My Grandmother

Everybody is looking for a scapegoat for one thing or another. Whether it is for a small mistake they don't want to admit was their own, or whether, like me, it is for something so shocking and unnatural that without assigning a mundane and everyday cause it would be wholly impossible to comprehend. Well I am British so of course my scapegoat was the rain; I like to blame the rain for the events of that Sunday, it's comforting to rationalize something so sensational, it's calming. Maybe it's because I have spent so long blaming it, maybe it's because of the effect it all had on my mind, I don't know, but I really do believe that it was the rain.

It's weird, to be one of the first people to ever have really witnessed it, to witness something you never even thought about before. Although I suppose it was the event itself, the flash, the fire and everything that followed that was the truly weird element. But what I mean is that I'd never even considered it before, let alone expected to see it. I suppose if anything could make what happened more shocking it was that it was totally unexpected. Nothing could possibly have prepared me for this and nothing will ever take the memory away. The white light searing into my retina, the burnt scent and taste that invaded my senses and the eternal numbness that was to follow.

It was Sunday; we had all gone to church as we did every Sunday, all accept my father, of course, who was a self proclaimed atheist. Once when I was younger I had asked him what this meant and he had replied rather ominously with a piece of poetry spoken in a booming and commanding voice,

'Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.'

I learnt many years later that this was an extract from a Christina Rossetti poem, I have read it and re-read it but I'm still not sure what he meant, to be honest I don't think he did either. My mother was later to tell me it was a stock response he gave to all questions he couldn't answer but I never heard him repeat it.

This particular Sunday was no different from any other, (at first anyway) we went to Church, we sang the hymns without gusto and while the sermon was being read I picked up my bible and started to read. I was one of those people who'd get uncomfortable when I had nothing in front of me to read, the idea of it just being me alone with my thoughts was terrifying. I didn't have much of an imagination and boredom is killer, but now I can't seem to get out of my own head for long enough to read even a paper. The events of that Sunday afternoon fill my mind so completely there is no longer any room for anything else.
After church we went back to my parents' house; we being the whole family: my parents, my sister, her husband and two kids, my own daughter and my maternal grandmother.

It would be unwise for me to presume that you have never met anyone like my grandmother, most people have. She was a typical old woman. Marcus Aurelius once suggested that when women passed the age of 70, (which my grandmother had, being 76), they became one of a three things: that old dear, that old woman, or that old witch. My grandmother definitely came under the third title. She was a sour old woman who saw the downside to everything, she could rain on anyone's parade if she tried hard enough, and she often did. However despite her grumpy nature and the pointless insults she threw around I did not dislike my grandmother and sometimes I even found myself liking the old witch. She was small, bent and withered, her face was covered with so many wrinkles it was quite possible to lose sight of her actual features, all of which were miniscule and seemed completely lost on the barren surface of her expansive face. She seemed shorter every time I saw her but she probably averaged at a little less than five foot, when standing straight, which she never was. And she had a dog, a horrid little thing, small and white which yapped at everything that dared move in its presence. The dog was called Shakespeare, a ridiculous name for anything in my opinion, but on this dog it was truly preposterous. It may seem strange to attribute an over exaggerated and undeserved sense of grandeur to a dog but I can think of no other way to describe him. My grandmother like to talk through this dog which was never more than a foot away from her body and was normally nuzzled into the crook of her left arm. She lost the ability to address people directly when my grandfather died and she had replaced him with the dog, instead she would say things like,
'Don't you think my granddaughter needs to cut her hair Shakespeare? Yes you are right she did look much better with it shorter, it was much neater. Ha, yes she does look like she has put on a little weight too, you are very perceptive, you clever little dog you'. It was nauseating to watch but it at least spared you from having to respond.

As I have already informed you, this Sunday was just like any other, my father sat on his chair absorbed in the Sunday Times occasionally tutting to himself and asking no one in particular,
'What is the world coming to?' My mother fussed around my sister and me making sure that we had plenty of coffee and cakes to keep us going. My brother-in-law was sitting quietly in the corner whispering to his youngest son while his eldest was in the middle of what looked like an abysmally poor game of chess with my daughter. And of course my grandmother was talking through Shakespeare about anything that took her fancy;
'Yes I think I will go to the bingo tonight Shakespeare, what a good suggestion, you are a good little dog aren't you'. We didn't really talk to each other, not normally, we would make passing comments on each others lives, books we'd read and films we'd seen, but it was all surface conversation, skimming over anything important or interesting.

When I look back to the events of that fateful afternoon I often wondered what it was that caused the incident that will chill my very soul for the rest of my life. I have thought of little else, when things like this happen it is natural to want to know why, to come up with someone or something to blame. Was it something beyond my control? I'd like to think so. Assuming I could not have done anything is a comfort. This is why I chose the rain as my personal scapegoat, I cannot control it, no one can.

We are, I would say, a typical British family so obviously rain is a hot topic of conversation on these Sunday afternoons. However our opinions on the subject are wide and varied. The children's attitude changed frequently, one week they enjoyed the rain as they were able to splash around in puddles with their wellies on, other weeks they felt repressed by the ferociousness of the downpour. They felt the rain trapped then, limited their choice of activity and prevented them from doing anything they really wanted to. The majority of the adults, too, hated the rain for its inhibiting nature; they viewed the rain as an enemy of the British people, something they could unite against. They hated the feel of the water drizzling down their bodies, beating down against their backs or spitting in their faces. They despised the sound of it hammering on their roofs and windows, the dripping sound as it tripped off of their gutters infuriated them. Like all British people they loved nothing more than a good moan about the rain. The rain however was the one topic with which I sided with my grandmother. I found the rain soothing, I found that it always fitted my mood, it cried with me and danced with me, it kept me company on the nights I spent alone. In the past few years it had become the husband I had lost and maybe that was why my grandmother and I felt the same about the rain, we were both widows. 'Yes Shakespeare the rain does provide life, and yes we should be thankful for its presence. What a good question Shakespeare, what would we do without it? Yes it is far too hot without the rain, they really should be thankful for it shouldn't they Shakespeare? You clever dog.'

This particular Sunday it was raining heavily, it had been for weeks now, there had been small breaks in between showers but for the past month the rain had been a constant companion to me. But then it stopped, it let me down, it left and it took with it my sense of security, my sanity and my grandmother. It stopped so suddenly that my grandmother was the only one to notice, 'Where has it gone?' her voice, usually possessing a rattling, husky quality, escaped her body in the form of a high pitch squeal. She sounded scared and this attracted the attention of everyone, we all spun around to face her, she was looking intently out of the bay windows. A look of horror mixed with confusion and revulsion was etched into her shrivelled face as the sun came from behind a cloud and poured through the windows. It took me a minute to notice but her face seemed to be getting redder by the second. Shakespeare was firmly clenched under her armpit, a look of fierce calm on his canine face. I exchanged looks with my mother, who asked, with overly exaggerated concern,
'Mother are you alright?' My grandmother spun around and caught her daughter with her eyes
'It's stopped, the rain, Martha it's stopped, it has left me.' Her face was turning a putrid shade of purple now and her voice was getting higher with every syllable. My mother looked relieved and exhaled a small laugh.
'Well thank goodness for that'. But my grandmother wasn't listening she was looking at the growing rectangle of sunlight that was making its way towards her through the window and across the living room carpet. He face, even through the creases and increasingly worrying colour, betrayed her fear, she turned to look at me and said in a small and helpless voice,
'The rain has gone'.
That's when it happened, I don't remember much, just the flash of light and the taste of burning flesh settling on my tongue never to leave. My mother insists it started at her feet and worked its way to her head, like a candle in reverse, but I don't know about that. All I know is I was suddenly blinded by a bright, white glare. While my sight was out my other four senses seemed to be working overtime. I smelt the fire and taste the flesh, I could hear my parents fire alarm beeping feebly overhead and I felt the heat, all over my skin pinching and prickling me. I prayed for the rain then, I prayed for it to come and wash it all away and leave me clean but it didn't come, it had left me too.

When my sight returned and I took the opportunity to take in what had happened I started to scream. The chair my grandmother had been perching on only seconds ago was still there, but now all that occupied it was a pile of ash, which Shakespeare was eating happily, and a scorch mark where previously my grandmother's backside had rested. I don't know how long I screamed for and I don't remember much of what happened afterwards. I was given some drug to calm me down by the paramedics and slept for hours. When I woke I was told the facts, or what my mother perceived to be that facts. Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC), the rain had stopped and my grandmother had gone up in flames. My mother found it miraculous that neither Shakespeare nor the chair had gone up with my grandmother. I couldn't think about that, all I could think of were her last words 'the rain has stopped' and the panic on her face as the rectangle of sunlight glided towards her, she seemed to know what was coming. The rain was her companion and it had abandoned her, left her to die. It had not been so gracious towards me; it had left me alive, alive and alone. For the rest of my life, which is tormented by nightmares which plague me while both sleeping and awake, the rain never returned to me. I prayed for it, everyday I prayed but it never came home. I hated it for that.