The sound of clacking keyboards filled the room, adding to the relentless creaking of the lone fan. It was a hot day, but the afternoon had brought a cool change. Hector sat quietly on a couch beside the reception desk, a briefcase by his side in the lobby where other suited men sat waiting to see if they had out-competed him. Hector was calm, but only just. If he didn’t get it, he would just move back home. It would be a shame, but he had only been here a week.
“Mr Brawley, you can go in now,” a voice called.
The nerves were coming back now. He stood up, clutching onto the supple leather straps of his case. He began the walk up the stairs.
***
The day grew tired, crickets chirped in a dusty evening as Hector strolled down the pathway. He stopped at the traffic light, and gazed across to the sandy shore next to the bridge. Cars zoomed past him as workers hurried home. While he had been here for a month already, Hector couldn’t get used to cars driving on the opposite side of the road. Some things were just too ingrained in his memory. It didn’t have the tropic fierceness of Queensland. Here the sound of the waves was constantly smashing across the rocks. Hector scanned across the beach overhead to examine the immense sand that covered the land. Where the sand meets the sea that connected the two continents together reached out to the descending sun. The sound of the fizzing sea water caught Hector’s eyes staring at the beautiful blue pacific sea as he gazed at the horizon.
Walking aimlessly across the void, he stopped and lay on his back, staring straight at the orange clouds. A small parabolic item was emitting light as it reflected off his eyes. He had focused on it at that very moment as it resembled something special to him. A seashell. He continued to lie on his back with one hand holding up the sea shell, covering the evening light. For the past month, he suddenly realised that he had not really contemplated home at all. The small town of Hervey Bay flooded his mind with motion images of him, his wife along with their child at the beach.
The life that he had lost couldn’t be replaced with something new. It was now forgotten amongst the chain of memories he had reflected on in that instant. Everything from the new job, the new home, the new food, and new clothes were nothing more but mere artificial replications of what was real at home. Life in this foreign world was a blur of ceaseless activity a prolonged sensation that allowed no time for mediation. It felt like the life he was living now was nothing compared to the images in his head or the memories flooding his mind.
Here, Hector was adrift, exiled at the end of the day, everyone mindlessly ignored everyone else. Everything was just so casual. As soon as the clock hit five, his colleagues became husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. They were somebody’s this or that, whereas he had no one. It was a strange feeling to the lonely island in a sea of people. He was marginalised from them all yet he knew a vast array of different people however paradoxically he was from them all. When he was at work, work became a part of him. Business to him was a labour of love, he enjoyed every second of it which made him feel alive. An energy urge through him it deformed him, it was euphemism of his will and faith.
Feeling like a migrating bird, he desperately went searching for his home. He thought he had everything he had dreamed of, yet it all meant nothing to him now. He was separated from all he knew by a vast body of water, the sandy beaches along the coast meant nothing to Hector. The memories of being held tightly by the warmth of the two individuals he treasured most slowly faded in his mind.
In the city where he had walked to his job, the air that he breathed, the suit he wore and the suit case he held every time was all tangible yet wasn’t a part of him. Although it was all the same, it was still unfamiliar to Hector. Despite his enormous effort to remember and retain his memories, it was all just a weight on his shoulders. An ache around his rib cage had forced tears down his cheek. The trickling sensation sent Hector into an uncontrollable expression of grief. There was nothing that he could do now. It was as if his memories were locked away. He had to take a great leap of faith and plunge into the deep sea of unknowns, even if it carried the risk of drowning.
Filled with regrets he was now stuck between two worlds, painful as it was to choose one or the other.
The remnants of his eroding memories were locked away in a never ending loop of bewilderment. He was restrained; the view of the distant world had closed. Continuously trying to regain the remembered experiences of what he once felt, saw and smelt: the intense humidity, the minty smell of eucalyptus leaves and the constant singing of the cicadas in the background. His inseparable bond to Hervey Bay was slowly but surely diminishing and the realisation of this had his heart sinking. Despite his attempts to remember, nothing was coming back.
He fiddled with the shell in his hand. And that was when the images – small fragments at first – began forming into more vivid scenes.
In a small yard in front of a white house with a blue door, his three year old daughter and his wife stood opposite the sandy shore across from home. The time was close. They stood in a small puddle and held each other tightly. Their emotions were one. He hugged his daughter not out of guilt or sorrow, but out of regret. They hugged each other for a long period of time. There was no going back on this, the calls had been made and his things had been packed. Then, without another word, the child and the mother were left alone. Hector walked slowly towards the cab and waved out the window.
Gone. The circle was broken
A distant reflection had nothing to yield but more sorrow. The light on the sea slowly receded into the horizon, and darker and darker the evening become. Soon, Hector stood up, sand fell right off his back leaving behind the memories on the shore. Embedded in the immense sand… forever lost. His burden would always be to maintain his two great loves. He had to have his heart and mind. To deny one was to deny life. Suit case lifted and his back turned to the horizon, he began walking. It was time to move on
