Saturday's Story

A Bitter Solstice

He had never quite grasped why he disobeyed her orders so flagrantly. There was a summons, if you like, from the high advantage of the oriel window that projected onto an abandoned shoreline below. Around the darkened space of what more looked like a waiting area for an appointment that was never going to be announced, the assortment of blended loveseats, armchairs and even an electronic recliner (for he was ‘granddad’ of the family) revealed an unkind truth of a home in a reluctant state of poverty. The tree, never artificial, stood in foreshadowed isolation, shirked away from the radiant glow of lights which this room so desperately needed at the moment. But he was happy, mollified even, by the fall of a duty sinking away into a restful night’s peace. Marjorie, the lady of this house, was already sorting through the receipts and detailing how the spending forecasts for the coming months were to be grim tidings regardless of her feedback. The kids had gone upstairs, locked away from any concern or business that one might construe as ‘family time’. To him, gazing on the hallowed thrash of a faraway sea, deadened to all the inhabitants inside.

That’s when he knew. There was something he knew that could not be neglected for a moment longer. The end of this chapter could not be written before he had completed what was only a necessity. Closing the weathered door, its hinges squealing their warning at every attempt to draw it further, he shivered from the head down, cursing the hated innate instinct to leave all rational precautions like winter wear behind. He knew it would have been impossible anyway, for Marjorie would have only locked the door from the inside, curbing all attempts that dear granddad should wander outside and do himself a mischief. The small cobbled stones that descended deftly to an immediate stone verge evidently had been untendered to for some time now for weeks – months, as it were. The overlooking gardens of the identical homes of other occupants only confirmed this. The worst torrents of autumn had ensured most of their keepers didn’t dare tend to their battered idylls. He briskly charted over the pebbled mount, this obstacle making certain that he was committed to the cause it wanted him to seek. The howl of an angry gale causing the man to chatter from the lips that were now desperately dried from Frosty’s might. The burgundy cardigan, closed around a dense woollen pullover, wallowing against the impossible force that crawled beneath the shallow flesh of his chest. It was then, when he at last it was to be all over, he had reached the summit of his destination. However, there was now to be an unexpected addition. A kite, patterned with the colours of a family coat of arms, rose as a challenger to its opponent of the all-consuming world around it. Its magnificent beauty, gliding so effortlessly in a storm no man had thought approaching. A small child, his hair the colour of red flames and bundled into a stretched green anorak, gleamed at his success. The sea had drew closer…

But he needs his father, he thought.

Daring to rush down, he immediately felt the need to be beside the young child. A boy needs his dad.

“That’s quite a stunner of a kite you have there. It’s a grand present, I’ll tell you now.” He was not at the boy’s side, the child now fixing his joyful expression to that of Pygmalion’s creation.   The sea had begun to wash over their feet now.

“Give it to me for a sec, boy…” He sought to cup his hands over the gloved hands of the boy, enveloping red sheaths of sticky joints over the reassuring warmth. Giving a shrill cry, the boy slapped away the efforts of this lost geriatric. His taught boots running away into the far distance of the path he came, his kite now losing the inevitable battle of the winds and falling in line to defeat below.

“Grandpa…” came a voice from afar. The ocean gave a sudden jerk and the cotton slippers the man had already torn from its stony crossing soaked to the point of him giving a yell of torment from the icy assault. It was a false summons – a call from an unseen enemy. He daren’t move now. Why couldn’t it just be over now?

“My God! What are you doing in there you silly man?” It was Marjorie, bounding over now to whisk him away back to civilisation.

Once Marjorie had recovered him back into his recliner and immediately threw three blankets apiece in order to quell the rush of his shakes, she pulled a nearby dining chair and sat on his right side, looking more mournful in that worn green jumper with a novelty reindeer stitched into its fibres. Even that looked a bit sad now.

“I knew you’d go down there,” she began. “William called me upstairs, saying that ‘Granddad ‘s done it again’” She tried a forced giggle, but evidently failing, she moved on.

“Why do you do this to yourself every year? She forgave you long before…well, not being here anymore.”

He stuttered, unable to contemplate such an idea. He looked to his niece, seeing the very same eyes that had replaced his once happy Gilda’s.

“I saw him there…he looked just like our Peter. Oh, if I didn’t go in there…”

Marjorie gave him a hard shake of her neck, her lips moving to the negative.

“No, no. It was Auntie Gilda’s doing. If she hadn’t been so selfish enough th throw herself off that peddle boat…

“But she didn’t!” Granddad protested

“Oh come off it,” whispered Marjorie. “You know she leaped just to spite all the family. Because of how nobody ever understood her.”

He turned away now, looking solidly of the two living boys that were never his.

“You know, the sea was so humid that day. It was the colour of the very sky when we come here in the summer. I remember when she came to the shore again. Unable to go through her plan to just show how I could never have our child without her. I tried to find him, I really did…” He put his palms to mask his face, the silence indicating another moment’s weep.

“It’s over now grandpa. I don’t know how to change that now. It’s history. Oh, I can’t stand it when you do this to yourself. Especially today, when it’s the boys upstairs who need us to make these days special. How about some mulled wine, eh?” Marjorie, hoisting herself with a sigh at the effort of it, glided into the open dining area.

“You know, I just love coming to this place in winter. Don’t you, grandpa. Grandpa?” He still looked faraway into another land.

“You, know, I could’ve swore that would have been my grandson on the same beach.”

“But he wasn’t!” called Marjorie.

“Maybe. But his eyes inside told me what had been lost, we lost together.”

The shoreline outside had been quelled. Only a rumble of soft ripples could be perceived.