A Slow Song on the Wireless

You must understand I was only a child then, and I did not truly grasp the nature of that day. There was a tense stillness throughout the house, that I remember. Of course, I don’t think any child grasped the gravity of the situation at the time. It’s one thing to be told your father is leaving to fight in a war, and another thing entirely to understand what that means. Everyone understood war in some way or another at that time – everyone except for the children. Though in truth, I’m not sure my father truly understood either. He seemed enraptured by the sense of glory and duty, with the horrors all too readily swept under the carpet. Perhaps that was for his own sanity.

It was afternoon. I was sat by the fireplace with the model train set I had received on my birthday some months ago. This may be nostalgia talking, but it was a wonderful thing. The light from the fire made it shine a deep red as it moved around the track. I felt I could simply watch it for hours, and often did. I’d always been fascinated with the simplicity of trains, these vehicles that could go round and round without the chaos that seemed to enshroud real life at the time.

The weather did not befit July, and the sunlight struggled to make it through our grimy windows, with the little light that did casting a neat beam across the table to illuminate a white vase of slightly wilted marigolds. My mother had bought them some time ago, intending to paint them, but reality had caught up with her and they had withered considerably by Sunday. Never one to admit defeat, my mother persevered – transforming the shrivelled sight before her into the most gorgeous flowers on a canvas.

My mother’s ability to paint astounded me. She could capture what was in front of her with such accuracy and detail, yet with an artistic flair that gave you a deeper insight into the object than real life could provide. It was this sense of realism that prompted my surprise when the wilted marigolds appeared otherwise on the canvas, and I remember remarking on it as such, to which my mother told me that she was painting them as they ought to be. She often told me that she felt art had a unique power of masking reality when needed, though I didn’t truly comprehend what she meant until much later in my life.

I recall my father returning home. He had gone to visit his parents, or rather to say goodbye to his parents. Usually one to loudly announce his arrival, he entered the living room uncharacteristically quietly. I remember marking the tears in his eyes; tears that were hastily wiped from his eyes as he glanced at me to see if I had noticed.

He placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Are those roses you’re painting?”

“Marigolds,” she replied.

It was obvious what the cause for her terse reply was. The unspoken fact that this could be the last day that my father would spend with us, the unspoken anger at nobody in particular that fate should drive them apart.

“Ah yes,” my father said. “Of course.”

Sensing the hostility, my father went to sit down in his armchair – unfolding the paper that he carried in under his arm.

“Mum and Dad are doing well.” My father spoke without breaking his gaze from the paper.

“That’s good.” My mother was equally focused on her painting.

“Concerned, obviously.”

“Obviously.” The tension was evident to me even as a child.

“It’ll be fine, though.”

My mother made no reply, and there was a further silence broken only by the faintest sound over the wireless – which my father rushed to turn up.

“…tolerate no parley; we may show mercy – we shall ask for none”

“Please turn that off,” my mother wearily interjected.

“Why?” My father was indignant at first – believing my mother simply wanted silence in which to paint.

“I just…I just want everything to be normal. I want to sit here and paint. I want you to sit in your chair and read the paper. I want John to play with his train set. Can we all just pretend for a while? Pretend that everything is normal, that nothing’s changed, that you’re not -”

At this point, she broke off. My father rushed to embrace her. I had never seen my mother cry, and the sight of her sobbing near-silently into his shoulder felt strangely unnatural. It seemed even more strange to see my father shed a tear in the same manner. I had always felt, especially at that young age, that my parents were these invincible bulwarks – and as such there’s something quite frightening when it becomes evident that they were as human as me. My parents had married young, even by the standards of the 1940s, and it’s clear to me now as an old man that they were barely adults themselves – simply scared at the reality that lay before them.

My father turned to see me standing there, visibly concerned at what was taking place before me. He beckoned for me to join. It felt as though we remained like that for hours, embracing one another as a family for what I later realised was the last time.

It was at this point that the wireless changed. The speech that had prompted my mother’s distress had given way to music. I don’t remember the song, but I remember my father suddenly standing up straight and offering his hand to my mother, which she took with a slight smile.

And there they stood, my father’s hands on her waist, my mother’s hands around his shoulders, and they danced for as long as the song allowed them. The sunlight through the window seemed to grow stronger, casting the pair in a bright beam that made the entire scene look fantastical as the fire crackled almost in time. Swaying backwards and forwards, both taking care not to tread upon my little red train as I now sat beside it in awe. There was an innate beauty to the pair and yet something deeply tragic.

I still have the painting of the marigolds that my mother was working on. She retrieved it sometime after my father died, and it was only when I rediscovered it years later that I noticed an addition. Amidst the bouquet of glorious yellow flowers, there was a single wilted marigold – a small glimpse of the harsh reality that my mother tried her hardest to cover up.

I know this seems a tragic end to their story. I could tell you of the night that my father spent here on leave, howling and screaming into the night as my mother tried in vain to console him. I could tell you of the drizzly afternoon when we received the telegram saying he had been killed in action. I could tell you of how my mother retreated inside herself afterwards, never to return to the woman I knew as a child. But neither my father nor my mother would wish to be remembered in such a fashion, so this is where their story ends – in a beautiful dance to a slow song over the wireless.