by Luke Palmer
I think about the prospect of spending another weekend on the sofa watching bad TV, or staring at the rain running down the windows. Or, worse, staring at the screen of my laptop; at the website I know I’ll go back to if left alone.
‘OK.’
In the car we listen to the radio for a while until the news comes on and Mum turns it off. We sit in silence. I pull my phone out of my pocket and plug in my headphones. Mum gives me that look where I think she’s going to say something, but maybe she’s forgotten how and her eyes return to watching the road. The red lights and headlamps of the cars on the motorway all repeat for a second in the raindrops before the mechanical arm wipes the windscreen clear, only to build back up again.
After a few minutes, I’m bored. I pop open the glove box. First aid kit, a couple of spare bulbs, can of energy drink that must be years old by now. Dad’s things. I smile.
‘Your dad always was a practical man. Prepared for anything. Even if he didn’t like driving, he did it properly!’
I nod, take my headphones out.
‘He’d have been glad to see you yesterday.’
I pause, shocked into silence. How did she know?
‘Whatever I may be at the moment, Josh, I’m still your mother. And mothers know.’
This is one of the ways I remember her, my mum, back before she was like she is now: hands on the steering wheel, eyes dead ahead. But I was always in the back seat, surrounded by sleeping bags and boxes of camping equipment as we headed down through France, or up through Welsh mountains, or to any number of holidays or weekends away. They were always her idea. Dad would be sitting where I am now as I sweated it out in the back. Dad’s hand would idly rest on the back of Mum’s neck, giving her an occasional rub and he’d ask if she wanted him to take over. She always said no, which was a good thing as Dad was invariably asleep within a few minutes of asking her. Me and Mum would talk then, in slightly hushed whispers, about everything. She was surprisingly good at football tactics and pulled no punches when talking about the weaknesses of the rest of my team. We talked about school and her work and my friends, about what we’d do when we got where we were going. She loved – at these times – to set me little challenges for our trip, like ‘spot five new kinds of tree a day’ or ‘wake up early and record the first birdsong on your phone’. I loved completing them, and we’d talk on the way home, while Dad slept, about what I’d seen, or heard, or collected.
But we don’t do that anymore.
She turns the radio on again, the news having safely finished. We listen in silence for the rest of the journey.
*
Nanna and Grandad’s house is probably like all Nannas’ and Grandads’ houses in the world. From the kerb, the net curtains hang neat and quiet in the windows, and there’s always a couple of empty milk bottles on the front step. Inside, after you’ve taken your shoes off in the porch and walked into the hallway with its bright carpet, there is that reassuring grandparent smell – mostly dust and laundry with a bit of cooking thrown in. Things will never change here, and walking in makes me feel like I’m six years old again: warm and comfortable.
Grandad’s coming in through the back door from the garden, his jumper wet at the neck where his coat wasn’t done all the way up, grey trousers tucked into mottled brown socks. The only time I’ve ever seen him dressed differently was their Golden Wedding Anniversary about three years ago; that day he was wearing a light blue suit and tie. He looked very uncomfortable, especially when Nanna kept sticking his hair down every few minutes and generally making a fuss.
Almost at the same moment, Nanna comes into the hallway from the living room – the front room, they call it. The sitting room is at the back, in the conservatory. She’s got her cleaning apron on, duster in her hand. They both say ‘Hello dear,’ to Mum at the same time.
Then they spot me.
Since I can remember, Grandad’s always squeezed my shoulder to say hello, giving it a little shake, like he’s rocking you backwards and forwards. He never does a full hug – the shoulder squeeze is as close as he gets. Well, almost. He used to do it to Dad too, but he’d shake his hand as well as squeeze his shoulder, rocking him backwards and forwards in rhythm with the handshake. Since Dad died, I’ve been granted this full handshake and shoulder version as if I’m an adult. This time, the squeeze is so hard it almost hurts, and it lasts for much longer too. I’m rocked so much I almost fall backwards, then I actually do stumble forward a bit into Grandad. It’s almost a hug. Nanna’s greeting is less restrained as she ticks off all the clichés on the Nanna list; cheek tugging, kisses, hugs, holding me at arm’s length to look at me, commenting on how much I’ve grown. The whole thing takes about five minutes.
We sit around their big kitchen table and have a cup of tea. Nanna’s made more flapjack and keeps apologising that there isn’t enough (even though the deep tin is brim-full of little, bitesize squares). She didn’t know I was coming. She’ll have to stretch the joint out (lamb tonight) but it should be fine if Grandad can bring in a few more leeks and carrots from the veggie patch.
I answer all their questions about school, about how my friends are, and manage to keep my blushes to a minimum when they ask about the still-just-visible bruise on my cheek. I can’t control the blushes when they ask about Dana though – Mum must have told them – and Grandad gives me some brief advice about women.
‘Don’t try to understand them, Josh. Just be as nice as you can be.’
Nanna hits him with the duster.
‘Thanks, Grandad. I’ll keep that in mind.’
As Mum talks to Grandad about his garden, Nanna busies herself with putting more freshly boiled water in the teapot and re-filling the plate of flapjacks from the seemingly bottomless tin. I’ve forgotten just how orderly this house is, how well everything seems to sit with everything else. There’s the porcelain salt and pepper pots in the middle of the table, shaped like a boy and girl. Nanna always places them so they look as if they’re holding hands. On the top shelf of the dresser, in front of the posh plates that never get used, stand the same row of my school pictures, from Year One right up until the one from last spring. And the people in the room as well; they fold into kitchen chairs like it’s the most natural place to be in the world.
I watch Mum as she talks with Grandad. Mostly she’s listening. He tells her about the right time to ‘put the garden to bed’, what needs covering for the winter and what needs leaving, when to get your early potatoes in. I think of Dana’s garden; how it doesn’t seem to need much looking after. From how she talks about it, everything just seems to happen on its own.
Mum is always sad, but even though she’s smiling at her father, nodding along and asking questions, she seems sadder here than she does at home. Nanna comes and puts a hand on her shoulder and asks whether Grandad could do aubergines again next year, or if she’ll have to make do with courgettes, courgettes, courgettes again as normal.
Maybe that’s why Mum looks so sad. For her, there is no ‘as normal’ anymore. She grew up in this house, surrounded by its warmth, its everything fitting with everything else: the people, the furniture, everything so solid, secure, immovable. She probably thought this would be how she and Dad would end up. And then, for her, for both of us, it’s like someone took that future and shook it so hard that all the pieces have flown apart. All those pieces that used to fit are now so far away from each other that it’s impossible to remember what fitted with what.
And there are some very big pieces missing altogether.
*
Dinner that night tastes like old times, and afterwards, as hasn’t happened for years, Nanna gets the photo albums out.
‘I don’t suppose anyone has these anymore, do they?’ she ponders, as she always does, lifting the heavy, leather-bound book from its almost sacred place on the bookshelf. ‘With all of the internets and Face-whatsit-webs, no one prints photos anymore, do they?’
‘No, Nanna,’ I say, smiling.
‘N
ow shuffle up, and let Nanna embarrass you with old-fashioned technology.’
We look at some of my old birthday pictures from when I was a toddler. I can just about recognise myself in the bright-eyed, blond child staring out from the cellophane wallet the picture is held in. There are other children around me, few of whom I recognise, most of whom I haven’t seen since. Not long after my fifth birthday, we moved away from Nanna and Grandad’s town to where we live now.
There are pictures of steam trains, and me looking proud on the platform. Pictures of walks on the beach at what seem ridiculous times of year to visit the seaside, especially considering how far away it is. Pictures of me and Mum and Nanna and Grandad on a big, fallen tree in the middle of a field somewhere. And lots of lots of pictures of Dad. His arm over my shoulder as I’m painting, me sitting on his lap as he talks to someone out of shot, him and Mum in the background, cuddling, as I’m racing Grandad across a park.
And then there are the blank spaces, at the back. ‘This one’s for your sixteenth birthday, if you’ll let us come,’ says Nanna with a nudge. ‘And this for your first driving lesson, first trip to the pub, first girlfriend…’ After the laughing stops, we put the album away. There’s a show on TV about celebrities that Nanna always insists on watching.
That night, in the bed that Mum used to sleep in, I dream once more of Dad’s tree. It’s on its own in a big field, and there are very small people climbing it. They all get to a certain point, then jump off and start climbing from the bottom again. The more I watch, the more it looks like a trail of ants going up and up the tree. I panic and start to brush them away with my hand, but then they’re all climbing on me, jumping off my arms and starting again at my legs. And then I don’t have legs anymore, but a trunk, and branches for arms, and I can’t stop the tiny ant people as they climb and jump, climb and jump, climb and jump.
TWENTY SIX
We’re halfway up the hill behind Nanna and Grandad’s house, squelching through mud and hunched against the wind that, thankfully, isn’t full of rain this morning. I’ve borrowed a pair of Grandad’s wellies; the fact that they almost fit me drew more squeals from Nanna about how much I’d grown. Further ahead, Mum’s talking with Nanna, their arms linked as they negotiate the bigger puddles. Grandad and I are a little slower. My feet aren’t quite as sure as I’d like in these big boots that knock against my knees, and he keeps stopping and poking the undergrowth with a stick.
‘Mushroom season, Josh,’ he keeps explaining. ‘It’s a good, damp one this year, but a touch too cold I’d say.’ He ushers me down into a ditch to show me a line of what look like eggs, stood in a neat little row all along a rotting tree-stump. ‘Puffballs. When they get ripe, they’ll explode.’
I can’t pretend I’m that interested. When he starts talking about ‘mycology’, and how the ‘mycelium’ is actually a giant web of interconnected fibres that can span huge areas, I know I should be a little more enthusiastic. For some reason, probably the Thursday sessions, my interest in biology isn’t very high at the moment.
As we get towards the top of the hill, the scrubby woods give way to more sandy terrain, with low gorse bushes speckled with yellow flowers. Grandad picks one and pops it in his mouth.
‘Want one?’
I shake my head.
‘Now, look at this, Josh!’ He’s stooped at the side of a larger gorse bush, his fingers holding back a tuft of grass at the base of what is, actually, quite an impressive mushroom. It looks like the ones in kids’ books – a flat, red disc on the top of a long, straight stem, covered in little white flecks. The edge is starting to curl back on itself, and the white bits underneath are going slightly orange. Beneath it, there’s a slightly smaller version, it’s top not yet flat, but even redder, even shinier, like a snooker ball.
‘Can we eat those?’ I ask.
‘Only if you want a quick way to shuffle off this mortal coil,’ Grandad replies. ‘These are fly agarics, Josh. Very poisonous indeed. Best left alone, but very good for looking at.’
I nod, trying to look interested.
As we watch, a small black beetle crawls over the rim of the smaller one’s top. It twitches this way and that before it’s joined by another one. Under the gorse bush, there’s a small bird hopping around, probably trying to keep out of the wind. I wonder what it would be like to be a small creature; a creature small enough that this mushroom, or this gorse bush, could be my whole world.
‘Yep, kill you straight off, these buggers will.’ Grandad wakes me from my daydream. ‘Or they’ll make you very high. Now let’s catch up.’
The question I was going to ask rides the wave of my surprise and comes out as a splutter. ‘Grandad?’
Yes, Josh? Grandad doesn’t miss a beat, his eyes sparkling with humour.
I regather my composure. ‘If I wanted to plant something now that would come up early in the spring, what kind of thing should I plant?’
‘To flower early in the spring? Easy. Narcissi.’
‘What?’
‘Daffodils.’
‘Oh. The yellow ones?’
‘Or you can get white varieties. Orange trumpets. Gorgeous.’
‘So I’d plant the seeds now?’
‘They don’t come from seeds. Well, they do, but most people grow them from bulbs.’
I suddenly remember planting bulbs with Mum when I was very young. We’d put them in pots and soil and leave them on a high shelf in the shed over the winter. Then, in the spring, when they were starting to sprout a thin, green finger, we’d put moss all around the bottom and a few stones and give them to Dad’s parents on their annual visit, and to Nanna for her birthday in February. I ask Grandad what they were.
‘Hyacinths.’
‘Higher synths?’
‘Yes, very pretty purple ones they were, mostly, though they come in all colours. And the smell. Very strong. You wouldn’t want too many in a room at once!’ Grandad smiles.
‘Can you grow them outside?’ I continue.
‘You can, but they’re not as easy as daffs.’
‘Where could I get some?’
‘Ah, now that I can help you with.’
*
After lunch, we go to Grandad’s shed. It’s completely different from our dark and spider-infested cave. His is bright, with a long bench than runs beneath big windows along one wooden wall. It smells of wood sap and dried earth; like everywhere else in their house, it’s warm, like a hug.
From underneath the bench, Grandad pulls out a cardboard box that’s full of small, brown spheres. They look like onions.
‘Now, you’ve probably only got a few weeks left before it’s too cold to plant these,’ he says, placing a dozen or so in a paper bag. ‘Push them quite deep into the ground – about twice the length of your index finger. You don’t want the frost to get them or they won’t flower. Your mother will enjoy seeing these come up.’
‘Yeah. Thanks Grandad.’
Back in Mum’s old room, I put the bag of bulbs carefully in the bottom of my backpack.
That afternoon, Mum and I drive home in comfortable silence. The radio, on low, is playing cheerful, forgettable pop songs. The tub on my knee is once again full of flapjacks (Nanna did a new batch while we were having lunch) and I munch away, two at a time, for most of the two-hour journey. I find it easier now to see why Mum does this long drive at least twice every week. I feel somehow fuller than I did on Friday morning. And it’s not just the flapjack.
When we pull up at home, it’s started raining again. As Mum goes to open the front door, she almost trips on something that’s poking out from under the doormat. ‘Get that for me please, love. It’s probably a phone book or something. Straight in the bin.’
But when I pull it out it’s got my name on it. I empty its contents onto the kitchen table. An A Level Biology textbook.
‘Isn’t that thoughtful? He’s right, Josh. Your dad would be proud of how well you’re doing at school. Mr Walters has really brought you on.’<
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I smile and see there’s a piece of paper tucked into the front. I pull it out. Something’s written in the same handwriting as the envelope. It’s not Mr Walters’ handwriting either. This looks like it’s been done with a pen tied to the end of a very long stick.
Sunday, 8:30, Function Room at The Crown.
And then it comes back, the last thing that Alan shouted after me last week.
See you on Sunday.
The feeling of fullness starts to drain away.
TWENTY SEVEN
The rain gets heavier that afternoon, and doesn’t lift on Sunday either, so there’s no way I can get to Dana’s garden to plant those bulbs. Instead, I watch a film with Mum – an awful, animated kids’ film – and spend some time reading before I do my homework. I find a little bit in the Biology textbook about mushrooms. Apparently, fungi (which is their proper name) are really useful in nature as they help dead matter to decompose. And some have something called a ‘symbiotic relationship’, which means that the plant or tree they grow on actually benefits from their being there. But they can be a nuisance when they are ‘saprobial’, which means they kill the thing they live on.
And then, after tea, which is always early on a Sunday, it’s eight o’clock.
I know the Crown; it’s a pub not far from here. About a ten-minute walk. Mum is upstairs in the bathroom. She always has a long bath on a Sunday evening, then goes straight to bed after shouting ‘good night’ down the stairs. So if I went out, she wouldn’t notice.