Coming Home?
This is just a short piece that I found lurking on my computer and after reading it through I decided that I quite liked it. Hope that you do too!
As he sat in the garden listening to the sound of the waves skipping onto the beach below, the sound of the insects as they went about their business in his well tended garden he was at peace.
But of course part of that peace was because he was waiting for the familiar sound of her car tyres as they crunched on the driveway. Her choice of vehicle had always been a bone of contention between them, he favoured the larger more imposing models where as she always choose something small and as she said "nippy". Sometimes she would drive him to appointments or up to London and it was on those occasions he thought ruefully that he fully understood the meaning of "nippy"!
He must have dozed off in the summer sun because he awoke with a start as he heard the sound he had been waiting for, car doors slamming and the excited voices of children.
Adam, tall and strong for his age with clever hands and a wonderful natural ear for languages. He was truly a boy any father would be proud of. And of course Joanna the light of his life, the comfort of his old age. Beautiful like her mother, bright as a button and already showing an aptitude for deduction and problem solving. He must he thought talk to her mother about steering her away from the career path they had chosen because he feared that in a few years time Joanna would be just the kind of recruit the service was always on the look out for.
And he knew that he would fight heaven and earth to make sure that didn't happen.
He heard the sneck on the kitchen door lift and he smiled because he knew what that meant; the children would be spending sometime inside changing into their swimwear, gathering their fishing nets and buckets and spades, bickering about whose spade was whose, being spoilt with juice and cake by the housekeeper before they joined them both in the garden.
Standing he waited for her to join him and as she approached he opened his arms wide and she walked without hesitation into his embrace. As he stood holding her, breathing in her perfume, feeling the touch of her hair on his cheek, the warmth of her body against his he could feel a shudder pass through him.
She looked up at him, smiling as she asked "How are you Harry? I hope you're ready to have your peace and quiet shattered!"
Their peace and quiet was indeed shattered as the kitchen door was flung open and Adam and Joanna ran down the garden towards them."Grandpa Harry!" they shouted in unison as Joanna threw herself at him. He picked up the little girl and held her tightly to him as he placed his other arm around Adam's shoulders and smiled fondly at Ruth.
And just for a moment he allowed himself to dream about what could have been, what should have been.