into the day, through the old cemetry and past the old village green. To the meadows and the Ees. To the river, and Jackson's Boat.
But she wasn't there. Days passed, and she never appeared; her car never pulled up. She never crystallised from the day, arriving from her tasks, her projects. He was at the cafe as he always was. He arrived there. He sat, with others or alone. But Ann?
He phoned her once, in the early days of her absence. She sounded busy. Her hands were full, she said. - 'I'll call you back later'. He said he was at the cafe. She said she might come later if she had time. - 'I've got a lot of things on'. He felt he breached something, some code, by phoning her. That he'd disturbed something, the still surface of their association. He should have been truer to it, that limpid surface. Nothing should be forced: why hadn't he understood that?
The afternoons passed. He walked; he didn't see her. Best of all, he thought, was to bump into Ann by chance. To bump into Ann, blinking and surprised, mid-mission. Midway through one of her missions. She'd tell him what she was doing. Where she was going. What she had bought.
She'd open a bag. Food from the deli: pasta, pesto ... or a blind from the hardware shop. Or a box of screws and picture hooks. He'd meet her on route, on the way to something, or coming back from there. Heading back to her car. About to go off, to drive off. To launch away from the kerb like a riverboat ... 'Great to see you'.
It would have been more perfect still if she had failed to see him, he says. That she was about to walk pass him, having failed to see him. He would hail her, the poet says. He would call her name: 'Ann!' Ann, exclamation mark. And she would stop, surprised. He would have seen her default face, her everyday face, her face for the streets, her face for her missions (she was always very busy, before her illness, Ann). He would have caught it out, there on the street, the most public space of all.
Or better still, he would have liked her not to recognise him at all, so he had to remind her who he was, the poet says. - 'I'm ----', he would say, 'remember me?' And she would stop and look at him, her eyes narrowing, sizing him up. - 'We used to meet at the cafe', he would say. And she still wouldn't be sure who he was, not really. He finds that idea very moving. He pictures a lake, perfectly still in the twilight. A lake beneath the sky, and holding its image. A lake reflecting nothing, nothing in particular.
Or, still better, he would have to remind her who he was, but she wouldn't remember. She would deny all knowledge of him, even as, somehow, she was sure she him from somewhere. Who was he? Who was he, now, to Ann? No one in particular. Anyone; everyone. And she would go off and meet someone else. Someone she knew, the poet says. And he imagines a planet of water, perfectly still. An ocean planet, orbiting some remote star, turning in stillness.
But he never met her, Ann, on the street. Never saw her driving by in her Saab. And soon, he wouldn't walk those streets himself in the long afternoons.