Granddad was a Bastard

 

I never had a granddad

As he died when I was four –

Leftover uniform shows

He did fight in but didn’t

Die in the Second World War.

 

I only saw one photo -

Old, grey man, extremely thin -

Sharp cheekbones, scaffold beneath

Black Bakelite spectacles;

Brylcreemed hair, tightly stretched skin.

 

Veiny claws clutch a grandchild –

My brother in a nappy,

Sun-shadows accentuate

Worried creases on his brow

Straining at arm’s length, unhappy.

 

An invisible presence;

Alive only in floating

Atoms, in snippets of chat

Slipping from unguarded mouths

Forgetting sugared coating.

 

In rare moments, repeated

Stories from my dad would paint

Pictures of a man who was

A bastard - though according

To my mum, a living saint.

 

Family party, Christmas –

Aunties strain smiles through pressed lips.

Uncles fill the kitchen with

Their dour Yorkshire jollity-

Whisky, large measures, slow sips.

 

Conversation tiptoes on

Cautious paws – their chat, stilted -

Glossing over sore subjects

Never discussed, but always

Lurking, carefully filtered.

 

Five sisters orbit the lounge;

Hissing, trying not to strike

The first blow. Slowly circling,

Passing round sausage rolls with

Green eyed, thinly veiled dislike.

 

My mum, wild haired Boudicca

Glaring, dares them to utter

One word. They quail, they back down;

Sink into quiet resentment,

Crease up their foreheads, mutter.

 

Lips pull back over bared gums

They reform their ruptured ring

Of aching whispers. For now,

Fragile illusion of calm

Restored; tongues taut as coiled springs.

 

Ah, poor man, how he struggled

After his wife upped and left

Leaving ten motherless babes

Poorly clothed, badly fed

Uncertain, hungry, bereft.

 

Turns out he was a gambler;

Who even on his deathbed sent

Someone to place his last bet

He won – oh, the irony -

Perhaps then he died content.

 

I felt his loss as a child –

In my imagination

A smiling, fluffy haired man

Tended tomatoes in his

Greenhouse; grew pink carnations.

 

This toffee proffering Pop

Stood right by me through my youth –

The passage of time stole him

From me; blurred him, spoiled him, killed

Him off slowly with bald truth.

 

Grandpa was a piss-head, a

Miserable waste of skin;

He rots in oblivion,

Smothered under dirt as worms

Digest his skeleton grin.