Living daylights

I was always popping up all over the place; the little master of surprise.  I was blessed to have as my willing victim a grandmother who I claimed for myself alone (despite her other grandchildren).  It was me that would trek the ten mile hike to turn up at her door.

 ‘Heya, granny!’

‘Hello, little man!’ she would smile and make me tea, and then, when I was occupied, would telephone my mum to let her know I was safe.

I was the car boot pirate.

‘Oh, little man, you scared the living daylights out of me!!’  But her pounding heart was forgiving, and when we’d get home, she’d offer me a jam tart because I must be hungry.  I was.  Surprises were hard work

I was the oak staircase spy; dinner parties were my work - the swirl of ladies, the guffaw of their husbands; granny handing back some gloves to a lady, a hint of red in the cheek, which she must have left somewhere…

‘I’m sure they don’t belong to me.’

And Grandpa, at the drinks cabinet, swimming at ease in his little pool of pearly smiles.  I can’t remember any of those ladies faces.  Granny beat them at their game just by keeping her living daylights safe inside.  She glowed; they all imitated.  I watched her from the staircase, glad it was only me who could sometimes surprise them out of her.

I was the mini detective.  I’d swipe the garage keys and penetrate my Grandpa’s secret cell: the Jaguar! Inside, the odour of squeaky leather and perfume was overpowering and I never understood the dangling teddies, encumbered by hearts, the emblazoned I love you’s… This was a side of granny I didn’t know!  It seemed far more in keeping with those dazzling, faceless ladies.  One teddy sat above the glove compartment, his seams unpicked with the years, so long had this collection been going on.

*

After Grandpa’s accident on the A17, I imagined the teddy’s strewn all over, the hearts shaken from their laps …. But then I conjured up granny’s liberation; no supper to prepare, dinner parties to arrange, gloves to hand back.  Her postcard from Canada describing  hosts of wild flowers is still on my fridge, as if she was still over there, as if I was waiting for her to come back.  She died at a ripe old age, a happy lady. God Bless her.  Releasing me to disclose something that Little Man has kept with him an awfully long time…

One night, I went down the oak stair case - torch in hand, the keys pinched during the early evening -and made it into the garage unbeknownst to the alarm lights.  Secret detective cool, culprit keen.  Quietly the Jaguar let me in…and  I stuffed the little alarm into the teddy on the dashboard;  a little surprise for grandpa this time, programmed for somewhere along the A17 which - I promise - was only meant to scare him half to death.