Once more, Mick is reminded of how nothing in life is ever set in stone, facing major changes and challenges he's not sure he really feels up to dealing with just yet ...
This story is for my grandmothers, two women of very different characters but equally lovely and wonderful, sadly both no longer with us. I'm glad to have known both of you.
„Excuse me, Mr. Walsh … this may not be the best time to address the matter, but would you have a minute for me? I have an offer to make to you."
I turned around slowly, hesitantly pulling my gaze away from the gaping hole in the ground I had been staring into with burning, tearless eyes, long after most of the attendees had gone. Only Jem and Martha were still here, waiting discreetly in the background until I would be ready to leave.
The man in the well-cut dark suit under a lightweight, expensive-looking overcoat seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. He might be one of those few sons of the village who had made it in the big city, to their parents' great pride.
"Carpenter", I said in a hoarse voice. I cleared my throat and repeated, "The name's Carpenter."
"Sorry, Mr. Carpenter. I thought you were … it is correct that you are Mary Elizabeth Walsh's grandson?"
"It is." I wondered what on earth that stiff-backed stranger with the accurately parted hair and the air of a lawyer or banker wanted from me.
"First of all, please accept my sincere condolences, Mr. Carpenter. My name is Charles Benton. My wife grew up in the neighbouring village, and her mother was a distant cousin of Mrs. Walsh's, which is why we came here today."
I scrutinized him warily without saying a word.
"As I said, I know this is an … unusual moment to discuss such a thing, but as we are leaving for New York tonight and I wanted to talk to you in person, please allow me to pose my question. If my information is correct, you are the new owner of Mrs. Walsh's house on Seaview Lane."
I had never thought of myself as a homeowner, but of course that was exactly what I had been, at least technically, since Grandpa died. He had made a will leaving me the boat, which had been wrecked in the very storm that had killed him, and the house. Yet it had always felt like Grandma's house to me, not mine.
Now she was gone, too. Her and Grandpa's home was now mine alone, a terribly silent, lonely place.
I nodded curtly at the disturbing stranger's question, eyeing him suspiciously.
"I'm not going to mince words, Mr. Carpenter, if you don't mind. I would be very interested in purchasing the property as a holiday home for my family. The location is excellent. And my wife would love to be able to spend a few days at the seaside once in a while with the children. Of course, we'd need to take a closer look at the house itself, but it seems to be structurally sound, so we'd just have to do some renovation work and maybe make some changes to the garden. So, Mr. Carpenter, I hope you will not feel insulted when I ask if you might consider selling the property? I'd offer you a fair price." He quoted an amount that seemed rather large to me in a casually businesslike tone, but then I didn't know a thing about property prices.
I stared at him in dazed disbelief, so much taken by surprise that I didn't even wonder how he had come to know so much about my grandparents' … our … my house and grounds.
The stranger raised his eyebrows in a wordless, "So?"
I couldn't think of any proper answer, just shook my head defensively.
The crunch of deliberate footsteps came closer from behind on the gravel path. I didn't have to turn around to know Jem was approaching.
Benton seemed to notice him, too, and held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Sorry, Mr. Carpenter, I realize this is indeed not a good time for me to ask. I just thought I might as well take the chance to speak to you while I'm here rather than on the telephone. My apologies for intruding on you at this moment. Really, I'm sorry. Take your time to consider my proposal."
Jem had positioned himself close to me and glared at the stranger who now reached into the pocket of his fine black suit jacket and handed me an embossed business card of thick expensive-looking paper.
"Here's my card. Call me any time when you have made your decision."
I nodded silently, pocketed the card and turned to walk off with Jem.
Benton's polite farewell phrases trailed off uselessly behind our backs.
Martha was waiting for us on the bench under the old chestnut tree. She rose stiffly and heaved a loud sigh. "Glad that it's over", she said. "Good that you told me to sit down, son, I might have fainted had I had to stand much longer." Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she sniffled a bit.
I felt sorry for her. Grandma had been her best friend since childhood. They had known each other for over seventy years, an incredibly long time to my young imagination.
I patted her fleshy shoulder in the black wool coat that was far too warm for this overcast but mild spring day. "Thanks for waiting", I said quietly. "Thanks for being here."
Jem in turn squeezed my upper arm. "Couldn't possibly leave you alone at your grandma's grave, could we?" He had the same gruffly genial manner that I had loved so much about my grandfather, and his simple cordial gesture now brought the first tears of this day to my eyes.
I blinked them away hastily and saw Martha's sunken eyes widen in disgust as Jem told her about our encounter with Charles Benton. "To have the nerve to demand that he sell him the house the very day his poor grandma is buried! And to think that Mick would ever consider giving up his home!"
Martha shook her head angrily. She was positively fuming. "Can you believe that? This is simply appalling! Really, some people have no souls. But then, he's Elsie Jefferson's husband, so I probably shouldn't wonder. That girl's never had a grain of good taste, and neither has her husband, obviously."
"Obviously", I said wearily. They had been so sweet in their outrage on my behalf that this was not the moment to tell them that although Benton's offer had caught me completely off guard and I balked at the thought of the house being occupied by the posh little model family he certainly had, I would have to let or sell it sooner or later anyway.
With our boat gone, which would have provided no riches but a decent living, I was trying to get by on whatever occupation I could find, helping out on the village fishermen's boats whenever the need arose or standing in for Billy at the port, but none of these jobs were permanent nor did they pay anything worth mentioning.
In the months since Grandpa died, we had mostly lived off my grandparents' meagre savings that had dwindled rapidly even though we tried to economise as best we could.
I might have gone away to try and find some decently paid work in Portland or further up the coast, but I couldn't possibly leave Grandma all alone, especially when her health began to deteriorate.
Nevertheless it was a fact that I wouldn't be able to keep up the house much longer unless some miracle happened.
Just a few days ago, the mere thought would have broken my heart.
I began to think different about leaving now. It still saddened me to ponder abandoning what had been my home for so long, but it didn't really feel like a home any more with both of my grandparents gone.
What had bound me to this place had not been the place itself, I had come to understand, but those who had inhabited it. Grandma's quiet, efficient care about house and garden, Grandpa's good-natured grumpiness, their love for the modest home they had made, their love for me, and most of all their love for each other, their blind trust and comprehension stemming from fifty years living through the highs and lows together, rendering words all but unnecessary – that had been what breathed life into the little house.
The house remained an empty shell without them, the familiar old interior where I knew every dent in the floorboards and every chipped teacup doing more to depress than to comfort me.
During all the long years with Mom and Dan in Missouri, I had pined for my old home, thinking it was the sea and the house that I missed just as much as I missed my grandparents, but now I saw that it was not places that mattered in the end. It was those who lived there that made the difference. The people you loved and trusted. People who loved and trusted you. People who let you be who you were. And, sadly, people whose presence you couldn't take for granted.
Life had so many ways of separating you from those you loved, death being only one of them – the final, irrevocable one but maybe not even the worst or the most incomprehensible.
I hadn't heard of Jess and Janie in over two years, ever since the letter I'd written had come back, marked "Return to sender", and I had tried in vain to find out why.
Most of the time, I managed not to think too much about my lovely girls, pushing the thought as far to the back of my mind as I possibly could.
Facing my most recent loss, standing by the third graveside in as many years, it all came rushing back at me.
I turned away from Martha and Jem, leaning against the chestnut's mighty trunk with the bark chafing against my cheek, and simply let go of all restraint, let my tears flow freely for the first time since Grandma was gone.
Without her around, I was ultimately homeless. I loved the house and the village still, but they felt like a home no longer.
After a while, Jem's worn hand came down heavily on my shaking shoulder. "Time to go, son. You come with us for dinner."
I nodded silently, gratefully accepting the hankie he held out to me without any further word.
The following weeks were a hard and lonely time. I went about my work mechanically, having returned to Alfred's boat rather quickly despite his offer to take my time about coming back because I needed to get out. Of course I needed the money, too, what with my funds so low, but the oppressing silence ringing through the familiar rooms of the little house was so much harder to bear than my dire financial situation.
Grandpa's death last summer had left me feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest, but at least I had not been alone with my sorrow then. I had wanted to bury myself in my room or dash off to the seashore, but an endless stream of well-meaning neighbours and friends had flocked to our house to offer their condolences, bringing senseless pots and dishes of food, more than we could possibly eat in a month, and Grandma, small and fragile and very upright in her black dress, had greeted all of them with such composure and grace that I had felt guilty for my childish desire to simply run away and had pulled myself together. If she could stand it, so could I.
It was out of the question for me to deal with those hordes of visitors alone this time. I had made it quite clear that I didn't want half the village to look in on me after Grandma's passing. Martha and Jem had thankfully helped me ward off the few who came calling.
After the funeral, the two of them would often drop by in the evenings when he'd closed the shop to see how I was doing, often bringing some food, and sometimes Ted or Billy came over with a few beers, trying to cheer me up without much success.
Most evenings I spent on my own, though, sorting through papers, trying to make sense of all the old documents I had found in the drawer of Grandpa's nightstand, flicking through the two old photo albums documenting not only their lives, but also parts of my mother's and my own, or reading the rare letters they had written to each other with the peculiar feeling of disturbing their privacy.
Once, I opened the clothes cupboard in their bedroom, wondering what to do with its contents.
The sight of Grandpa's well-worn tweed suit made me smile sadly. He had always looked so uncomfortable in formal attire. Grandma had wanted to dress him up in his suit for the funeral as tradition demanded, but I had objected. Considering that he had virtually, if not literally, died with his boots on, I had persuaded her to let him wear his working clothes this final time, his faded blue pants and jacket and a checked shirt, and his scuffed brown boots on his feet.
Up on the top shelf, neatly folded, was Grandma's grey cardigan, the one with the hole at the elbow that she'd always worn for gardening. I touched it gently, remembering how the slightly oversized garment had used to hang around her bony figure shapelessly and how she used to pull it tighter around her torso when she was feeling cold.
She had always been cold in those last few weeks of her life. She had taken to her bed with the shivers one day in early March and awoken with a bad head cold the next morning, which quickly developed into a severe case of pneumonia.
As nature awoke around us with all its might, nights still chilly but days bright and warm, as the trees were budding and birdsong filled the air, Grandma's strength faded.
Carol, a girl from the village with some basic knowledge of nursing, came to take care of Grandma while I was at work and helped out with the household. She was kind and gentle and I knew Grandma was in good hands with her, but each and every day I feared what I might find upon coming home, what state she'd be in. She was so weak that I was afraid she might not recover and that she would leave me without a proper goodbye, as Grandpa had.
One evening, I returned home rather late. Carol had dozed off in the chair beside Grandma's bed, the newspaper she had been reading to her had dropped to the floor. I awakened her gently, thanked her for waiting until I arrived and sent her home, taking her place by the bedside.
Grandma had all but stopped eating in the last few days, and it began to show in her face. She had never been fat, but recently her cheeks appeared painfully hollow. She slept most of the time now. I would have loved to speak to her but didn't want to wake her up.
After a while, she stirred a little and opened her eyes. When she saw me, she inclined her head a little towards the edge of her bed. "Sit over here with me a bit, will you?" Her voice was still strong as ever, despite her overall physical weakness.
"Of course I will", I said and did as she requested. She half sat up and took my hand in hers, squeezing it with surprising firmness. "Tell me how your day was. I need to hear something else than all those awful things Carol has been reading to me from the paper. I don't care for all that political nonsense any more, or that ugly little man in Germany and the economy and all those depressing other news they print. Why can't they ever write about something good to cheer people up a bit?"
I smiled and gave her a brief account of my workday, adding, "Alfred and the crew are sending their love. They hope you'll be out and about again soon."
She shook her head slowly and said with a tiny wry smile, "That won't happen, love. I'm going to be with your mom and your grandpa soon."
"Grandma! Don't say such a thing!" I exclaimed, horrified. "I need you around!"
"I'm not going to die on you right now, don't you worry", she said with a smile and patted my cheek. "No need to look so startled. But that's the way it goes, Mick darling. And you know, I've been only half alive since your grandpa went, and I'm simply tired of it all. You won't need me around forever. You'll find yourself a nice girl to marry and have a life of your own, so what should you need an old grandmother for?" She gave me a little wink.
"To dance at my wedding and to look after my kids, for example", I retorted, attempting to smile back at her with quivering lips while my eyes were clouding over. I knew it was very unlikely she would live to see me get married and have children.
I averted my head lest she'd see me cry and scratched my arm nervously, trying to keep those tears from falling.
Of course, it was impossible to hide my feelings from her. She simply knew me too well.
She reached out and laid a hand on my back. "No need to cry. I'm still here. Save your tears for when I'm gone, love."
I nodded silently with another shaky smile and blinked them away obediently.
She ran her small thin hand lightly over the seahorse on my arm and said in a solemn tone, "Will you promise me one thing, Mick?"
"Sure I will."
"No tattoos to remember me, do you hear me? That giant seahorse is enough for both of us!"
"Oh, Grandma! You can be sure I won't!" I couldn't help laughing in spite of myself, glad she hadn't lost her humour and that little twinkle in her eye as her strength and her appetite diminished.
She hung in there for another fortnight until, one Saturday morning in April, I walked into her sunlit room to find her lying on her back, her head slightly tipped to one side, facing the window, a serene little smile on her lips as if she was just asleep and having a pleasant dream.
Yet her skin was already cold to the touch when I gently stroked her hand.
She had quietly slipped away while I was still sleeping.
"I hope Grandpa came to meet you", I whispered and kissed her cheek one last time.
I sat with her for a long while, motionless, waiting for reality to sink in.
I was quite numb, fearing that the frightening experience of feeling absolutely nothing that had troubled me so after Mom's accident was going to repeat itself.
Only when I called Martha and Jem to give them the news and heard Martha's voice at the other end of the line, the floodgates broke, and I wept like a child as I told them she was gone.
"Oh, Mick. I'm so terribly sorry", Martha said. "Jem and I will be over in a minute, so you won't be all alone."
But that was what I'd be from now on, all alone. The ground beneath my feet that had seemed so solid had simply been swept out from under me, the happiness I thought I'd finally found had dissolved. I had relied on not having to fend all for myself quite so quickly. I felt way too young and inexperienced to lead an adult's life with nobody there to ask for guidance or advice.
Sure, Jem and Martha would always be ready to help me as long as they were able to, just as Ted and Billy and some of my other friends in the village would, but they could never replace the love and trust and that very special bond I had shared with my grandparents.
I already felt a vague urge to start over anew somewhere else, to take life fully into my own hands, all by myself, wondering if this might be the kind of adventure I'd always dreamed of as a kid, in that twisted way life sometimes has of throwing your dreams back at you.
I closed the door of the cupboard without making any decision about the clothes, but I resolved to make a decision about the house within the next couple of days.
I didn't know what was worse, to imagine that family of strangers filling the house with their jokes and laughter and quarrels, changing everything about the interior and the garden, inviting their posh friends from New York to stay at their quaint little holiday home, occupying what should have remained mine, or to think of Grandma's lovingly tended garden in shambles, the paint Grandpa had always meticulously touched up peeling miserably from the walls while I was away at work in some distant place. Or the whole property falling into disrepair under my own eyes because I was too timid and sentimental to sell but couldn't afford to have the leaking roof mended and the rotting shutters replaced either.
I decided to run down to the cove and swim for a while to clear my head. It was one of those lovely spring days filled with balmy air and brilliant sunlight that make it seem like summer has awakened a few weeks too early. Even now in the late afternoon it was still fairly warm.
Leaving my shoes and shirt on the folding chair by the back door, I jogged along the narrow lane with only my shorts on, scrambled down the rocky path and threw myself into the waves. The sea was still very cold, and I cried out loud as I immersed myself fully in the chilly water and started out away from the shore with a vigorous breaststroke, not particularly fast, but steady and powerful. I wanted to swim as far as I dared, hoping I'd be mercifully exhausted afterwards and get a proper night's sleep for once.
I swam, thinking about everything and nothing, reminiscing, making plans, until dusk began to descend. A chalky half-moon was already visible, hanging low above the clifftop. I shivered a bit as I got out of the water, my muscles burning with pleasant exertion. I cursed under my breath when I noticed that I had forgotten to bring a towel and forced myself to run the short distance home as fast as my tired legs would carry me.
Martha must have been there in my absence. There was a pot of soup on the kitchen table along with sandwiches and two large slices of cake and a handwritten note telling me to heat the soup for dinner and to phone her if I needed anything else. I smiled. She was such a lovely, caring person, so much like Grandma had been. I would miss her and Jem's ministrations, but I had made up my mind now.
Jem had been horrified at what little this rich fellow from the big city was willing to pay for the house, snorting derisively when I told him the price Benton had offered me, but it was enough for me to make a new start, and I had neither the knowledge nor the will to get involved in lengthy negotiations. I would have preferred a local buyer, someone I knew, but there was no one interested in the little property but the man from New York.
So I changed into some dry, warm clothes, ate my supper and went through into the hall to pick up the receiver.
Two or three times, I stopped midway, placing it softly back into its cradle, leaning against the wall, my heart racing.
Finally, I took a very deep breath and went through with dialling the number printed in elegant lettering below an embossed name and title on a cream-coloured business card.
This is my farewell song for Grandma, and here's hoping Mick will find his way "home", wherever that will be, one day.
Izzy - Going Home
Going home, going home
I'll be going home
Quiet light, some still day
I'm just going home
It's not far, just close by
Through an open door
Work all done, care laid by
Going to fear no more
Mother's there expecting me
Father's waiting, too
Lots of folk gathered there
All the friends I knew
All the friends I knew
Nothing's lost, all's gain
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on the way
No more longing for the day
Going to roam no more
Morning star lights the way
Restless dreams all done
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life just begun
There's no break, there's no end
Just a living on
Wide awake with a smile
Going on and on
Going home, going home
I'll be going home
It's not far, just close by
Through an open door
I'm just going home
Going home...