‘Sure. Listen, I just called Grandad.’ I know from his tone he’s not coming. ‘Don’t give me a hard time, J.’
‘I didn’t say a thing.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
He’s right. Anger is rising in my chest. When the worst imaginable thing happened to us, our grandparents gave us a home; they sacrificed their lives just when they should have been retiring and skipping off hand-in-hand to Benidorm. It’s only because of them that Lucas and I have a roof over our heads. They sold Mum and Dad’s flat in north London and invested the money for us, not one penny went into their own pockets. Without Granny, Grandad is alone in that big house, rattling around like an old coin in a large tin. He depends on us to visit. He looks forward to seeing his family, and Lucas could be part of that if he wanted. Yet, he’s making the same old choice not to be involved. Despite Lucas and I resolving our many differences some years ago, I still find his behaviour deeply frustrating. I know he loves Grandad, if only he could show it more. Equally Isla doesn’t really know her Uncle Lucas. To her, he’s a shadowy figure who is always working. Why does he remain on the outside?
‘I didn’t get round to posting his iPad so I wondered if you could swing by a service station and grab him some chocolates or those shortbread biscuits he loves.’
‘Fine.’
There’s a loaded silence that Lucas finally breaks. ‘I would have driven down, Jan, but I can’t. It’s just not possible.’ Another long pause. ‘Grandad understands.’
‘Fine.’
‘If only he’d move back to London, J! It would make life so much easier.’
And then I hear a female voice. ‘Lucas, sweetheart,’ she says in a soft seductive tone. ‘The bed’s getting cold.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘No one,’ he says, knowing he’s been caught out. I hear shushing noises. ‘A colleague, OK.’
The selfish bastard. I take a deep breath.
‘Jan…’
I look across to Isla, wanting to say so much more than I can. ‘Grandad isn’t going to be around forever, you know.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘But, I can’t. Don’t make me feel guilty.’ There is a long pause. ‘Remember everything I’ve done for you.’
As if I could forget.
After we hang up I want to wind down the window and scream, but instead I keep my frustration locked inside. I see Lucas as a child, always resisting help from my grandparents. He hated Granny trying to button up his coat. He wasn’t cold. He didn’t want Grandad reading to him. Books were boring. He didn’t need tucking up in bed. He wasn’t a baby. He acted out the orphaned child. I know now that he was hurting, he was unhappy and missed our mother and father so much that he withdrew into his own world, but I wish we could be closer now. He is the only brother I have, and I need him.
As we grew older I began to ask him more about our mum and dad. Our grandparents positively encouraged us to talk about them. What did he remember? He’d shrug and say ‘not much’. I could see pain in his eyes; I longed for him to let me in. But I do recall one time when Lucas was in bed with a raging cold. He would have been about fourteen; I was eleven. Granny had asked me to run upstairs to check on him. Tentatively I knocked on his door. He looked pale and weak, propped up against the pillows, his eyes red and sore. When I sat down on the edge of his bed, to my surprise he didn’t tell me to go away. He said, with a croaky voice, ‘I remember this one time, Jan, being really ill and Dad wrapping a blanket around me and showing me the stars.’
Whenever I feel like hating Lucas I remember him saying that, and it makes me love him and forgive him.
7
Isla, Spud and I arrive at Grandad’s in time for a late lunch of sausages in baps, Isla’s favourite. In the afternoon we head down to the beach. I find the sea and the sound of the waves helps me clear my head and calm down about Lucas.
Early evening, Bella, an actress friend of Grandad’s, joins us to celebrate his birthday. She’s in her mid-sixties and lives in Fowey, a small town roughly five miles east of St Austell, where Lucas and I went to school. When we first visited Cornwall, I recall thinking Fowey was a world away from London. Everyone was relaxed; cars could park in the high street; people enjoyed barbecues on the beach; the sea was a brilliant blue.
Bella knew Grandad had been a successful theatre director, so when we moved, she approached him with her own idea for a play written by one of her many ex-lovers. I see her sweeping into this sitting room twenty years ago. The sofas weren’t quite as sunken as they are now; the photograph frames weren’t collecting dust. She would have been in her mid-forties then, tall and chic, her jetblackhair striking with her red lipstick. She left the script on Grandad’s desk; the pages smelt of rose perfume. We didn’t see Grandad for the next two days. He sat glued in his chair, paper scattered across the floor like confetti. Bella and Grandad have remained close ever since. Grandad has always respected actors. ‘The only important things in my job are the audience and the actors,’ he used to say. ‘You don’t need the writer. If you get a group of actors in a room they’ll have the imagination to put on their own show.’ But he could never have married one. ‘What a desperate way to live, being out of work fifty out of fifty-two weeks; only a tiny percentage make it to the top.’ Bella would have been too highly charged for Grandad, but she is undoubtedly kind. She is one of the first people on his list whom he calls if he has an emergency.
Grandad opens his cards and presents. Bella praises Isla’s drawing of Grandad with his bushy white hair and thick eyebrows. Old age and grief have not diminished his looks. He remains handsome, his sharp eyes still full of curiosity. Bella rocks her head back with laughter when she reads the caption, ‘Grandad, it’s a disgrace! At eighty-six you should be in a wheelchair, but you’re not!’ Underneath Grandad is a picture of an empty wheelchair.
As Grandad finishes unwrapping his presents I remember he has one more, although I’m almost reluctant to give it to him. ‘From Lucas,’ I say, handing him a box of chocolates.
‘Bendicks. My favourite,’ Grandad says, unable to hide the sadness in his voice. ‘It was a shame he had to work but you young people have to work so hard these days.’
‘It’s not your real present,’ I reassure him, touching his knee.
‘No. This is,’ says Lucas, standing at the door, holding a small brown parcel.
I can’t believe he’s here. Nor can Grandad from the look of surprise on his face. Grandad stands up, unsteady on his feet, and opens his arms wide. ‘How wonderful to see you, dear Lucas.’
