| 3. A second life | | Print | |
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One evening, he arrived on the doorstep in a trilby hat, an overcoat, serge trousers, shiny brown shoes, and carrying a small green suitcase. My grandfather, Albert Edward, was recently widowed. My mother had “taken him in,” as she put it. I was five and he was much, much older.
He took up residence in the corner of the dining room in the cramped flat above the shop. His small bed was pushed against the wall and covered with a red-and-white bedspread. Beside it on a night table stood a wooden radio. Its dial displayed strange names of a world beyond our small town: Luxembourg, Athlone, Budapest, AFN, Hilversum, Helvetia.
My mother confided to me later that she thought he wouldn’t last a long time. This proved to be untrue. Despite my grandfather’s enthusiastic hobby of chain-smoking, he was very fit and lived for another twenty years. My childhood was wreathed in smoke. I flew my toy airplanes through blue cloudbanks in the living room.
My mother’s side of the family had come from Yorkshire, and my grandfather had gone into the army as a boy and risen to the rank of regimental sergeant-major. He dressed with care. His shoes were always polished. The only time he didn’t wear jacket-and-tie was when he was asleep. He was an early riser and I never remember his bed unmade.
Being “well turned out,” was an article of faith in our family. My father's army service had left him with a dogmatic sense of order. I reluctantly went along with the neat-and-clean regime.
My father had gone into the army a boy-soldier and come out an officer. But in my grandfather’s day, officers didn’t come from working-class backgrounds. The class barrier had been solid. My grandfather was exotic because he seen something of the world. He spent time on troop ships, been in Egypt, sailed down the Nile, and tramped the baking sands of the Sudan—in full military kit. He lived in India with my grandmother: a lifestyle that had included servants. But he maintained that all places abroad stank, and that England had the best climate in the world. Even as a very small boy this sounded doubtful to me.
He saw two world wars, and didn’t share my boyish enthusiasm for fireworks. There had been enough explosions in his life. He spent time defusing unexploded bombs during World War II: a career with a very low survival rate. My grandfather was a survivor.
Under his bed was a long curved knife in a sheath. I was fascinated by it. I wanted it. He said one day it would be mine. It never was. The Gurkha Brigade had presented him with the knife. According to him, during the ceremony it had been thrown and split a penny wedged in the branch of a tree.
To me, he was an exotic creature and full of mysteries. His Yorkshire accent contrasted with ours in the south. He employed an antique vocabulary. His suitcase was a valise, or sometimes a portmanteau. A magazine was a book, which he pronounced with a long “oo” sound as in moon. The radio was a wireless. He would tell me to “look sharp,” which meant to hurry up.
On going to bed, he announced that he was “away to the woods.” This conjured up images of his sleeping in some midsummer-night’s-dream forest.
He was of the firm opinion that roads were for people to walk on and not for cars. However, I unearthed a photograph of him proudly standing, foot up on the running board, of a modest but shiny black car. But his love had been his motorbike. It was how he lost his hair.
He told me he was traveling at such speed on his motorcycle his hair flew off. He'd forgotten his helmet. He could have worn his cap with a peak (bill) at the back, but he had lost it. He’d tried to buy a cap with a peak at the back, but all he could find were ones with the peak at the front.
He told me of India, and the Ooslum bird that flew backward to keep the dust out of its eyes. India had left its prandial mark on him. In India, each meal had been preceded by a small dish of curry. The habit had stuck. At each meal he produced a small tin of curry powder and sprinkled it on his food; and then salt, salt, and more salt. He liked salt.
My grandfather did not lose his appreciation for young ladies. One summer in the mid-1950’s we spent ten days at the Clift Hotel in Looe, Cornwall. It was all rather formal. Part of the service was tea in bed. He was very keen to be woken up by a young maid bearing the dark and life-giving brew. He called her the tea fairy. In your twenties you are not satisfied unless you have steamy erotic adventures. Add three or four decades and tea in bed is just as good. Appreciations change.
After years of parade-ground bawling my grandfather’s voice had softened and he was quiet. But his habit for activity lasted a long time. He was a walker. He took me on walks by the river. Sometime we walked for miles. He taught me to look for red squirrels, and multicolored kingfishers. His appreciation for being quiet in nature rubbed off on me. He taught me to stand still, watch, and listen. It was a valuable lesson, and a practice I keep up.
When we moved to a village two miles away, he walked more. On Sundays, it was his habit to walk through our village, by the airfield and the watercress beds to the pub in the next village. He would have a pint and then walk back in time for Sunday lunch.
Our new house had a garden at the back where he grew vegetables. They were planted with military precision and kept ship-shape-and-Bristol-fashion. Order and cleanliness reigned in the vegetable garden, (as it did in the house) and my grandfather was in his element. He commanded his vegetables to grow, and they obeyed. He showed no signs of not lasting long as my mother had predicted.
He now had a room of his own, but he spent hours in front of the TV on Saturday afternoons watching Grandstand, a sports program. I hated it. I had enough of organized sports at school. He also was going make us all rich by winning the football pools. He religiously filled in his “perm,” but the jackpot was never ours. The football results, horse racing, rugby, boxing, cricket, and gymkhana were background noises to my childhood. He loved it all. He had been a keen athlete in the army, and played cricket for England. He had a pragmatic knowledge of the cunning and secret googlie.
Letters to his sister, Vera, were a regular activity. His penmanship was elegant and clear. He tried to help me with mine. His hand effortlessly (or so it seemed) produced flowing and beautiful marks on paper.
It’s an odd thing about handwriting and how it changes over time. My own hand now seems more stable, elegant, and controlled the more I write. That may not be surprising. But my handwriting seems to be more like my father’s without any conscious effort to make it so. Could there be a handwriting gene?
The letters to Vera were in advance of my grandfather's bi-annual visits. He’d travel north to Yorkshire for two weeks at a time. On one occasion I went too. I remember the rotten-egg smell of the steam train as it puffed its clickity-clack way north. Vera’s tiny row house formed part of a crescent that gave onto a patch of tired, almost colorless, grass sloping down to a street; on the other side of which were rail tracks and factories.
Back at home with us, if he wasn’t out walking, gardening, or watching TV, he napped in his chair.
We eventually moved away from the village and into a hilly town. There was no longer a garden to keep him busy and he went into decline. The house was on a busy street. It was tall and narrow with a winding staircase which limited him. He lived into his eighties, but in the end time catches up with us all. His waking moments became less lucid. He died when I had already left home and was away having my own youthful adventures.
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