12. The Fourth Candle

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN THINGS (12)

“I suppose we all do things we’ll live to regret,” murmured Professor Josiah Dingle, “especially when we’re kids and too young to know any better. After all, I really thought the bird was dead or I wouldn’t have been burying it. And after all, I was only a nipper.”

“And I wasn’t much older than a kid when I surrendered Amanda to Perry,” I said, deliberately changing the subject from slaughtered cockatiels.

“Totally different,” he sniffed, “affairs of the heart aren’t in the same league as poisoning parents.”

“Now what are you on about?” I demanded, “who’s been poisoning their parents? Not me, for starters!”

“Haven’t you, then?” he asked, “when you were too young to know what poisoning is but still sort of tried it anyway?”

“If you think I’ve been doing that then your chair does a great deal more than enhance old memories, it invents brand spanking new ones,” I told him, perturbed.

He shook his head. “No, not at all,” he assured me, “it can’t do that. Everything it brings back into sharp focus actually happened, and exactly as it shows it. My chair is incapable of being deceptive or inventive. It merely shines a light on forgotten moments and reports the truth.”

“Then what was that about poisoning?” I asked.

“You probably remember, or will when I shine a light onto it and highlight a moment or two from when the two of us were not must more than babies and at nursery together. But I forgot: you’d forgotten that! But I haven’t. Do you want me to carry on?”

“Go on,” I invited him, just the tiniest bit reluctantly.

“I suppose you can’t remember the green snake book?”

I shook my head. “What have green snakes got to do with anything?” I asked.

“Back when we were that young the second world war hadn’t been over for long and decent books for kids were relatively few and far between, and Mrs What’s-her-name, Mrs Platten of the comfortable pointy bosom, she made a book for us herself. She drew all of the pictures, and remembering back after a session in the chair I can promise you she had considerable talent.”

“I suppose it helped in days when there wasn’t much printed stuff about,” I said.

“Well, she created a snake and called it Cedric and gave it quite a comical face with a great big mouth that opened unbelievably wide and fangs that could reach half way across the room,” reminded Josiah, “surely you haven’t forgotten about dear old Cedric?”

I shook my head. “Whatever he was, he’s new to me,” I confessed.

“Poor you! Anyway Mrs Platten asked us all to suggest something French for the snake to enjoy. She’d been telling us a few French words so that with a bit of luck we’d end up with a basic grounding in the language that could be built on at proper school in the future. And when your turn came round you suggested fish and chips.”

“That sounds like me,” I confessed.

“Ah, and I’ve no doubt it was a very sensible suggestion, but the bosomy Mrs Platten didn’t like it. She told you that fish was an English word and that the French speaking world ate poisson. They liked poisson with their chips, or fries as they like to call them. Poisson. Do you see where I’m going? So when you got home after nursery I seem to remember you asked for poisson for your dinner, but you left out one of the s’s!

“I wanted poison?”

“That’s what I remember your mum telling Mrs Platten the next day. She wanted to know what she’d done wrong to have a son who wanted to poison her! Then the two grown ups laughed, and I, who had been listening, sniggered.”

“At least I didn’t mean cyanide or arsenic or anything like that!” I protested.

“Of course not. But I must have found it quite funny to have remembered it.”

“It’s not remotely like bashing a poorly parrot over the head!”

“True. Very true, and it’s probably the one thing I did as a kid that I’ve regretted ever since. But tell me, Roger, did you get your fish and chips?”

“I’ve no idea,” I replied, not really caring, “because I doubt that it mattered back then and it certainly doesn’t matter right now!”

“So you’re serious about not wanting to have anything more to do with my chair?”

“Of course I am! We forget stuff for a reason, mostly because to remember it is to clutter our minds up with irrelevances but partly because some things are destructive if we allow ourselves to be tormented by them.”

“True. Too true. You’re perfectly right. So what do you remember about Amanda Rosebud?”

“That name again! Are you obsessed by her?” I asked, annoyed. He seemed to be behaving as though the pretty girl from my junior school days meant something to me, and she didn’t now and never had.

“Well, she was significant to you once,” he pointed out, “remember you told me, when she asked you if you wanted to be her boyfriend, and when you didn’t rise to her bait she went off and married your friend Perry.”

“It wsn’t quite like that!” I protested.

“Wasn’t it? How many times do you think a pretty girl actually asks a boy if he likes her and wants to be number one on her list of boyfriends?”

“She didn’t put it like that!”

“No, but that’s what she meant. Or why else did she broach the subject? And in response you went off and started a relationship with a horsey lass who upped and died on you!”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t anyone really, Amanda, I mean...”

“But she married your friend Perry?”

“I was there.”

I know. And how long did it last?”

“What? Amanda and Perry? I lost touch with them. They went their way and I went mine. That’s how it had to be. It was fate. The proper route through life.” I was lost, wondering what he was getting at.

“And here you are, seventy something with a dream and a lifetime behind you and not much in front...”

“About the same as you,” I pointed out, annoyed at his bleak description of me, “neither of us can pretend to be a spring chicken!”

“Do you know anything about the girl now?” he asked.

“Amanda? No: I’ve been out of touch since they got married and moved away from this corner of town. I’ve had a life to live, you know, a library to run, and then retirement and a multitude of hobbies.”

“You know where our old nursery was?” asked Josiah, “on Green street? Where that supermarket complex is now?”

“Of course I do!” I replied, and from the expression on his face I judged he must have thought that I sounded annoyed or irritated.

“There’s the old All Saints church there,” he said, “all small and squashed in by modern commerce and car parks. I tell you what: go in, now if you can spare the time, and see what you might see. Especially next to the fourth candle on the altar. The one that should be lit. Do that and you’ll want to love me for ever.”

“Why?” I asked.

Because,” he said, “just because.”

That’s the trouble with Josiah. Old age has made him infuriating.

“I’ll go,” I said, “some time this week if I feel like it.”

He grinned. “That might be too late,” he mumbled, “go today. Go now. I’ll walk with you. Look outside: it’s a lovely day too good for sitting in here and moping over lost chances.”

“This is getting worse than odd,” I grumbled, but I stood up and pulled my jacket on anyway. After all, the conversation didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“The fourth candle, you say?” I asked.

© Peter Rogerson 20.06.20