Draca. Geoffrey Gudgion
full sun were oven-warm, almost musty. Others hid under the leaves, cool and fat on a day when the heat had turned the shadows black and stunned the birds into silence. There was just the drone of insects wavering in the air. The hills rising inland, beyond the roof of Grandpa ’ s cottage, were fading into a heat haze.
Jack ’ s bad leg made him stumble on his way back to the house, and he laughed with black humour. Dropping the raspberries would have been too much irony.
Jack had a memory of early childhood. They ’ d all been here at Grandpa ’ s on a rare, family visit, but he ’ d sneaked out alone to hide between the staked lines of fruit. He might have been escaping an argument in the cottage. He ’ d been very young, so small that the highest runners were out of reach, but loose canes arched over him, drooping down as if offering themselves for picking; succulent, pendulous fruit that burst on his tongue. The bowl that day had been porcelain, pretty enough for even a boy to wonder if it was quite the right thing for the garden and to hold it with solemn care on the way back. He ’ d been so pleased with himself that he didn ’ t sense the tension in the kitchen.
Daddy Daddy look Daddy see what I got. He ’ d lifted the bowl in ruby-stained fingers into a thunderclap bark of anger. The shock jolted him so that the top layer of berries went upwards while the bowl fell, tumbling, spilling, to shatter across the flagstones in a blood splash of pulp.
Sorry Daddy sorry Daddy I didn ’ t mean to do it.
Tears at the heart of rage, and the little dance on the spot that kids do when they ’ re frightened and can ’ t run. He may even have wet himself.
Look what you ’ ve done you stupid boy that bowl was your grandmother ’ s.
A frozen, photographic image of a moment. His mother in the hall doorway, silent fear on her face as she cradled a chubby Tilly on one arm. Tilly wide-eyed, sucking her thumb. His father standing by the kitchen table, shouting, with both hands clawed in anger.
And Grandpa, smelling of sweat and cigarettes as he knelt beside Jack, one arm across his back while the other reached for fragments of porcelain.
There, there, no harm done, I never liked that bowl anyways. Don ’ t shout, son, he only dropped it ‘ cos you shouted.
Had it always been like that, him and Grandpa against the rest?
And on the day that his grandpa died, Jack carried raspberries to his father. He told himself he was honouring Grandpa rather than needling his father, who ’ d have forgotten the incident long ago. Harry sat in Grandpa ’ s front room at the kneehole desk in the recess between the fireplace and the dining room wall, and Jack waved the bowl towards him, lifting his shoulders in a half-shrug that made light of the moment. Nearly fifteen years since he ’ d left home and he still had to resist that urge to placate, with an apology ready in his mouth like a bad berry that he might have to spit out.
Harry grimaced, irritated, and turned back to the papers spread in front of him. The drawer hanging open by his knee looked as if it held bank statements and savings passbooks. It didn ’ t seem right, somehow, picking over Grandpa ’ s life so soon. Jack would rather have pulled a bottle of Eddie ’ s elderflower wine from the cupboard under the stairs, sat in the garden with the bowl of raspberries and drunk to him, wherever he ’ d gone.
In the silence, Harry threw one of Grandpa ’ s diaries backhanded towards a plastic recycling crate near his feet. That didn ’ t seem right, either. Nearly forty years of diaries were in those cupboards, all in cheap, hardback, half-page notebooks, all labelled with the year and a ‘ volume ’ number. Volume 35 hit the edge of the crate and fell onto the carpet, fanning pages covered in Grandpa ’ s awkward script. Jack did a mental calculation. Four years ago. He ’ d taken a week ’ s leave and they ’ d sailed round the Channel Islands together. The last long voyage together. Good times. Jack bent over, quietly, and pocketed it.
‘ You could check the loft. ’ Harry didn ’ t look up. He was hunched over the desk, shoulders tense, and he didn ’ t want Jack there.
Jack found a corkscrew instead.
The tide had turned. The mudbanks glistened blue – brown but the boats moored out in the harbour were pointing seawards. Draca used to swing with the tide at a buoy in Freshwater Bay, between the cottage and Witt Point, but the mooring had been empty since arthritis kept Grandpa ashore and Draca was laid up in the boatyard. Grandpa had changed, after that. He ’ d always been old, to Jack, but somehow vital, the sort of guy who ’ d laugh into the storm with spray running down his face and white hair plaster ed to his scalp. But it ’ s hard to sail if you can ’ t grip a rope, and without his boat he became just an old man with salty stories to tell, a man who cursed as his hands fumbled at woodworking tools or a corkscrew.
The pop of the cork sounded muffled, as if the heat had robbed the air of its resonance. Grandpa ’ s elderflower wine was fragrant, floral and sweet enough to sharpen the raspberries. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to have a moment of reflection, to sit in the garden and toast him in his own, tepid wine, eating the first raspberries of the summer. Here ’ s to you, old man. Thanks for the good times. He took another pull at the wine, forcing his mind onto good memories, away from Eddie ’ s screaming end and his own humiliation. Rages weren ’ t him. Hadn ’ t been. He ’ d been trained to kill but he didn ’ t take swings at people. Never before. These explosions of anger were getting worse.
Grandpa had understood. He ’ d been gentle, when Jack first came back. Not in the cloying, gosh-it-must-have-been-awful way most people have, but with a quiet tolerance as if he ’ d been there. He seemed to understand that sometimes people don ’ t need sympathy; they need time to work out how to live with the shit inside them. Homemade wine, a boat seat and silence between friends, staring out over the inlet. Good therapy for both of them. On one of Jack ’ s first visits back, Grandpa had broken the silence to tell Jack he had cancer. Aggressive. Terminal. Soon. After that , Jack had come over a lot, usually on his own. Charlotte was probably glad to have him out of the house.
Jack leafed through the diary, looking for entries about their voyage. Each entry started with a weather report, like a ship ’ s log. He ’ d forgotten that that was also the year that Eddie found the carving.
20 th April. Wind ESE Force 4. Fair.
I ’ m soaking the dragon in an old bath, in the shed. Had to trim the burnt end so it would fit. Kept it in seawater, first, then polyethylene glycol. Had the devil ’ s own job to find that stuff. Six more months, I reckon, before it ’ s safe to take it out. It looks up at me through the chemicals the way a sick patient looks at a doctor.
Maybe it ’ s Danish, from one of Guthrum ’ s ships. He raided this coast in the time of King Alfred, him and his army.
Guthrum the oath-breaker, the Saxons called him, but then the Saxons wrote the histories so they ’ re bound to have made him out the bad guy. I ’ d like it to be Viking.
‘ I thought you were going to help. There ’ s still the loft to do. ’
Jack slipped the diary out of sight. His father frowned into the sun by the seat, holding up an envelope to shield his eyes. Jack remembered that tone. It hovered between disappointment and mild contempt, and it was the voice he ’ d used to express disapproval when Jack became too old to be ordered around. It still made him feel like a teenager who wouldn ’ t tidy his room.
‘ Have some wine. Lighten up. ’
Jack had brought a spare glass and slid it along the shelf inside the hull.
‘ Too early for me. ’ Harry sat down, anyway. The silence stretched. ‘ Bit jumpy, are we? ’
‘ Just a touch. It ’ ll pass. ’
A different kind of silence grew between them,