The Forever Whale

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We know that nobody gets better from Alzheimer’s, but the doctor said it’s possible Grandad can recover from some of the symptoms of the stroke. But the way Mum described him sounded all wrong, like it was someone else in hospital, not my grandad. I keep thinking he’s still here, somewhere, only I can’t find him.

I get up from the sofa.

“I don’t want to see him in hospital,” I say. “But when he comes home, there’s something we have to do.”

“What’s that?” asks Dad.

They all look at me and I’m not sure now how to say what I’m thinking. Our journeys were about being together and discovering things, and seeing the world in front of us with bright eyes and open ears. I was going to take him out in the boat again. We wouldn’t go far – we’d stay in the inlets and quiet harbour waters. Because I’m sure, if we did, he’d remember everything he wanted to tell me.

“We’re going to take a journey together,” I say, but don’t wait for them to ask questions because I can’t explain anything more. How can I tell them that I think we’re going to find a whale?

I go out to the kitchen and rummage through the cupboards until I find the spray gun. I fill the bottle with cold water from the tap. I go out to the garden and shout into the night shadows, “Just you wait until Grandad gets back, Smokey! I know it was you that killed the robin.”

8.

“DID YOU THINK SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH Grandad yesterday morning?” Jodie says when I meet her on the quay the next day on the way home from school.

I feel guilty because I’ve been trying to cover up some of the things he did, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

“Yes, but most of the time he was fine,” I say. It’s an effort to lie and makes my stomach hurt. “I wanted him to be fine,” I say quietly.

Jodie knows I feel bad and I can trust her not to make me feel worse.

We stare at the statue of the faceless people.

“It’s weird how they didn’t give them faces,” Jodie says.

“Mrs Gooch said it’s so we can all see something of ourselves in them.”

Jodie pulls a face and I know what she’s thinking. Nobody’s faces are the same – they have different shapes and colours and ways that they are put together.

“It’s not like a mirror or anything,” I say. “It’s just that it’s supposed to remind us of things like being safe or rescued or people we know, something like that.”

I see Grandad and me in the statue. He’s the big brave figure in the boat reaching for the small one, to carry them safely back to shore.

“What’s the greatest power on earth, Jodie?”

“That sounds like something Grandad would say.”

“It is something he said, ages ago. He was going to tell me a story … about a journey.”

Jodie screws up her face and tips her head to the side. “Maybe the greatest power on earth is Art,” she says, taking a long look at the statue. “But not this bit of art. It’s weird.”

I notice Jodie has black eyeliner and mascara and her lips are glossy and pink.

“Have you got a boyfriend?” I say.

“No!” she says, far too strongly.

“Thought so. You don’t normally wear so much make-up. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she says, “I just like him.”

“How much?”

Jodie’s painted eyes open wider.

“Loads,” she says which makes us smile, but our faces drop again straight away. Even that can’t stop us thinking about Grandad.