The gate in front of the wall

An original fictional account set in an invented courtyard.

I had been asked to list anything that might delay the resurfacing of the courtyard. The gate seemed the easiest item. It stood between two short iron posts, several paces in front of a brick wall. Opening it simply allowed a person to move from one patch of paving to another. I wrote ‘unnecessary’ beside it on my form.

The caretaker heard me testing the hinge. “People used to come through there,” he said. Before the flats were built, a narrow lane had crossed the courtyard. Workers had pushed bicycles through the gate, and children had waited beside it for relatives coming home.

He showed me a row of initials cut into one post. The lower rail was smooth where hands had rested on it, and a shallow dent marked the place where bicycle pedals had repeatedly struck. “The wall came later,” he added.

Until then, I had thought the wall explained the foolishness of the gate. Now the wall seemed to be the interruption. The gate was like the beginning of a sentence whose remaining words had been covered over.

Even so, its paint came away against my fingers. A delivery driver had to steer a trolley around it, and the hinge protested whenever the wind moved it. I looked again at the form. Under ‘recommended action’, I had three choices: remove, retain or move.

I crossed out ‘unnecessary’. I did not tick ‘retain’. Instead, beneath the three boxes, I wrote: ‘Ask the residents before deciding.’

How does the writer develop the narrator’s changing view of the gate? In your answer, consider whether the ending makes that change seem complete.