This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

21

One day I went for a bike ride while Per was having a nap. I cycled aimlessly in the direction of the nursery, it was late afternoon. The forsythias were in bloom in a few small front gardens. I was soon too hot in my jumper. I stopped to take it off, then carried on in my T-shirt. A smell of seaweed and salt water hung over the fields, they must have been out fertilising. There was a song in my head for a confirmation party. I tried to think of a rhyme for pony, but all I could come up with was stony, phony, bony. The road passed through a little wood, I felt a chill on my arms as I passed through the shade, but then I came out the other side and into the warm air again. I stopped by a solitary tree at the side of the road and folded my jumper tighter on the pannier rack. The sun was very bright. I closed my eyes and turned my face upwards, and stood there for a while. I could hear myself breathing, everything turned red behind my eyelids. The bird we called the bicycle pump chirped somewhere close by, further away I heard the noise of a tractor. I thought: Here I am with only myself. Apart from the sun and the tractor and the bicycle pump. There was a warm breeze against my skin, and my trainers fitted my feet just right, I’d never noticed before. A car approached and I let it go by, my eyes still closed. I wiggled my toes. I stretched my fingers out from the handlebars. By the time I opened my eyes all my thoughts had left me. I got on the bike again and carried slowly on, empty and content. At the nursery I turned down the gravel track, I walked the last bit and leaned the bike against some stacked-up sacks of peat. Lars was in the evergreens behind the goats, I could see his anorak. I looked at the hardy perennials, the grasses and the cactuses, and read all the names. Then I went down to join him, he turned round with a smile, pulled off his glove and gave me his warm, dry hand. He showed me a mahonia shrub, it was a different thing altogether from the tree variety. It was in bloom, with fragrant yellow flowers. We talked for a while. He walked me back to my bike and all the way up the gravel track, where we talked some more.