Peaches, but not so fresh.

 We sat on a rock in the smoke of a hot afternoon. The sun beat down hard but the trees around the stream used their thick-packed leaves to filter out most of its merciless rays. Only a little direct sunlight managed to penetrate the leafy canopy so not much grew beneath the trees making it easy to find a good spot on the river bank to spread out the picnic blanket. There were squirrels, and the only noise was of the fast river pouring over rocks. And there were birds. I don’t remember much else about the day, but I do know that it was the day that Peaches died and after that there were no more picnics and we moved away to live in the city.

An over-active imagination helps.

This is the kind of night when I'd really like to be at sea. It would be late at night, well after midnight; the boat would be a cargo vessel without the frivolity of holidaying passengers. I'd be on deck, well wrapped up and with a full hip flask of whiskey on me (not rum, even though rum is more commonly associated with the high seas) and the sky above would be like a bubbling cauldron with clouds surging and spilling in all directions, obscuring the moon and the stars. I'll have spent the evening in my cabin reading something deep and unsettling and the spray from the ocean will refresh my eyes without dissipating any of the melancholy that will have accumulated around my heart as plaque accumulates around improperly brushed teeth. I peer out through the mist and the spray knowing that there is nothing to see, knowing that the coast of Panama is still three days sailing away, but the smell of the land has already begun to arrive on currents of warm, wet air.

Too much Proust perhaps.

Under the influence of too much Proust I became sluggish of mind and bowel. I was just nineteen. I spent most mornings in bed, unable to bring myself to face the day till my bladder was about to burst. Once it had been emptied I returned to bed unless the smell of warm buttered toast persuaded me otherwise. Or a freshly baked Madeleine.

My sense of self worth became so low that when I thought of my name I couldn’t see it written with a capital letter. My sister was convinced that it was a case of unrequited love. She pestered me for information, a name, and concluded that it was an older woman who had been disappointed by romance during some war and still thought that she too was nineteen.

My brother coaxed me on the occasional warm, summer afternoon down to the river where we used to swim as children, hoping that the fresh air and exercise would claim me from the clutches of despair. Once or twice I ventured reluctantly into the cold, slack water under the bright sun, but the feel of wet clothes against my skin was unbearable and the new road that ran alongside the river bank prevented swimming without clothes. Till the previous summer there was no road, no drivers and therefore no need for modesty.

At the beginning of that autumn my father lost patience with my torpor. He declared that I had become so apathetic that even growing a moustache would be too much of an effort for me. So he arranged with Doctor Carduso (with whom my sister was having an affair) for me to be admitted to a sanitorium to be treated with frequent doses of vigour, vapours and purges.

Possessions were forbidden at the “Hôpital Purgatoire “ and after just a few days sans Proust I began to revive. I even fell in love with a young nurse but Doctor Carduso’s jealous nephew found out and she was fired. I thought I would descend again into the depths of stupor once Nurse Collette had gone, but her replacement was just as acceptable, and I concluded that the problem all along had just been too much Proust.

Death in a huff.

Death sat gaunt and unloved at the piano in Alice's drawing room. His coattails fell almost to the floor behind him. Light from candles threw shadows on the walls as his fingers raced over the keys releasing shivers of Tchaikovsky that transported Alice to some place where she believed love could never touch her. Leonard came in after midnight. He sat on the recently reupholstered Voltaire in the corner of the room and watched Alice start to sink into oblivion and gravitate  towards Death's clutches. He blew blue rings  of cigar smoke towards the dead roses that were looking in at him from the patio on the other side of the French windows. From the air he grabbed hold of the floating notes of Tchaikovsky as they passed under his nose. Alice was already starting to dissolve. Leonard mixed the black notes of Tchaikovsky in the bottle of Chablis that Death had left to chill on the hearth of the unlit fire. As he poured the adulterated wine into a pewter goblet the musical notes were rearranged into a waltz-like version of "Knees up mother Brown". The spell that Alice had fallen under was disrupted. She swooned; Leonard caught her and laid her limp, feeble body on Daphne's chaise longue. Death put on his overcoat, wrapped a white scarf round his scrawny neck and took off in a huff.