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Stories

John Farquhar Young

    As he works in a secluded alcove in the bar area of the hotel in North Tenerife where he is a semi-permanent resident Jack Wheaton, a successful though not prolific writer of novels, again becomes aware of a tall good-looking woman, of similar age to himself walking slowly towards the hotel reception hall. He has seen her several times in the preceding week, hovering, as he thinks, indecisively next to groups of people gathering by the bar during ‘happy hour’ or waiting for the dining room to open for breakfast. Clearly single, he thinks, adding detail to his memory of her appearance.
    He dreamily fixes his gaze on a mural of Mount Teide on the far wall of the bar. Access to his inner world would reveal that he is entering his carefully constructed memory estate inspired by the medieval and classical method of organizing and quickly retrieving memories by placing them according to particular locations - the ‘method of loci’. The main avenue of his mental realm is lined with imposing buildings and cedar trees, and, as always, is illuminated by a warm early evening Mediterranean sun. Each structure contains hundreds of the images which he thinks may at some point serve his writing endeavors. He pauses in front of a large villa guarded at one side by a giant statue of Athena, ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and war. Frequently visited, the building is devoted to representations of female characters.
    The huge ornate double door swings open in response to a mental command, and he drifts into an atrium around which are the entrances to several galleries. He decides that he will temporarily locate the image of the ‘woman in the bar’ as he has now labelled her in the gallery where the collection is organized around the theme of ‘Loneliness and Solitude’.

    Frequently during his visits to this spot, he mentally pauses in front of the image of an elderly lady encountered during a stay in Madeira. She wears a wedding ring, is expensively dressed, and is, he has decided, a widow. In the evening, when she joined a group of guests at the bar she wore her engagement ring, an interesting detail which he added to the woman’s finger.
    The image he thinks can capture the idea of the loneliness of old age, the frailty of a solitary existence made lonelier still by the loss of her life’s companion. That she may, in reality, have been enjoying a break from a large turbulent extended family, teeming with demanding grandchildren is of no concern to him. The memory is useful. It will help him explore a theme increasingly occupying his thinking as he gets older: a fragile person discovering hitherto unknown inner strengths when faced with a life threatening challenge. “Something there,” he murmurs as he holds the image in his mind. But, he thinks, not even an embryo of a story yet. He mentally shrugs. Still, the idea holds promise.
    He turns to an empty space in the alcove intending to ‘lodge’ the image of the ‘woman in the bar’ at the foot of a long marble table where he has placed a gigantic cocktail glass.
    “I hope that I am not distracting you.” His memory estate vanishes in an instant as, momentarily shocked, he turns to see the object of his mental endeavors standing beside him. “I noticed that you are not working at present so I thought I would say ‘hello’.” The accent is German. “You are English, yes?”
    “Scots actually.” Jack finds himself smiling. Close up the lady is very pleasant on the eye, as his amorously wayward father used to say.
    “May I sit?” She points at a vacant chair opposite him, and seats herself before he can answer.
    “I think that you have been studying me - unobtrusively and quite inoffensively of course.” She pauses and laughs. “Which is OK, since I have been studying you.” She nods as if coming to some sort of conclusion. “I am interested in people. Well, it’s my job. I am a psychotherapist - a psychoanalyst actually.”
    Jack plunges into his memory estate to harvest what he knows about psychoanalysis. The image of Freud he finds has a large quill in its hand. “You help people author their own story,” he ventures.
    The lady raises her eyebrows revealing sapphire blue eyes. A man could drown in these eyes, he thinks. “My job, in a nutshell,” she exclaims. “Well, with several essential modifications. My name’s Mia by the way.”
    Jack introduces himself. “I scribble for a living. Fiction. But I often think that my characters write for me - in a manner of speaking. They take charge. They tell me to produce circumstances and challenges to allow them to find something important within themselves. I never know where the story is going until it’s finished.”
    Mia nods. “Roughly the same with my work.” Then she sighs and smiles. “Sadly, I return to Munich tomorrow. I quite like it here. I think that I will return sometime.” Her smile now seems to reflect a mischievous thought. “ You encounter quite interesting people to study.”
    Jack thinks for a moment, but only for a moment, about his memory estate. The lady is certainly not right for the loneliness alcove. Then an impulse carries him forward. “To provide the opportunity for further mutual study, how about dinner tonight? I know a nice restaurant.”
    Mia laughs. “That would be good.”
    You never know where a story is going, Jack finds himself thinking.

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