A CHILD'S TOY

A child's toy rescued from the flames
at last finds a loving home.

There are many things that can inspire a story, in this one it was a child’s toy that would have been burn’t if it wasn’t for the rain.

It was when my mother didn’t call me down for breakfast that I began to think something was wrong; something had changed. Even at an early age we become accustomed to routine and as much as we might say we find it tedious, it is also a comfort. A noise might wake us in the dead of night, but for sailors the monotonous drumming of an engine is what lets them stay literally, sound asleep. It will be when the engine stops that they will awake.

I remember laying for a while wondering if normality would resume, but it didn’t. Outside my bedroom, I could hear unfamiliar sounds coming from downstairs. Cautiously I crept down the stairs until I could see into the living room where daddy sat with an arm round mummy who was crying. Daddy looked up and with an inclination of his head, beckoned me to join them. With his other arm around me, he told me quietly that Nanny had ‘passed away’. I had heard adults use the phrase before but none had explained it to me. Passed away what, I wondered. The moment was such that I felt it intrusive to ask what he meant. Obviously it was upsetting so I presumed, as Nanny was mummy’s mummy, something awful had happened to her. So awful that my mummy couldn’t stop crying.

‘Is she dead?’ I asked.

Daddy nodded and mummy looked briefly in my direction, then resumed her sobs. I adopted what I thought was an appropriately sad expression at the same time as wondering how this would affect the rest of my day, whether I would be allowed to play outside or make any noise. Then there was breakfast, how long would that be? It wasn’t something daddies did, only mummies, and she was in no fit state to do anything. 

Some time before that morning my hamster had died and we decided to bury him in a shoe box in the garden. During the ceremony both mummy and daddy had said that I wasn’t to cry and I must be brave. This was because Hammy had gone to heaven to play with all the other Hammys and would be having a lovely time. 

Even at the age of ten the idea of Nanny having gone to heaven to play with all the other nannies seemed a bit absurd. She could hardly move the last time I had seen her and unless my understanding was woefully short, which it was, a new lease of life seemed inappropriate, she having just died. I filtered the Hammy burial and decided there was a question I could ask without causing any offence, but just in case I would ask it, ‘in all innocence’.

‘Has she gone to heaven?’ I ask this only because of what I had been led to believe regarding hamsters, I was curious to know if it also applied to people.

Again daddy nodded. She had gone to heaven then, like hamsters do. Mummy looked up to confirm Nanny’s ‘onward journey’, and forced a slight smile by way of comforting me. I forced a slight smile by way of comforting her. Daddy forced a slight smile and we were all comforting each other with slight smiles, so that was alright. 

I was in the process of thinking, now that I knew she’d definitely gone to heaven, what she and all the other nannies would be doing up there when Daddy turned to me and said that Nanny had gone to join Grandad. 

Grandad’s being already there, was a surprise. He had ‘passed away’, before I had arrived so I hadn’t really given him much consideration. I thought I’d better check.

‘He’s in heaven too?’ I asked in the same kind of innocent way, just in case I’d got it wrong.

‘Of course,’ Daddy replied. 

This made it seem obvious, something everyone knew, well I didn’t. Suddenly the vision of the nannies playing at whatever nannies play at faded and something like an old people’s home came into view with lots of old people clasping each other’s hands sitting in adjacent chairs as far as the eye could see. I could see no end of them.

‘Do all nannies and grand-dads go to heaven?’ Was my next innocent enquiry.

‘If they’ve been good, yes,’ Daddy replied. 

My vision of heaven at the time did not include any young people. Not having the concept of infinite space, where as many people as necessary could be accommodated I was curious to know if there was a chance of heaven running out of space. Maybe before I got there. As far as I was concerned everything had its limits. Like our doctor’s waiting room, there would be a point at which there was standing room only, or even the necessity of having to make another appointment. 

I was about to ask, ‘What if they haven’t been good?’ when we were all saved by Mummy suggested she make us some breakfast.

‘We have to be brave and carry on,’ my father announced whilst nodding and remaining seated. He was looking at me so I felt the urge to nod as well, and did. And I too remained seated.

‘Making breakfast will help to take mummy’s mind off things,’ he explained as Mummy wiped her eyes and went into the kitchen. As she made breakfast every morning I wondered if she was generally in a state of upset and had to permanently have her mind taken ‘off things’. 

After a day or so things did return to normal. Then there was a day when mummy and daddy were picked up in a big black car and I had to be looked after until they returned by a neighbour who smelt of onions. Soon after that I was given a present. Mummy said it was from Nanny which I found confusing being certain that she had ‘passed away’, but I had learn’t never to question the circumstances surrounding the arrival of presents and just to accept them with a gracious smile. So I smiled graciously whilst being told it had always been meant for me to have, but somehow it had been forgotten. This made no sense to me at all, so I just kept the smile on.

The unwrapped present lay on my bed for some time while I tried to understand it? Eventually I reasoned that the total unsuitability of the toy was due to Nanny having ‘passed away’ in such haste she had just grabbed the first thing that came to hand. Standing on a chair I put it on top of the wardrobe, where it would stay and I could forget about it.

My folks moved house some time after I had left home. During the move my mother found the toy covered in dust on the wardrobe. In the aftermath of my grandmother’s death she had forgotten all about it. In fact so had I. She told me it was something I should have been given when I was very little, but it had been in grandfather’s shed when he died. It was a child’s toy but at the time it didn’t seem to matter that I was much too old for it; it did. At the age of ten you adopt an air of maturity that you have absolutely no right to.

Now I have my own child, I see that toy every day. My daughter puts her dolls astride it, and pushes them around and never seems to tire finding new uses for it, and new ways of enjoying it. There’s something timeless and classic about its simplicity. There are somethings you know will always be with you and yours, they’re a keeper. 

One winter’s evening I asked my mother where her mother had bought it? 

‘It wasn’t bought,’ she said, ‘it was one of your grandfather’s projects,’ and began to explain.

My grandfather, who was a handyman, was repairing a customer’s fence when he noticed something in the adjoining garden. He would repair and repaint anything that he thought he could bring back to life, anything that might come in useful or bring pleasure. A neighbour had started a bonfire but almost immediately a shower had doused the flames and given my grandfather the opportunity to remove from it something he thought he might give to a grandchild one day. No sooner had he returned to his work than the bonfire burst into flames. 

In his shed he scraped away the wood that was charred, put on a new tail and a mane, painted it like new and even replaced a wheel that was missing. There, in his shed, it waited for a grandchild to claim it, but not before he died. Grandmother had forgotten all about it, only when she died did my mother remember for whom the wooden horse had been rescued from the flames.