Mr Timm's story continued....

The sun slanted in at the open doorway. Mr Timm looked round the bare shop and sighed. The end of an era he thought. All gone.

The neighbourhood had changed radically.

The Victorian homes up and around the corner had become too expensive to maintain and gradually the families moved away to greener pastures. The three girls with whom he had shared so many jokes had simply one autumn disappeared. Other kids too. Little businesses had sprung up in Murphy street.... just the ghostly echoes of kids playing were in the wind.

We had indeed moved out into the country. Wood borer had been discovered in the wooden floors of our Victorian house and it had proved too much for my parents. Here today and gone tomorrow without much of a backward glance.

Years passed and it was when I was in my first year of university that I met Trisha Timm. She was a vibrant personality and we soon became fast friends.  One day we were talking about our family names and I mentioned that when I was a child, about 14 years before, my sisters and I had known a Mr Timm who had owned the corner shop around the corner from where we lived.

"What a coincidence ," she exclaimed, "he is Clive, my grandfather!"

"No way, we adored him.....he was such fun ," and I described our 'cowboys and crooks' game that we used to play. Her face grew solemn and I suddenly stopped. 

"Well, things have changed for him." she said sadly." I don't think he has smiled in the last year. He simply sits and stares and nothing much interests him anymore."

"Why," I asked overwhelmed by the realisation that as children we had left the neighbourhood without even saying goodbye to our friend. One day the packers came in and we had suddenly moved into the countryside.

"He and my gran were close and then she died very suddenly two years ago. He was devastated and then his eyesight began failing and he has sunk into a depression that frightens me. What's even worse is that I'm going to transfer to another university soon and I won't even be able to visit him."

Time passed and Trisha indeed departed. I was sad for the loss of my good friend and I became preoccupied by old Mr Timm and how lonely he must be.

I phoned Trisha and she told me he was in a home for the aged up on Town Hill.

The following day I parked my car in the gravel car park and walked in to reception at Azalea Gardens. A pleasant woman gave me directions to the garden he liked to sit in. "He'll be the one under the shady tree, just sitting. I'm glad he'll have a bit of company. He's very lonely since his granddaughter left."

My running shoes squeaked on the shiny red polished floors of the long veranda. There in the garden I saw old Mr Timm still recognisable after these many years in his wheel chair, simply sitting. The angle of his head told me he was listening to a bird above him on a branch. He raised his head in my direction as my footsteps alerted him to my presence.

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"Hello," I said quietly, "I've come to see you and I've brought something for you." His face showed a bit of interest. "Really? Now this is a surprise," he said in the still familiar deep voice.

I took the big round penny that I had brought from my memory box and opening his hand I pressed the coin onto his palm. For a second he was puzzled but as his fingers explored the roundness of it, recognition dawned gradually on his face. A smile broke out like sunshine after rain and he clasped the penny and my one hand tightly and with the other he made a finger gun and said,

 "Bang......I've got you!"

That was the beginning of a rich friendship that I like to think, enriched his life and was a new beginning for me.