A Perfect Stranger...

He was there again, sitting on the park bench which looked out onto the neat row of Victorian terraced houses. A handkerchief covered the soiled wooden slats and he unpacked his luncheon onto the make-shift tablecloth. His hands tidied the flask and sandwiches into precise patterns. It was an old routine, one his fingers knew by rote, leaving his mind empty and able to drift freely.

All this the woman observed from across the street. Of course she had no idea who this man was and it was hardly her place to comment on the state of his mind, empty or otherwise. Their acquaintance was merely a result of his strange choice to eat his luncheon opposite her house. When exactly he had begun to sit there she couldn’t really say with accuracy. Perhaps no more or no less than a year. Yet it was as if he had always sat there and would always continue to sit there. So much was this the case that she had begun to think, and even speak, about it as his park bench.

There could be, you would suppose, nothing more natural in the world than his sitting on a park bench. Except that it was that park bench. It couldn’t even be truly considered a park bench when there was no park, indeed not even a garden in a mile radius, unless you thought to include the tidy window boxes nestled under Mrs Ashcombe’s bay window. The very existence of the park bench was then a peculiarity, and his sitting upon it was so decidedly irregular that she could not help but steal glances throughout the course of her day to see if he really was there at all.

But there he really was. Always, without fail, arriving at 11.27 before proceeding to lay out his luncheon upon the same carefully pressed handkerchief. When it rained an umbrella joined him or a peaked hat might make an appearance on days when the sun was high and bright. Today a scarf enveloped the top portion of his body and most of the bottom portion of his face. The stick, however, remained a constant companion, resting faithfully against its master’s knee. It wasn’t that he was a particularly old man. In fact his hair looked to her remarkably thick and dark, his face notably unlined and unblemished. Yet his spindly frame was seemingly permanently hunched over itself in an ungainly stoop.

Her gaze wandered to the handsome clock on the mantelpiece before straying back to the man, whose hands rested patiently on his knees. An outlandish urge suddenly over took the woman. A desire to change what had become their bizarre routine. Tentatively, strangely frightened she might upset some cosmic balance, she eased open a window. Her breath expelled a relieved sigh when the universe remained as it was. She finished sliding the window onto its latch with a certain amount of liberated pleasure. Now the action was complete she glanced back towards the clock. Gathering her skirts about her she sat on the stool which had been prepared and flexed her fingers in the rapidly cooling air. It was 11.45 at last. And they could begin.

The notes were coaxed and beckoned by her manicured fingers which sought out the familiar keys. She drew the music from the instrument and allowed it to course through the well-appointed room and out into the open air. She didn’t need to check the window to know that the man would have begun to eat his luncheon by now. Today, for the first time since their peculiar acquaintance had begun, he wouldn’t need to strain and grasp for each lilting note. The music would be as crisp and clear as the autumn air and there was no breeze stirring in the russet trees to carry it away from its audience.

Of course she could not be certain whether he was in fact actually listening. For in truth she had no idea why a perfect stranger would sit there upon that park bench.