The Promise by Tony Birch

occasionally, something in between. I made myself a coffee, went out into the yard, lit a smoke and watched them more closely. One bucket was already full. They bustled away, shaking the tree like a flock of birds feeding on the fruit.
    I didn’t want them thinking I was spying on them, so I began tidying up around the yard. I picked up a broken terracotta pot but wasn’t sure what to do with it and put it down. I wandered over to the corner of the yard and stopped outside the wooden garage door. In the time that I’d been living at the house with Rachel I’d never been inside the garage. I forced the door open and looked in. The garage was empty except for a piece of furniture sitting in the corner, covered in dust and cobwebs.
    It was an ancient record player. My grandmother had had one just the same, when I was a kid. She’d called it a ‘three-in-one’. I lifted the veneer lid of the player and saw a record sitting on the turntable. I heard the old woman call me from the yard. She pointed to the overladen buckets.
    â€˜We finish olives.’
    Her husband, who hadn’t spoken a word, had the ladder slung over his shoulder. He bent forward and picked up a bucket in each hand, as she attempted to explain the process of washing and preparing the olives to me, only some of which I understood. She guessed so, and smiled to me as they were leaving by the side gate.
    â€˜No matter. I will come back and show. One week. Two weeks. I will have beautiful olives.’
    I stood outside the garage and watched as they left the yard. He was about half a foot taller than his wife. She reached up and rested a hand on his shoulder and they rhythmically waddled from side to side.
    Late that night I dragged the old record player into the kitchen with the idea of listening to the radio for company. I dusted off the player with a damp cloth. I plugged it into the wall socket and hesitantly flicked the switch, half expecting an explosion. Nothing happened. For the next hour or so I tried everything I could to get the radio working, pulling wires out of sockets and checking loose connections, with no success.
    Mucking around with the wires I accidentally knocked the arm of the record player. The turntable began rotating. I moved the needle across to the vinyl and heard the wonderful crackling notes of the first track on the record. I knew the song well. My parents had once owned the same record.
    I dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the record player, sat down and closely listened to each track on the album. I felt a little sad. Not particularly because of the words or the melody, but with a strong memory of my parents dancing arm-in-arm together in my childhood lounge room. They had been really in love, my mum and dad. When he died of a heart attack, in his fifties, she fell apart and had kept to herself ever since.
    True to her word, the old woman knocked at my front door a fortnight later. It was a Saturday morning. The jar of olives she was nursing in her arms was enormous. I stepped onto the porch to greet her.
    â€˜Your husband? Where is he?’

    â€˜Oh, he fell from ladder. Sore back.’

    She pantomimed the fall, right down to clutching her back and moaning.
    â€˜I’m sorry to hear that.’

    She waved away my concerns.
    â€˜Better soon.’

    I invited her into the house. She looked at me a little suspiciously before following me down the hallway into the near-empty kitchen. Her eyes settled on the record player and chair in the middle of the room.
    â€˜The house is empty. You live all alone?’

    â€˜Yes. Alone.’
    â€˜No good. This makes you sad. I see. You …’ she pointed at me, ‘enjoy the olives. They bring peace. They bring luck for you. They bring happy. Eat.’

    Before I’d fully comprehended what she’d said she had turned around and marched out of the house. I didn’t really know what to do