Time Will Prove Everything

The palpable odour of elderly dissatisfaction spoiled what would have otherwise been the acceptable remnants of a living room. Nearly everything remained as he had last remembered; the sofas of cream and fuchsia cretonne sat abnormally unused, the dust burdened cushions longing for a familiar bottom to once again make itself at home; the shiraz-red bookcase nestled between each sofa, its depth of colour swallowing the gaze of whoever looked upon it, like a glassful of the antique wine it resembled. All the books were still in their place. All the books except one.

Across the room, the last vestige of sunshine provided an exceptional varnish for the finely carved fireplace, the glowing wood rising in narrow lanes before curling into a chameleon’s tail which supported the mantelpiece. On the mantelpiece, he saw the familiar smiling faces of a couple in their youth and vigour, contrasted yet encapsulated by the brownish fading photograph framed in silver. “The little book, on the top-shelf, he said you would know which one”, the words of the solicitor who had sent him here. He knew which book. It was the only book belonging to them both. A small, worn black notebook, the one he and his grandfather used to write dirty jokes behind everyone’s back. Except this time, a handwritten note fell from the sleeve: “It’s all going to charity. All of it. Everything except a little treat for you, Jim, my lad. Look under my bed.”

Holding the book in his hand, he exhaled and examined his ill-fated surroundings and admired the nostalgic timelessness of his grandparent’s home; the visuals of a happy childhood seemed to illustrate themselves dreamily before him, a watercolour, surreal but comforting. He had been happy here. He had felt safe here. Here, in this cottage, the family had been together; ritualistic Sundays awaiting Granny’s roast, surrounded by aunties and uncles, with throngs of little cousins chasing each other up and down and around the hallways of anaglypta and into the front-garden of chrysanthemums. Everyone would arrive early. Everyone would leave late. He would leave the latest.

After everyone had left, in the last remaining hour of sun, he would sit cross-legged upon this pouffe, facing the checkerboard windows. Every Sunday, a new book in hand. It was their little secret. Kipling. Keats. Houseman. Yeats. It was nearly always poetry, and he devoured them all. In this room, on this pouffe, under the nurturing blue eyes of his grandfather, he had been born. He had been cultivated. Looking through the windowpanes he could almost still see the old man still toiling away in his garden. The old man had the frame of wiry winter branches, but he could work the spade as though he was made of the sternest and thickest oak, turning gloomy soil into jovial pink and yellow. How his flowerbeds sang. How the insects and birds sang with them.

Death lingers and contorts. Nobody would have mistaken Rupert Knight for a cheery man, but once Barbara Knight left him behind all that was good and hopeful within Rupert seemed to call it quits too. His garden dwindled, along with his moods, and then as there was no more soul and vibrancy provided by his garden and his wife, his weekly visitors dwindled too. The family would make sporadic visits, if only briefly, before his dour mood would inevitably have them checking their phones and finding an excuse to depart. Soon, he suspected people only visited as a means of ensuring they were going to be left handsomely in the will. This was confirmed when his two oldest sons, one of which being Jim’s father, began trying to encourage him to reconsider where the inheritance should rightly go. Only little Jim would make his weekly visits, and though they had become stagnant and solemn, he never forgot to get out the little black book. The filth within was the only thing that could still make the old man smile.

How quickly we grow old and forget. How quickly circumstances can change from the bluff and ardour of togetherness to the ugly frustration of dispute and avariciousness. They had changed so much, in fact, that he now found himself questioning the reliability of his own remembrances; were these memories no more than make-believe idyllic ramblings intended to bosom him in the lost opus of his life? Had the last decade of drunkenness disorientated his mind to such an extent? No, this was not the case. He was certain of it. These memories were shared. There had been a family here.

And now he was the end of the family line. Not literally, of course. As one of seventeen grandchildren stemming from Granny and Grandad’s six own offspring, and at only thirty-five himself, the odds of him being the literal end of the family line were ghastly. Barring some horrendous tragedy in which all members of this once sacred union were set screaming and ablaze inside this very cottage, the chance of him being the only heir to this provincial throne was only an inkling short of an impossibility. No. But such an event might have been less tragic.

Standing up, his eyes met those of his grandfather on the mantelpiece. Those piercing, nurturing eyes. “He was a bitter old bastard,” he thought to himself, “though I can’t say I disagree.” Twenty thousand pounds. And to think, he'd of been happy with the nothing but the bloody book of dirty jokes.