Grandfather/Grandson

A hot, dry day in an already arid season. I stumble through stands of age-misshapen oaks, leaves blistering brown as they beckon me into the shade. From time to time, I glimpse a clearing to one side of the path, or a view through the trees to an open space. And each time he’s there, dancing on the margins of seeing. Piccolo to lip and hair brilliantined lustre-black as his dapper suit, skipping through the undergrowth as his notes peal like birdsong. My grandfather, refusing to be less than joyous. And if I turn to look, he scurries away, his melody pursuing him like a gymnast’s ribbon. Leaving behind a memory as if someone has tattooed the air.

__

I am not an anthem, at least not officially. I have no lyric, but they understand my meaning nonetheless. I am not their tune, although I can summon a laugh or a tear. Theirs is not romantic love, though love it surely is. I am a memento on the breeze, brushing the ear soft as a pillow’s edge. I am a running motif on a silent film’s soundtrack, a Wurlitzer organ ascending serenely through a trap door in the stage floor of their days. I am a fine thread strung between a bitten fingernail and the tunic pin of an old campaigner’s medal.

__

His father clicked a shutter, and I was frozen in mid-stride. Hovering above the tulips and narcissi in that part of Hampton Court Palace gardens they call The Wilderness. Where walking on the grass is an expected pleasure, not a sacrilege. Clandestine woodwind raised to mouth, my embouchure turns to smile as I wink for the camera. I write a caption for the photomontage in the boy’s head. This is how happiness is done. Lightly, always lightly.

I will feed him snatches of song like sips of water, nudge him back to the track whenever he flags and falters.

__

They say music is a gift, although I am rarely given so literally. A pawnshop violin, its quality recognised through a decade of dust. A horsehair bow, a block of resin and a music stand. Dvorak and Vivaldi scores, and a music teacher, two hours a week – pocket-money to be withheld for truancy, although the boy never skips a day. Honours an old man’s wishes. I bind them together with cat gut and breath: an eternal duet.

__

Here among the branches, I check the screen for messages, swat away junk mail like flies on an uncovered platter. But a memory beckons, summoned by subterranean algorithms that will never understand their serendipity. A snatch of music, sweet as a robin singing in a supermarket carpark. Any onlooker might see a new metre to my tread as I start to move away.

Dave Wakely has been shortlisted for the Manchester, Cambridge and Bath Short Story Awards, and his stories and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He lives in Buckinghamshire with his husband. Instagram: @davetheverbalist