Just now Jake and I are spread across a blanket on the grass. We’ve got a bottle of wine going and Jake’s drawing on something through a cigarette holder and is smiling and smiling. You know, I think we’ve really got something here. I cast my eye about and there’s nothing that displeases me.
I don’t know how many years the two of us have been tweaking this and that just to get the yard sorted out. It’s important to get the yard looking good. It’s like an extra room for the apartment isn’t it?
The end of the yard was difficult. We always wanted a fabulous view, and we’ve got that now. There’s a rush of lavender in the meadow, lilac trees beyond, and hills rising to mountains that, in the mornings, show purple through the wisps of cloud. There’s a track snaking down through the hills and into the meadow. It comes a hundred yards from the fence we put up and goes off to the right. That fence has been a hundred colours over the years. We tried everything. It’s the lilacs and the purples, nothing goes with that, trust me. You can’t reflect those colours in any way. Contrasts slice up the scene and take away from its power. Still you had to have a fence, how else would you know what’s yours? In the end we hit upon this grey, it’s almost like it isn’t there until you look for it.
Occasionally we see movement along the path. Not so often as to make us uncomfortable. We wouldn’t want to be constantly anticipating or anything like that, we like it as it is. There never seems to be a pattern to it and sometimes days go by and nothing happens. At others we can see as many as five or six movements in the space of a few hours.
Just now Jake called my attention to something three or four hundred yards out. We made out a young girl standing behind a tree. She appeared to be watching us, occasionally looking down and fingering the hem of her dress. For a long while we watched each other. Jake and I didn’t speak until she turned her back and drifted away.
We often go over these things. Jake is keen on getting a meaning out of every little thing. Why a girl? Why the dress? Did I notice the white flowers embroidered on the hem. She kept fingering it didn’t she? Nothing, as far as Jake is concerned, is there by chance. Did I notice her smiling? I didn’t. Why would she smile?
I don’t know what the neighbours see. They never say.
Against the house, the yard is laid in roman tiles. We have a mosaic in white of a chariot racing over the sun. There are three steps down to the lawn, where Jake is still figuring, and I next to him. It’s open and simple and we like the grass. Next door you can see that they’ve paved their whole plot. They have a small pool and a table and chairs. But I like to feel something alive beneath me.
They’re nice people. Good neighbours don’t bother you unduly, and they don’t. Some people don’t like neighbours at all. I don’t understand that. Jake wouldn’t be so bothered, but I like to see people around. It makes me feel part of something. I like the odd word through the fence, a good morning or evening, a bit of news from elsewhere. Just to see someone else regularly. It’s not as if you don’t have a choice is it?
We’ve had several sets of neighbours in the past, good and bad. I don’t think you ever quite know why something went wrong. We’ve got on for years with people and they’ve left, sometimes without saying goodbye. On occasion we’ve been the ones to oust them. They’ve got to be people acceptable to both of us, and that’s not always easy. Then there are the whims. Jake wanted to be next door to a Chinese family once. That never happened. But others did. We’ve had gay couples, families, the flirty and the prim. You can try to match with whatever criteria you like, but there are simply no guarantees. Sometimes I wonder what they asked for in order to come up with us.
We spend most of our time out here. Sometimes in the evening you can catch the deer grazing on the hills. And there are the surprises. Like the little girl. Jake says it’s about innocence. The flowers on the dress, the long hair, the fingering of the hem. I just know how it makes me feel.
Jake takes life hard. In a minute we’ll have sex. Here. The mountains are clear now. I think I can even see a bird up there, maybe an eagle. After sex we’ll share a smoke. Then I’ll leave him out here. He likes some time alone. I’ll call a girlfriend or go off to bed. Jake will sit for a while, then turn it all off.
I’ve tried a few times to understand what he gets from it. When he first started doing it I stayed. But not now. It made me cold. It’s a chill that seems to be in the bones. I can’t help thinking about it when he slips into bed next to me. He carries it with him. He makes sure I’ve gone, then off it all goes. One flick of a switch and gone are the neighbours, the mountains, the light, leaving dark grey walls on each side. I can’t get over that feeling, of grass with no sky, of the loss of depth. Yet Jake will sit twelve feet away from a bare wall with no sounds except his breathing. God knows what the neighbours think when we just disappear. They must have got used to it, or maybe appreciate the extra privacy in the evening.
No there is nothing in this view that displeases me, nothing at all. But nothing does displease me. If only Jake didn’t like it so.
