Grandad for a Day

“Your grandad’s ace!” This was from Jake who normally made a point of not speaking to ‘stupid girls’.

“Yeah! I’ll say!” This from Tony who modelled himself on Jake and also saw himself above speaking to girls.

It was Fiona’s first year at Clarke Street Primary. Her previous school hadn’t had a Grandparent’s Day where grandparents were entertained in the morning by the school choir and items from individual classes, had lunch at the school, and then took part in the activities of their grandchild’s class in the afternoon.

“And I haven’t got anybody, I’m going to be in real trouble.” Fiona had wailed to her mother when she took the newsletter home. “Miss Leckie said that everybody has got to take a Grandad or Grandma to school.” Which wasn’t quite what Miss Leckie had said and it wasn’t quite true that Fiona had no grandparents. Her father’s parents were not talking to her mother now that her mother was separated from their son and her mother’s parents had been left behind in the other island.

“My silly girl,” her mother had said. “I think you’ll find that a lot of the other children won’t have anybody there for them either. You won’t be the only one. Those new girls from South Africa for example. And nobody’s going to growl at you. They’d answer to me if they did.”

It was only later that her mother had an idea.

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Grant to be your grandfather for the day?” It was not such a silly idea. In a way, Mr. Grant was already Fiona’s grandfather.

Fiona’s mother worked as cook at the Tranquility Rest Home in the street behind them. She couldn’t leave until the evening meal had been served and so Fiona went there every day after school. Her homework was at first done in a corner of the Tranquility’s kitchen with any help that she could grab from her doing-a-million-things-at-once mother.

She tended to stay in the kitchen. The old people were kept out. It could be a place of danger for them and some of them were really scary. To Fiona anyway. The home took care of some with dementia. If she went through the lounge, withered hands would reach for her.

“Come here my darling. What’s…..what’s your name dear?” No matter how many times she told them, it was always going to be the first time for them.

Mr. Grant was not like that. Sun-dried and ancient-leather he might look but his mind was still as enquiring and as full of wonder as that of a child. He had been an accountant in life and Fiona’s mother had sent her up to him with a maths problem that she herself had had no time to look at in the rush.

“He’ll be in his room reading. Take him another cup of tea and some of these Ginger Nuts and he’ll be your friend for life.”And so it had proved to be. Mr. Grant hated having to live with old people: people who had switched themselves off. He could not abide ’these stupid stupid nurses’ who could not see beyond the surface and assumed that he must be as senile as the rest. Fiona was refreshment to him. Helping with her homework was refreshment to him.

And yes, he’d be only too happy to be her grandad for a day. Wished that he really was. He’d need a taxi and his walking frame.

“I take it your mother will make some lunch for me. It’ll be good to get out of this hell hole for a few hours!”

The morning’s entertainment had gone well. Room 8 performed a play of their own devising . Fiona played the part of a famous recording star who believed that the whole world must be in love with her and that the paparazzi, who recorded her every move, were performing a vital public service. Then it was lunchtime.

After lunch, Fiona’s mother was proved to have been right. Room 8’s tally was only three grandmothers and Mr. Grant. Most grandfathers were still in the work force. Many grandmothers too. Miss Leckie had hoped that these grandparents would tell Room 8 what it was like in their own younger days. Some hope! It seemed that the grandmothers had almost nothing to say about themselves and it was left to Mr. Grant.

Room 8 could see nothing of interest in his youth in the very different world of the nineteen twenties and thirties. No television! No iPods! Not even any Playstations. It must have been a very boring world. But when he mentioned the start of World War II, his reaching enlistment age, and training as a fighter pilot, everyone sat noticeably taller.

He had flown Kittyhawks at first and later the new Voight Corsair. He had served on Esprito Santo, at Guadalcanal and at Bougainville, and had flown high-cover on some of the later Liberator raids on the large Japanese base at Rabaul. When Miss Leckie took the pointer to try and point out where these places were on the large wall map, he had to direct her.

“Don’t worry! The Pacific is an easy place to get lost in. It’s a vast nearly empty space with a just few pimples of land. Our biggest problem was always to find our enemy and then somehow find our way back home again. It took pin-point navigation! And when you think that Pacific people could travel from one speck of land to another speck hundreds of miles over the horizon with absolutely no technology at all it sort of blows you away. In the Mediterranean, sailors always stayed within sight of land and anchored at night. Not our fellows.”

But Room 8 wasn’t interested in navigation.

“How fast could the Corsair go?”

“How many guns did it have?”

“How many bullets?”

“Could it carry bombs?”

“Did you shoot many planes down?” That was something that Mr. Grant had no wish to speak about.

“Enemy planes were flown by young men very much like me…with families just like mine…who

loved them as mine did…and were going to grieve their loss. I’m not particularly proud of it now.

Ask me something else…..Please.”

“Were you shot down yourself.”

“Yes. There is always someone better than you are.”

“Do you have any medals?” It seemed that he did have medals and not just campaign medals but some that were personally awarded. Again it was something that he was not keen to talk about.

“Where are they?”

“Oh! In a box somewhere.?”

But Mr. Grant was an old man and tired. This had been a big day for him. A taxi was called well before three o’clock and it had seemed reasonable that Fiona should ride home with him.

“You never told me that you were a pilot,” she accused.

“Well, you didn’t ask, did you?”

And because Fiona left early, she did not hear the favourable remarks until the next morning. And while the compliments were nice to hear, she felt it best to come clean.

“He’s not really my grandad. He’s just my special friend.”