Novell, eller text, I dream of you...

I dream of you. I dream of you every night, every night when I go to bed. I hug my pillow and wish you were there. I fantasise. We were not meant to be, you chose my best friend and you've been married for forty years on now. I see you approximately once every two weeks. For dinner or on outings. Sometimes you stay at home, and just me and Leo do something social. This morning we're heading off fishing. I ironed my tweed suit yesterday. I am seventy two and healthy, I drink aloe vera juice every morning. Just when I wake up at six am. Then I try to find a poem to start the day with. This morning it was Wandsworth. I never studied literature, I went to Oxford, like Leo and we all three of us studied history. I was also good at languages, learned German and French and Spanish and suddenly I ended up working as a tour guide at The Tower of London. I had a good life. Even if I decided I never wanted any other woman. Ever. I saw your kids grow up from a close distance, I didn't see much of you then. You were two, then three, then four, then five, too busy living a cosy family life. Just me and Leo at the pub now and then. Drinking a malt whiskey of good quality. On all birthdays I was invited, all nights after dreaming weird dreams of you and I. Leo knows. He knows I never got over it. That she chose him. They never tried to set me up with another woman like my sister did. I was not interested. I have had cats, Persian cats, and they have given me some tenderness, affection. That'll be it. After reading a poem to set the mood for the day, I drink my cup of tea in the garden, winter as well as summer. The fresh air wakes me up. Sometimes I sit there with an umbrella in the rain, sipping slowly. Those days I mostly takes two cups. Then I go inside and read the Financial Times. I have earned quite a lot of money in oil. I never sell, I just buy. Now I am seventy two and I have no clue what to do with my money. Apart from some modest luxeries. I have my ground floor flat and a small summerhouse in Devon, that has been in the family for years and years. This week I have thought a lot about writing a will, the closest idea would be to give the money as a scholarship for university studies for Leo and yours children and grandchildren, and my sisters kids too. It would be a gentleman choice. But at the same time, that is what people expect from me, and after having lived a seventy two years old life in the shadows of my great love, maybe I should build something as a remembrance. All those years I studied historical buildings. Maybe I have not the time to build a pyramid in Egypt, but something that could stand over time at least. But where, where should I build, certainly in England, and what? An enormous sculpture that incorporates the loss of the only thing, the only person I ever really wanted. Something like a Henry Moore mega size. No. Should I start the building of a church built over hundred years ahead.. What then ? I have worked with tourists in all my life, so something in a deserted place worth visiting. After a lot of thought I came down with one idea I liked.

*
Leo caught the first fish. I laughed because it was a small one. The river ran smoothly and we had some fine wine with us to drink with the grilled fish. I caught the second. It was of a good size. I felt smug. More to eat for me. We always just ate the ones we caught ourselves. It was a lovely afternoon in the beginning of august, very sunny but not too hot. Leo asked me to read anecdotes from my diary on those fishing trips together. I have never written a diary of lost love, it is for others to do. I write anecdotes about the tourists I had the opportunity to catch a glance of during work. I have a good sense of detail and wrote down what happened during the day, every evening at home after tea. My manuscript will probably never be published, but that, at least, I will give to my sisters daughter who works in a travel agency after I'm dead. Today I had with me one of my last diaries, the first anecdote I choose is that of yet another bubblegum chewing American family in the cue to see the crown jewels. They had no sense of directions while inside where you are slowly supposed to walk in a row within a certain limit of time, so that as many people as possible can see them during a day.
This family were from Texas, I could hear that from the accent, and they walked against the stream. They wanted to stay longer at every item, wanted to dream about owing them I suppose, wanted royal flare brought to the States. They were highly irritated at the forced speed. The children were bubblegum chewing and got me thinking of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, wasn't there an American girl there, spoiled rotten and chewing gum? One daughter, they had two, started to scream on the top of her voice “I want a tiara, mum, dad, I want a tiara, I want THAT tiara, I am a princess, you always say I am a princess.” She was eight years old and had a fit and I had to throw them out of the building eventually, they were like very drunk people in a fine bar, but drunk on wanting to have the tools to appear to have the bluest blood in United States of America. Leo gave it a thought, and we talked about memories of the time of our wild student days and getting thrown out of pubs occasionally as the sun shine stronger and we took of our suit-jackets. Leo once knew another family in Texas, he went there to visit their ranch. They bred horses, Arabian horses and we had planned to go there together but it never happened. We caught seven fishes, I caught three and Leo four and it was time to eat them. We found a little spot where there was safe to put a little fire, not far away from the water, just in case. I had brought parsley from my garden and tinfoil, lemons, salt and pepper. Leo had bought the wine. These moment together out in the nature, in the greens and close to the river meant a lot to me. It was a pleasant repetition and a moment of given time to contemplation as well as small-talk about this and that. I am a man of habits. Leo´s wife seldom came with us, but their kids used to come when they were little. We had done this outing for over forty years, and it was the same procedure, Leo picking me up in his car, the same drive into the countryside, the same bed and breakfast we stayed in at night, but somehow our long friendship still brought new topics of discussions, we seldom gave in to repetition of the same events like some elderly people tend to do. I remember my mother when she was seventy-two, always talking about the same memories from her childhood in Devon, long before she met my father, I listened because I knew she felt peace in doing so, she was like an old time storyteller before stories were written on paper, she told her stories again and again in hope of keeping them down generations, to let them stay in the walls of our small county-house. My sister has made a scrapbook with old photos and has written down some of it, that is kept in a drawer in the cottage, and for a while we treasured it every Christmas, but then the kids grow up and got less interested and wanted to watch television instead. The smell of grilled fish is gentle and vivid at the same time and I can feel my appetite anticipating. Leo ask me to read another anecdote from the Tower.

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