The retiring
assistant manager scribbled his last initial and put down his weary ballpoint
with an air of finality.
His “in tray” was empty, his “out tray” full and yet there were loose ends; things
remained undone and must now forever remain so. The sand lay flat in the lower
chamber of life’s hourglass. Intentions, objectives, ambitions; these were the
loose ends which could not be neatly knotted.
He drew comfort from the tangible and pondered
the forest of paper that had traversed his desk these four decades, hungrily
sucking the ink of a thousand pens; gorging the graphite of a towering pencil. His
mark lay on reams of records stowed safely in the banking bowels below; tasks
completed, returns returned, ledgers ruled and checked. There lay the rich
seams of evidence indelibly stamped in banking history.
He had safely shouldered a mountain of
responsibilities with his unique monogram. A million signatures had authorised,
confirmed, advised, certified, applied, declared, reported and claimed. Now our
man reached for a cigarette and wreathed himself in its haze. His mood of
reflection continued and he seemed almost to disappear within the rafts of blue
and grey, his mind adrift on a sea of nostalgia. An endless tide of faces,
names, places, conversations ebbed and flowed, removed from time and context.
When reality returned he would try to remember these details in ordered
fashion, but not yet. Enough for now to indulge at random.
A column of white ash dropped unnoticed.
Imagination slipped its leash and began to pad softly down the corridors of
wistful thought where there were unopened rooms containing untested talents,
unexpressed emotions, abandoned projects, forgotten thoughts and lapsed
aspirations. There was so much to do, yet so little time. With frightening
suddenness, conscious thought returned to him. His empty desk stared gravely
back at him, an old and trusted friend. He must remember to bid his faithful
wooden companion farewell. But how to say, “Goodbye?” How to say, “I won’t be
back?” Soon its drawers would fill with unfamiliar clutter and this it would
accept with brave resignation or bland indifference, he did not like to
contemplate which.
Sadness came over him; ‘end of an era’, a woefully inadequate phrase.
He glanced at the relentless clock, willing it to stop and encapsulate the
moment. On it marched, into the future. Why couldn't it just mark time or pass
the time of day? He laughed aloud at the irony and with that the spell was
broken and the fleeting moment of regret passed. The future held the key to
those unopened rooms of opportunity, potential, and above all, time. With
spirits rising he left the Bank.
A broad grin spread across his face as he
detected a spring in his step, which had not been there yesterday. Was that
last step more of a skip? The years rolled back and he summoned a memory from
one glorious July afternoon half a century earlier: a small boy riding home
from school, standing on the pedals, eyes ablaze with anticipation at the
summer holiday stretching endlessly ahead.
He hadn’t felt like this in years. Cares,
worries and responsibilities lay strewn in his wake as he hurried towards his tired,
old car. His mind whirled with anticipation on the drive home. He concentrated
on nothing in particular, allowing himself to bask in expectation: summer, cricket, gardening, Vivaldi, travel,
sun, solitude, deck-chairs, reading, ...
he was drowning in euphoria. Full of unabashed excitement he hurried
home to the future and with a sigh of relief closed the door on a most eventful
day.
The beginning…
