Love Letter

‘Is that you Molly?’ Grandpa said when I slammed into his house after school.

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘who else would it be?’

Grandpa usually talked to me in a joking-serious tone. ‘How’s the reading goin’? He dressed like an old person should, wearing the same clothes every day. Whitish shirt, unbuttoned collar to let some fresh air in, showing a V of wattled red skin at the throat, blackish trousers that had gone to seed and sprouted two leg and sturdy work boots. But he had a certain vanity he always kept his hair on the edge of darkness with boot polish.  

I wandered through to the kitchen trailing my school satchel along the floor, peering out the window at the football parks to see if anything was happening –nothing ever did— getting myself a drink of tap water, and sitting in his kitchen on a high stool, with my back to the window.

He followed me in, sat in his favourite canvas chair where he could listen to the radio and lean across and flick the kettle on. He didn’t like to get too settled always likely to go out walking somewhere and not coming back until he figured where it was. His house was like a pen in which he kept things. Two hoovers in the living room, none of which worked. A microwave in the kitchen with a smashed door. And his bedroom was the place which swallowed light where he kept things that might come in useful: a toaster, rolled up carpets, outsize cuts of linoleum, a car seat, parts of furniture, nails, wire for a fence that he was going to patch up someday. It made you seasick looking in at it.

Grandpa’s bed rolled up like an accordion. It was the place where he claimed to have seen the devil. As God was his witness, he was plain as a wooden fence, standing there looking down at him sleeping. A gloomy looking fellow he’d said. And no wonder, with him being a Protestant. Slinking in, without knocking the door, like he owned the place. Grandpa got him by the ear and kicked his bahookey on the way out, and told him not to come back until he got himself some manners. But the devil got his own back by making Grandpa forget things.     

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Top of my class.’

He looked at me with fierce eyes. That’s the way he looked at everybody who thought they were smartaleks, because if they were smartalek they should be smartaleky enough to keep out of his way. If you’re lucky he used to say, you keep your mouth shut. And if you’re unlucky, you keep even more stumn. And by the time he got onto the subject of idiots, he’d be sputtering and purple faced about those that knew they were and those that didn’t.   

 I squeezed my lips together and added ‘…or thereabouts.’

‘Wait a minute,’ he said and stomped into the hall. He came back a few minutes later with a book with a leather cover mottled different shades of brown. He handed me it. ‘What’s it called?’ he asked.

It was a heavy book that smelled musty with dust, with curled up pages rotting into each other like spider webs, but I placed it square on my lap and sounded out the title, The Wealth of Nations.

Grandpa leaned forward to get a closer look at me, scrunched his nose up, and chewed a bit on his teeth and bottom lip. ‘Read a bit of the first page,’ he said, and yawned loudly. ‘I thought it was a bible and might be worth something.’

I held the book open like an unwanted sandwich put my finger on the first line, ‘The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith,’ and began to falter and stutter, my finger barely moving as I worked my way down the lines.

Grandpa wasn’t really listening. He was away somewhere in his head. ‘That’s fine,’ He leaned across and put the kettle on. ‘You want tea?’

I shook my head that I didn’t. His cups weren’t too clean. Turning, I slipped The Wealth of Nations on the dull marble-effect worktop and slid it firmly away from me and against the back wall.

Grandpa pottered about making tea, opening the fridge door, standing, pausing in its light as if he was fishing and not sure whether he’d catch something, before deciding it was the carton of milk he wanted. He dribbled milk into his tea, and did the same thing in reverse.

He smacked his lips with satisfaction as he drank out of his favourite mug, double the size of a normal cup, scrunching his neck and looking up at me. ‘How’s your writin’?’ he asked.

‘Not bad,’ I admitted.

‘Tell you whit,’ he said, ‘dive into that drawer and get a pad and pen out.’

I turned, looking behind me, ‘which one?’

‘That wan!’ He said, pointing a wavering finger at the drawer at my hip, as if I should have known.

I found in a drawer full of mongrel spoons and forks, but no knives, a bundle of bookies’ pens looped together with a red elastic band. Scribbling on the back of a pad, I found one that worked.

He scraped his foot back and forward as if deciding something, his mouth hanging open. ‘I suppose you can write a letter?’

I shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

‘How does it go again?’ He slid his mug along the work surface, and cleared his throat as if he was going to sing.  

‘Well, I think you start with an address.’

‘Whit address?’ He jerked forward in his chair and suspicion crept into his voice, looking up at me, so he could look down on me. ‘Whit dae yeh want to know that for?’

‘Where do they live?’ I asked smugly.

‘How the hell, do I know.’

‘You need to…’ I didn’t really know how to put it because it seemed so obvious. ‘You need to put a stamp on the envelope and sent it – with an address – or they’ll not be able to find it.’ Then I remembered what Mum always said, ‘And you’ll need a postcode as well, because they’re useless now. Useless.’

That seemed to placate him. ‘Aye, don’t worry about that. She’s lived where she always lived. I’ll stick it through the door.’

‘Alright,’ I said. Pen at the ready. ‘What’s your address then?’

He ducked his head down and held a wavering finger up as he considered. ‘Don’t worry about that either. You’re the expert now, just write the letter.’

‘Ok.’ I scribbled and read out what I’d written so far, ‘Dear…’

‘Isn’t that a bit formal?’ he asked, chortling and trying to keep his face straight.

‘Hmm,’ I said, putting him in his place. ‘What is it Mr or Mrs?’

‘Dear Lady,’ he replied, with a satisfying grunt.’ He squinted as he watched me writing.  ‘You got that?

‘Yeh,’ I said, ‘I’m good at writing.’

‘Ok,’ he said, ‘I’m goin’ tae take a chance and test you. See how quick you can write.’ He shook his head as if unsure, ‘But it will be quite long. You think you’re up to it?’

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘I never get tired.’  

‘Right,’ he said, adopting a telephone voice as he dictated. ‘Some people think you’re getting as fat as a little pig, but I never listen to them. You got that?’

My nose was pointed into the pad and I felt out of breathe as if I was running. I didn’t look up, but nodded that I had.

‘Ok, hold your hand up when you’re finished writing or I’m talking too fast and I’ll know to shut up. You got that?’

‘Aye,’ I said, paused and ready to go again.

‘The doctor has told me it’s curtains and I’ve not got long to go. He’s told me that before, but even doctors get it right at least twice in your life.

I held my hand up, he was talking far too quick, but when I lowered it he just carried on as if I was a computer.

‘You’ll get married, have kids of you own, perhaps even grandkids. You’ll forget about me, and that’s the nature of the beast and not a bad thing.’

My hand shot up into the air.

‘But just to let you know I’ll love you more and longer than a fish loves the sea.’

My hand was cramping and I wasn’t sure I could read my handwriting. ‘What else?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’ Grandpa’s voice was choked and if I didn’t know that he’d rather poke himself in the eye than cry, it seemed like he was wiping away a few tears.

‘You need to put your faithfully, or yours sincerely at the end of a letter.’

‘Do you?’ he said. ‘I never knew that.’

‘Yeh,’

‘Well, you better put, very, very, sincerely and lots of kisses too.’

‘You don’t put kisses on a letter, Grandpa!’

‘You can if it’s a girl,’ he argued. ‘A girl never forgets her first kisses.’

‘Ok,’ I showed him what I’d written.

He read it over, folded the pad shut, slipped it under his chair and sat on it.

‘Did I do good?’ I asked.

‘You did very good.’ He was waving me away. ‘But you better get ready, your mum will be here soon, and you know what she’s like.’

I shrugged. Mum never really listened to me, not in the way Grandpa did. But I was dying to tell her that Grandpa had a new girlfriend and she was as fat as a pig.

 1024 × 768 - flickr.com