The Bench by the Weir

Gordon had been walking to the weir for fourteen months. The doctor had said thirty minutes a day and Gordon, who did not do things by half, had measured it: the house to the weir and back was thirty-two minutes at a decent clip, thirty-eight if he stopped on the bench, which he always did. The bench had a plaque. For Moira, who loved this river. Gordon had never known Moira but he liked her, in the way you can like a stranger for choosing a good spot. On the Tuesday there was a man on the bench. He was younger, fifties maybe, in a good coat and trainers that had never seen a hill. He had the look of a person who had been sent outside. Gordon stood there. The man moved along without being asked. Gordon sat. They watched the water go over the weir. It made the noise it always made. "Doctor's orders?" the man said eventually. "How'd you know?" "You've got the face. I've got it too. Blood pressure. My wife bought me the shoes." "Cholesterol," Gordon said. "Fourteen months now." "And it works?" Gordon considered. "The numbers are better. The doctor's happy." He paused. "I'm better. Different thing." The man's name was Ahmed. He was a solicitor who'd been told to walk and had been walking, resentfully, for eight days. He said the first few mornings he'd kept checking his phone. Now he'd started leaving it in the car. "Nobody tells you the hard part isn't the walking," Ahmed said. "It's the being alone with your head for half an hour." Gordon nodded. He knew that one. The first months after Jean, he'd walked because it was that or sit in the house listening to the fridge. The weir had been useful. It was loud enough that you didn't have to think if you didn't want to. "It gets easier," he said. "The head bit." "Does it?" "No. But you get better at it." Ahmed laughed. He had a good laugh, sudden and a bit too loud for a riverbank. They sat a while longer. A heron came down onto the flat rock below the weir, folded itself up, and waited.

"Same time tomorrow?" Ahmed said, standing, brushing off the coat. "I'm always here at ten past eight." "Then I'll be here at ten past eight." He was. And the day after. By the end of the month there were three of them, because Ahmed's neighbour had a new hip and needed the practice, and by the autumn the bench wasn't big enough, so they stood, the four of them, and watched the water, and nobody said anything about Moira but Gordon reckoned she'd have approved.