To Wilfred

 He stopped me, pointed to a house across the road. 

“That one, the last small one, beside the big two storey joint. It would have had an outside dunny and laundry back then, but it looks pretty plush now.”

I looked at him, wondering why I was looking at this house. A pretty standard, nineteenth century three room workers home, corridor down one side, a couple of bedrooms, a main room with a fireplace, a kitchen on the back. 

“My great grandparents owned it, over a hundred years ago, I don’t know a whole lot about them. My grandfather didn’t live here, lived back up near Cudgewah, worked for the post office, back when knowing how to drive a lorry was a rare skill.”

Again, I looked at the little house, lovely roses in the front yard, then back at him, why was he telling me this little history of a family I didn’t know?

“But I know, from records and all, that my grandfather stayed here a few nights, he enlisted for the First World War using this address, embarked from here.”

There it was, finally, some action.

“It would have been a working class paradise back then, train station at the end of the street, pub on the corner, pub on the other corner, corner stores on the other corners, fish and chip shop . . . around the corner, proper wide streets to let the smoke clear from all those home fires burning. Working class paradise.”

“So, your grandfather, he served in World War One?”

“He did. But he came here first. Down from the bush. I imagine to see his folks before he went.”

“Right.”

“They were strict Methodists, so I doubt he went to the pubs, my guess is there were a few last home cooked meals, before he left.”

“Some Methodists refused to go to war back then.”

“Indeed. My grandfather went as an ambulance officer. One night when my father was drunk he regressed to a child like state and told me his dad was braver than the other dads because he drove to the front without a gun.”

“So your father wasn’t so strict, you know, as a Methodist?”

“I think my grandfather came home a very quiet man, possibly not the world’s greatest dad. Nearly everything I know about my grandfather I found out for myself. War, it does things, you know?”

I said nothing, looked at the house, looked at him, looked at the house again.

“I feel closer to my grandfather than my father. Is that weird?”

“A little, you never met him?”

“I just recall his feet, looking up at a hospital bed, wondering why he was wearing shoes, and a suit, but lying on a bed. That’s my only memory of him.”

It was getting awkward. Why was I there? He could have looked at the house without me. 

“He left his fiancé, came to see his parents, then boarded a ship for the war to end all wars.”

“But he came back, right? You met him, so he survived.”

“He did. But he didn’t. He raised three sons who didn’t really come back from the war either. One of those sons raised me.”

“Listen, I’m not entirely sure why I’m here.”

“My grandfather came here, spent a couple of nights with his parents, in that house. I think it may have been the last happy moments of his life, despite his looming enlistment. You’re an artist, right?”

“I . . . I am.”

“I want you to paint it, the young man, here in a working class paradise, at table, drinking cups of tea with his Methodist parents after dinner, I want to see what that looked like.”

“A rosy home sweet home thing, but with a hint of trepidation? That sort of thing?”

“Yeah mate, that sort of thing, paint it with the last of the fish and chips on the table, the newspaper wrappings, dim electric light, the young man trying to read the headlines about the war, his mother close to tears, his father looking up, not sure what to say or do, paint it like the young man is there, but already gone, alive and dead, like all soldiers, paint it like it’s the last supper for the working class paradise, the moment before men were sacrificed to machines, before generations of working men were both alive and dead.”

“I don’t think I need to paint it, you just did.”

“Did I? Maybe I did . . . there’s one pub left on one corner, can I shout you a beer?”

“A toast to your working class grandfather, and to the end of paradise.” 

“To Wilfred, to the end of paradise.”

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi