MORNING SERIAL

WHEN Nain sang you could tell she wanted to break the grey quiet of the house and Dad’s old record-player which sat under dust. She wanted to rub out his hymns and his music from all over, did Nain.

He spoke less and less. He couldn’t get them out, his words. Then his breath disappeared like his words. He hung from his bones like empty clothes, and his skin was pale as if it couldn’t breathe, like the meat he put in packets at the food factory. Then he started to talk again, but not to anyone, just to himself.

“Air,” he said. “I need air. Air,” over and over.

It was spring and there were birds singing the day he went.

When I came home from school that day, there was Nain, sat at the table, a cold cup of tea undrunk in her hands, and her eyes staring straight ahead. There was Efa stood perfectly still in the middle of the kitchen. Efa’s face was white as milk and round the three of us the house was empty. When Nain spoke she just said, “He’s left us, love. He’s left us.”

We looked for him all over. There was nothing left. Only the quiet house and, down at the bottom of the garden, a shape made of wood which had swelled up with the rain. It was a man, the shape. I go to look at it sometimes now, and it’s a man, stooping.

And after that you couldn’t speak about him. Like his father. He was just like his father.

“Way it’ll always be. All they do is leave you, men, all they ever do, leave you to it.” Nain said. “Like him. Off to Spain. As if it mattered! As if it mattered to people here what happened there. As if it mattered, for god’s sake!”

She meant Taid, our grandpa. She couldn’t speak about Dad without getting him mixed up with Taid.

Nain stayed. And Dad’s junk was cleared out from the corners, hard daylight was let right into the smoky dust of the house. Nain filled the kitchen with the smells of home, but Efa and me kept looking. It was a game of hide and seek and we were searching for something, something that wasn’t quite certain. We were looking for creaking floorboards, walls that moved a bit. We were looking for Dad.