2
2020 – on the terrace 2
Toni Meldrum opened his eyes, pushed at the armrests of his deckchair, leaned forward and cocked his ear to a distant sound – perhaps an accelerating car – reminding him that there was a world beyond these aromas, these garden walls and this darkness, and in that world out there, a virus was circulating and people were living and breathing, living lives, living deaths, breathing their first, their last, their sighs of love and their words of betrayal.
Betrayal. And how on earth did that start? We had pledged eternal love and affection but affection does not last forever and eternal love has its time limits and the potential for betrayal was probably there from the day we were born. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Toni rested his elbows on his knees, his chin in his cupped hands and rocked to the rhythm of his thoughts. Alone now – it had not always been that way – but alone now, he guessed that it was probably during their childhoods – his childhood, her childhood and Ricky’s childhood - that the problems had started and they had never been identified, addressed and dealt with. So, he reflected - and in a way - what happened was neither his fault nor his brother Riccardo’s fault because they did not bring themselves up - not actively anyway - and fill their heads with all that nonsense. Both he and Ricky, as his brother was known, had been brought up – passively - and raised - actively - like most people, and they had been trained, by parents and accompanying adults, to act and react in certain ways, to judge and to condemn in certain ways, to think and believe in certain ways, forever and ever, until death did take them away.
Brother Ricky’s fate was probably sealed by that old woman standing helpless at the roadside; but for Toni, it was porridge which set the tone of his life. Even now, he was able to recall the steam on his face when, one morning, long, long ago, he had drawn the spoon through the oats, and separated the cereal into half-moons. The trick, no - the necessity - was to put the spoon in the mouth and repeat the action before the half-moons met again. If this happened, Toni knew it would cause a calamity – the world would end or he would die.
One morning, runny porridge appeared at his nose. Believing himself unable to carry out his task, Toni was struck with terror. He refused to touch his breakfast, and his mother said:
“Mr Perfect, are we? Is there no room for something different in your life?”
And the name, “Mr Perfect,” like the coronavirus, spread through friends and family until its point of origin was forgotten.
“Oh, perfect Mr Perfect – what a perfect boy he is. Why can’t you be like the rest of us ordinary, adaptable and imperfect people?”
And then, their views spread like a deadly disease. Not only did he become the perfectionist, so they said, but he also needed the world around him to be perfect, too – perfect relationships, for example, or the perfect holiday, the perfect hotel and so on. It also meant, so they argued, a dislike of change because a changing world was a disorderly world and far from the perfection required, so they said, by Toni.
Something similar happened to Ricky. On the surface, it seemed that brother Ricky had been blessed while Toni had been cursed with the who-do-you-think-you-are attitude of others but one day, long ago and so long that neither Ricky nor Toni remembered it, they were out in town and carrying their mother’s shopping – at least that was how the family story went - and they said that Ricky noticed an old lady hovering on the edge of the pavement and he ran over to help her – so went the story.
"Bless him, just look at that,” said their mother. “How he loves to help and please people."
And somebody else, although Tony could never remember who, said:
“Such a caring and kind individual.”
From that day on, Ricky was condemned to carry this burden and he became the caring one, the thoughtful one whose kindness would take him far so that he would become a “somebody” – perhaps a doctor, a teacher or even a social worker. Some people said that he had better be careful and remember to look after himself otherwise, so they suggested, he might leave himself open to the machinations of others who might not, they opined, have his well-being at heart.
“Too universal to give it all to one person,” they said, and although they, whoever “they” were, were now vanished and gone, their ghosts always returned to haunt and taunt him. And Toni thought, as if struck by a revelation, that there had always been something of the priest about Ricky. Toni fidgeted at the arrival of this idea. The problem with having a priest-like figure as a brother was that, whatever Toni did, he was not quite good enough – not completely bad – but bad in comparison with the priest-like goodness of his younger brother. When Ricky opened his mouth to speak, Toni always expected to be lectured loftily while an accusing finger wagged between Ricky’s arched eyebrows. But Ricky was solid and dependable, right at the core of the universe, a kind of male Florence Nightingale determined to help the desperate and desperately determined to live up to his reputation as a caring and kind angel of mercy.
What utter nonsense it all was. They got it all wrong…neither of us was like that and we are not like that now.
And the letter proved it – the letter that had arrived like a pistol shot, the letter he had screwed up into a ball, thrown onto the table top and which was now blowing around to the whim of the wind – the blue official envelope, the one stamped and ablaze with the words: “Polizia dello Stato,” - looked like a traffic fine or a reminder of some kind and anything other than what it actually was – something that went completely against the grain, because - despite everything – Ricky had often called to wish his brother was there with him and that was typical of his care and thoughtfulness. Amidst all the beauty and sunshine of Italy and despite what had happened, Ricky found the time to think of his brother.
After Toni had scanned the letter, he was in the sort of state a person might experience on discovering that his father was not his father. There was a nonsense going on, a sort of April fool’s joke of the worst possible taste. Certainly, the Italian police must have made an error. His brother Ricky, so selfless, so caring and mindful of others could never have done what they said. After all, he had seen him the previous week and they had talked right here on this terrace and Ricky had given no intimation of any bad feeling or malicious intent. Ricky said he understood why Lucy was thinking first and foremost about the health of her parents and she was right to do so. After all, both of them were in their mid-eighties – a high-risk group at this time of covid 19.
But Toni had to think of himself. He been ordered to Verona immediately, and immediately did not mean when he could find the time, it meant now; except now was not an ordinary now – now meant “now” in the time of the Corona virus - and nobody knew what the word “now” meant. There was a “new” normal and a new normal meant a new way of understanding the world and its time, a new now, a new then, and a new now and then and a new future. Several friends had commented that the coming of the virus had ushered in their generation's World War 2, and suggested that it might be the event that changed their understanding of words and expressions like now, instantly, immediately, without delay or any other words or phrases that they might later utilise to place everything they did in time's perspective. If that turned out to be the case, their lives might soon be divided into that time before the virus or this time after the virus lockdown. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, the lockdown and its fear, its isolation and anxiety, its role in the increase in alcohol and drug usage and insomnia – at least that was what the newspapers claimed – would all be forgotten and buried in the grave with the dead and the truth got covered up or reinterpreted.
There’s a lesson from the past here, old chap, and don’t forget it. You and your friends showed little interest in your parents’ stories of World War 2, didn’t they? Community spirit, the white cliffs of Dover, of love and loss and later reconstruction did not mean much to the young, did it?
The words World War 2 had, indeed, gallantly flown over the white cliffs of Toni’s childhood. I once suggested, and Toni agreed, that the tragedy or the blessing was that the young don't look backwards when they are in that blissful state of youth. And that is how it should be. But Toni hoped that both his grown-up children, Julia and Mario, were dancing right now with their eyes fixed on the present. There would be more than enough time for them to indulge in nostalgia and, if they were wise, they would not live their lives in order to make future memories like many Face bookers seemed to do. If they did that, they would never appreciate the value of a moment - at least, not until it became a memory.
Perhaps, when they were older, his children would later recall 2020 and see it as a milestone - before Corona and after Corona - in the same way that his own parents' generation referred to "before" or "after" the war. If there was a lesson to be learned here, it was that parents should not expect their young children to be interested in their lives. That interest would develop as surely as night followed day and youth merged into middle age.
Regrets in life? Toni had a few – as the song went – but he had dealt with those few in his own manner and “his own manner” is something to be revealed in a later chapter, something that was rather unique, a kind of re-creation that told Toni his life had been better.
But there was one regret he would not, and could not change, and this was the regret at not giving his father enough attention when he talked, rarely, about his experiences in WW2.
Comments