Losing It

by Ross Gilfillan

  Having told GD to think about what they are going to give us for our dinner, Nana picks up an old photograph album and starts to leaf through it, pointing out this or that to Clive and Lauren. I get up from Nana’s chair to look over her shoulder at page after page of stuck-down colour prints, some with captions in Nana’s neat handwriting, and as I hear her frail voice apologising to her guests that what they see was all a long time ago, when times were very different, I’m able to patch up my own crumbling memories of the time I spent in this house as a temporary but well-contented resident of Narnia.

  Lauren still hasn’t said a word. What Nana is saying as she shows her the photographs must all be strange to her – actually, famous poets dropping by with bottles of wine and professors of literature running riot, bollock-naked in the garden sounds odd to me, too – but I can see she’s smiling and trying to understand. In fact, like the others, she may be starting to see Nana as I do, as a cool and motherly source of inspiration and advice – and love, too, of course. Nana turns the leaves, sometimes chuckling at some old memory or at a photo of GD with long black hair and a cowboy hat. Then she shows her guests page after page of pictures of her travels in India – Nana spent three years there, working for an Indian charity.

  There are pictures of wild-looking men and women, mostly taken in this room. Clive sits on the other side of Nana, taken as much by the fashions as by anything else. In the really ancient shots, long haired men wear colourful cheesecloth shirts, patched jeans, velvet jackets embroidered with flowers and granddad T-shirts, brightly tie-dyed. There are Zapata moustaches, chains and amulets, CCuban heels and broad and big-buckled leather belts. The men sit on cushions or drape themselves over armchairs, playing guitars, laughing and gurning at someone’s camera. The young women wear long, flowery dresses, headbands and chokers, bare feet and, from what I can see, no bras. No one takes photographs of sad or dull occasions but to look at these is to think that life chez Arthur and Ruth Johnson was one big and friendly party.

  GD picks up a tortoiseshell kitten which tries to scratch him as he glances at what Nana is doing. ‘Those were the days, my friend,’ he says in a singsong voice.

  Nana looks up from her photo album.

  ‘You can still talk bollocks, husband of mine,’ she says. ‘These are the days too. Look at these kids, living through the biggest technological revolution since the steam engine and, Arty, being young enough to see how it all plays out. These could be the best of days, the very best of days, if everyone gets it right.’ She pauses, like speaking is sometimes an effort for her. ‘But yes, these here were ours. And we had a load of fun, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did that,’ GD says, bending to kiss Nana on her forehead before helping Faruk and Diesel to choose another record to slip on his old turntable. ‘Here we are, then, Grateful Dead, Europe ’72.’

  I catch Nana rolling her eyes. ‘Not again,’ she says. ‘If we must have the Dead, how about American Beauty?’

  ‘It’s always been a bone of contention this,’ GD says. ‘I love the live stuff, the long improvised jams, but Ruth has yet to see the light. Stubbornly sticks to the studio albums, don’t you, mule? We nearly divorced over that, once. I’d have had grounds, too.’

  ‘Rubbish, Arthur. Don’t listen to him, kids.’

  GD disappears into the kitchen, from where appetizing smells start to filter. There’s a lot of clattering, the sound of something falling and skittering across the floor and GD singing about being ‘trailed by twenty men’. But the bowls of pasta dowsed with a sweet chilli sauce – which we eat on our knees – are exactly what we need after a long and frustrating day out, trying hard to have fun. After the meal, which Nana barely touches, GD stands in front of the hearth as if he’s warming his bum, though being summer, there’s no fire there just now. He puffs out an impressive stomach and says, ‘Did I ever tell you people about how I joined the Dead after they played Hollywood?’

  ‘You joined the Grateful Dead?’ Faruk says.

  ‘You were in Hollywood?’ says Diesel.

  Granddad unwraps a boiled sweet and pops it into his mouth.

  ‘Oh, aye, yes indeed,’ he says. ‘Hollywood Music Festival, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1970. The first time the Grateful Dead played on these shores. I joined the band as a roadie for a spell, after I rescued them when their tour bus broke down outside Stoke-on-Trent. I was reminded of that when I saw you lot broken down today, though Brian here would need a little more hair to pass as Jerry Garcia. I picked them up with their guitars and everything and got them to the festival with only minutes to spare.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Faruk says.

  ‘It certainly is,’ Nana says.

  ‘It was raining then too, and that was before I’d had the roof on the van fixed, so they did get quite wet. Not that it dampened their spirits, not the Dead. In fact, they were so grateful that Bob Hunter wrote a song about that van, and called it Box of Rain. And Jerry took me on as driver-cum-roadie and once I’d introduced him to Newcastle Brown ale (I always carry an emergency crate in the van) we became firm friends. He never forgot me, either, you know. Always a card at Christmas.’

  ‘Incredible,’ Faruk says.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Nana says.

  ‘When the band wasn’t playing, Jerry and I used to jump in the van and go off in search of a pint of real ale, or a decent drop as we called it then. Jerry became a hard-core fan of British beer. It’s a little-known fact that Dark Star was actually inspired by Jerry’s love of Newcastle Brown. You check out the label on the bottle – two dark stars. And the idea for Uncle John’s Band came from a story I told him about my Uncle Jack, who was banned from every pub in Chesterfield.’

  ‘Arty,’ Nana sighs, but it’s no good, GD’s on a roll.

  ‘Soon, Jerry and I had converted the rest of the band. They loved it. Couldn’t get enough of the stuff. We went everywhere, in search of the perfect pint. Some nights, you’d find three great lorries full of amps and tour gear parked in front of a little country pub in the wilds, and you’d walk in and there would be San Francisco’s finest, Jerry, Phil, Ron, Mickey and Bob getting outside a few pints of Sam Smith’s or Timothy Taylor, and me and Bill enjoying a game of darts. Fantastic days.’

  ‘Fantastic is the word,’ Nana says.

  ‘Then, one day, we got pulled over by the police and searched, following a tip off, probably made by a rival band. The New Riders of the Purple Sage or the Quicksilver Messenger Service, I expect it was. Anyway, the cops pulled everything apart looking for drugs and couldn’t believe there was nothing on board. Even Owsley were clean. Not so surprising, really, because Jerry and me had been obliged to ditch several kilos of top grade Mexican grass in the Manchester Ship Canal, to make room for another six crates of Boddingtons.’

  Faruk, who has been following every word, starts to laugh. The penny rolls, clatters and finally drops for Diesel too and everyone’s laughing, though as for me, I’m wondering about the signatures on the poster and an almost indecipherable scribble which might just read, ‘Your round next time, love and peace, Jerry.’

  We have been so engrossed that we haven’t noticed that Nana and Lauren had gone into the kitchen and when they come out, it looks like they’ve been talking. Lauren looks a little more cheerful, anyway. Nana looks exhausted, and GD decides it’s time he and Nana retired. A little later, Lauren and Diesel, who have been assigned the spare bedroom, go upstairs. I see that Lauren’s talking to him for the first time that day, but softly, so she doesn’t disturb Nana. Clive takes the sofa and the patchwork blanket. Faruk, after one last look through the records, unfolds the camp bed. I’m not tired, so I volunteer to sleep in Nana’s rocking chair, where I sit and rock and think about Nana, and what GD will do when she’s gone and how unfair it is that she has to go like this, so long before her time.

  I think happier thoughts too, of the warm welcome we’ve received, of the amazing toffee cake, and of how I want to tell Ros all about this place when I’m back at school next week
– if I can engineer a meeting and if she will speak to me, of course. But drowsy, warm and happy, I am confident too and think that she will. I’m wondering if I can stay up and perhaps see the dawn in a few hours time, like we used to when I was here before. I’m not aware of having fallen asleep but when I feel GD’s big hand on my shoulder, gently shaking me awake, there’s the faintest sliver of light bordering the edges of the curtains. He puts his finger to his lips and beckons me to follow him. We step over Faruk in the low day bed and quietly open the door, which someone has forgotten to lock. It’s cool and fresh outside, with just enough light for us to make our way along the narrow lane that leads to the hillside, where a faint glow behind the distant castle is announcing the coming of the dawn. I look at my watch as GD strides ahead. It’s 4.44 in the morning.

  ‘Have you told your father?’ GD asks, as we enter the ring of standing stones. In the centre, one of these ancient slabs looks like it has been extracted from the earth and laid upon two others to form a seat. We make use of it.

  ‘Not yet,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll know when,’ GD says. ‘It’ll be a shock at first. But once he knows, he’ll be all the better for it, I’m sure he will. We were mistaken in taking him, I think. We weren’t right for him, though we tried to be, we really did.’

  ‘He does love you,’ I say. ‘In his own way.’

  ‘I know,’ GD says. Rabbits are starting from their holes and scuttling across the close-cropped grass. ‘And he loves Ruth, too, in his own way. But all this talk of hospitals and hospices. He just doesn’t know her, Brian. Not like we do.’

  I find it hard to talk about Nana’s condition. It seems like a betrayal, but I do. Surely Dad is right about wanting Nana to have proper medical care? ‘You wouldn’t keep her here, though,’ I say. ‘Not if she was in pain?’

  ‘I’ll keep her here with me for as long as she wants to stay,’ GD says, stubbornly, it sounds like. ‘No matter what anyone else says.’

  ‘But if you can’t?’ I say. ‘If she’s too ill?’

  GD sits quietly for a moment. ‘We’ll cross that bridge if and when we have to.’ Then, after we have sat in silence for a few minutes, he says, ‘Now, what do you think of this place?’

  There’s no need for an answer. It’s gobsmacking. There’s a watery sunlight thinning the sky, silvering the clouds and throwing a pattern of faint shadows into our stone circle. Below, I can see green fields and granite walls dipping towards a winding road and further down, the tree-lined river bottom. Across the water there are forested slopes and farmhouses and pastures dotted with cattle and sheep, then the suggestions of distant hills and valleys behind these, and then more, fading eventually to blue smudges on the far horizon. And just beyond us, on the edge of the great ridge along which we’ve been walking, is Nana’s Rock, where I sat with GD not so long ago – but probably wouldn’t have, if I’d seen how precariously we were perched. From here we can see how the single mass of granite reaches out above the valley, high above the bracken and boulders below.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ GD says. ‘Philly loves this place. In fact, she’s decided on it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  GD turns to look at me, sizing me up, I think. As if he’s making sure I’m ready to hear something that he needs to tell me.

  ‘I mean that right here is where we will say goodbye to your grandmother. When the time comes.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will, but all in good time,’ GD says.

  I want to know more and I don’t. This all sounds too ominous. And yet it can’t be, not if GD is saying it. But GD just looks out over the valley and adds nothing. We sit there in companionable silence, while the place fills with bright morning light and – to borrow a phrase I remember Nana reading to me once – whatever mystery was upon the land in that between-time has withdrawn into the woods.

  GD unwraps another sweet, pops it into his mouth and sucks noisily. I know him well enough to know that he’ll be turning something over in his mind and that I’ll hear all about it as soon as he has it right. Sometimes this process can take a couple of boiled sweets.

  ‘If I could leave you with one thought,’ GD says, finally, ‘it’s this.’

  I’m suddenly panicked at the thought of GD leaving too. Then I wonder what he will do when Nana is gone. And then I reproach myself for even thinking of Nana being gone. These are all things which just cannot be.

  ‘There is always an alternative way, Brian,’ my grandfather says. ‘Question everything. Don’t think what people tell you to think, don’t live your life just to please others.’

  If I ask what he means one more time he’ll think I’m a retard. And anyway, I always seem that much more intelligent when I keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Back in the day, my day,’ GD says, ‘a lot of us questioned what had previously been set in stone. Why was sex for after marriage? Why did your class or your race determine your future? Why should America be at war with a country we had barely heard of? People wrote about these things and others sang about them. We made our feelings known in every way we could. There were demonstrations, sit-ins, all kinds of protests. Some people were just along for the ride but most of us, I like to think, were deadly serious. We didn’t watch the world pass us by on a screen, we did something. And in the end, we changed that world, just a little.’

  Changed the world? Some days, it’s all I can do to change my socks.

  ‘Of course it was easier for us then,’ GD adds.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We had nothing to keep us at home. No addictive video games, no internet, nothing on telly. You met people when you went out, not when you went online. We had more money than previous generations but we were stony broke beside yours. There wasn’t yet the rampaging consumerism which keeps people dull-witted and takes their eyes off the balls they should be on.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a radical,’ I say.

  ‘I’m not. I’m just a carpenter who works with wood and wants to live in a world without knots. Or a few less of them, anyway. What you do about your world is up to you,’ he says, shaking a stone from his boot. ‘You are the future. Join it and subvert it or reject it and fight it. Not a revolution, those things are doomed to bloodshed and failure. But think for yourself. And don’t add fuel to this consumerist nightmare – question whether you really need that new thing they’re asking you to buy. Recycle. Make do. A smaller economy needn’t be a bad thing. Vote for anyone who tells the truth and wants to do good, regardless of party. Start your own party, or work from within. Love one another. But do something soon, before it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as all that, is it?’ I say, which sounds dumb, but I don’t quite know how to react to this new side of GD I’m discovering.

  He turns and looks at me, like he’s judging just how much I really know about life and the world. If he has much else to say, he swallows it. ‘We’ll see,’ he says. He stands up, dusts himself off and takes one more sweeping look at the majestic view.

  ‘Come on, Brian, let’s make tracks,’ he says, the early morning sun lighting a smile. ‘There’s something else I wanted to speak to you about.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I say.

  ‘Good, says GD, as we stumble over stone and heather towards the village and the cottage on the hill. ‘Because I’ve been wanting to tell you the real story behind the now-legendary Macclesfield pub crawl that Jerry and me went on, back in ’72.’

  Much later that morning, after Nana’s neighbour has fixed our car, we think about going home. It’s Sunday, so there’s nothing much to rush back for, but GD has told me that at times like these, Nana will find energy she doesn’t really have and that she may pay for her exertion later. In the front room, Faruk and GD are talking records – Faruk is being encouraged to borrow whatever he likes. Clive is telling Nana all about what he has been doing to the Dyson house and how he might borrow some of her ideas. I’m sure Roger will like hipp
ie retro, once he becomes accustomed to it. Diesel and Lauren have gone for a walk at Nana’s suggestion. Having got up so early, I’ve been dozing in Nana’s rocking chair.

  We are drinking tea and eating warm cheese scones when Diesel comes puffing up the garden path and bursts into the room. He stands there in his silly jacket and wide eyes, with his mouth moving and nothing coming out. GD sees something is wrong and lays a hand on his shoulder. He says, ‘Are we okay?’ Lauren stays at the bottom of the garden path, with her hands plunged into the pockets of her jacket, her face partially hidden by her hood. Back in the room, Diesel looks about wildly, like he has something to communicate, but can’t decide who to tell first or whether it should be communicated anyway: it’s impossible to tell; I’ve never seen him like this. ‘It’s Lauren,’ is all he’s able to offer by way of an explanation.

  ‘What’s up?’ Faruk says.

  ‘What’s she done?’ Clive demands.

  Diesel’s face is paler than I’ve seen it before, his eyes strangely vacant. He looks like he’s had some sort of a shock, a bad one too, I’d guess. Nana watches him impassively.

  ‘It’s Lauren,’ he says again.

  We’re all looking at him and then glancing through the windows at Lauren and wondering why she’s not come in with Diesel.

  Then we find out.

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ he says, and sinks deep into the sofa next to Nana, burying his face into her body while Nana herself waves to Lauren, telling her to come on in.

  CHAPTER 11

  Oliver’s Army

  The menu at St Saviour’s school canteen has been changed, yet again. This time last year Monsieur LeClerc’s reign of terror finally came to an end. It had lasted just over eighteen months but it had seemed an awful lot longer. Previously, we’d all had a normal, healthy fear of green vegetables. By the time Monsieur LeClerc had donned his chef’s hat and got cooking, our fear had been ramped up to an acute horror of anything even suggestive of a leaf. There were vegetables on our plates we had never heard of, much less actually seen.