Luke Harris - Paratrooper

Montpellier Press

Paratrooper

by Luke Harris

No. 1

Introduction Here at Montpellier Press, we give creative writing students at the University of Gloucestershire a chance to flaunt their fresh talent through a collection of short stories, which explores a variety of genres. These contemporary writers require help establishing themselves and their work; Montpellier Press assist in this process.

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“It felt like something he once knew that had become divorced from memory.�

Paratrooper

Every Sunday afternoon when he came home from his football match, Daniel would feel tense and febrile, knowing that he would be there waiting for him, sat in the armchair in front of the fireplace, elbows flared, reading his newspaper. # Grandad always came round for dinner on Sundays now. This never used to be the case, but, a few months ago, Daniel had been told by his mum, Karen, that Nan needed a break once in a while and that was that. After a dozen Sundays straight spent with Grandad, Daniel wondered when his break was coming.

‘Do you know what would sort them out?’ Everyone had come to assume that all of Grandad’s questions were rhetorical. ‘Five years minimum military service for all those who are fit and able.’

Although Grandad was talking about teenage boys generally, he was specifically irked by a group of long haired boys that moped about on his street, occasionally riding skateboards.

‘They look like little girls,’ he had said earlier, curling his lips up to his nose in disgust, ‘riding around on those poncy things. There’s another two good reasons to get them in the forces: they can get proper haircuts and stop riding those bleedin’ skateboards.’

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Daniel wore a headband when he played football to keep his long fringe out of his eyes. He knew that Grandad was taking a dig at him when he said this, even though he didn’t ride a skateboard.

Daniel had recently been researching his family tree for a History project.

He’d always been told by Nan and his dad, Stewart, that Grandad had been a paratrooper in the Korean War. His dad had shown him black and white photographs of paratroopers falling like grey jellyfish from the sky and Nan often let him hold Grandad’s war medals when he visited their house.

She’d given him one to take home the last time he was there.

She’d said that it might be useful for his project.

‘You got many of them, Daniel?’ Grandad asked.

‘What?’ Daniel hadn’t really been listening.

Grandad wheezed a short, deficient laugh that turned to a cough and picked up his newspaper from his armrest.

‘You not taught this one any manners yet?’ he said, once he’d finished coughing, facing Stewart but pointing the newspaper towards Daniel.

Stewart laughed.

‘Female teachers. Do you have many?’

‘A few. For English I do, and for History,’ Daniel replied, his head bowed.

‘History? How ridiculous is that. What can a woman teach them young lads about history? I mean I might not have the qualifications, but I bet I could teach boys and girls more about war than any woman ever could.’

He said this as though he’d forgotten that girls also went to Daniel’s school.

‘If history is written by the winners...You know what I mean?’ Karen and Stewart mumbled to give the impression that they did.

‘Without that sort of positive male influence, some boys go off the rails.

I mean, look at Andrew.’

Daniel knew Andrew as Grandad’s estranged younger brother, but had never met him. He was the leader of a gang of teddy boys in the late fifties and had worn a motorcycle chain hidden under the lapels of his drape jacket. Andrew had supposedly hit his dad with the chain wrapped round his fist the day he’d kicked him out.

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When Daniel looked at Grandad’s feeble, bony wrists and the way his shirt sagged about his sloping shoulders, he found this difficult to believe. Both he and his dad shared Grandad’s matchstick limbs – the sort where the elbows and kneecaps are the most pronounced parts – and it’s likely that Andrew did too. Daniel stared at his clenched fist and imagined sliding a motorcycle chain over its knuckles. He looked up at Grandad.

‘That side of yours got their act in gear yet?’ Grandad said to Daniel, tugging at the oversized orange football shirt that he was wearing.

Daniel’s team, Kingswood Rovers, were one of the worst youth football teams in the district. They had only scored two goals in the opening six matches of the season. One was an own goal and one was inadvertently scored by Daniel, coming off of his shinpad in a penalty box melee following a scuffed corner kick. Grandad came to watch him two weeks ago when they were playing top of the league. Daniel knew he purposely picked this game as the one to come along to. Even in the heart of midfield, Daniel could hear Grandad’s groans from the sideline whenever he misplaced a pass or took a heavy touch. When Daniel was substituted ten minutes from the end, Grandad’s clapping was just about slow enough to be mocking.

‘Why don’t you go upstairs and have a shower before dinner?’

Karen said to Daniel. ‘It’ll be a while yet.’ # After Daniel had showered, he went to his room to work on his History project. He took out Grandad’s medal from his drawer. He was supposed to be analysing it for part of his project, but he didn’t know what the blue and yellow striped ribbon signified, nor did he have anything to say about the shape or colour of the medal. It appeared to have Queen Elizabeth II’s face engraved on it, but even then he was unsure whether she was the Queen at the time or not. It didn’t have Grandad’s name on it either, though he wasn’t sure that it was supposed to.

His teacher had said that there was a website where you could look at the military records of all servants of the British army from World War One onwards. When Daniel searched ‘James Cook’ he got dozens of results, but none of them seemed to be Grandad’s records.

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There was a Second Lieutenant James Robert Cook, a Major James Aaron Cook, a Captain James Wilfred Enoch Cook, but no James Stewart Cook.

Not even a JS Cook – some records were incomplete and only had the initials of the first names. Daniel then searched for Korean War medals.

There was no mistaking that what he held in his hand, what Nan had given him, was a Korean War medal: silver with the face of a young Queen Elizabeth II engraved into it, attached to a blue and yellow striped ribbon.

‘Daniel, come on,’ Karen shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

Daniel took a last look at the picture of the Korean War medal on the computer screen, then at the medal he was holding in his hand. He squeezed it for a few seconds, the shape of the medal leaving an impression on his palm. Then he put it back in his drawer and headed downstairs.

Dinner wasn’t ready yet; it probably wouldn’t be for another fifteen minutes. Karen explained that she had called Daniel down early as he never listened to her, though Daniel couldn’t see what that had to do with anything.

Grandad was still sat in the armchair in front of the fireplace. The same chair he always sat in, hogging the heat. Daniel always thought of how war could age and weary someone when he saw the deep, pinched lines around Grandad’s mouth and the dark creases under his eyes. Daniel still believed that he could have served in the war – there were probably thousands of cases of military records being lost – but he enjoyed the idea that he hadn’t.

Karen came through to the lounge with a glass of water and two small tablets and gave them to Grandad. He immediately started sipping from the glass of water, but, as soon as Karen’s back was turned, he put the tablets in his pocket.

Daniel went to the kitchen to put his football kit in the washing machine and saw a small, white cardboard box on the windowsill with ‘rivastigmine’ written on it. He didn’t know what this meant, or how to pronounce it in all honesty.

He picked it up to look at what was inside, but it was empty.

Karen walked back into the kitchen. When she saw Daniel with the box in his hands, she took it from him and threw it in the bin.

Daniel stared at her.

‘Well it was empty, wasn’t it?’ she said with her back turned to him, walking back to the lounge.

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As Daniel was stuffing his football kit into the drum of the washing machine, he heard Grandad shouting and cursing.

He walked to the kitchen door and lingered there.

‘I could have sworn I brought it with me,’ Grandad said.

‘It’s ok. I’m quite friendly with the woman who works there. I’m sure I can pick them up tomorrow without the prescription.’ Karen said this in a tone intended to be pacifying and sympathetic. It was the same tone she’d used with Daniel when he came home from football two weeks ago and threw his bag down in a sulk after he’d spent the whole game stood on the sidelines, freezing his bollocks off. He imagined her placing a hand on Grandad’s shoulder, maybe even bending down to where he was seated to look him in the eyes.

‘No, no, better be safe. I’ll walk home to get it. Won’t be too long.’

Grandad patted his hands over his pockets. ‘Have you got the… Oh, for…

Where are the...’ His hands made staggered movements across the coffee table as though he was searching for something in the dark. ‘Shit. Where are my keys?’ Grandad hurried to the kitchen, brushing past Daniel at the door.

He emptied cupboards, sending saucepans tumbling, a box of cornflakes spilling out across the counters. He dug his hands into the fruit bowl; mashing bananas, puncturing grapes. He stood still for a while, tapping the side of his head hard with his knuckles, before walking out of the back door. # It had been a few minutes now since Grandad had gone into the kitchen.

Daniel had pretended that he was in the toilet when it happened.

‘Stewart, I think you should go check on him,’ Karen said.

‘He’s fine. You know how he gets.

He’ll probably be in the garden having a smoke.’

‘Stewart,’ Karen said sternly.

Stewart raised himself from his chair and walked into the kitchen.

He called for his dad a few times before stepping out through the back door and looking over the fence of the garden into the alleyway.

He walked back to the lounge.

‘Come on. We need to go,’ Stewart said.

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Daniel watched out of the window as his parents got into the car and headed to the end of the road, the red warmth of the tail lights illuminating the path as they halted at the junction.

Then they pulled away and the street was dark and quiet again.

Daniel sat in the living room alone for a while. The fireplace crackled a low whisper, flames turned to cinder. He decided to bring his History work into the lounge, but grew bored of it quickly. Putting aside his notebook and the stained, creased family records he had printed a while ago and scarcely looked at, he picked up the medal and twirled the ribbon round his index finger a few times. He saw a brown leather wallet at the foot of the chair Grandad was sat on.

When he picked it up, a set of keys fell out and jingled to the floor. He put them on the coffee table, but took the wallet back with him to where he was sitting. There didn’t appear to be anything interesting in it, but, as he put the cards back in their slots and picked up some of the loose change that had fallen out, he found a worn black and white photograph tucked away in the rear slot. It was Grandad – minus the jowls, the wrinkles, the dark patches – in his army uniform. His shirt was buttoned uncomfortably tight around the collar and his chin raised with militaristic exaggeration, the light glaring off its milky underside as though someone were holding up a buttercup to it.

Daniel held the medal against the photograph, squeezing it like before but tighter, as though he expected it to crumple and disintegrate in his grip; as though he had the power to erase history.

Daniel walked to the kitchen and stood over the bin.

He tore the photograph like he’d seen his parents tearing receipts, the wisps of paper cascading like confetti.

He went to the shed in the garden and got out his dad’s spade. He started digging a hole in the corner of the garden by the long dead tulips. He was going to bury the medal here. It wasn’t important for his project any more.

He could do without it.

Digging was difficult for Daniel; his underdeveloped shoulders struggled to take the strain. He paused, stretching his shoulders by clasping his hands overhead. He picked up the medal and twirled the ribbon round his index 6

finger once more, slower this time. He was starting to feel ill. He didn’t need to be sick, but the tense, knotted feeling in his gut wasn’t going away and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. He kicked earth and dirt back into the hole in a panic, patting it over with the spade. He went over to the tap and rinsed his hands and the medal of mud. He heard the garden gate creak open behind him and turned around. It was Grandad.

Grandad was shivering, dressed only in a short sleeved white dress shirt and black suit trousers. His brogues clapped a steady rhythm as he walked towards Daniel over the patio tiles. He took the medal from Daniel’s hand and held it up to his eye line, squinting at it and running his hands over the ribbon. It felt familiar, but he could not place it. It felt like something he once knew that had become divorced from memory.

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Author Luke Harris is an English Literature and Creative Writing graduate from the University of Gloucestershire. His life ambition is to escape from Swindon for good.

If you wish to contact Luke or find out more about his work please contact him at: luke_ah@hotmail.co.uk

No. 1 “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.�

Oscar Wilde

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