Fragments of a Time gone by

At last she caught sight of the old tree that had stood here, high above the town, ever since she was a child. From where she stood, she could see the little town below, nestled in the valley. Gently, she ran her hand over the cracked bark of the great sentinel.

She sighed and turned, then leaned back against the trunk and slowly slid to the ground. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she gazed at the town for a while. The earth beneath her was still damp from days of relentless rain. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at the place where she had spent so many childhood holidays.

She still could not quite believe it. The emptiness they had left behind weighed heavily on her heart. She closed her eyes and remembered the old house. It had seemed unchanged since her childhood, yet even the familiar scent that had always lingered there had felt strange. Time stood still in that house. She had climbed the creaking stairs and opened the brown door beneath the embroidered picture that welcomed visitors. The large old dark brown grandfather clock, which had stood there for as long as she could remember, was silent. It had stopped working some time ago.

Slowly, she made her way into the living room, where she used to have breakfast with her grandparents. The little table where the three of them had sat together now stood by the other window. Yet for a moment, it seemed as though her grandfather were sitting there, waiting for her to join him for breakfast. The scent of black tea with lemon drifted towards her. Then the cold settled over the room again.

Her gaze rested on the large, heavy wingback chair in front of the bookcase. Her grandfather used to sit there every evening, reading and listening to classical music. Opposite him, her grandmother would sit embroidering small, colourful pictures on white cloth. How often her grandmother had tried to teach her to embroider, always in vain. As a child, she had much preferred lying on the rug by the window, drawing or writing, listening to the music all the while. Her grandfather had always had so much to tell her about it. Often, he could name the composer after only a few notes.

She tried to shake off the memories. Leaving the living room, she walked down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. Nothing had changed. The little pale wooden table still stood in front of the window. From there, she could see the empty nesting box. For years, tits had nested there, and her grandfather had always watched over them. Gently, she ran her hand across the smooth tabletop, remembering the board games she had so often played there with her grandmother. Cheerful music would spill from the radio.

Along the wall opposite the window, the cupboard, fridge and cooker stood side by side. She turned towards them. Her grandmother had often stood at that cooker preparing meals, until she discovered how much she could make more quickly in the microwave. For a moment, the kitchen seemed to fill with the smell of freshly made chocolate and vanilla pudding.

She went back along the hallway and climbed the narrow wooden stairs. Upstairs, the green carpet still lay like a stretch of lawn. In a corner beside the stairs stood the old, sprawling model railway that her uncle and grandfather had so carefully built together. A little world of its own spread out before her. Two rocking chairs stood in front of a small television, almost as though they were waiting for her grandparents to come upstairs and watch something together. She had rarely sat here with them, but she remembered those evenings clearly. Her grandmother nestled in her open sleeping bag in one rocking chair, her grandfather sitting beside her.

She turned away from the empty rocking chairs and went into her uncle’s room, where she had slept during the holidays. The room was unchanged. Everything was still in its usual place, only a thin layer of dust covering it all. The mattress still lay in the corner beneath the sloping ceiling. In front of it stood the little bedside cabinet with the cassette player and its many tapes of children’s stories.

She remembered lying in bed listening to the stories, and how she would give a little start whenever a tape came to an end. Usually, she disliked any sound when she was trying to sleep. But as a child, she had found the silence in this house unsettling. Now she knew how much quieter it could become.

She looked up at the skylight. How she had loved the rain drumming against the glass, filling the room with its sound. She crossed to the other window, opposite the door, and looked out over the neighbouring rooftops towards the old church in the centre of town. A familiar sound broke the heavy silence of the house. The old church bell was striking the hour. She stood motionless for a moment, listening to the sound she had heard countless times at this window as a child. When the last note faded, she could hear the silence in the house again. This time, though, it was louder and more stifling than she remembered. She had known there would be no more memories to make with her grandparents. Only now did she feel, painfully, what that meant. She hurried out of the house and made her way to the place she had so often visited alone during her childhood holidays.

The pressure of the rough bark against her back suddenly brought her into the present. Below her, the town spread out, the old church tower rising among the rooftops. When the bell rang again, she tightened her arms around her knees. Her gaze followed the streets she had walked with her grandmother. This time, she did not try to shake off the images that came to her.

The little path beside the stream, where she and her grandmother had watched the rainbow trout. The way past the little white house, with geese and sheep wandering together in the green field beside it. And learning to swim with her grandmother at the small lido.

A faint smile crossed her face as she remembered the thistle she had once stepped on in the grass beside the pool. The pain beneath her bare foot. Her grandmother comforting her, until at last they had both laughed about that little thistle. There had always been chips on those days, too. Nowhere else had they ever tasted quite as they did at the lido.

She remembered the walk home, past the stream again, where a little waterfall tumbled noisily down near the lido. Small fish shone in the water like glittering stars. Then she thought of the old, rattling bicycle her grandfather used to lift down from the garage wall. Her grandmother watching her as she sped out of sight around the bend. That bicycle had left her with a scar or two. A piece of childhood, still hanging on the garage wall.

She remembered, too, how her grandmother used to laugh as she told stories about her granddaughter’s visits. How she always came home on time, only to spend another hour talking to her best friend outside the front door downstairs. Until at last her grandmother would call through the intercom, telling her to come inside.

In all those little memories, her grandparents seemed close to her again for a moment. She missed them. But for the first time, alongside the pain, there was also gratitude for the time they had shared. For all the moments she had taken for granted.