Remembering Silence (standard:adventure, 3147 words)
Author: Shaw	Added: Dec 16 2005	Views/Reads: 3279/2314	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
I was asked to put this story up again. I hope you like it enough to tell me what you think.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

He unpacked the rest of his bags with Mum as Dad pushed me along by the
saddle of my bike. I was furiously peddling when I heard Mum and 
Granddad clapping and whooping and turning I saw Dad had lied and let 
me go. 

It wasn't long later when I was in my adored Granddad's room as he was
unpacking, he picked me up and placed me on the bed and began to tell 
me a story about a sailor named Sinbad, a sailor that often struggled 
where to unpack his belongings. 

As I listened something in Granddad's open bag caught my eye. It was an
old and weathered photograph in a gold frame of a young man who clearly 
resembled my granddad with another man. They both were in army 
uniforms. 

I was about to mention it when Mum put her head around the corner and
asked me to come downstairs and help with dinner. Downstairs I 
mentioned it to Mum as she dried a plate. She smashed the plate and 
cupped her hands to her mouth. She was shaking. 

‘Sometimes,' she said at last, taking me gently by the arms, ‘Sometimes
there are things we'll never understand, no matter how much we want to. 
You mustn't mention what you saw to granddad. Do you understand? You 
mustn't ever. All we can do is be here for him and let him know that we 
are. Do you understand this Lewis?' 

I wasn't sure what to think, for something so small to be so serious was
incomprehensible to me. I couldn't see how anything could ever upset 
Granddad the way Mum imagined this would but nodded and said I 
understood. Mum nodded back and smiled, turning to clear up the broken 
plate. 

Grandad settled in as I knew he would. He'd spend mornings helping Mum
with me and the afternoons helping Dad with himself. It was a constant 
irritation to my father to have his hardest DIY efforts reduced to 
amateurish hobbies by Granddad. Everything he did, Granddad really 
could do better. 

It was the following summer when Mum and Dad had a barbecue with all
their friends. I'd eaten enough burgers to pop and after watching the 
adults get ruddier complexions and laugh at sillier things I'd had 
enough and asked to be excused. 

Finding a quiet space on the grass I laid back and watched the sky.
Sometime later I woke up hearing Granddad calling. 

‘So this is where you got to Lewy?' he said, ‘It's bad for your eyes to
look at the sun,' 

‘I'm looking at the clouds,' I said dreamily. 

‘Really.' He replied, lowering himself onto the grass beside me, ‘Do you
mind? I haven't done this in years.' 

‘Done what in years?' 

‘Made shapes with the clouds?' 

‘What's that?' 

‘Look,' he said taking my hand and pointing it into the sky, ‘there's a
door, there's a wall, there's a spire! You see? A church!' 

I did see the church and laughed. 

‘You have a go.' 

‘But I can't see anything.' I said. 

‘That's because you're looking the wrong way. What do you want to see
more than anything?' 

‘More than anything?' 

‘More than anything.' 

‘The Eiffel tower.' 

‘You've never seen the Eiffel tower?' 

‘I'm only six Granddad.' 

‘Oh right, lets see . . . hmmm . . . there it is! Give me your finger.'
Again Granddad took my finger and drew into the sky and as clearly as 
the sky itself I saw a white Eiffel tower floating above me. 

‘Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there,' said
Granddad rising to his feet. 

‘Granddad?' I asked as he was about to leave, 

‘Yes?' 

‘Who taught you that?' 

‘My brother,' he said, ‘When we were children as old as you are now. We
used to run around in the fields and when we were tired we'd lie back 
in the grass and just imagine all those things we dreamed we'd see one 
day. “Making shapes” was our favourite game.' 

‘Granddad?' 

‘Yes,' 

‘Is your brother the man in your photograph?' 

It is a terrible thing to cause pain to someone you love and it scars. I
will never forget the look in Granddad's face when I said those stupid 
words. His face a face that was always smiling, always happy, always 
kind and always beautiful turned at once to desert. His eyes were 
devastated beyond description and yet like the realisation of a man 
that death is no myth to his life. His voice failed and he shuffled, 
looking away and back again before trying to say something and could 
not, and headed back to the house. 

I did not see Granddad again that day but the next he was his old self
again, joking with Mum and telling Dad how to fix things that really 
didn't need fixing. When we were alone he gave me some chocolate with a 
conspirator's wink and kissed me on the crown of my head. It was his 
way I suppose of telling me that he felt sorry. 

In November Granddad changed. He joked less with Mum and instructed Dad
with less focus, choosing to stay in his room until eventually we only 
saw him at mealtimes. Then one day he didn't come down at all. That day 
was November 11th. 

Mum, Dad and I always stood together at the table at eleven. It was
something I had never really understood to my shame.  I had always 
wondered what I was supposed to be thinking about during that one 
minute silence. What good did it do, I used to think, being silent? 

I got used to it happening every year, Granddad alone in his room and
the next day everything back to normal although it was a little awkward 
for him at first.  That date, November 11th, I only saw him twice on a 
November 11th. 

The first time I was eight and because I couldn't sleep I went
downstairs for a glass of water. I saw Granddad in the garden. He was 
lying on the grass, looking up at the night sky and dressed in a 
military uniform with medals on his chest that impressed me at the 
time. I could only watch through the window at him pointing into the 
night sky, drawing a shape. 

He came in and poured a drink from a bottle on the table. I was behind
the door and he couldn't see me there. But I could see him as he 
unpinned one medal and whispered “Hugo” before throwing his head back 
and emptying the glass, sliding it away from him and looking hard at 
the medal with that same look in his eyes I saw that summer in the 
garden. 

I can see that medal now: a dull bronze cross, a red ribbon. I was so
close I could see a lion engraved upon it. It was only years later I 
learnt what that medal was. And what it took for a man to get it. 

Sometime after that it was my Birthday and Granddad came into my room.
He said he had a present for me and tried to pick me up but I was too 
heavy so he let me down with a wheeze. 

‘Dear oh dear boy!' he laughed, catching his breath ‘Phew! You'd better
walk!' 

I followed him; mum and dad were loading cases into the car. 

‘What's happening?' I asked, 

‘That would be telling,' laughed Granddad, ‘you'll have to come and find
out, won't you?' 

Two hours in the car and when we reached Dover I was still none the
wiser especially as Mum and Dad had stopped speaking to each other 
before we left the county. Another hour in another queue and we drove 
onto a ship, “a Ferry” Granddad corrected me. 

An hour later we were in France. It was all so new to me, everything so
different from anything back home. Dad struggled to ask one Frenchman 
directions and contained himself admirably when he noticed Granddad 
happily chatting with the Frenchman's wife. An Eternity later we 
arrived in Paris and I saw at last my Birthday present. 

The Eiffel Tower just kept going, all the pictures failing its true
size. It was immense. We climbed to the top to a view that stretched 
into forever and it was only the first of three wonderful days I'll 
never forget. 

I won't pretend I didn't notice any change in Granddad in the years
after France, small changes mostly that accumulated; his wit slowed, 
his footing less assured, his joking less honest. Until one night he 
went to bed and stayed there the next day, and never left it again. The 
changes came and thick and fast, he lost weight and was often 
incoherent, I tried to follow him but struggled. Those times I 
understood he'd smile and I'd see my old granddad again, just for a 
minute and he was gone. 

Time went by and I began to read to him, his eyesight failing so badly
he couldn't make out the words on a page. 

Then November came and his health worsened. He became so distant we
would sit for hours in silence until I rose to leave and he would say 
“come back soon Lewy” and I returned to his side. November 10th and I 
had just finished reading him “The Count of Monte Cristo” and rose to 
put the book back on the shelf. 

‘Do you believe in Magic Lewy?' he asked me, 

‘I don't know,' I replied, 

‘Do you believe in Heaven?' 

I didn't like this but answered that I did. 

‘Why do you believe in Heaven Lewy?' 

‘“Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there”'. 

He seemed to remember the day he had said that to me or perhaps some
other day when some other person had said it to him. 

‘Would you spend tomorrow with me Lewy?' 

To be asked that honour, knowing how special and private it was to him I
couldn't speak. 

‘I'd be honoured, sir.' I said at last, 

‘Sir!' he chuckled, my granddad again. 

This was the second time I saw my Granddad on November 11th and I woke
early to shower and dress my best, joining Mum and Dad at breakfast 
only to tell them I wouldn't be. 

‘Why are you dressed like that?' mum asked, 

‘Granddad asked me to spend today with him.' 

Mum clasped her hand to her mouth and sobbed; rounding the table she
hugged me close to her. 

‘You make him proud,' she said, ‘make him know how much we love him, how
much we owe him. Make him . . .' 

She turned to the sink, her shoulders trembling as Dad rose to comfort
her and smiled that I was Ok to leave. 

Granddad had tried to climb out of bed. I spent a few moments
straightening his sheets as he told me not to bother. We sat in silence 
until he started to talk about his childhood, about the games he and 
Hugo would play, the trouble they were often in and he said it all in a 
voice I didn't know. I could barely see my Granddad in him, there was 
so little left, he constantly had to turn when the pressure on his 
chest was too much and was completely incoherent to me many times, but 
he didn't seem to notice as he talked on till the clock struck half 
past ten. He started as he noticed and tried to rise but I had little 
difficulty pushing him back down, 

‘Please,' he said to me. 

I reached down and helped him but his strength failed and he lay
wheezing painfully watching the clock move closer to the hour. 

‘Open . . . the . . . drawer,' he said at last, pointing to the cabinet
beside his bed. Inside was the photograph I had seen all those years 
ago when Granddad came to live with us, of two men laughing. He took 
the photograph and stroked its cold glass and pointed to the drawer 
again. I looked and there was that old red ribbon I'd seen before 
nestling that dull bronze cross engraved with a lion and the words “For 
Valour” beneath Queen Victoria's cross. 

I handed the medal to him, but he shook his hand. 

‘One minute,' he said fighting for breath, ‘wear . . . it . . .
remember.' 

He was weakening fast and it took every effort he had in him to make his
words clear, I wanted to call Mum but he just shook his head. 

‘Don't . . . take . . . this minute.' He begged me. 

I steeled myself for this minute but couldn't forget all those silences
I had wondered what to think about. 

‘I don't know what to remember?' I asked him, terrified I would do this
last thing wrong. 

‘We don't,' he said, fighting the pain, ‘have one minute . . . silence,
to remember . . .  we have . . . one minute . . . to remember . . . the 
silence,' 

I stood, pinned the medal to me and as the hour closed I fought my pride
in him with everything I had in me. 

‘Do you believe in Magic, Lewy?' he asked as the hour struck. The medal
glinted and there was a flash, a bolt of lightening. 

And it was raining, the thunder deafening with men running left and
right of me inside a slim ditch. 

‘Move!' bawled a ferocious voice and as surely as I see this word a
sergeant major was walking through the trench, walking straight past me 
as though I wasn't there. 

The soldiers took their places at ladders in hundreds. A terrific
barrage of guns was exploding over our heads, a noise so ferocious I 
had thought it a storm. The thunder and lightening of artillery, the 
barrage, the awful rain, the mud crawling over limbs, I was seeing 
hell. 

And here I saw two faces I knew from an old photograph. Granddad and his
brother Hugo taking their place at a ladder. 

A shell landed in the trench and three men disappeared in one flash. I
hadn't time to think before the men in the trench filled every hole 
without a word, as the guns stopped firing. 

‘One minute!' roared the fierce sergeant. 

Then silence. Absolute silence. A hundred tin hats bowed into the
perpendicular of the trench wall. At last I heard something, a ladder 
shaking in the grip of one young soldier. I tried to steady his hands 
but could not. I was a ghost. I could hear him though, muttering 
incoherently and sobbing simultaneously. 

‘Oh God!' I heard him pray, ‘One Minute?' 

‘Just one minute more?' 

Whistles blew all around me and with them the noise returned, the men
roaring as they climbed the ladders and over the top. I followed 
Granddad and Hugo, explosions left and right of us, the chugging of 
machine gunfire and then the screaming. The terrible screaming. All I 
could see of where we were headed was the murderous blinking light of a 
machine gun and that was no beacon to follow but they followed it, wave 
after wave to feed the screaming. 

Hugo lurched backwards, staggered and span onto his back. Granddad
pulled him into the cover of an immense shell crater and hurriedly 
looked to him, he rose to go on with the others but Hugo clung to his 
arm. Granddad took his hand from him and went on. 

‘I didn't know how bad it was.' A voice I knew said. 

I turned. There was Granddad as young as in the trench but with a look
in his eye I knew. 

‘I wouldn't have left him if I knew.' He said, ‘Remember what I told
you?' 

‘“Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there”' He nodded,
looking back to his brother. 

‘I couldn't see it,' he whispered, taking a pace forward, 

‘What about Mum?' was all I could think to say, he turned to me and
kissed the crown of my head. 

‘Let her see you,' he said and left me. 

He walked on towards Hugo and lay down with him. They were smiling. I
had never seen Granddad so pure with happiness. He took his brother's 
hand and pointed up into the sky. They were making shapes in the clouds 
of smoke and sky and drew a childhood together all the while untill 
Hugo finally faded. Perhaps, I like to hope, perhaps the last shape he 
saw was the face of my mother. His neice. A future to remember his 
silence. 

THE END. 


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