Back of the Radio

By Paul Williams

As Vern reflects on a past he thought he knew he unearths some unexpected truths, discovering that the most significant and valuable things in life are sometimes those with no beauty or value at all... the bullet that robbed him of his best friend... the medals that stir his memories of two happy and haunting years in the Far East... the locket that hides a picture of family heartache... and a jagged shard of bombsite shrapnel that makes everything right again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326505295

Paul Williams

Professor Williams has had a long-standing research interest in geomorphology and hydrology and is a Fellow of the International Association of Geomorphologists. He is co-author of the seminal reference text ‘Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology’ and a senior advisor to IUCN/UNESCO concerning natural World Heritage.

Book preview

Back of the Radio

Back of the Radio

By Paul Williams

Copyright © 2015 Paul Williams. All rights reserved.

ISBN:  978-1-326-50529-5

For my dad, and for all great dads who appreciate the privilege and preciousness of fatherhood.

The Medal

There’s a moment, in the second or two after waking, when the mind is beautifully clear, perfectly empty, a silenced library of memories waiting to be liberated by the unknown triggers of the day ahead; a heaven-like moment when neither happiness nor sadness exist. The moment before a fresh thought, the path to a decision, an understanding, a revelation.

Vern’s eyelids peeled open with the slightly sticky resistance that comes after a night of deep sleep. Slowly the textured pattern of the summery green wallpaper came into focus as he blinked a few more times. He rubbed the granular saltiness from the corners of his eyes and in that moment he expected it to be another unremarkable day, pleasantly inconsequential.

He turned his head and saw the empty space and dented pillow next to him. She must be up he thought as he propped himself up on his elbows, grimacing slightly at the ache in his shoulder joints. After kicking his feet a little, freeing them from the weight of the duvet, he swung his legs around until his feet hit the floor and he was sitting upright on the edge of the bed. He sat there a few seconds, looking over his shoulder in an attempt to determine the weather through the haziness of the net curtains: ‘Hmmm, looks bright – that’s promising,’ he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath, got to his feet and made the short walk to his wardrobe.

First decision of the day – on the whole, decisions were easier now that he had retired, apart perhaps from this one. Working life had demanded only the selecting of a suit, a shirt and a tie – not including the time he was in the army when the only choice was khaki – but now he could opt for jeans, trousers, shorts, t-shirts, sweatshirts and jumpers in any combination or colour. He pulled out a casual white shirt, a thin, teal-coloured v-neck and his blue jeans and placed them on the bed ready to put on.

Yes, it does look quite bright, he concluded, trying to ascertain the blueness of the sky beyond his bedroom window.

He returned from the bathroom and got dressed. His head forced its way through the top of his sweater and his arms tunnelled their way to the light at the end of the sleeves. Perhaps I’ll have chance to mow the lawn, he mused.

As he stepped on to the landing he could hear the sounds of the radio coming from the kitchen. He walked down the stairs and made his way to the kitchen where his wife had a cereal bowl and his box of Shredded Wheat waiting for him.

‘Coffee?’ She asked.

‘Please,’ he replied as he opened the fridge for some milk. She flicked on the kettle and turned her gaze away from her compact mirror to look at him.

‘You all right this morning, darling?’

‘Yes, fine thanks. Think I might do a spot of gardening. Lawn needs mowing. Might get a paper first though. What about you?’

She smiled at him: ‘I might pop over Sandra’s for a coffee and a chat, and I have an appointment for a pedicure this afternoon. Oh, and there’s always housework to do – I’ve got plenty of ironing piling up.’

Vern poured the milk and added a sprinkle of sugar to his Shredded Wheat then retrieved a spoon from the cutlery drawer. He walked to the kitchen window and stood eating as he surveyed the late-spring potential of his garden and pondered what he might work on.

Joyce picked up her mascara and returned her focus to her compact mirror.

‘Right,’ exclaimed Vern finishing his last mouthful and putting his bowl and spoon in the sink, ‘I’m off to the paper shop.’ He picked up his house and car keys – married into a large bunch by a colourful Orlando key ring they’d picked up on their last Florida holiday – from the stainless steel saucer by the kitchen door and went to the shoe cupboard in the hall to find some footwear that would complement his choice of clothing; a pair of white not-shoes-but-not-quite-trainers-either. They’ll do, he decided as he pulled them on and tied the laces.

He closed the door behind him, walked the short distance to the end of the block-paved drive and turned left in the direction of the row of shops at the end of the street that comprised the local newsagent, a butchers, a Chinese takeaway, a small hairdressers-come-beauty salon and a mini-supermarket that boasted a wider selection of alcohol than it did groceries.

*

Mr. Patel smiled as the bell rang and he looked up to see one of his long-standing regular customers entering his shop. Vern smiled back.

‘Hello, Mr. Vern, how are you today?’

‘Fine thank you, Ravesh. You?’

‘Oh, you know, tickety-boo. Your usual?’

‘Yes please,’ Vern replied as Mr. Patel rolled up a copy of the local paper and handed it to him. Vern pulled a handful of change from his pocket, sifted through it in his palm and handed over the exact money.

‘Not much going on today,’ Mr. Patel commented, nodding at the flimsier-than-usual paper in Vern’s hand and ringing the money into the till, ‘but there is one story you might be interested in. If I remember rightly, I think you once told me that you served in Malaya… didn’t you?’

‘Yes, well, I did my National Service there.’

‘Ah, I thought so. Well, apparently the Malaysian government has decided to give medals to all the British soldiers who fought in the fifties and sixties; that’s when you went, isn’t it?’

Vern raised his eyebrows a little, surprised at Mr. Patel’s recall: ‘Yes, I did,’ he replied with growing interest, ‘I’ll make sure I read that. You never know, I might even be eligible.’

‘Now that would be something, wouldn’t it. Page twenty-six,’ Mr. Patel grinned.

*

Vern placed his cup of tea on the kitchen worktop, hotched up on to the stool, flapped open his newspaper and, ignoring the front page and thumbing straight through to page twenty-six, skim read to the crux of the story…

"After much campaigning, British servicemen who served during the Malayan Emergency are celebrating the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s decision to accept the Malaysian government’s proposal to present its new medal, known as the Pingat Jasa Malaysia Medal, to veterans and others who served in operations in Malaya between August 1957 and 1966…

…The Ministry of Defence does not have a list of veterans who served during this time and so applications must be submitted through relevant veterans’ organisations to…"

Vern scratched his chin and looked at the address. He cogitated for a moment or two, questioning whether he should apply or not. He decided he would think about it; mull it over for a while. There would be no harm in applying. He was definitely eligible – he could even recall his army number, saying it in his head in the same shouty, subservient, military tone called for when acknowledging his sergeant major all those years ago. In the back of his mind though, he had a small seed of self-doubt that questioned his worthiness.

He put the paper down and took a sip of his lukewarm tea. Perhaps a bit later on, after he’d mowed the lawn perhaps, he would go in the loft and look out his General Service medal and his old photo album. Yes, he’d have a flick through the pictures of his National Service and his time in Malaya with his army chums and maybe that would help him make up his mind. Then he thought about his old and best pal Malcolm. A nostalgic smile crept across his face and a sicky feeling of despondency swelled in his stomach.

The Initials

Vern sat by the window and waved slowly, his little fingers gently tickled the cold glass of the train window. He had cried and cried when the security of his daddy’s embrace had eventually dissolved and his mother had carried him into the train’s carriage; his tears blurring his vision as his father forced a smile, telling him everything will be all right, I’ll see you all soon. You look after your mother for me.

Now, as he looked through the meandering rivulets of rain that patterned the window of their third-class compartment, his tears had pretty much dried up and he felt a solitary forlornness that he didn’t understand. His elder sister knelt on the seat opposite, sobbing audibly as their mother fought back tears and did her best to comfort them both.

‘We’ll see Daddy again soon. He’ll be coming to live with us in our new home very soon.’

A whistle blew and the train lurched with an industrial clunk, a surge of steam evaporated the view of their waving father and the grinding rhythm slowly increased in pace as the engine found traction, gained momentum and the train pulled away from the station. For a while they sat quietly subdued, but the excitement of experiencing rail travel and the curiosity of where they would be living soon displaced the melancholy of goodbyes.

*

Their new home was a small terraced house in a short street on the outskirts of Morecambe. Wearily they trudged the last few yards of their journey counting down the numbers on the doors until they reached their new abode. They stepped off the pavement into a small front yard bordered by a short brick wall then through a door with flaking, dark green paintwork into a sparsely furnished living room. Pale rectangular patches blemished the walls where pictures had once been and the resounding echoes of their steps on the floorboards cracked the empty silence.

Most of the men in the street were away, either fighting abroad or, like Vern’s father, serving with the Home Guard. The lady who lived next door with her little boy had a husband who had just been posted to Burma – she had introduced herself as Alice on the day they moved in and had offered them a welcoming cup of tea, and straight from the start she and Vern’s mum got on easily. Her little boy was called Malcolm and was just a few months older than Vern. Vern was happy to have a new friend to play with. Apart from the fact that Malcolm had more toys than he did, it helped to take his mind off the fact that he wouldn’t see his daddy for a while, and perhaps the reason they bonded so instantly and played so well together was because they had a subconscious mutual empathy; an understanding of the similarities of their situation and their feelings.

Vern’s mum and Alice watched happily as their boys played contentedly – a moment that helped cement the early stages of what was destined to be a deep and lasting friendship.

Vern and Malcolm saw a lot of each other. They played together almost every day – at first under the watchful eyes of their mothers, then, as they grew, outside with the other children of the street. They spent their first day at school together. They caught colds together and even chicken pox together. Vern’s sister kept an eye on both of them and made sure the bigger boys weren’t too rough with them, although Vern and Malcolm resented her interference, protesting that they could look after themselves – and united as a duo they usually did.

One of their favourite play spots was a bombsite – a heap of earth, rubble, splintered and charred wood and twisted struts of metal, created by a stray bomb intended for factories in the port of Heysham not too far away. No one wanted to be the Germans, so Cowboys and Indians was the game they played most – bits of wood, string and nails crudely fashioned into pistols, rifles, bows and arrows. Vern had captured the marauding Red Indian chief and was about to make him plead for his life on his knees, when Malcolm suddenly wailed and rolled over grasping at the knee he had put his weight on.

‘What is it?’ asked Vern. ‘I didn’t do anything, honest.’

‘No, I know. I’ve knelt on something.’ Malcolm said as the initial pain subsided and he removed his hand from his knee. A smear of blood stained his palm and a trickle of red ran down his shin and under his calf.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah, it’s nothing – just a scratch,’ snivelled Malcolm wiping his cheeks dry with the back of his hand. His fingers began to scrabble through the dirt in search of the shard that had punctured his skin. ‘Ouch,’ he said again as his hand brushed over a sharp piece of metal protruding almost undetectably amid the dirt and rubble.

Vern crouched down as Malcolm dug round it with his fingertips until he was able to grasp it and free it from its home.

‘What is it?’ questioned Vern.

‘I think… I think it’s a piece of a bomb. What do they call it… shracknel?’

‘Shrapnel.’

‘Yeah, that’s it… and look, it’s got some writing on. Some kind of code, letters or numbers.’

‘Like a serial number or batch number? We might be able to find out what kind of bomb it was, or what kind of plane it came from, or even the exact plane it came from. What do they say?’

‘Well, it looks like MCMXXXVIII-12-0… and then it stops where the metal is broken.’

‘Can I see?’ asked Vern.

Malcolm handed the curved, jagged-edged piece of metal to Vern who scrutinised it closely: ‘Look,’ he said, holding out the metal shard and pointing to the letters. ‘Your initials… M.C. and here are my initials at the other end… V.I. Malcolm Capewell and Vernon Ison.’

‘No way!’ Malcolm exclaimed excitedly. ‘I know, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we cut it in half? We can have a piece each, each with our own initials on.’

‘Yes, let’s,’ agreed Vern.

The two boys spent the next hour frantically working at the bomb fragment with any implement they could lay their hands on. Bricks and nails used in the fashion of hammer and chisels seemed to work best and eventually they had punctured enough holes to weaken the metal sufficiently to make it bend. Then, after much bending back and forth it finally parted into two pieces. Vern and Malcolm cheered and punched the air victoriously – Malcolm took the piece with his initials on and Vern took the piece with his.

‘We’ll keep these forever,’ proclaimed Malcolm, raising his half to the sky.

‘Forever,’ concurred Vern, and he raised his half to meet with Malcolm’s, a glint of sunlight bursting through gaps where their two halves of shrapnel weren’t quite joined at the apex of their silhouetted arms.

The Garden

Vern breathed out heavily, releasing his moment of nostalgia for the time being, and carried his empty teacup to the sink. He placed it in gently to dampen the echo of china against stainless steel.

Stepping outside he looked at the sky and then scanned the confines of his long back garden, making a mental note of the tasks he would like to tick off his gardening to-do list. It was that time of year when the grass was just starting to grow with increasing rapidity; he had given it a first cut a couple of weeks ago and even though he could possibly leave it another week, he knew that if he did it would just bug him – so mowing the lawn was at the top of the list. The daffodils were on their last legs – many of them had succumbed to the wind, their browned heads hanging low and their crumpled trumpets muted by the soil – so they could definitely do with a bit of tidying up. Happily though, the tulips were looking strong, their tightly packed oval buds clinging on to neutral shades of pale green before they fulfilled their glorious colourful potential.

Vern walked up the path towards his greenhouse and the shed where he stored his gardening tools and electric lawnmower. It was much more than your conventional garden shed – for a start it was painted a pale shade of apple green with darker green window frames. It had a central door with a window each side and a matching dark green gable to the front.