Wishful Thinking

“I blame myself,” Martin murmured.

They sat on the porch of the old cottage, the toads in the nearby pond providing background music for their conversation.

“She wasn’t well though, was she?” John said by way of moral support. “There’s not much you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve been with her.” Martin picked a stone out of a plant pot and threw it towards the pond; the toads stopped their croaking momentarily.

“But you live in another country,” John insisted. “You have a job there. You couldn’t have just dropped everything, could you?”

He took a long drag on his cigarette, satisfied with his response.

“But that’s just it. I could have,” Martin said. “It might’ve been difficult, but not impossible.”

“She would’ve known you wanted to come back.”

Martin slumped further down in his rocking chair; John’s encouragement wasn’t salving anything. He remembered all too well his most recent visits and hesitated before speaking again.

“She was so frail, like a sickly butterfly. I hugged her when I said goodbye that last time. It felt like I might crack her ribs. And ... I took her by the hand once; she’d not long recovered from a broken wrist, after a fall. I said: ‘ Grip my hand as if you mean it’. There was hardly anything there. How could she even have opened a jar or a tin? Or a carton of milk?”

As if passing comment, a cow lowed from the field behind the cottage. The coincidence wasn’t lost on John and normally he would have joked about it, but not today.

“Didn’t she have a neighbour who could’ve looked in on her?” John was still trying to load the scales of blame in Martin’s favour.

“She has her own life. I could hardly have asked her to be on call, could I?”

“Suppose not.”

The two friends sat back now, sipping from their bottles of beer. In the approaching dusk, blackbirds had joined the toads in providing accompaniment.

“I had something similar,” John said finally.

He left his comment hanging in the air, gauging Martin’s interest.

“Go on,” Martin said.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as important as your story … it was just my cat.”

Martin turned to see if John was joking, but he could see the pain.

“No ‘just’ about it, mate,” he said. “There’s those that say a pet’s like a member of the family, but they’re wrong. For me, a pet is a member of the family.”

“Yeah … I feel that, too.”

“Was that Sammy?”

“Yep. Sammy the Siamese. Lovely little fella. So soft and sweet. I don’t know if you remember, but I found him in the street, still a kitten. He was either abandoned or his mother disowned him. Anyway, he was going to die if I didn’t take him in, so…”

“You did good.” Martin smiled, raised his bottle and chinked it against John’s.

“You know, when he was young, he’d fetch balls, just like a dog. And when I got home, he’d jump up on the table and rub his face against mine – like kissing, I suppose.”

“That’s nice.”

“I bloody loved that cat.”

“But…?”

John lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“He had a really good innings. He was nineteen when I noticed it – a lump on his tail. I took months to take him to the vet’s, and when I did, he had tests and they discovered it was cancer. So they lopped his tail off.”

“And it worked?” Martin asked.

“It seemed to be working. He had this little stump instead of a tail, and it was kind of cute really. But then I saw a swelling near the base, took him back to the vet’s, and…”

“It had come back?”

“Yep. And the vet told me it was in his system, so there was no hope.”

“Poor little thing. You had to have him put down, I suppose.”

This time, it was John who picked a stone out of a plant pot and threw it towards the pond. A pair of blackbirds took flight, complaining loudly.

“I should’ve done,” John said, taking another long drag on his cigarette, “but I wanted to have more time with him. And I didn’t want that moment to come – that final walk to the vet’s with him in the carrier.”

“I see,” Martin said with a nod.

“He got really wobbly and would just flop about – didn’t have the strength for anything. Then one day, I saw some flies buzzing around his tail – his stump – and I knew that couldn’t be good. Another trip to the vet’s and she did a quick check: the flies had laid eggs on the poor boy. The flesh around the tumour had started rotting, you see.”

Martin noticed the cigarette trembling in John’s fingers. He opened the cool box and took out two more beers, handing one to his friend.

They sat in silence for several moments until John sighed and went on, his voice shaky.

“I decided there and then, and the vet put him to sleep. It really affected me, I can tell you.”

“Yeah. I had a dog once – Buster, remember? I felt the same.”

“Well, it was Sammy’s time. The thing is, who’s to know how he was suffering? But to make it worse…”

John took a swig of beer and a final drag on his cigarette, flicking it away.

“I read something recently – about how owners should stay with their pets when that time comes, ‘cos the pet’s in this stark, brutal place, surrounded by strangers, and it needs that bit of comfort – of a familiar touch and voice – for its last moments.”

“Seems right.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t stay. I couldn’t bear to be there. And I just left the poor boy lying on that cold, stainless-steel table, and came away.”

Martin put a hand on John’s shoulder.

“I read something recently, too,” he said after a while. “A book: Before The Coffee Gets Cold. Do you know it?”

John shook his head.

“By a Japanese writer – can’t remember his name.”

“What’s it got to do with what we’re talking about?” John asked.

“Nothing directly, only…”

“Only?”

“It talks about going back in time to try to…” Martin searched for the right words. “...smooth out creases in our pasts.”

“And the coffee?” John frowned.

“Ah, well – it’s this café where you can go back … but only until your coffee gets cold. And there are other rules. It wouldn’t do us any good, I don’t suppose – not enough time.”

“Nah. Probably have to give that a miss,” John said and grinned.

Martin followed suit. It was a fanciful notion, after all.

They relaxed a little now as the dusk settled in. The toads and blackbirds had fallen silent, the crik-crak of crickets filling the air.

They turned to each other.

“Still.” Martin said. “If there were no rules...”

“Yeah,” John agreed.