Bill is 81 years old. He lives in Marrickville, New South Wales. He has been waiting nine months for an appointment with a specialist to see what can be done about his back. He believes the best way forward will be to fuse three vertebrae low down in his spine.
It may have been the tapping of his stick on the pavement that alerted me to his presence behind. The two shopping bags I had were sufficiently laden for me to be pleased to set them down for a rest, and there could be no better excuse than to let someone by.
“Hello there! How you goin’?“
Although his family settled in Preston, Lancashire, when he was just 13, Bill still has a light but delightful Northern Ireland accent.
He looked down with something like suspicion on my two shiny, swollen shopping bags now settled on the ground.
“How far d’you have to go? I saw you gettin’ along. I’ve got this trolley bag and we could put one of yours on it. Which way you going?”
I now saw that Bill‘s leash finished not with a dog but with a well-used canvas bag on two wheels. It was barely half full and before the future geographic situation relating to himself and me had been clarified, he had placed one of my bags half in and half on top of his two-wheeler.
He takes medication to improve his lung function and uses oxygen on an as-needs basis. He has had multiple surgeries and cancer. He has a device at home which gives some relief from the pain caused by scar tissue in his back. (I accepted Bill’s invitation to undertake a brief palpation.)
Clarification of how long it might be before we would need to part company was proving difficult. Bill’s hearing, like his back, would benefit from some repair and modification. And these days my voice is clumsily and faintly produced, and my brain’s executive function is unreliable – two of the less obvious manifestations of Parkinson’s.
Nevertheless we made confident if slow progress along the pavement, while attempting to predict our conjoined spatial future. I could not remember the name of the street on which my daughter lives, and Bill referred to streets and roundabouts beyond my ken and yet to appear before us. There was some talk of a golf course which might still have been a fair way off.
Bill and his brother served in the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons, Bill for six years. Serving later in the same Company, a nephew had to make an early incursion on the Falkland Islands and as a result still has PTSD.
When we reach the head of the street I recognise as being the one on which my destination lies, Bill indicates that his street is down the other branch before us. But do you think I could persuade him to give me back my bag for the suburban block-and-a-half which I promised was all there was before me? He said if he came my way he could cut across down another street back to his place.
Bill has clearly made this journey many times before. School was just out and he (and I) stepped aside to let parents and youngsters, unencumbered by shopping bags and considerable bodily wear-and-tear, pass easily between us. A gentleman sun bathing on his verandah, shirt off, called out a cheery hello to Bill which was cheerily reciprocated.
At this time I was thinking of recompense, perhaps in the form of a grateful postcard from Canberra. (I wonder if Bill has been round Parliament House?)But try as I may he would not reveal an address, only a name.
He is Bill Hutchinson.
As we parted I fell to wondering how many of Bill’s shopping trips involve helping people down the street with his trusty ‘bag on wheels’. And there is a different sort of wonder as well: about the kindness of Man.