Alec

by William di Canzio

The little train did its duty. At Penge he walked from the station through quiet fields. He entered the estate at its lower end, through a gap in the hedge. Squirrels scuttled above in the trees. He hoped to meet no one who might ask why he was there. The morning was gray, but quick-moving clouds signaled change. The sun had broken through by the time he reached the pond and the water reflected its splendor. In these last days, the park seemed more silent to him than it had before his visit to London. Even the songbirds, their mating season long past, were quiet. Light pierced the gaping shingles of the boathouse, which stood dark against the water and derelict, like all the buildings of Penge. Yet here was where love (he could call it so now, freely) had taught him to suffer. The trysting place, he’d once hoped, whose only key he, for no particular reason, always carried. He would return that key now. We’ll meet in your boathouse yet … He opened the wide double doors. Light scattered the shadows inside. There in his corner were cushions from the rowboat, as he’d placed them just so, waiting long nights for Maurice. The air was warm, damp, steaming in the sun. Silence and solitude had quieted his mind. He became aware that his skin felt strangely delightful, but he could not name the cause of the sensation. He hugged himself and closed his eyes. He opened them on what he would remember all his life as a vision: there, in the water, perched on a floating branch, a bird hard...