Halfway along the path
turn right at the hawthorn tree
Then it would be: ‘hello nan’, so softly
You would stand between the two of them
Ada and George. A long conversation
Then we’d walk among angels and scrolls
and those awkward, formal lines
splashed with lichen now – saffron and lime
on ancient leaning stones. You would always say:
“Kirton, Chandler, Holloway
Good old Reading names”
There was often a tear
But it wasn’t death that brought you here
to stand at their feet. It was life
and lots of it
It was raucous laughter, magic tricks
It was coins disappeared up white shirt sleeves
And lit cigarettes emerging from ears
It was the yarn George spun about a snipers’ shell
slicing though one cheek, and the other as well
to explain identical scars
(from wisdom teeth extractions)
It was The Eagle comic thrown on your bed
With a ‘There you go, lad’
And the ruffle of a gardener’s hand on a small, blond head
It was Chipperfield’s big top.
You had George’s build. And probably his gait
a Grenadier Guard, he walked tall and straight
But you added a side-to-side action
Stolen direct from Johnny Cash
I would walk to school each day
past St Michael’s Rectory
and its overhanging fig tree
Later, a teenager, I’d visit a blind old lady there
I’d known since I was a baby
Austrian, a housekeeper
she looked like your nan
Old ladies looked like that back then
She cried for a Jewish family
all taken by the Nazis
I have a photo of me, a toddler
at St Michael’s gate, with Auntie Pam
Polished, red shoes. Visiting my gran
Isn’t there a picture of you with your little girl in this spot?
Among these photos, did I imagine that?
Decades on, you still worried
for Ada and her secrets
Her teenaged years in service
the mother she barely mentioned
evenings when the tears came
and: “Terry, you don’t know you’re born”
The ‘cousins’ and ‘aunts’ in town
who shared her unspilled knowledge
They spoke with dark looks in sweet shops
And in short nods at bus stops
over a young boy’s head
Was there another baby
passed along the family
Like contraband?
You couldn’t press, but wanted to understand
You never did miss much, boy or man
Kate Clarke
