It was the year of explosions. That’s how he remembered it. Detonations. In post boxes, on trains, on shop shelves and under cars. They erupted seemingly every day. The newscasters grim as they flickered black and white on the early evening news and announced the latest. The deaths, the dismemberment, the ashen-faced injured, blood mingling with the brick dust and plaster as they sat disbelieving on a kerb or on the step of an ambulance. They had been blown up but were still alive. They didn’t know which they could comprehend less.
He remembered two firemen in their old-fashioned helmets, blue serge coats and heavy boots shovelling – shovelling – remains into two bags. London, Belfast, where he couldn’t recall, but there it was; black and white and red all over. The news.
And his mother’s friend. A nurse the night someone chucked a bomb through the window of a pub full of soldiers. He remembered her. Vaguely now.
Other explosions too. His father’s. The easy switch from jolly charmer to raging bullshit. Sunday lunches running down the wall, fists raised, fists used. The punches to his mother’s arm as she drove, the maudlin moods and misunderstood genius. The lies and confections, the gathering storm. Add alcohol and stand well clear. Who was in for it this time? Not him, never him. Even when the police came, he’d lie calmly. They’d eye him suspiciously of course. They knew. The broken bannister, the crumpled faces, the tension oozing from the walls along with the wine from a thrown glass.
Then the bang that changed everything. The slammed front door. Even in a world of explosions, it echoed with the clarity of a single rifle shot. She’d gone. And left them.
Where that had left Sean Christopher was where he stood now. On a high hill overlooking London. The new increasingly overcoming the old in height and in light and in prominence. An old bronze general staring silently over the river from his plinth while the aviation lights atop the skyscrapers winked cheekily back like upstart urchins taunting a Chelsea Pensioner.
It was autumn. The leaves were turning and the conkers poked their shiny noses through heavy shells of fading green. They were parting slowly, preparing to drop their off-spring onto the pavement. A silent bearing down.
Years ago, there would have been gangs of children throwing sticks into the branches to try and harvest them for playground duels. Nobody played conkers any more. The horse chestnuts remained unmolested by string and experiments with ovens and vinegar. Only the pavement awaited. ‘There’s a moral there somewhere’, he thought, ‘heads you win..’
