Memories For A Liftetime

An old lady reflects on her life, the highs, the lows, all while watching it play out through her window.

Memories for a Lifetime

 

Brushing her grey hair, Lucy stared out of the window. The sunset blazing on the summer grass, tinting it with colour, never changed �" what changed were the occupants. Gone were those suffocating skirts and the seniority of men was now shattered…almost. Lucy was looking past her front garden, across the road and into the playing fields beyond. Children played on the swings and the wooden playhouse was host to a plethora of whispering girls while boys fought for dominance in an intense battle on the football pitch. Every now and then a heated curse of indignations caught the girls’ attention and a chorus of giggles followed, while the younger children stared in open-mouthed confusion.

In her and Malcolm’s day, grounds like these did not hold social gatherings such as the one Lucy was observing. No, their days were spent in family bunkers and busy streets, overflowing with hopeful newspaper vendors and hopeless soldiers. She had met Malcolm in one of those corrugated bunkers. Lucy laughed, poor lad. ‘If he didn’t have bad luck, he had none at all,’ she would say after every weekly attempt at the National lottery. That day so long ago was no different. A dull, rain-sodden birthday and the intrusive siren sounded as he was running home from football and towards a birthday meal created from rations. Unable to reach safety in time, he went to the first house he saw, knocked on the door and the rest is history.

They had a good start, Lucy remembered, as she watched a young couple make their way to the bench beside the park. She recognised the couple, they were regulars at this bench. They met there �" as far as Lucy could tell - and they fought there, made up there and fought there again. Although, Lucy thought this could be the last time she would ever see the young couple at their bench. She was currently watching an apparent break up.

She sniffed. Malcolm’s signature chortle would have engulfed the entire room if he were here �" ‘Always the nosy one, Lu!’ he would have said if he had been watching her pondering the dynamics of social groups at the age of ninety-two. But the natural play and young actors were just too interesting, especially when the lovebirds in front of her took centre stage. The gossiping girls, laughing children and angry footballers became the mise-en-scene, the wind blowing away any background noise while the sun gave the couple and natural spotlight. Lucy wondered whether she and Malcolm had ever starred in some old lady’s glass cinema screen. Did this lady laugh with them? Cry with them? Celebrate their successes? And there had been much to celebrate: seventy years of marriage, beautiful children, gorgeous grandchildren and a great grandson who took her gasping breath away when she had first held him. She had done well over the years.

 ‘We have done well, Lu. I was there just as much as you, and when are you going to call the police on these bairns? Cause not a thing but trouble, just you see…’

They were never a uniquely special couple. When they moved into this comfy abode, the ‘wally dugs’ and netted curtains were put up just like their mothers’ respective homes. They were still there, although they had been joined by various other quaint effects �" a few fridge magnets for each new country to which her successors travelled, drawings her grandchildren proudly showed off were pinned on a special wall near the framed photos, the furniture had not changed �" still a rough, cheap leather sofa set and an ancient TV set which - and her children were still shocked at this - had a back on it!

Their bedroom had transformed into her favourite room. A huge bed which stayed with her and Malcolm since their early days dominated while on the walls hung all sorts of little trinkets and postcards the man had sent his wife whilst away. Lucy would never forget the elated shock she felt hearing his chortle as she was going to bed one night. He picked her up and spun her so high her head was almost literally in the clouds. Then, when all was calm again, he had put in her hand the most adorable stuffed tiger toy;

‘I am not joking you, Lu, the real ones were everywhere! We were under strict orders, of course, but when one comes flying at you, all teeth and growl…’

Her house was close yet still far enough from the field so that with her window open, Lucy could hear every word that was said, as long as there were no mumblings of course. However, Lucy may be a tenant in the modern era but her tiger sat next to a wired telephone and she cursed the modern day English �" especially when spat out from an otherwise impressionable, if slightly rough, young boy and girl with the intention to hurt. She had often raved about it to Malcolm when they first moved in;

‘I shall never understand why these bairns feel the explicit need to throw around such vulgar language, ‘likes’ and ‘in-its’ left, right and centre as if they were adequate forms of speaking to one another! Oh, Malcolm, what happened to the world?’

‘Lucy, you spend your days watching and listening to these ‘bairn’s’ lack of good quality English…’

‘Well, I am not saying that what is sprouted from such illiterate seeds is not interesting, just hard to decipher. Now, remember to take that pill with dinner.’

The sun turned the girl’s blonde hair a fiery orange, but did nothing to cool her fury. Lucy knew what she was shouting about without need of an open window, however it did help;

‘God’s sake, Mark! How long do you think I can keep doing this! We are together, do you remember that?’

‘Of course I do, Beth! Of course I know that we are together because I have never been allowed to forget for the past year!’

‘Beth’ faltered for a second, clearly shocked. She quickly regained herself and the hackles rose once again,

‘What? Well you obviously did if you…Mark, do not make this about me �" this is about you and that…that…’

There was a short silence, tension was thick and Lucy noted she was not the only attentive observer. By now the children were off home, probably tucked into bed ready for school the next day, but the older ones - the playhouse girls and football boys �" had started to gather around the swings. Lucy was slightly amused by the modern teenage subtlety. 

She also noticed how they all stuck together. She couldn’t deny the tingle in her heart that burned for a companion while she feigned puzzles, instead heeding to the mewling of indignant teenagers and friendly dog-walkers as they passed her garden bench. Every now and then a dog would jump up next to her and wag his tail, or one of the teenagers would say ‘Hello’ on their way home, but it was never the same as the rare gaggle of grandchildren or, better yet, her chortling husband. An impossible dream, she knew.

‘It was a mistake, Beth! Why don’t you get this? You were gone and she was-‘

‘She was what? She was there? You are not seriously gonna blame me for your so-called mistake, this was your doing!’

‘I know, d****t, I know and I am so sorry, Beth, I’m so sorry,’

Lucy absolutely trembled at the thought of her grandchildren saying these words. Malcolm would always laugh at her whenever anyone deemed it appropriate to voice these lazy expressions like ‘gonna’.

‘How hard is it to say “going to”?’

‘We are living in new times, Lu,’

Malcolm always had a rebuttal for anything �" it was that honesty that kept the relationship as strong as the diamond on her ring.

Not to say that, at times, it was difficult to find the diamond in the rough. Lucy could still restore the power of love to her daughters by pointing at dents in the walls from the couple’s earlier days which resulted in either shattered glass or shattered knuckles. She could still tell her great grandson a ‘fairy-tale’ or two about a brave warrior who ventured tirelessly into foreign plains to save his beloved and the rest of mankind. But nobody could find the shine of the doctor’s words �" not even Lucy.

All the old clichés. ‘There’s nothing we can do’, ‘We can only keep you comfortable for when the time comes’ and Lucy had to admit, her husband received the best care. But, like the girls and boys, they were only outsiders to the trauma within. They were not the ones who had to watch Malcolm try to tell the family, the family they had built together, and they were not the ones who had to sit there and stare at a piece of rock in the ground that was supposed to reflect an incredible man’s whole life. ‘Husband and father.’ Lucy tried, no one could deny that she tried, to keep the family close but as the kids grew older, the walls seemed smaller and ‘Husband and father’ became Malcolm while Lucy became ‘Nanny’. Outside, the grass grew and grew and she knew that soon, neither would be anything to this world.

The sudden quiet stole Lucy from her musings. Beth had her back to Mark, quickly crossing over to the other side of the road. Lucy had to quickly find cover behind the net frame of the window, but could still see the heartbreak in the blonde girl’s eyes, its tracks betrayed her stony portrait. Still in the field but sitting with hands helplessly grasping at dark hair, Mark visibly gave in to his heart. 

Ignoring the other boys’ sniggering, the boy gave an almighty sob and exploded out of the bench, running after Beth.

The sun had now cloaked itself in the dark velvet of night, the park and football pitch were now empty while Lucy pulled her blanket up to her chin. She heard more giggling and whispering as the girls passed by, the boys were still bickering over their all-important match, the football bouncing from foot to foot. Blowing a kiss to Malcolm’s picture on the wall, Lucy closed her eyes and whispered her prayer. She prayed for her great grandson’s teething adventure, her granddaughter’s illicit bond with a bottle, her son’s new book of poems.

She prayed for Malcolm’s safe passage on that day �" the day pills, comfort and Lu could not have vanquished the evil that finally overwhelmed his frail body. The day he sat in the armchair, looking across the field, Lucy was waiting for his routine complaint that never came �" he never got up again, the field had collected his debts to life. She prayed, and she prayed and she never stopped praying since then, so afraid that if she stopped she would be faced with the unwanted reality of loneliness.

‘So we’re good, then?’

‘We are very far from “good”, Mark…but we’ll reach that point again,’

‘Good. I am really sorry,’

‘Shut up, Mark,’

The patchwork pairing laughed together and Lucy was both envious and hopeful,

‘Don’t worry, Lu. You and I are good too.’

‘Good.’

Death would not be the end of their marriage; they had been too strong to let that intruder change their lives forever. Lucy prayed for Malcolm last, prayed that he was praying for her, that he was waiting for her so they could scream at one another for leaving and then apologise and forgive and hug and laugh until they felt like they did one day long ago when a lucky teenage girl answered the door to a lucky teenage boy.