Freedom Lake

The day our house burnt down, I was out fishing with my Grandad Stephen. He wasn't actually my grandad. Not blood-related anyway, but he'd married my grandma when I was two, so he felt like he was my real grandad. More so than my actual Grandpa Roger, who I only saw at Christmas. Whenever I saw him, he never looked pleased to see me. Roger always had a look in his eyes that hinted some sort of disapproval of me.

Grandad Stephen though, he was a good guy. He was cool, he chatted to me about football. He was a die-hard Nottingham Forest fan. He told me all about the Glory Days under the brilliant Brian Clough. He was there, he saw it all. He'd been to the games, the cup finals, and watched his heroes lifting trophies. I'm a Spurs fan, so I’ve never had any glory days to remember. So, I'd sit and listen to him and just be in awe of what he'd seen.

He had a cool Audi Quattro, too, which I thought was amazing, even though I wasn't really a car kid. I’m not a car man either. But the Quattro… It was green, and when he revved the engine, it roared. What I'm saying is that when I was young boy, I thought Grandad Stephen was amazing.

He started taking me fishing when I was six. I loved it. I didn't particularly enjoy the actual fishing side of it, to be honest. I hated the maggots he used as bait. On a Saturday morning, we’d get into the beast of a car, and we would visit Jessops & Beale's, the town's toyshop. The journey wasn’t to pick up toys though, unfortunately. No, we went to buy the horrible, writhing white and pink maggots. Back then, I never thought it was weird that a toyshop sold them. Thinking back, it's bizarre, but that's how it was. I don’t know if all toyshops did this in the nineties, or if Jessop & Beale’s were just a bit out there. Either way, it wasn’t fun.

Once we’d picked up the bait, Grandad Stephen would ask me to hold them very carefully in their tub while he drove us the six miles to Freedom Lake. “If you drop them, they'll get everywhere” he told me with a knowing shudder. I never admitted my dislike of them to him, but I’m sure he noticed how my arms were locked at a ninety-degree angle from my body, so if I ever did drop them, they’d be nowhere near my arms, legs, face… Let’s move on.

Freedom Lake was a huge man-made reservoir-type thing that someone had bought and introduced loads of different aquatic beasties into, which men and boys would spend weekends attempting to catch. The lake was almost perfectly circular, so we got to know lots of the other people in a nod-if-you-see-them kind of way.

As well as my dislike of the maggots, I hated it when we actually caught a fish. I would sit, often staring at the placid water and, with no external signal I could ever see, Grandad Stephen would jump up out of his camping chair. He would splosh into the water, a cigarette clamped in his mouth, and he'd pull the rod up high, frantically reeling it in. The fish would emerge from its home, thrashing in obvious distress, its mouth gaping open and shut. Although we always threw the poor creature back in, I’d feel dreadful. It was just minding its own business in the water, then suddenly it was caught in the mouth by a massive metal hook and thrust into a horrible environment where it couldn't breathe.

Despite my queasiness about the animals involved in fishing, I really enjoyed the rest of the experience. Grandad Stephen brought a radio and we'd listen to old classics. I became a fan of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Del Shannon while my sister Clare stayed at home listening to the Spice Girls and Take That with my mum. Don't get me wrong, the Spice Girls are great. But whenever I hear Day Tripper or Hats off to Larry I am immediately taken back to warm summers by the lake, with the smell of Grandad Stephen's menthols wafting in my nose and the taste of Panda Pops on my tongue.

We sat and chatted about football, and school, and he would sometimes tell me things about my grandma. My mum never allowed conversation about her own mother. If Clare or I ever asked about Grandma Betsy, mum's lips became thin, and we knew we should busy ourselves elsewhere. Because of this, I yearned for information.

The day of the fire was swelteringly hot. I was ten, and I was sitting shirtless in my camping chair, my feet resting in the water at the edge of the lake. Grandad Stephen was in a similar state of dress; the only addition to his attire was one of those military-style caps with a flap at the back to cover his neck. I'd refused to wear headwear, after my best friend Liam had told me that hats squeezed your head so tightly that you lost brain cells. I didn't really believe him, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to be safe.

“Tell me about Grandma Betsy”, I said, as Grandad Stephen lit another cigarette. He took a long breath and closed his eyes before exhaling. He was one of those people who made smoking look cool. Even at that young age, I knew that smoking was bad for you, but he made me want to do it. Years later, when I tried my first toke, I imagined I was him for a second.

“What do you wanna know?” he said, taking another drag.
“Well...” I said, wondering what to ask, “Last time we came fishing, you told me about her job. She worked in Woolworths until she was too poorly”.

Grandad Stephen nodded. He had a faraway look in his eyes. He looked so far away, I doubted he would have even noticed if the Loch Ness monster jumped out in front of us.
“So… I was wondering”, I said, my tummy lurching, “How did she die? Was it because she was poorly?

Grandad Stephen looked at me so sharply that I heard his neck crick, and a bird was startled from a tree. I started and wondered what I had done wrong. “What? What did I say?” I asked in a small voice.

“What has your mum told you about it?” he asked in a tone unlike his usual calm, kind manner.

“Nothing”.

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”.

“Well, not nothing. She told me that she had... She had cancer”. I whispered that word. It seemed as though everyone whispered it, but I wasn't even really sure what it was. I knew it was bad, my Grandma Betsy had died from it, and my friend Liam's dad had been so poorly from it that it made him bald.

“That's all you know?” Grandad Stephen asked, “She had cancer?”

“Yes” I said. It was strange, but he seemed relieved. He took one last drag of his cigarette and walked over to me. He came and sat down next to me. He dipped his feet in the lake and groaned with the pleasure of the cool water.

“Sometimes…” he said, “Sometimes, it's good not to know too much about things. Maybe one day you'll be old enough to know what happened, but for now, all you need to know is that she was poorly. We were happy, you were too young to remember, but things were great.

“Then she got cancer. It's a fucking nasty thing, cancer. My dad died of it when I was about your age. We didn't have the NHS back then, and we didn't have money. Dad was a miner, but he couldn't work because of the illness. His screams kept me up at night”.

I had never seen Grandad Stephen like this. His eyes were so alive. He gazed in the distance at the trees on the other side of the lake, but I knew he could see something else. He could see his dad, dying all over again in his head.

“So, when we went to the doctors, and they told us Betsy had cancer, well, shit, it took everything for me not to scream. I told God there and then, that I didn't believe in him anymore. If He existed, He wouldn't allow it. Your grandma was kind, she was caring. She didn't deserve pain. She didn't deserve anything that happened to her.