GRANDMA'S BIRTHDAY

 by Richard Banks       
                                                                          

The morning was not going well. Steve was at the wheel, key in the ignition, anxious to be off. For a third time, he sounded the horn and was briefly rewarded by the sight of Lena in the open doorway of the house. There was a brief exchange of sign language including a gesture that might have indicated her intention to be ready in two minutes. She disappeared from sight into the gloom of their through lounge where a conversation featuring the words “computer” and “off” was followed by a howl of anguish and a further conversation on the subject of shoes. Having established the importance and location of shoes Lena reappeared in the doorway with a small boy who, after successfully negotiating the several steps down to the driveway, collapsed in abject misery onto its block paving. Unheeding of his mother's exhortations “to get up, now” the boy was unceremoniously restored to vertical alignment and conveyed to the car where all further resistance was rendered futile by his incarceration within a childproof seat belt.

         Lena took several deep breathes and prepared to re-enter the house, but there was no need. The curtains in her daughter's bedroom were now wide apart and said daughter could be seen retrieving her trainers from the rack at the foot of the stairs. She advanced into the porch and with the furtive air of an escaping convict peered either side of the car at the street beyond. Finding it devoid of anyone known to herself she banged shut the front door and speedily took her place on the back seat of the car.

         Steve peered into the windscreen mirror at the sullen faces of his two children and wondered why this should be. They were going on a family outing, a picnic. What could be better than that on a summer's day? Okay, it wasn't the best of days, a bit overcast perhaps, but the sun was up there somewhere and once it burned through the clouds there was no telling how nice the afternoon might be.

         He waited until Lena was in the front passenger seat before asking the question that preceded every journey.

         “Is everybody belted up?”

         Jack responded with another anguished howl.

         “Zoe did you hear what I said?”

         “Yes.”

         “And?”

         “Of course I am. So is Jack, so is Mum. Now can we get going before everyone in the street sees us?”

         Steve resisted the impulse to administer a sharp rebuke. Instead, he decided to win hearts and minds. “Come on cheer up everyone. It's Grandma's birthday. We're going on a picnic. We always do that on Grandma's birthday. Just think of the fun we had last year.”

         Zoe's reflections on last year's excursion and her father's strange idea of fun were cut short by Lena who curtly reminded her daughter of forthcoming social events she might be hoping to attend. Having reduced one half of the back row to enraged silence Lena continued on in determined fashion.

         “We had all this out yesterday. Nothing's changed, we're in the car, we're going. Now not another word, and that goes for your brother as well. Here feed him one of these, that should keep him quiet for a while.”

         Zoe opened the bag of toffees tossed onto her lap and pressed one into Jack's mouth. The tear stained face above the mouth became thoughtful. Perceiving that a world with sweets was infinitely better than the world that preceded it, his protestations of grief subsided and the face responded to the improving mood of its owner.

         Steve watched the transformation with unrestrained enthusiasm. “Did you see that? Look, look he's going to smile. There he goes. What a cheeky grin; any broader and it be touching both ears. Lena, quick, pass me the camera; it's in the glove compartment.”

         Sensing a lack of movement alongside him, Steve turned towards Lena whose normally expressive face was as dull and cheerless as the sky. She stared blankly through the windscreen at the garage door.

         “Lena?”

         Only her lips moved. “Drive the car, Steve, just drive.”

                                             **********

At the end of a journey of thirty minutes and seven toffees, the car and its occupants turned off a country road into a car park where they stopped alongside several other vehicles. As if to welcome their arrival the clouds parted to reveal a corridor of blue sky into which the sun made a belated appearance. The atmosphere within the car had also improved but was not yet summer.

         The unpacking of the car was achieved quietly and with a minimum of fuss. This they had done before and a familiar routine established which required neither direction or thought. They set off along the path that took them through a rose garden, Steve and Lena carrying the hamper that contained their picnic while Zoe followed on with raincoats, umbrellas and a box containing Grandma's cake. Released from the protective grip of his mother, Jack raced ahead gurgling with excitement.

         As usual, his father was the chief cheerleader. “That's right, Jack, you go and find Grandma. Tell her we're on our way. Look at that, Lena, the boy's a born sprinter, an athlete in the making. You mark my words that boy's going to win gold.” He pictured Jack's competitive breakthrough into the British team and his first gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2034. Having moved on two years to the Olympics his daydream was ended by a sudden tug on the hamper as Lena surged ahead in pursuit of Jack.

         “Get a move on, Steve, he's nearly out of sight.”

         They hurried along with all the finesse of unpractised contestants in a three legged race while their son, unencumbered by hamper and the demands of teamwork, reached the top of the path and kept going into the Woodland Area. They found him where Lena prayed he would be by Grandma's rhododendron examining a caterpillar.

         Steve set down his end of the hamper and smiled broadly. “Hello Mum. Sorry we're late. Ran into a bit of traffic on the A12. We're all here. Zoe's coming, bringing up the rear as usual. And how are you? A bit green round the gills I see. Not to worry, it's just a few lichens. I'll soon have you looking as good as new. He opened the hamper and on retrieving a tin of Brasso and several jiffy cloths immediately began work on the brass plaque that marked plot 792.

         “Zoe.” Lena was using her stern but patient voice. “There's no point in hiding behind that tree, it's not wide enough. Come here and give me a hand. You know the drill: polish first, the talking bit doesn't start until later.”

         Zoe advanced into full view anxiously scanning the surrounding terrain for other woodland visitors. On finding there were none she helped her mother lay out a ground sheet over which they spread a paper tablecloth displaying the words 'Happy Birthday Dad'. Her face contorted with disbelief; she struggled to find words sufficient to express her disbelief.

         “Don't say a word,” muttered Lena. “It was the only one Mr Patel had. It was that or a three mile trip into town. Put Grandma's cake over the Dad bit; he'll never notice.”

         Zoe giggled and helped with the rest of the unpacking until the tablecloth was overflowing with sandwiches, cakes and Mum's kiwi fruit trifle. They were trying to find room for the crisps and Cola when Steve, who had been totally absorbed in his polishing, reconnected with the woodland world behind his back.

         “My goodness, look at that, what a treat! Lena, you've done us proud. The best yet. No one does picnics like you. Isn't that right, Zoe?”

         Zoe confirmed the rightness of Mum's efforts while pointing out that it was herself who had buttered the scones.

         “She also kept Jack out of my hair when I was baking,” added Lena. “Now shall we make a start?”

         Steve scrutinised his watch and finding the time ten minutes short of mid-day suggested that they hold off until the afternoon. “Anyway,” he said, “we haven't brought Grandma up to date with our news. Let's do that first. Who wants to start? Zoe?”

         Zoe was about to articulate her opinion that talking to dead people was really weird and that she would rather throw herself off a cliff when Lena intervened with what she described as a 'new idea'. “Steve, why don't you speak on our behalf.”

         Steve looked surprised then disappointed.

         “After all you're so much better at this kind of thing than we are. I'm no good at monologues, prefer conversations where the person you're talking to talks back at you. But you're really brilliant at them. Even better than that chap on TV who does them for a living. What's his name? Alan something.”

         “Alan Bennett,” prompted Zoe.

         “That's right, Alan Bennett. And you're so much more cheerful than he is.”

         Steve looked thoughtful. The comparison with Alan Bennett was an unexpected compliment; he wondered why this hadn't been mentioned before.

         “Okay,” he said. “Where shall I start? What about last year's holiday in Marbella?”

         Lena nodded her agreement. Steve gathered his thoughts and turned round to face the plaque. He was about to begin when Lena's voice preceded his own.

          “And Steve, not too loud. You're not addressing a public meeting.”

         Steve took a deep breath. Was she being deliberately annoying? he wondered. She was definitely up to something. He decided this was not the moment to find out. He cleared his throat and began speaking. He had reached the point where they were in the Departures Lounge and their flight had been cancelled when Lena tugged at Zoe's sleeve. Her voice dropped to a whisper.   “You're brother's almost over the horizon chasing squirrels. Why don't you go and bring him back? And Zoe, … this may take you sometime.”

         Lena observed her daughter's careful departure and helped herself to a chocolate finger. She settled back against a tree with that book about the Venetian courtesan and the Duke of wherever which was due back at the Library on Monday. It was the kind of book her fiercely puritanical mother-in-law would have burnt in a huge bonfire of the profanities that would have included lottery tickets, mobile telephones and the Sun newspaper. To be reading such a book at this moment seemed deliciously decadent. She hurried on to the bedroom scene which she correctly surmised was only pages away. On the back-burner of her consciousness, she could hear Steve's rambling account of the past year and the occasional squeal from Jack in pursuit of squirrels. She, however, was in Venice and feeling all the better for it. She had reached the point where the Duke had to choose between the Duchess and the courtesan - who on the previous page had given birth to the male child he had previously been lacking - when her ever sensitive antennae informed its owner that Steve's narrative was about to end with Rory McIlroy's victory in the British Open. She relayed this information to her offspring with frantic hand signals that brought them racing to her side. They had scarcely resumed their places when Steve turned to face his family with the thoughtful expression of someone who had discharged a solemn but necessary duty.

         “Was that okay?” he asked.

         Lena hastened to reassure him. “Absolutely excellent dear. I'm sure your mother was most pleased to hear about young Rory. Now shall we have lunch?”

         “And what about the 'ologies'.

         “What about them dear?”

         “The 'ologies' that Zoe will be studying next year. Sociology was one; I know that, but wasn't too sure about the Psychicology. That's why I asked you, Zoe, if I had got it right. You might have said something.” 

         “But she did,” said Lena, “she nodded. You couldn't have heard her. Now help yourself to a sandwich, dear. There's cheese and tomato, ham on its own or egg and cress with that nice mayonnaise you like.”

          “But,” said Steve. Indeed there were several buts. The but thoughts struggled to assert themselves but proved no match for the seductive tang of a mayonnaise sandwich. Steve helped himself to another sandwich and the buts seemed a distant irrelevance. He happily observed his family at picnic. The squabbles of that morning he did not understand. He was not going to spoil his afternoon by trying to understand. For the moment his family was at ease and he with them.

         Jack picked up a scone and presented it to his father who politely acknowledged the gift and dropped it onto his plate. The look of outrage on Jack's face was followed by an indignant shriek, “no Grandma eat.” Having attended four birthday parties in the last year he was fully conversant with the convention that the person whose birthday it was should be fully involved in the birthday tea and whatever games that followed. To be eating Grandma's birthday tea, while she was elsewhere, was an injustice requiring his father's immediate attention. For once Steve was the first to understand.

         “You want Grandma to have this scone?”

         Jack vigorously nodded his head.

         “Then she shall, and I bet she would also like that ham roll.”

         Jack's head nodded even more vigorously.

         “In that case, we will make a little hole in the ground and send them down to her.” He reached into the hamper against which he had been leaning and retrieved a trowel and a bag of daffodil bulbs. Having made an excavation of some six inches he inserted both scone and roll.

         “Anything else you want Grandma to have?”

         Jack selected an iced cake with a cherry on top and at his father's bidding dropped it into the hole and helped cover it with earth.

         “That's it son, well done. Grandma will be pleased. I can see her now, eating them in heaven with the angels.”

         Jack's face registered surprise bordering on incredulity. “No! Grandma down there in a bad place.” In his imagination he saw an underground cavern in which his grandmother was sitting on her wickerwork chair.

         Zoe saw her father frown and tried not to laugh. “Well, he's got a point Dad. If Gran is down there she can't be up in heaven.”

         “And I never heard of heaven being underground,” said Lena. “Not that I'm saying your mother is in the other place,” she added hurriedly.

         Steve tried to recall what he had been told at Church before the lure of Sunday league football took him along a more secular path. The answer came to him as if by divine intervention. He addressed his explanation to Jack who was pounding the bad place with his father's trowel.

         “No son, it's only Grandma's ashes that are underground. It's her soul that's in heaven.”

         “Soul,” repeated Jack. This was his first theological instruction and he felt it important that all unfamiliar words be explained.

         “It's your inner light, son. The things that make you a good person, it's every kind thought you ever had, it's about caring for others, playing fair, doing what's right, always seeing the best in people. So when Grandma died her soul rose up into heaven and that's where she is now with Granddad, Great Aunty Kay and all the other good people she knew.

         Lena's eyebrows pushed upwards onto her forehead. “Are you sure Aunt Kay is up there as well?”

         “Well, she was Grandma's first cousin.”

         “I know that, dear, but after all she did spend rather a long time in Holloway. I don't think she was shining much of a light.”

         “Maybe she was innocent.”

         “What of all twelve offences?”

         “Well, it was hard times. Perhaps she repented.”

         “Or maybe she went to purgatory,” said Zoe.

         Correctly surmising that neither of her parents were conversant with the concept of purgatory she proceeded to enlighten them. “It's an in between place where dead people go who aren't good enough to go straight to heaven. How long they stay there depends on how bad they've been. Like if they've only stolen a few sweets from Tesco they're probably be let out after a month and allowed into heaven. But if they've been really bad they could be there for centuries.”

         “Well that explains it then,” said Steve. “Great Aunt Kay has done her time and been allowed up.”

         Lena opened her mouth to express her doubts on the subject and then thought better of it; Steve was looking irritated and in no mood to continue the discussion. She recalled her father's dictum that religion was best kept in church.

         Her daughter, however, was for continuing the religious debate.“What I don't understand is where heaven is. It's not in the sky, at least I don't think it is. There's nothing about it in that book of astronomy that Uncle Trevor gave me. According to that, space is full of planets, stars and big clouds of gas.”

         There was a thoughtful silence.

         “What do they say at school?” asked Lena.

         “Well Jenny thinks it might be some kind of parallel universe.”

         “I mean your teachers, dear. The ones that are supposed to tell you about these things.”

         “Oh they're no help. Mr Stubbs is an atheist while Mrs Jones says that heaven is when she's on holiday in Antigua. To tell you the truth I don't think they know any more than I do.”

         “I like Jenny's idea,” said Steve. Reminds me of what old Bill Felds once told me about some of the folk who lived about here a hundred or so years ago. They thought that the spirits of their ancestors lived on in the sounds and motions of the countryside: in the currents that made the rivers flow, in the wind that moved the trees and made patterns in the wheat. The Church called them heathens, were against them and everything they believed in, but I'm not so sure. I fancy they knew a thing or two.”

         “So, if that's right, heaven isn't up there, wherever 'up there' is, it's all around us,” said Lena.

         “Why not,” agreed Steve. “It's a better theory than others I've heard. Whose to say it's wrong? After all, how can you see a spirit? Stands to reason it must be invisible. Nobody, no voice to speak with. They could be all around us, we wouldn't know. It can't be proved, of course, but neither can it be disproved. In the end, you just have to go with what you feel. Guess that's why I keep coming back here. It's where Mum wanted to be, part of the forest she used to play in as a kid, near to where Granddad and Great Aunt Kay are now. If she does have a soul or spirit this is where it be.”

         Steve stopped speaking and wished he had done so sooner. He looked anxiously at Lena half expecting her to say something in that tone of voice that made him feel he was being quietly mocked. Instead, it was Zoe who spoke first.

         “That's really nice, Dad. Perhaps Gran is here, and Great Aunt Kay. She giggled. “Did you notice how that breeze started up when we were talking about her being in prison. Perhaps we should bring a wind chime next time we come.”

         Lena was tempted to say that it would only be something else to polish but for the second time that afternoon left her thoughts unsaid. She glanced down at her watch. It was nearly time to pack up, to do what they always did: plant a few bulbs and feed the remaining sandwiches to the ducks on the lake. For the first time she was in no hurry to leave. The day had gone well, unexpectedly well. Perhaps there was something to be said for Steve's theory. She cut the small birthday cake she had brought into four pieces.

         “Now, before we eat this, is there something you want to say, Steve? I mean what you always say at this time.”

         Steve grinned. “Yeah, why not. Let's say it together. Are you ready? On the count of three. One, two, three.”

         “Happy birthday Gran! twenty-one again.”

          

Copyright Richard Banks