Fragment

To be the audience to her words meant that you heard every fact she spouted as a contestable lie, and every hope as nothing short of an eventuality.

The Old Man Visits Solitude - III

“Mam always said that my dad was the old romantic of the pair of them. When they met at the dance the music turned slow all of a sudden, and just like that he insisted on spending the rest of his life with her. They were engaged and moving to Dorset before the year was through. They were lucky to get a cheap cottage that backed onto a beautiful farm, but it was also less than a mile from the coast. Everybody said, “Our John must be mad! He’s moved his life away to the coast and decided to make his living joining wood, just like he could’ve done if he’d stayed up north!”

“But Mum still loved him. And just after moving they had started a family. First born was our Maggie, she’s the bossy one, religious too. Would have become a nun if it weren’t for Pete stealing her heart!”

I felt begrudgingly obliged to feign interest in some way, though I knew that I was going to regret asking for the lengthy response that would follow.

“So you were the younger one?”

“Youngest. First was Maggie, then our Ron came along, and three years later to the day I was born.”

Something about the pattern of our dialogue made me dread the obligation to interject. What on earth was I to respond to a family chronology with? (Besides a mirthless, sarcastic grunt of course.) Thankfully, the silence was but a chance for him to take a puff of breath with what little strength his near-obsolete lungs could muster.

“Our Ron, he was ever so quick with sums and such things. He was the sort of smart Alec that all the grown ups had to laugh at, even if they got a little cross at first. I remember one day, when I was only 5 myself, he came home for tea and had the biggest grin you had ever seen on his face. We didn’t even have to ask what happened before he started off his little story. Apparently Doherty, a boy who was ever so slow but came up with the cleverest questions, asked the teacher the most difficult sum he could think of - thirty-nine times thirty-nine (remember, we didn’t have those fancy computer things that you do now!). While the teacher was still facing the wall and counting on her fingers, Ron shot his hand up and shouted the answer. Whoosh!” his left arm mimicked the movement “”One thousand, five hundred and twenty-one, Miss!” he said. It was a good ten minutes before the teacher could say if he was right or not, which of course being our Ron, he was!”

Bloody hell. It really did seem that there is an age you reach where anything goes for a story. What was it with people of his generation that compels them to let us know where the light switch was and the colour of jumper they were wearing the time aunt Mildred severed her thumb with the butter knife? The advent of the photograph must have been such a paradigm shift to these people. As was the bullet point, I’m sure.

“Our Ron,” he muttered with a sighing laugh, “he was the cleverest boy I ever knew. He was wasted in the army. Even as a boy he hated playing with toy soldiers, but played anyway because he knew I’d enjoy it. When he left for his tour, even before we received the telegram six months later, picking up a toy soldier made me think of him out there fi-- fight-- ing. Sorry”

His now pursed lips bore the beginnings of a toothless grin that quivered, and from his glazed eyes began the stream of tears; a humane mixture of grief and acquiesce that graced the sentiments of so many. These were the people who held a mature sense of acquaintance with death.

It had been so long since buying a box that I couldn’t tell if I was in the habit of keeping tissues around the place so I offered him the most dismal of substitutes - a piece of kitchen towel. He graciously accepted.

“It’s an incredible thing you know,” he said, “five!”

“Sorry, ‘five’?”

His face became illumined with a slight start.

“Tom from the bookies was an old friend of my dad’s, originally an apprentice that my dad took under his wing. Though it took less than a month for Dad to realise that the boy would never be a carpenter-joiner. One day Tom walked into the atelier and Dad just stood in front of the bench and said “Young man, to be quite honest with you, if you ever make so much as one pay packet for joining wood in this country then we really have no hope against the Germans.”

“Every Sunday for three years, when the fixtures for the derby were announced, Tom would stop by our house and inform us of them, then come again at the end of the race to tell us who won. He knew that our wireless was broken, you see. We each had a lucky number. Our Ron’s was always five, ours were always prone to change but his was always five.

“Fifteen years after his death, when I had a wife and a son and that son had a brother of his own, I planted a rosebush in the garden, in Ron’s memory like. And every spring exactly five roses would blossom from that bush. Not a single bud more or less. Ever.

“But I grew up for Ron. I found a wife and had kids who have grown up themselves now. And I loved my wife, right up to the very end. I still do, because being sad won’t bring them back now will it? But remembering that you love them keeps them in a special place.”

“When did your wi--”

“Last month. The funeral was just a few days ago. I’m sorry for cutting you off there, I just can’t bear to hear a sentence like that. Not just yet anyway.” Every second word was now punctuated with a sniffle and drying of the eyes. I stood up and tensely grasped the top of my armchair, swilling my brandy a little as I did. It was a deliberate attempt to conceal from the man’s line of vision a black tie, white shirt and suit jacket that still lay draped over a wooden dining chair.

“What about your children?” I said, smiling without the show of malice that I truly felt. “They’re all grown up by now, I presume? You must be very proud of them.”

That simple link between mind and countenance, that kept the former looking so alive suddenly went, as if my question had hacked away at the tangible connection. His face fell featureless in a terrifying display of incompetence. His mouth quivered as if running through all names of the English-speaking variety.

“Their names are John ... Mark ... Sarah, I --”

Before he could continue he saw me. Head bowed down and sighing a mirthless laugh I muttered, then repeated with a near-shouting voice: “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Dad.”