Greenhouse
For mile upon dreary mile there has been nothing but motorway. Grey, tedious, crowded, rain-soaked motorway. Only occasionally, seemingly at random, pointless roadside warnings break the monotony; ‘Tiredness kills. Take a break’ – erected miles from the nearest service station. ‘Keep apart two chevrons’ – try telling that to the arsehole cutting in in front. Alex is back in his habitual pose, twisted to his left, one hand pawing at the window. It’s a wonder to Daniel that he doesn’t crick his neck, sat like that the whole time.
Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, each county salutes them in turn: only Somerset and Devon to go. The world-weary Golf rattles and buzzes a punishing seventy, its protests modulated by the varying patches of roadway, the wipers squealing and smearing across the windscreen. The speakers add their spits and crackles to the din as the hills play havoc with the radio. But Daniel kind of prefers it this way. The noises drown out the uninvited thoughts, seal him off from the world and leave him alone to muse and to reflect.
They’ll all be there today, Blakeley, Jerry, maybe even Greenall himself, going about their business: shifting stock, balancing books, fighting to keep the plants from dying, this road putting an ever greater distance between them and him. Or perhaps they won’t – maybe it’s already too late. Liquidation. Such an unlikely, science-fictional term. Post-apocalyptic imagery. Flora and fauna, glass, steel, brick and mortar all reduced to a slurry by some futuristic weapon of economic annihilation. Someone should bottle it and sell it as plant food. Profits to be made there for some wily entrepreneur.
A little after two, they pull off at a motorway services for some lunch and a toilet break. Haute Cuisine it isn’t, but it does have proper facilities: a dedicated toilet with room to back up a wheelchair, double handrail and an emergency cord. Lunch is hastily plucked from the self-service counter and trolleyed out in Alex’s lap. They eat in the car. Having people stare at him pushing the chair around is one thing, but he’s certainly not ready to take the mock pity of a public feeding.
They hit roadwork warnings within minutes of rejoining the carriageway, the traffic staggering in fits and starts long before the traffic cones actually arrive. Then it’s nose to tail right through to Bristol. Beyond Cribb’s Causeway, things improve a little, but already the light is starting to fade. With the radio all but dead, Daniel is forced to fall back upon conversation. He picks his words with care. Returning to their childhood home could be a mixed blessing. Familiar sights, long-forgotten place names on road signs, all have the power to rekindle dark memories and maybe set Alex off again. The motorway is moving faster now, everyone in such a hurry to make up for lost time. Some wanker is tailgating them. Not the best time to be swerving onto the hard shoulder because a passenger is midway through a fit.
In the end, it’s the encroaching darkness and bad weather that spares them. They miss the ‘Welcome To Devon’ sign altogether. Only after Exeter, beyond the motorway, do they have any real sense of the change, cresting the hill as the rolling peaks embrace the gloom like a pop-up book unfolding by torchlight. After that, the glare of oncoming lights exploding across their soaked windows wipes out all contact with the outside world. It’s all Daniel can do to watch the road. Locating the correct exit isn’t easy either with zero visibility and a page of scrawled directions almost impossible to read.
The road sign he’s searching for flashes briefly into view, and they’re safely onto the next leg of the journey. A nervous thrill begins to fill the car. In the sweep of the headlights, names from the distant past do indeed leap out: Buckfastleigh, Dartington, Totnes – place names that ring with bell-like resonance. Something about a steam train they’d once taken with their parents – a quaint old railway station and ice creams, coal smuts on their faces from leaning out of carriage windows. A long winding river and a big round castle on a hilltop. It’s with the awestruck eyes of a child that he now begins taking in the Disney villages, the lonely roads that tunnel through the trees, the caricature hills that he himself might once have designed and hastily filled in with black felt pen.
Their final approach to Thurlestone becomes perilously narrow, the lane snaking its way blindly between the hedgerows. But at least the road is now entirely theirs. Somewhere ahead, they must turn a corner or drop over a hill and be reunited with their old home. Time here might almost have frozen over, their old headmaster, their teacher, the old corner shop owner, all waiting for Daniel’s return. He senses he could walk straight into school and find his wooden desk exactly where he’d left it; that he could call in at the local store with his hard-earned 30p and buy the same time-honoured ‘Pick-n-Mix’ of sweets; that he could saunter down to the village, unlatch the wooden gate and skip up the front path to his…
To his…
Whoa. Something there isn’t right. A ‘No Entry’ sign bars his way. This untouched past stops at their doorstep. It’s a collision between adult and infant selves that cannot be. But there’s one place he can still go, a place set aside for his exclusive use, and to reach it he must tiptoe around to the back garden, scale the wooden ladder and hack through the branches that time will have woven between the slats. Only then can he squeeze himself up onto the platform, rest his back against the trunk and press his lips to the cold, bare skin of his knees.
And it’s from this safe place in his head that he spots it, at a road junction on their left, nestling behind a palisade fence; clean white render beneath a slated roof. All Saints’ Primary.
Their old school.
“My god, Alex,” he cries. “See where we are?”
He slows the car to a crawl, opens the window and inhales the memories like a fragrance. That Monday morning smell of polished wooden floors and disinfectant, souring as the week passes into one of off milk, used P.E. kit and old socks. All those classrooms decked with artwork and papier-mâché masks, reeking of Plasticine, paper glue, brushes in bottles and squeezy tubes of paint. Decorated window panes greeting them every day as they climbed those steps, waved their goodbyes and joined the bottleneck of chattering knees at the entrance door.
“Do you remember Miss Ellison?”
Longsuffering Miss Ellison, who always waited inside to line them up by year group and shepherd them into assembly. Laughter and school shoes ring out along corridors; satchels and gym bags jostle and collide. He can hear the headmaster’s voice, the hymns and prayers, then the clatter of footsteps as they run off to their studies – or walk, when reprimanded by Miss Ellison.
The bell sounds for playtime: a climbing frame, a playground marked out for ball games. Everything comes rushing in on the outside air – the laughing and screaming of boys, large and small, some to befriend and some to avoid. Pretty girls with long blond hair skipping and jumping in their white blouses and pleated skirts, the tease-worthy ones in spectacles who only stand and watch.
Strange, how the school, for all the extensions and add-ons accrued over the years, nevertheless appears so much smaller. Daniel has an urge to grab Alex by the hand, leap from the car, scale the fence and run amok through the playground. But Alex sits rigid, unmoved, still staring at nothing. His time at this school had been so cruelly cut short by the accident that it probably isn’t wise to stay longer.
“Come on then.” Daniel gently coaxes the accelerator. “How about we try and find the old shop? It’s somewhere along here. What was it called – Morten’s? Martin’s?”
The cottages lining the street look just as they ever did, but there’s no sign of any shop. They’d told him on the phone to look for the pub on the left, the hotel being an adjoining annex behind it. Daniel imagines it as rambling and Dickensian, probably several dwellings knocked through into one, with different levels and low ceilings supported on vast beams. When it comes into view, the Village Inn seems to confirm it. In fact, he remembers the pub now. He remembers the intrigue he felt as a child, watching customers sat along its narrow front, sipping their beers on bench seats as the cars brushed past. The Thurlestone Hotel sign becko
ns from a lawn beyond; he slows and pulls the car off the road into the entrance drive.
“Fuck me!”
This is no piddling little annex. The place is vast. A lumbering white giant from the Costa del Sol. An ocean liner that has run aground at night and flattened half the village. Four storeys of sheer stone and regimented windows dwarfing the skyline. Terraces and balconies, steps heading down into the unlit grounds beyond. Never was an edifice more at odds with its location. No wonder those few remaining B&Bs had thrown in the towel and referred him here. Against this beast they didn’t stand a chance.
The car park is empty; Daniel can pull up right by the entrance. Just as well, as the rain is relentless. He’s already drenched by the time he’s erected the wheelchair and brought it round to the passenger side. And there’s another problem: despite the promises, the main doors are five steps up from street level. It takes several minutes of heaving backwards, one arm-wrenching step at a time, just to get Alex safely inside. Reception may be all classy marble floors and plush furnishings, but they’re not intimidating him so easily. Someone has some explaining to do. The lobby is quiet, just a solitary woman behind the counter. Daniel is strutting bullishly over when a bellhop hurries in from the rain and steals his thunder.
“Sorry, sir. I came as fast as I could. I saw you struggling back there. As soon as you’ve checked in I’ll show you the other entrance. It doesn’t have those steps. And I can show you the lifts that’ll get you directly to the garden area.”
“Yeah? Well, someone might have explained all that on the phone. Would have saved me from nearly breaking my arms.”
He turns his back on the bellhop and props an elbow on the counter.
“Daniel George. For one night.”
“Good evening,” the lady smiles, checking her screen. “You’re the twin?”
The question makes him start. He’d never said anything about them being twins. What relevance was that? Was that even her business? Christ, did these people know who he was, even after all these years – was their story still such a talking point in the village?
“Ah yes, here we are. Mr George – twin room second floor. This is your swipe key, if you’d just care to fill in your car registration here and sign at the bottom please.”
Get a grip, Daniel tells himself, chewing the pen. Get a grip; you’re overtired.
Despite the earlier brush-off, the bellboy reaches eagerly for the luggage and leads them to the waiting lift, and from there to their room. “I trust everything is to your liking, sir,” he says, after a rather affected pause.
“Yeah, cheers. We can cope from here, mate. Go and dry off. Show me the other way out later, yeah?”
The boy nods and turns from the room.
Daniel scoffs at Alex. “Fuck that for a laugh. I’ve paid enough for this place as it is, without tipping the staff every time they lift a finger.” He unlocks his neck with a rotation of the head and drops his shoulders to stretch his spine.
A relief, certainly, but it’s also something of an anticlimax to have the journey behind them. The two twins now study each other across the room. Alex still looks most unsettled. Their escape to the country has not yet worked the magic Daniel had been banking on, perhaps not surprisingly after such a long drive. Tomorrow, when they can explore the village properly and take in the sea, surely then things will change. Tonight, they’ll take things easy. Daniel dumps his hold-all on the bed furthest from the window. Ideally, he’d have wanted the view – come morning, they’ll be waking to a stunning view of Thurlestone Rock, standing like some giant’s croquet hoop on a shimmering white lawn of water. But better for Alex to be nearest the bathroom.
Two identical twin beds for two identical twins – green studded headboards, white turned back covers and soft golden cushions. A flat-screen TV to die for hangs on the wall above a tray of tea and coffee things. But it’s not tea or coffee Daniel needs now. Nor is it TV. After five hours on the road it’s a double scotch and soda, with a hot curry or a thick steak to follow. He opens the mini bar and reaches for a couple of miniatures before flicking through the room service menu only to discover the scandalous prices. Suddenly, being a mealtime freak show at the pub seems preferable to being robbed in the privacy of one’s own room.
Firstly though, a few minutes to unpack and get settled. He arranges Alex’s things before sorting his own. Smallish bathroom, but large enough to take the chair. Good sized shower. Loads of freebies. He can’t help wondering what Alex is making of all this. Nothing in his manner gives anything away. He slumps immobile in his seat, head a fraction to one side, lips slightly parted and just a trace of saliva on his chin, following with his eyes as Daniel busies himself about the room. How the brain could do it, Daniel wonders: shut down the links with the body like that in defence against some terrible event. The urge is almost irresistible to try again and gatecrash that mind: to force Alex to talk, make him react in some way, get him remembering. But instinct says to wait until they’ve reached the beach and the coast path. Seeing those locations again is sure to unlock something. A high-risk strategy, of course. But once there, the truth will surely out, kicking and screaming if it must.
As he pushes backside first through the doors, chair following, Daniel can already sense the now familiar sequence of surprise, morbid curiosity, discomfort and faked disinterest spreading through the bar. A few individuals, mainly geriatrics, offer a civil smile and a nod as they steer past, but always sure to keep their eyes pinned only on Daniel’s face. A newfound protective pride begins to override Daniel’s initial repulsion at being saddled with a cripple. It’s somehow easier now to square up to their mindless gawping.
All the same, their meal really doesn’t go well. The pub is cramped and narrow, with tables partitioned off into cubicles too small for a wheelchair. Only the table directly in front of the bar has room enough for Alex, and only by placing him squarely in everyone’s way. His feeding skills, pretty accomplished now at home, are badly upset by the change in routine. His capacity to get food from the plate into his mouth repeatedly deserts him. Most of it ends up on the floor, which does not go unnoticed by the dog tethered to the leg of the next table. Daniel is forced to squat beside the chair and spoon the remaining pieces of chopped fish into Alex’s mouth, while shoving the animal aside with his right foot. This in turn upsets its owner who tells the mutt to keep away from ‘those men’. The whole ordeal quickly descends into farce. Once feeding is over, Daniel can’t get Alex out of the place fast enough. He’ll see him off to bed and slip back later for a few jars when hopefully this lot have buggered off. He needs time alone to recover, time to plan for the morning and time to digest this lingering, choked-up feeling he’s had ever since they arrived.
The bill is settled and a way forged through the bar out into the night. Their next hour is spent getting Alex washed, undressed and into bed. “I won’t be long,” Daniel assures him, turning off the light. “Just a couple to help me sleep.”
Over the course of that hour the pub atmosphere has thankfully transformed. Few of the diners remain; most seats are now taken by drinkers. There’s an altogether more local air about the place. Without the wheelchair, Daniel can easily work the crowd. He prises himself between the bodies at the bar, inexorable yet unchallenged, with skills honed from many a Saturday night at the Millwrights. In no time, after downing-in-one a stiff scotch at the bar, he is pirouetting his way out again, holding aloft two pints of local brew, targeting a corner where one empty seat has gone unnoticed. The din of conversation won’t bother him there.
It was the school, wasn’t it? That’s what’s brought on these emotions. A few bevies should get to the root of what’s upset him. So, why has he reacted this way? Had he hated the place as a child?
He thoughtfully swigs a mouthful of beer, and then another.
No, not really, it had been a good school, he’d had friends there – well, friends of Alex’s who’d let him join in their games.
Half the pint d
own.
Had he been a bad pupil, then?
No, not to start with. He’d done pretty well, considering he and Alex were the youngest in the class. He got fair enough grades, satisfactory reports, behaved himself. Not like Alex. Never the kind of playground scraps that he got into. True, Daniel was known to have a bit of a temper on him – a short fuse, his mother called it. If Alex ever messed with his shells, or their mum tried to dust his model ships, then he was rather prone to lash out. If someone at school went into his desk and rearranged his books, if they moved his duffel coat from its peg or knocked into his satchel, then he could become something of a stampeding bull for a few seconds. But, for the most part, when other kids left him alone, he was as good as gold.
His talent for maths and science was first spotted by Miss Ellison. And she was the one who got him interested in astronomy. All her stories about the planets. Saturn with its rings was his tops. And that project where she had them go out every night for a month and plot the phases of the moon. His insistence when she drew the classroom’s initial findings on the blackboard that they’d all got the first quarter the wrong way round. Daniel was so adamant, and Miss Ellison so trusting in his eye for detail, that the drawing was promptly reversed and each subsequent drawing thereafter. Then the dawning horror when he’d understood his mistake. He’d taken the shaded area on the board to mean the dark side – but it was white chalk on a black board and the teacher had intended her shading to represent the lit side. All so devastating back then. Now he could afford to find it rather endearing. He’s actually chuckling now into his second beer. They were days that began in such innocence; days when he was like everyone else, a child with a mother and a father and a sibling. So normal, and yet special too because they were twins and because his dad sailed in gunships. He recalls how he and Alex would entertain the class by confusing the teachers: pretending to be each other for whole lessons. They would gather crowds around them at playtime with tales of their father’s derring-do. Admittedly, it was Alex who told the best stories, who gathered the biggest crowds, who attracted the prettiest girls, who fended off the burliest boys, but Daniel hadn’t minded, because he was accepted. He fitted in. He pushes away the second empty.
And these were the days that crashed around his ankles so cataclysmically when in close succession he lost first a father and then a brother; two tragedies that became major local news, affording Daniel an utterly different kind of status. Suddenly he was famous. He was the child about whom one only whispered. The kid in the paper. The boy picked out in assembly, belonging to that George woman whom everyone’s parents gossiped about.
The beer has given him stomach cramps. Far too gassy. He should have stayed with the scotch. The empty glasses chink to the tune of his own emptiness; the emptiness of the boy no-one could understand and must therefore poke fun at. The boy who vanished for a year and came back just a few months before they all went their separate ways, when everyone had realigned their friendships – mostly to the opposite sex. When there was nobody left for him to befriend or fall in love with. What a bloody stupid idea that was – sending him to his grandmother’s. No wonder he became the angry and disruptive child in class. No wonder he played truant and began to bully the bullies. The child that grew from a lover of science and nature into a despiser of life itself. So obvious now why seeing the school had left him feeling so knotted up. It was the stolen potential, the defiled innocence, the denial of hope. The pain of losing all his possible futures but for one.
He rises to do battle once more at the bar.
“Is this seat taken?”
There’s a red-faced old man in a smart blazer looking at him. He hadn’t noticed the seat opposite becoming vacant.
The man sits himself down without waiting for Daniel’s answer. “I saw you earlier with the chair,” he says. “Difficult place this, with a chair. Difficult village. Three years I had to cope with that, before my wife passed away. Helping out with the hospice up the road are you?”
“Er, yeah.”
It’s all Daniel can think of to say.
“Well, good for you. This village needs more keen youngsters like you. I remember a time when everybody helped each other out around here. Even the young ones. I haven’t seen you here before. On holiday, are you? Voluntary work?”
“I’m… just getting another drink.”
The old man waves his newspaper. “You go right ahead, young man. I’ll watch your seat.”
Daniel makes for the bar, still shadowed by an infant mob who stare and whisper; who wink at each other; who taunt him with stories about their dads. He’s forgotten all about the old gent by the time he makes it back to the corner.
“It’s all changed now, you know,” the man continues, as though Daniel had never been away. “Half this lot in here aren’t locals. Not really.” He leans forward with narrowed lips. “It’s all down to that new estate. All those posh houses with their swanky sea-views. You get these la-di-da professionals charging about in their 4x4’s, bussing in their kids. It doesn’t matter what they say – they’ll always be blow-ins as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care if they stay another thirty years.” He guffaws. “Not that I’ll be around to see that, of course!”
Getting into a conversation had been the last thing on Daniel’s mind, and he’s taken aback by the idea that suddenly hits him. “How long have you lived here?”
“Me? Oh, I’m a true local, I can assure you of that. Devon born and bred, me.”
“Yes, but how long here?”
“Ah, now you’re asking. Well, I was born in Kingsbridge in 1924. Long, long before most of this lot. My pops, now he was the postmaster there. During the war I was sent out to…”
“Here! In Thurlestone.”
The old man blinks nervously and strokes his pencil-thin moustache. “I was coming to that. It was after I got demobbed. 1946.”
“Then I guess you might have known my father.”
Daniel hadn’t meant to word it like that, giving away his own identity. He wishes he’d just given a name. But there’s no turning back now. “Richard George. Navy man. Killed in action in 1982.”
The old gent stares dumbstruck at Daniel for a good two minutes, the turning of the cogs almost visible behind his spectacles.
“Dickie George? The Petty Officer, you mean? And you’re his son?”
Why had it never occurred to Daniel that this might happen? Coming here was supposed to be about unlocking memories, but only Alex’s and his own, not about tapping into the memories of a community. But of course. It was a potential goldmine. He can see those cogs now winching up great nuggets from the depths of this man’s past. His little faded eyes scan back and forth as though newspaper articles are being dangled in front of his face.
“Young Dickie George! Well I never. Falklands, wasn’t it? Tragic, tragic. Yes, I can see the likeness now. Handsome chap. Liked his beer, same as you. Good darts player. I remember his poor wife after they told her the news. And then that terrible tragedy with their boy just after, as if she didn’t have enough on her plate. Oh heavens, you said you were his son, didn’t you? That poor little chap would have been your brother then.”
The old man is now so worked up that Daniel doubts he can usefully squeeze much more from him. In any case, he’s getting the oddest feeling, not unlike finding the photo at the cemetery. A feeling of invasion. For over two decades he’d enjoyed anonymity as far as his past was concerned. He’d got used to being whoever he liked. Moving from Thurlestone so soon after the loss of Alex may have been traumatic at the time, but it had grown to be a life-saver. It let him leave everything behind – no prying questions, no more staring, no name-calling, no need to prove himself. Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to having sole ownership of this tale. Yes, he’d begun now to share it a little with Gulnaz, but strictly on his own terms at his own pace. But here was a complete stranger painting a portrait of his father that even Daniel didn’t know. As with the school, the street and the
pub, it was like stumbling upon scenes and characters from inside his own head.
He’s not even aware of having finished the previous scotch, let alone of having acquired another, or how a small crowd became summoned to his table. But they’re all talking now, bearing down on him with torrential, head-spinning questions. How was his mother? Where did they move to? Would they be attending the Falklands Parade? What has brought him back to Thurlestone? In his desperation to get away, he nearly hands them ammunition for a whole new line of assault:
“I need to get back to my bro… to my friend.”
He covers the slip with a shake to the head and rises to go. “But I just need to know, um…” He must think quickly. How to turn the situation to his advantage before escaping the clutches of these people. “…Two things. Can anyone tell me exactly the spot where my brother fell – in case I want, you know, to put some flowers there or something?”
A short exchange of opinions leads to a quick consensus. It’s the blazer who answers on behalf of the group.
“Yes. It was reported in the papers to be out at Leas Foot. You can’t miss it. Park up at the clubhouse and take the beach path – you can tell it by the big red safety information board. Take a right onto the coast path, uphill for a couple of hundred yards. There’s a spot there where the cliff face opens up right beside you.”
“If you get to Warren Point then you’ve gone too far,” someone adds unhelpfully. “And take care. You could easily fall.”
Everyone freezes at the faux pas. But Daniel barely registers it. He can’t believe those instructions, how perfectly they equate with the dream he’d had just two nights ago.
Someone else hurriedly chips in. “What was the second thing you wanted to know, son?”
“My house. I want to see my house. Where did we live?”
In that short journey from the school to the hotel Daniel had seen nothing but pretty stone cottages. His memory of home was of a stark council house, concrete built, one of a line of identical semis. The two impressions didn’t square at all.
“I’m sure Charlie will know,” says the blazer, and he hobbles stiffly off to the bar. There’s a short conversation with the barman and he’s back.
“Charlie thinks it was Parkside. Right opposite: the road heading up off the high street.”
Nice work, Charlie. Parkside. Yes. Quite something to be able to suppress the memory of one’s own address. The men move aside to let Daniel through, until the one nearest the door taps him on the shoulder with his pipe.
“In my book, Dickie George was and always will be a hero. You remember that, son. And be proud. And when you’re up there laying your wreath, or just saying a few words to his memory, you be sure to send a few thoughts from us too.”
Daniel nods and gives him the thumbs up. Like the old man, he’s becoming muddled about his purpose in finding the cliff path; the whiskies have gone to his head. Somehow he’s outside on the road again, staggering slightly, and heading over the road into Parkside. After just a few yards, the road turns sharply and is thrown into total darkness. Nobody home; not a single street light; not a hand in front of his face. Symbolic perhaps; a barrier to partner the one he’d imagined across his front door; darkness to mark the spot where revelations for today must come to an end.
He knows he should be getting back, that Alex has been left alone for well over an hour, but the urge to keep walking is too strong. He retraces his steps and takes a right, down past the hotel. The high street is marginally better lit. Thurlestone at night is not a total graveyard. At the bend in the road he sees, emerging from the gloom, the distinctive monument on the village green, the one as a child he’d thought looked so much like a wedding cake because it was tiered and topped with a cross. People had referred to it as the war memorial, but he’d been too young then to understand its purpose. The meaning is crystal clear to him now though: his father is sure to be there among the honoured – nothing more than the great man deserved, a fitting tribute to someone so long denied their own grave. This will be why everyone remembered him so well down at the pub. Stepping up close, he scans the surface for names. The smaller top tier bears the arced inscription, ‘IN GRATEFUL MEMORY’ and beneath, ‘OF THE MEN OF THIS PARISH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR US DURING THE GREAT WAR 1914 TO 1918.’
The Great War. What, Daniel wonders, is so great about a war that robs a community of twelve of its young men? The names are hard to read in the darkness. Clifford… Corswick? – no, Creswick… Dyer… So hard to imagine how a place this small could bear the weight of another twelve stories like his own. Twelve more family trees needlessly lopped; twelve more abandoned homes. On the next face, again on the top tier, a second dedication troubles itself with nothing more than the dates: 1939-1945, as if the sheer quantity of human sacrifice by then had left a chilling legacy of indifference. Below this is carved another list. He counts the names with growing morbidity. Eleven more soldiers to join the parade of the dead, and in their shadows another eleven widows, and another generation of scarred children.
1914 to 1918, 1939 to 1945 – it’s a chronological sequence working clockwise. The third and fourth sides will be the ones to mark post-war conflicts – the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps Northern Ireland. His father would understand if it meant having to share wars.
But nothing is written there. Not even some tribute to a prehistoric irrelevance like the Boer War. Just empty, wasted stone. So much for a community looking out for its own. Suddenly Daniel detests the lot of them. How those old men in the pub could have dared rally around him, wax lyrical about his father and his bravery, offer their words of remembrance, when they couldn’t even be arsed to add his name to their roll-call of heroes. Okay, so they’d lived in Shit Street, but what did people expect of a lowly sailor? Prejudice, fucking prejudice, that’s what it was.
He should go to bed, but he can hardly walk away without leaving some kind of a signature. Give him an aerosol and he might add a eulogy of his own. The memorial’s left him plenty of space. As it is, he can do no more than spit his protest onto the stone and watch it slither its way to becoming the first stroke of the first letter of his father’s first name.
He stands back against the hedge in the deepest shadow, takes a leak and watches his father amid the hell and high waters of battle, dive-bombed by Argies, standing firm on the bridge and gallantly firing back with the ship’s great guns. Sailors fleeing for their lives, fireballs billowing skyward from the deck and earthwards from the planes. Petty Officer George stares into the jaws of death and thinks proudly of home, of his loving wife Rose, of wild, unruly Alex and above all, of his genius son Daniel. And Daniel’s is the image forever burned into his eyes as the ship is blasted to smithereens and scattered upon the waters.
Cold and bitter, Daniel zips up his flies, steps away from the green and trudges sullenly back to the hotel.