Kia ora, I nearly killed someone on Monday. Purely by accident.
It started with a knock at the door. The instructor of the exercise class I go to wanted to let me know that one of us had died and there would be no class tomorrow. Her problem was that all of us just use our first names and so she had no idea where some lived so couldn’t contact them. Did I know anyone?
I said I knew the first names of three and had a vague idea where they lived so when I went for a walk I would try and locate them
This was a hell of a lot harder than I anticipated. I walked around Otaki in the heat of the afternoon getting progressively more cheesed off as I knocked on people’s doors and having them look at me suspiciously (who is this mad-eyed woman?) when I asked did a woman called Mary live around here?
Is she a con artist? The words were in a circle above their heads like in a cartoon or a comic.
They opened their doors an inch and peered out and most decided I looked too untrustworthy to even speak to but some gave me directions which turned out to be absolutely no use at all.
When I saw a woman weeding her garden I thought, oh good, at least I wouldn’t be waking her from her afternoon siesta. I said,’Excuse me.’
She looked up, gasped and said, ‘Oh, oh, you gave me such a fright.’ She sat back on the lawn and fanned herself and indeed looked like she was going to pass out.
Various scenarios played through my mind in this split second. Headlines. Strange woman sneaks around gardens giving people heart attacks.
Oh dear, oh dear,’ said the woman, and really looked like she might faint.
‘Im so sorry,’ I said, ‘I ‘m just trying to find out where Mary lives.’
‘Just give me a minute,’ she said.’
She took a few deep breaths, pulled herself to her feet, and staggered over to the fence. She patted her forehead
‘I think she lives down there,’ she pointed vaguely down the road, ‘no, not that one, the far one.’
It would be the far one, I thought. Bitterly.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to have startled you.’
‘She took another couple of gasping breaths and hung on to the fence. ‘I was thinking,’ she said.
I set off and then heard a faint voice and turned. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, ‘I can tell you don’t know where you’re going.’
She checked all her windows and doors before leaving her property and followed me down the road clinging on to people’s fences. I already felt like a murderer, did she have to make it so public? I felt like someone being followed by Nemesis.
‘There,’ she said, ‘there.’ So I went up the steps, forgetting at that point exactly why I was here. Very existential, I thought later.
When Mary popped her face out her door I was so pleased I could have kissed her. Except she would probably have fainted too. I told her the news and asked if she knew where anyone else lived (I was past caring by now really but had to say something) and she pointed out two houses in the same complex. ‘I’ll do this one,’ she said, and you go down that drive and do Molly.’
I was hot and tired and feeling a bit grumpy by now but I did that. I delivered the news to an inch in the door, then thankfully walked away – out of a class of over fifty I had located three but I didn’t care. My future did not lie as a Sherlock Holmes. That was obvious. The woman I’d nearly killed was hanging onto the someone’s fence.
‘Are you okay?’ I said.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said.
Well it wasn’t nice to meet you, I thought as I walked away. Then felt terrible.
Never mind I could go home now and have a cup of tea. I was as dry as a bone. I get to my place and there is a van down the drive and an unknown group of cheerful young men have dug up half my path.
‘Water meter,’ said one cheerfully, ‘made a bit of a hole in the path but we’ll fix it. Water’s turned off for the mo,net.’
‘But I want a cup of tea,’ I said, ‘I need a cup of tea. I will die if I don’t have a cup of tea.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said, ‘I suppose I can turn the water on for a minute – seeing its urgent.’ It was his turn to have various scenarios playing round in his head.
I was hot, tired, and at snapping point – I wanted to yell and stamp my feet at him but remembered the kettle would probably have enough for one cup in it. And it did.
So I made a cup of tea and reflected on life, and death, and made the decision never to interrupt anyone gardening again. Next time I might not be so lucky.
