Something to consider when reading/listening: Are memories a sufficient consolation for ageing?

I think ye said it within a week of knowing me. I think ye did, ye know. I remember thinkin’ what a plonker. What a thing te say.

Ye definitely said it when ye put ye back out tryna learn our first dance. Ye did. I know that for certain.

When we flew on Concord. When we skied down black slope and nearly died. When the queen came to one of me productions. When you saved that little boy’s life who’d been written off. When we found the girls covered head to toe in chocolate at 3 AM.

Ye said it then. Ye couldn’t stop saying it, could ye?

[In a southern accent] “We’ll tell the grandkids about this.” Aye. That’s what ye said. Ye couldn’t say it enough.

And then, I dunno, as the years have gone past, ye’ve said it less and less.

It started out as joke, aye, that’s the trouble. We’ll tell grandkids in distant future. When we’re old. A long, long time from now. But “now” moves, durnt it? It drags ye with it. That’s the trouble.

When Lydia told us her news — no, the circumstances weren’t how we’d imagined — but I were dead happy. ’Course I were. And I looked at yer and I thought to meself, what is he playing at?

Cheer up, ye plonker. We’ve known this were coming. This is the deal, aye. Ye keep getting older. And then, if yer lucky, ye get some grandkids. Ye get to quieten down. Ye get to relax. Ye durnt mope around like a misery guts, that’s not how it works.

Since yer wer twenty-odd ye’ve been saying we’ll tell grandkids about this, we’ll tell grandkids about that. Well this is yer chance, I thought, cheer up, I thought. Ya bloody plonker, I thought that too. Aye, course I did. 

Just down a few corridor is Lydia. In all manor of pain and discomfort, aye. But any moment now… Any moment now…

Same hospital. Can you believe it’s happening in same hospital?

We did foxtrot at our wedding. Ye made it look difficult. Ye stiff plonker, scared of yer own arms. But me dad told me, he said if I can teach you I can teach anyone. And I did. I quit nursing and I taught hundreds of people how to dance. And hundreds more how to stop dancing like fools. But ye were the first. And I’m sure we said we’ll tell grandkids about that ’n’all.

That were our deal, weren’t it, aye? You’d tek a sick person. Ye’d sort ’em out, stitch ’em up, put ’em back on their feet. And I’d get ’em dancing. That were harder to co-ordinate than we might have imagined, but it were the general idea. 

But I promised yer — what?— can only’ve been three, four month ago, I promised yer I’d teach yer a new dance and we’d show it to our grandson once he were born.

Same hospital. A few corridor away. Can’t believe it’s happening in same hospital. 

Is a dance the same dance if it’s danced by different dancers?

Ye asked me that early on. I thought ye were a right plonker then ’n’ all.

Aye, it’s same dance. ’Course it is.

Me dad were dying at the time. And yer were tryna make me feel better. I didn’t really pay much attention.

But I get ye point. The dancers can stop, but the dance carries on. The dance don’t care yer name or who ye are. If ye let it, it’ll move through ye. Aye, it will.

Even if we forget a dance, mebe it finds a way of coming back, aye.

You said, in thousands of years, long after it’s forgotten, two bodies’ll find themselves doing foxtrot and they’ll have no idea why. Somehow, the instinct will simply tek hold. I think ye might be right. I think they will ye know. And they’ll say we’ll have to teach this dance to our grandkids.

There are patterns, ant there? That’s what ye always used to say. Patterns. Instincts. Things what move through us. The way we speak, the way we move our bodies. It ant us what’s doing it, ye said. Ye said it’s the weight of history. Whatever that means.

Aye, ye didn’t half say some daft things, did ya, plonker?

But I suppose I made ye do some daft things ’n’ all. Skiing and snowboarding. Following Hugh Laurie ’round Selfridges til we realised it were someone else. The UB40 gig, definitely won’t tell our grandkids about that. Cold water swimming. The school fetes. The school council. Neighbourhood watch. Always meking ye do things when yer were far happier in yer dressing gown and slipper.

But aye, I am ’n’ all, truth be told.

We’re at our best sat on settee with a cuppa watching something daft or just sitting, aye. Not talking, not dancing. Not me or you. Just us.

We’d watch I’m a Celeb, even though we hated it. Corrie even when it got shite. Gordon Ramsay, we couldn’t stand him, aye, but we kept watchin’. I couldn’t watch a second of any of that without you. 

Ye get to sit on settee a lot when yer grandparents, don’t ye. That’s the deal, that’s the idea. That’s what ye sign up to. You spend years charging around, getting into scrapes. And then finally ye get to sit on settee in yer slippers while some little tyke’s crawling all over yer.

Always wanted a grandson, didn’t ye? Surrounded by women, well it makes sense.

Ye never complained, that’s yer problem. If ye didn’t like something, ye’d lump it. Only person I know who ever took that expression seriously. “Like it or lump it. Mustn’t grumble,” that’s what ye’d say, ye big plonker.

Yer dead wrong, ye are. Ye might have been right to stop me mekkin’ a fuss in a restaurant or on a plane. But there are some things, plonker, some things ye most definitely should grumble about. Most definitely, aye.

The same hospital. A few corridors away. What are the chances of that?

We were gonna live near mountains, remember? We been saying that almost as long as we’ve been talking about grandkids. Ever since our holiday to Alps, when ye couldn’t ski or snowboard fer toffee, we’ve wanted to wake up and see peaks from our bedroom window. That were our promise, aye, that were how we stopped being scared of getting old. Grandkids, slippers and mountains.

You’d point at clouds over yonder, wouldn’t ya? On days when sky were bottom half white, top half blue, and ye’d tell me, “Look love, mountains in West London.” And somedays it did look like it ’n’ all. And you said, I know ye said it, ye said that’s what we’ll tell our grandkids.

So, you know what plonker, I think I will grumble, if it’s all the same to you. I think I’ll grumble and complain and mek a fuss. I’m gonna speak to manager, whoever that is, and I’m gonna grumble until I’m thrown out. Because we had a deal. We had an understanding. And this, like this, fer it to be like this in same hospital, it in’t right, it in’t fair, it in’t how it’s supposed to be, it in’t… it in’t… it in’t the way it’s meant to…

You know, the end of a dance, that an’t the bit people remember. That an’t the reason for dancing, to get to end. No. No, there an’t no reason for dancing at all. That’s what makes it what it is. That’s why we love it. Ye keep moving without travelling.

And when everyone remembers, they remember the middle of dance, as though it’s still going on, aye.

I dunno how I’m gonna do it, love. I dunno how I’m gonna stand up and move meself, aye, even if it is just down a few corridors. To go from here to there, from your bed to hers. I dunno how I’m gonna do it.

The same hospital. But the other end of the world, that’s how it feels.

I just know, somehow I just know, them two things are gonna happen at same time. I just know.

You’re gonna pass… and…and, at same moment, he’s gonna arrive. And summit. I dunno what exactly. But summit is gonna carry on.

He’ll have an instinct. A pattern.

And I know what I’ll tell him, our grandson.

I’ll tell him, I’ll say, “Ay up Plonker, I’d recognise that smile anywhere.”

[Doe Wilmann first released this piece on his short story podcast, Meaningless Problems.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.