Nan said he never talked about the war much, except when he was drunk, when he would hammer at the piano with his fists, sing There’ll Always be an England, and toast the names of men she knew nothing about.
“What about the medals?” I said.
“What medals Charlie? I don’t remember any medals.”
“He must have got something. Didn’t everyone get a medal?”
“I never got a medal,” she said. “And I spent my ripest years in the underground.”
“But that’s different,” I said.
“They gave us canned whale meat to eat. We only had day old bread. I didn’t see a banana again until I was pregnant. We came out of the station one morning and Ethel’s house down the road was gone. All her underwear was in the street. ‘Well I never,’ I thought. ‘She deserves a medal.’ But she never got one.”
The old man’s time was running out. He’d been up most of the night, connected to his oxygen tank. He couldn’t make it up the stairs any more, so he had to sleep in the living room. When he couldn’t sleep he’d turn on Dish Blû and watch French erotica, cranked up high. I lay awake upstairs, in a different time zone, listening to the slaps and moans of the TV as it mixed with the sounds of the oxygen tank.
Bonjour, Je suis le plombier.
Ah, bon. Je voudrais un peu de plomberie.
Hiss.
Le piston est très grand.
Oui. Toute la monde.
Hiss.
I heard a series of thuds – Granddad was banging his walking stick on the ground for attention. He needed to use the toilet, but couldn’t get out of his chair. I left the bed and made my way down the stairs. When I used to visit here, as a kid, I would run up and down these steps on all fours, or slide down on my cheeks, each bump sending a shock up my spine to the base of my skull, to my teeth. When I was five I would jump from the fourth step to the landing in one leap, arriving hard on the hardwood floor. The piano would rumble in applause. By six I could clear as many steps. Once, I was sure I would be able to clear all the steps in one, frightful bound, but now I took them one at a time, remembering the carpet on the fourth step was loose. Through the marbled glass in the front door’s small window I could see the red light of day creeping up. It would soon be hanging over the O2, the Gherkin, the London Eye, all landmarks that were never here before. The Mirror and the News, each with 80-point headlines screaming out puns, would soon be squeezed through the letterbox and plop on the hallway floor.
Il pleut.
Oui, Je fais la pluis.
Hiss.
Granddad had changed the TV station by the time I opened the living room door. Football was on again.
“Toilet please Charlie,” he said. I hooked my hands under his armpits and lifted. His face, up close, looked like unraveled origami: every fold and crease perfectly intentional, there for a reason, but now so hard to tell what it once was. I got him on his feet and noticed for the first time how short he was.
“Who’s winning?” I said, nodding over at the TV.
“I don’t even know who’s playing anymore Charlie.”
The cheers of the crowd escalated as I helped him through the kitchen and past the sink. “That would sound deep if you hadn’t just been watching blue movies,” I said.
“You know too much.”
“Tell me about the medals.”
“I’ve forgotten all kinds of things. I’ve probably forgotten about any medals.”
“Tell me about the medals or you can piss in your chair tonight.”
He promised to tell me in the morning. I went to bed, expecting to be rewarded with sleep. Instead, I spent the night on the floor, ear to the ground, waiting for each hiss of the oxygen tank.
Ben Hogwood is a journalist and former editorial assistant of the North Carolina Literary Review. He lives in Beaufort, North Carolina, with his wife and son.
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