He was searching for a memory, a glowing memory, a memory suffused with a particular glow. Searching was not really the right word, implying as it does, conscious choice, and these memories were like a streaming series, as soon as one finished, another began, irrespective of whether he had pressed Not For Me, Liked or Loved. Not For Me was hardly an option, since all these memories were his in the first place and now his mind was serving them up willy nilly, the good and the bad, for who has not got bad memories, shameful memories, memories of decisions taken, or avoided, that led to unfortunate consequences. “Non, je ne regrette rien” might be a nice and sentimental idea, but truthfully, few people could, in all honesty, fully lay claim to it.
He remembered, age twelve or so, how the onset of Summer heat made the tops of his ears swell, the skin blistering and flaking and he had been given antibiotics which, in those years soon after it’s wartime discovery, still had the cachet of a wonder drug and he had always wondered what they had done for his condition. Hot swollen ears were hardly the kind of glow he was seeking.
Standing in the hot air streaming out of the louvred doors in the funnel of a ship crossing the Tasman Sea on his families return from Australia, back when ship journeys were still cheaper than flying. Riding a storm, clinging hard to a railing having climbed up the ladder marked Access Forbidden, but no passengers or crew were abroad in the wind and squalls of rain, to witness the fourteen year old revelling in the view of the ship plunging through the seas from his perch, kept warm by heat direct from the engine room below – but that wasn’t it either.
The whole trip to Australia had been a roller-coaster of experiences, the journey out round the Cape of Good Hope because the Suez Canal was closed due to the 6 Day War and the view from the top of Table Mountain, the heat of the South African sun ameliorated by the elevation. Crossing the Nullarbor Plain by train, flat and featureless and truly without a single tree, as his father had delighted in pointing out, a man who had learned enough Latin to get into Oxford in a week, as his mother delighted in pointing out whenever his exam results flagged. The only excitement in that two day and a night crossing the Nullarbor – a herd of feral camels left over from building the railway and thriving in that desert. The English Summer strength sunshine on the deserted Australian Winter Bondi Beach, the four thousand mile round trip up to Queensland by car and back south on dirt roads, the opal mines at Lightning Ridge. The throbbing glow of his hands after being caned for insubordination by the Czech, French teacher at Vaucluse High School that had given him temporary hero status amongst his fellow pupils – but that definitely wasn’t the right glow.
He remembered lying naked on the deserted beach in Naxos, on a post-season holiday with Janet, the sun, still with enough strength to burn unless sun protection was applied. That was more like the glow he was seeking – until a local widow dressed in black, walked all the way down the beach to berate the two shameless foreigners and at the same time, perhaps to get a good look at him. Glow dispelled.
The satisfaction of finishing a sign on some shopfront, the fresh gleam of new paint and then handing over the invoice and receiving a cheque – gleam but not glow, except for a few special jobs. The mural of WB Yeats on The Winding Stair Bookshop, named for one of Yeats’ poetry collections – a mural drawing out images from so many poems, studied at school and still redolent with meaning – now that job brought a glow of pride every time he mentioned it to a prospective customer, by way of a calling card, as it were, and it was rare that the customer did not know the mural and equally rare that it didn’t clinch the deal…
And later, after the accident (he managed to swerve away from that memory) when signwriting was no longer a possibility, the turn to teaching – first in the local Primary School. He remembered the expedition down to the beach, teaching the excited youngsters where best to look for the tiny Irish cowrie shells and telling, whilst they searched, them how in the South Pacific, necklaces of cowrie shells were used as currency, including for the purchase of brides – then the general laughter as one young fellow, successfully holding up a tiny shell, quipped “Well you wouldn’t get much of a wife for this now, would you!”. A fond memory but the only glow about it was that of the Summer sunshine on that Sligo shore.
The joy of cradling his new grandsons in his arms, not his blood – Janet and he had no children between them, but these grandchildren from his stepdaughters, were his by upbringing, teaching them the joy of puns, of playing air-guitar to Lou Reed’s “I’m Waiting For My Man” whilst being careful not to explain what the song was about… Plenty of little glowing moments dotting the years before they grew up and left home to pursue their own glowing lives. After that the shared moments were fewer and farther between, but no less glowing. Now he looked forward to their visits with children of their own, finally including a little girl, a great granddaughter after six grandsons – but they were brief and more overwhelming than glowing.
He opened his eyes and took in the single, though spacious and well-appointed room to which his age had reduced him. A constellation of LED’s of various colours shone in the dark – overhead, the steady green light of the smoke detector with its occasional red flash to reassure that the backup battery was functioning. Another red light on the pull-chord for the shower, outside the en suite and again by the bed, in case he needed to summon help. His music centre had a plethora of twinkling lights and white bars of light rising and falling where the equaliser measured the music even though the volume was turned down but not off. Lastly his laptop flashing a small green light that lit up, faintly, the pile of books to be read, beside it. His connection to what friends were left, scattered around the world, and to family, busy about the middle years of their lives. He had once taken a photograph on the Night setting of his phone camera, the constellation of lights scribbled because of the slight tremor in his hands, but the room illuminated nevertheless by the glow of LED luminance. But that wasn’t the glow he sought, either…
When the James, the resident in Room 24 and a favourite amongst staff and residents alike due to his unflagging positivity, failed to appear at breakfast, a nurse was despatched to check on him. She found him, pulseless, staring at the ceiling, the glow of life gone from his eyes…
© Andrew Wilson, 2026
This is a short story written for Deadlines – 12 Short stories in 12 Months and since you can’t read it on the site – unless you are a participant – I am posting here for anyone who chances upon it and cares to read…
