The Walnut

By the time wash-up was done it was 2 o’clock, cool still without a wink of sun. Nine or ten degrees being no good for painting the day was devoted to cleaning, gardening and clearing the paths around the back of the house. Once the weatherboards were sponged a couple of times the resulting gleam suggested they might be left another couple of years at least. In this quarter of town the eastern side of the house clearly bore the lesser weather. Up under the roof on the western side a number of boards might need to be replaced, close on fifteen years had done for them. It was good to get the prep completed, good to follow the same old rhythms. The gardening was light weeding and raking the walnut leaves, some of which still bore traces of yellow and even green. (My way of life has fallen into the sere.) For a number of weeks various household tasks had brought back Babi. It had been not so much memory as bodily posture and movement programmed by the earlier example. Sleeves rolled washing the smalls in the bathroom basin, lifting the washing onto the line, spooning out the breakfast from the various containers the sense was of established formal pattern – these actions followed Bab’s unique and precise gestures and motions. People had children after all for the hope of continuance. Bent over the garden shovel, plucking weeds and raking leaves and carting then into the different corners for their blanketing and manuring brought pleasure in the mimicry. Paying for the works could not have provided anything of the sort. Behind the back fence a brood of beautiful hens could be heard in low tones that were close to the voices of the housewives from decades past. The week before the low gabbling had been investigated, the ladder moved across to the fence and a peek taken. When the new owner was heard opening his shed door a short conversation ensued and the chap was duly congratulated. The fellow was told of our chooks of fifty years earlier that had needed to be slaughtered when a neighbor complained to council of the stink. These lustrous copper hens were of a particular breed, kept for ‘dual purpose,” the chap said – eggs and also meat. A while ago before he had gone to the chopping block there had been a rooster too. It was doubtful that this young hipster lad had wielded the axe himself. During the morning a bird had called from the olive in Romano’s yard. The prickly pear reminder of Sicily was no more against Signor Carmelo’s fence – Romano’s father-in-law in front. It was a pity it had not remained while Signora Maria was still alive, it must have withered somehow in the droughts. Bab had planted the walnut at the back beside the old outdoor dunny in early years. There had been little growth over the six year absence. Another walnut down at her house had died while she was still alive. There has been about a kilo and a half of nuts, most of which were given to Kuma Jasna on a visit. The walnut was a dangerous tree, many a picker having broken their backs falling from those brittle branches. In the foreign soil the trees never attained the size of those back in Europe, those who knew reported.