As a small lad I would arrive from the big smoke and be left to run around my grandparents’ Derbyshire garden in the quaintly named Two Dales. It was full of hidden crevices, little ceramic signs and rooms that smelled of Pears soap.
I knew they were kind and I knew I loved them, but I had no idea what they thought about the world. I only saw them in the good times. They were of a different generation, so I didn’t think of them as fully rounded people with faults, hopes and dreams. Yet they represented something so basic and fundamental, I was constantly drawn there. Everything about them seemed warm and loving.
Having survived two world wars, they were masters of self-sufficiency and kept chickens in the shed. And although the lawn was rolled to within an inch of its life, it was the vegetable patch at the back, next to the stone wall, where we spent most of our time.
Peas, potatoes, beans and green things emerged from inside the ground and grew off bits of string stretched across wooden poles. I was sent out to pick and pluck, placing these strange-shaped items in newspaper, which in those days was much admired for its ability to keep vegetables fresh.
If I finished my chores early, my grandfather would button up his shirt, push up his tie, escort me to his Ford Anglia and drive (never more than 30mph) to watch a cricket match, or see the leaning tower of Chesterfield. My sisters, meanwhile, entrenched in the kitchen, helped our smiling grandmother prepare meat pie and home-made pastry on a polished range that glowed red hot from dusk till dawn.
When meals were ready, she’d ring a bell and we’d wash our hands then run into the lounge, clearly indicated by a small ceramic notice on the door. It showed a picture of pigs with their noses in a trough. It simply read “Dining room”. And on the walls were small photos of all the family, including one of a mysterious but beautiful brown-haired girl who no one ever talked about. She was some ephemeral figure captured during a moment of pride and happiness.
After lunch we would go out across the moors for a long, sturdy walk. Because walking did something that no other exercise could: it cleansed the mind and made the world a better place. Then, on the dot of 9pm, we’d be sent up to bed through a door where another sign read “Horror’s room” and showed a small blonde girl next to a jumping boy gleefully holding a watering can in his hand. I used to think the picture had been specially chosen to represent me.
There was never any conflict, no arguments. My grandparents were there for the good things in life, always open-armed, calm and, recently retired, they played at a pace that suited their home-grown vegetables. Maybe I was just too young to be interested or saw no reason to question what felt easy, but I don’t remember asking them about themselves. They were devoted to me, read me stories and hugged me tight – that was their role. They were old and I loved them for it.
Between copious cups of tea served in proper china cups, we played out this same idyllic Enid Blytonesque childhood summer after rainy summer for several years.
I casually assumed that no longer having the responsibility of parenting enabled them to step back and focus on what mattered: the gift of time.
Then, in the moments before the end of their lives, when all the time in the world suddenly ran out, who they were not only mattered, it became compelling.
There had been a shift when my parents divorced. It suddenly became harder to see my grandparents without feeling awkward. They felt a duty to silently defend their son – my father – and we had to avoid ever talking about my mum. They were from a generation where it was thought better to skirt round anything uncomfortable in the hope problems would shrivel away.
Shortly afterwards, my father remarried a woman 20 years his junior, and my grandparents’ uneasiness became even more apparent. Unsettled by the changing family dynamic, they sold the home of their dreams and moved to a nearby bungalow, then on to Morecambe, and a little later back to Derbyshire. Soon my father and his new wife moved in with them and the lightness disappeared from my grandmother’s step.
The last time I saw her, she was almost 90. After she’d prepared lunch, my grandmother grabbed my arm and took me to one side. “Come with me,” she said ushering me towards her garage. She handed me several cardboard boxes, filled with items she’d wrapped in newspaper. She was nervous, and her eyes told a story I’d never before experienced. “Take them,” she whispered. “And don’t let anyone see.”
I did as I was told and furtively placed them in the back of my car. She looked much calmer and smiled when I returned. The deed had been done. “I don’t know what will happen to it all when I die,” she said.
My grandmother was not only facing her own demise, she feared that all she had worked for and what she represented would disappear, unless the things that mattered were put in safekeeping. Inside the boxes were trinkets and memories that went back decades. They were worth little and would mean nothing to people without our history. That much she knew. To me they were priceless.
Inside the newspaper was a “Two for Joy” tea set to celebrate in 1926 the birth of the new Princess Elizabeth, now the Queen. Two cups, two saucers, two side plates, a delicate teapot, a sugar bowl and milk jug. All intricately made and, despite being banished to the garage, still in pristine condition. Among the finger plates, clocks and mugs wrapped in layer upon layer of newsprint were the two cheap ceramic door signs – Dining room and Horror’s room. I hadn’t seen them for years, but they took me back to the rainy summers of Two Dales.
Some years after my grandmother died, I went back to their home. The house had been changed, walls knocked down, everything just a little smaller and different. But the garden was just as it ever was.
I’d come to realise the beautiful, bright, brown-haired girl whose picture sat silently for years on their wall was their daughter, my aunt Gillian.
She died aged 24, from an asthma attack. It had been their lot to watch her lose her fight for breath inside an oxygen tent.
A simple inhaler would have saved her life and made theirs complete. But it was not to be. So they had to quietly take her death on the chin and move on. They dealt with this terrible event, too painful to talk about, by taking a deep breath and grieving so quietly I sensed it best not to ask questions.
Back then, I was too young to understand what death meant, or the pain a parent carries when they can no longer protect their child from life’s adversities. Because of the photo, I knew of her existence as a two-dimensional, fleeting figure, but I only really became aware of what she meant and how her early death may have affected my grandparents long after they died. The epiphany of hindsight.
My grandmother had worked as a midwife, my grandfather had been one of 13 siblings, yet the dreadful irony was that, although they were surrounded by children, they had lost their only daughter.
Their reaction was to pour love into their grandchildren, and I was the fortunate recipient. They tried to ignore all that went wrong and to make everything perfect, so I was protected.
Whether they were right or wrong in so doing is no longer a question in my mind. What mattered were the bonds they created with the people they loved.
For my part, I have put the ceramic sign on my kid’s bedroom door, and the tea set sits quietly, untouched in the corner. It’s lovely to know they are still with me.
