A short story about my grandfather.

Granda Norman

Northumberland, England. Sometime in the early 90's.

    "Not many people talk to you, do they granda?".

    We were sitting in the kitchen on a table that looked out in to my grandparents backyard. There had been a lot of visitors that day, all of whom spoke to my grandmother who together with by mother was working in the house. I was sitting with my grandad as I always did and had, for the first time, become aware of the fact that no one really made conversation with him; that except to me he rarely said anything to anyone. 

    I don't remember what we were doing but it could only have been one of a few different things. Usually we would look out the window and discuss the small birds that arrived at the various feeders they had hanging from the fence outside. All the while he would smoke 'Regal King Size' cigarettes, lighting one 'tab' from the other as it died out and the last millimetre of white disappeared into the filter. My gran would do the same when sat at the table; fortunately for my young lungs, she was usually on her feet. I would always complain about their smoking . 

Their yard was small with a concrete floor and a scattering of plant pots that didn't match, it was enclosed on all sides by a high brown wooden fence in ill repair. On the other side of that fence the neighbours garden was much larger and there were many trees that sheltered the birds. We knew all of their names and quite often we would identify individuals and speculate on what they had been doing while absent from the yard. 

"No, not nowadays they don't". He replied with a far away smile. 

    It never occurred to me then, that he had ever been any different from how I knew him at that moment. Yet despite his thick white hair and his bent, overweight body he was tanned and handsome, his face would have been at home on the big screen as the protagonist in a black and white western. Having worked as a farm-hand his entire life, his arms and hands were still heavy and strong. He was in his late sixties at this point. You could add ten years to that back then though, owing to northern working class culture, the cigarettes and unknown to me at the time, his difficult upbringing. 

    A little later in the day and not yet having moved from the table, we where playing draughts; another thing we used to do almost daily. Nothing had been said for sometime. 

"Why is dad so upset?" I asked him...