Dead Ends

Mike got off the tube at Regent’s Park and followed the street to Campbell Mansions. As with much of London, he knew exactly where he was going but couldn’t have told you where he was. The doors of the lift were stippled like inverted braille. He would have liked to run his fingers along them as he had as a child, but he knew better now than to touch anything in a communal stairwell. He stopped breathing almost on instinct as the door closed with him inside and only the burn of piss in his throat for company. He stared back at his khaki utility shorts between the Schindler logo and Gaz wants ur cum scribbled in purple over the emergency intercom.

On the seventh floor, he gasped his first full breath in 17 seconds. He passed the sounds of Jill and Terry screaming at each other, and the reggae coming from flat 73, both louder than Fear of Music in his wiry Walkman headphones.

He was hardly through the door before his Grandpa half-erupted on the threshold.

“I’ve finished it!” he said.

‘Finished what?’ he asked, to no one. Grandpa had already shifted into the kitchen and was boiling the kettle, slicing a loaf cake. Mike checked for burning rubber on the bottom of the old man’s tartan slippers as he unlaced his own walking boots in the hallway, before following the trail of red and gold diamonds of the patterned carpet into the lounge. He took the guest sofa, same as every week, adjacent to the two armchairs.

Grandpa’s, and the other, empty one.

The photos of his Grandma still filled the bookshelves, none of them having moved in the four years since she passed, apart from by Mrs Nkusu, who came down from the 12th floor once a month to dust and hoover for a fiver. Which meant that most of the time, the place was notably mustier than it had been when his Grandma had been alive. His Grandma, who had risen at 6 and spent every morning cleaning the place from floor to ceiling as though it had never been cleaned before, let alone by her just 24 hours earlier.

But his Grandpa hadn’t been the same since Evelyn had gone. In truth, none of the family had expected him to make it through the winter. It had been a good 50 years since he’d last had to feed himself, Mike’s mother never tired of reminding them. That he had found it within himself to keep going had surprised them all.

Evelyn stood there now atop the beige-tiled fireplace, flanked by porcelain spaniels, under a commemorative plate of Charles & Diana’s wedding, beaming back at him from beside his Grandpa, somewhere in Madeira on a trip for their Ruby anniversary. Happier than he could ever remember having seen her.

China rang and rattled, heralding Grandpa’s arrival in the doorway. He carried the tray into the room, decked with the now-ritual tinned salmon sandwiches, custard creams, lemon drizzle from the off licence, and pot of tea wearing the same union flag cosy, handknitted long before he was born, the many star-sided lines running miraculously straight along the curve of the pot. The rattling of teaspoons on saucers grew more urgent until Mike was caught in a kind of limbo between the corduroy sofa and reaching up to his Grandpa to help, unable to commit to either sitting or standing. His Grandpa pretended not to notice. The shaking spoons reached their fevered crescendo as the tray hovered high over the glass coffee table, lowered into place by increments, his arms two cranes with a new road bridge.

Eventually the performance was over, and both were settled with a steaming cup and Mike a plate of cake and sandwiches. Grandpa’s arm had barely touched the chair before he came out with it.

“My memoir,” he said. His eyes flashed, far from their usual grey slumber, “It’s all done. Finished.”

Mike had a faint memory of it coming up in conversation one Sunday afternoon. He couldn’t say when - they all followed the same DNA.

> Tea, cake, sandwiches.

> G. to ask how he was getting on

> M. to give a shallow, sanitised account of how nothing had turned out quite the way he had hoped or planned and that, while his ‘career’ as a delivery driver fell far short of his more artistic aspirations, everything was alright, really

> Both to give in after three long silences and watch either Countdown or the snooker on his lunchbox-sized black and white tv.

“Now your children and your children’s children will remember your ole’ Grandfather.”

‘That’s great, Grandpa. I mean, you didn’t need to, obviously. They’ll remember you from all the stories you told us, he nodded to the bookcase and the fireplace, ‘and the hundreds of thousands of pictures Grandma took’.

“Don’t be daft, you can’t hang onto all those,” he said. Although Mike got the impression that that was exactly what he expected. “This,” he said, leaning forwards far enough to squeak out a fart (unnoticed or unacknowledged, it wasn’t clear), “is my legacy.”

‘What did you write about?’

He allowed himself a few breaths of the excitement that swelled in his chest, before reining it in with prepared backup phrases he might use if the writing turned out to be a little clumsy. After all, aside from the golf biographies and Delia, his Grandpa’s bookshelf was almost exclusively Wilbur Smith, Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer.

What he wanted from a story was a kind of old-white-man’s choose-your-own adventure. James Bond minus anything too self-aware. So it was important to start there with his expectations and work backwards.

“My life, of course! What else? It’s all in there.” He produced an A4 red hardback from down the side of the armchair.

He was reminded of the Christmas a few misguided years ago when he thought he found he had found the perfect present in Blood Meridian. A western. Check. Sparing, Hemingway-esque prose. Also check. Masterwork of 20th Century literature. Definitely.

He got it back for his birthday 3 months later. When Mike’s mother had pressed her father on it, he feigned ignorance and swore he had picked it up in Smith’s not a week before. Somehow Mike seemed to be only one among them consumed by shame and embarrassment.

To his knowledge, his Grandpa had never written anything at all. So, he would offer to help, to edit, to draw out the meaning, make it flow better, to ‘tighten it up’ a bit. Whatever he could do to bring his Grandpa’s story to life.

Mike felt his heart jump in his chest. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure about reading it at all.

He had said at the time how interested he would be to read it, especially the parts on his time in the army, spent all across the world - in Kenya, Hong Kong, South America, Northern Ireland. And not just to be polite. There was a lot happening back then, obviously, in all those places. The British Empire and its Army hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory, to put it mildly, but he was sure his Grandpa would have been on the right side of history. He was one of the good ones, keeping the peace, protecting the innocent. An old widower in tartan slippers, who fed stray cats in the community garden, and repaired his own net curtains with lace from his wife’s nightie.

His perspective would tell the story of a man who was measured, brave and kind, even-handed when his superiors demanded he be thoughtless, fickle, cruel. Of someone who had seen terrible things and done what he could to be sure that the wicked were held to account for what they did when they knew the world wasn’t looking.

The cover showed a sketch of a cartoon couple hugging in a way that seemed to imply long-term separate sleeping arrangements, under the title Your Grandparents…Their Story.

‘Okay! Let’s see it then.’

Grandpa passed him the book. It was lighter than expected. He skipped the pages covered with logos, rights, ISBNs, to the first page.

My name is…Graeme Bellshank

I was born in…Dunbarton, 1945

I had _1_ brothers and _2_ sisters.

My school was…Alderman Grey’s Secondary School

He passed over the first few pages, which looked like some kind of application form, increasingly conscious of being watched.

Minutes later his grandfather couldn’t hold it and took himself off to ‘put the kettle on’, leaving Mike to flick through the rest of the pages in search of something more substantial than My favourite subject was…

And it never came.

How had this taken a year? Did he fill it out one letter at a time?

His grandfather returned with the teapot billowing steam from its spout, the occasional stray slug spurting onto the toe of his slippers.

“So,” he said, as if to say more before staring at him expectantly. Mike took a deep inhale.

‘It’s…it’s good, isn’t it.’ He found himself turning it over in his hands, looking for……what. The afterword? A map of Middle Earth? It was a job application in hardback. My Last CV. ‘I -,’

“Great!” said Grandpa. “I’m glad you like it. As I said, now you can pass it down to your children and your grandchildren when you’re my age, and they’ll know all about me and they’ll be able to look up through the generations for years to come. Maybe you could write your own one day.”

‘Mmm.’ he said it without moving or opening his mouth, his teeth pinning his bottom lip in place. ‘Maybe.’

In pulsating silence, he rode the long wave of questions he couldn’t ask. Have you sold the movie rights? When’s the second one coming out? What did Val Kilmer say when they approached him for the lead?

“So, how are things with the job?”

‘Mm? Yeah, fine.’

“That’s good. And Mum and Dad, they’re good too?”

‘Yeah. Yeah. Everyone’s good.’

“Good.”

They sat a while, questions about the book still cycling at Mike, every one of them snarkier and less coherent than the last.

‘Could I get some more tea?’ he asked, suddenly realising he didn’t know how long it had been since he had last spoken.

“Help yourself,” his grandfather said, waving at the table.

‘Actually, I’ll just go and make some room. Too much tea.’ His Grandpa frowned. Mike disappeared down the hallway.

When he returned, the tv was on. Grandpa looked up with a flat smile. All cheeks. No eyes. Ronnie was dismantling some newcomer with a 70+ break.

Mike went back to the book. He read it cover to cover another three times, and learned no more about his Grandpa than if he’d read his driving licence.

Finally he swallowed hard, girded himself to address the 300-word elephant in the room.

‘Do you think’, he coughed, cleared his throat, took a swig of tea, ‘do you think, maybe you could add a little more?’

His Grandpa frowned, his gaze still locked on the table of black and white balls.

“What do you mean?”

‘I just mean-’

“Is there a line I missed?” he leaned over suddenly to take the book, “I must have forgotten to fill something out. Give it here then.”

‘No no, they’re all filled out’, he passed it over, ‘it’s just a little…empty?’

His Grandpa sat motionless, the book dead in his hands as he stared at passing dust.

“You’re not making sense. How do you expect me to follow what you’re saying when you don’t make sense. I’m not as sharp as I used to be, you know. What do you mean. How can it be empty?”

Mike wondered for a moment if it was fair to have expected more of him. To put down in words the stories he’d told endlessly, and the rest besides. Or if that really was beyond him now.

‘What about the bully, the one you met after school. You broke his nose and he never bothered you nor anyone at school after that.’

“There wasn’t anywhere to put that.”

‘You said he shook your hand afterwards.’

“That’s right.”

‘He picked on you at school every day for a year, you and Dennis, and Annie, and you told him you’d see him at 4 o’clock on the hill at the top of town, in front of half the school.’

“Hangman’s hill. Too right I did.”

‘Then you joined the army. Barely 14,’ Mike said.

“Yes, yes. All in there.”

‘Okay, but why?’ To get away from the father who beat you and your brother bloody with a belt for masturbating. The same man who forced himself on your younger sisters.

“To make something of myself. To be part of the greatest army in the world.” Mike mimed along with the words in his head.

‘Okay. Okay…Then what about the years you spent in the Household Cavalry,

“Oh yes.”

‘Trooping the Colour, the times you met the Queen, I mean, where is…everything?’

“You know all that.”

‘But if you’re going to write it down, why not write that?’

“Sounds a lot of work,” he said, passing the book back without having opened up.

‘Maybe you could just speak everything into one of those, what do you call them…. voice recorders. Dictaphones. You wouldn’t have to do any writing then. I could help you with it.’

“Hm. Maybe.” Ronnie cruised through another frame, the colour of the balls only decipherable through the static buzz of commentary, and retrospective subtraction.

“…But apart from all that, it’s alright is it?” he asked, a while later.

Mike sighed, sinking into his thighs, the book now slick with sweat from his palms. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course – apart from those few gaps, I think it’s… great.’

He flipped through the mostly empty pages once more. Jumped back to the cover.

‘This says-’

“Reads.”

Mike allowed himself a sideways glance.

‘This reads – ‘Your Grandparents’. Did nan ever write anything?’

Grandpa cleared his throat, continued staring at the colourless snooker balls as if the eternal truths of the universe were inscribed on them.

“I’m working on those parts now.”

Mike watched the snooker. His Grandpa descended into a deep and fortified silence, of the kind he knew all too well. So he would wait until the game was over to be polite, before heading home. He would come back next week. Frames drifted past into the early evening, with the sun setting on his neck and down the back of the sofa, he felt himself begin to nod.