“You’d probably call me a communist.”

No fur hat. No balalaika.

“No. I probably wouldn’t.”

A bottle of vodka in the cupboard. Some rye on a shelf. I looked at him.

“Not Russian. Communist.”

He carried my suitcase upstairs and left in search of duvets.

—–

I had answered an ad in the ‘Rooms Available’ section of the university dispatch. A girl who partied polo-style with a young prince and attended his mother’s alma mater was the owner of the suite. Ella said she adored the name Buffy and was ever-so-ready to welcome an American into her home (for the obligatory 500 pounds a month room rental of course). It would be fantastic. (It wasn’t.)

She sent Phillip to help me move.

—–

I spent my first night watching Eastenders in a flowered-to-death sitting room with the blonde Phillip, who wasn’t Russian, and a pint of Guinness. He wore a green robe with matching bottoms and leather slippers.

The all-his-life Londoner looked like a young (i.e. slim) Leonardo DiCaprio – from a distance. Up close he looked very English. Very what he was.

“Why’d you move?” He asked. “Nice house. Nice area.” He crossed his legs and stuck his hand in his pocket.

“Freaky housemates.” I told him.

I wasn’t being fair. Ahmad and Teemo were only trying to be friendly. To see me after the sun went down. Maybe share a drink with the house at the round-the-corner pub. But I was 21 and repressed and didn’t know how to be friends with a 46 year old Libyan who slept in the room next to mine. Teemo was younger, only 25, and slept downstairs. But he didn’t speak a word of American and I could only conjugate the odd verb in Finnish. So I kept my door locked and my whistle by my bed. (Really).

“Well. It happens.” Phillip hand rolled two cigarettes. Skinny. Like his legs. “Ella is a nice girl. I’ve known her for a while.” He sprinkled tobacco from a silver can and wet the papers with his tongue. “George, I have never met.”

George was the fourth house mate. Ella said his daddy was a Baptist preacher.

“I thought he moved in last month.”

“He did.” Phillip never took his eyes off his hands. “Three days before me.” He stood up, belted his robe and walked to the front door. “I take a walk every evening at sevenish. I guess he comes out then.”

I didn’t believe him. Then he looked at me, and I did.

“No way.”

“You’ll see.” Phillip stepped outside and lit up.

Stoop smoker.

I followed him. “Is he here?”

I’d spent six hours in the house. Hadn’t heard the first sound from the bedroom in the loft.

“He’s always here.” Phillip sort of laughed. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

I was creeped. “That’s like, seriously weird.”

“Love, you don’t know the half of it.”

The words had barely left his mouth when I heard it. Dull but there. Coming from….above.

An organ. And not the kind my Pa played.

“Holy Moly!” Goosebumps rushed up my arms. “It’s Lurch!”

We listened to the eerie sound for a few minutes, then Phillip finished his cigarettes and we went back to the sitting room.

“Those old flatmates of yours….”

I nodded.

“…..did they play the organ?”

I stopped nodding.

Phillip smiled and left the room.

—–

Oh Lordy, where are Earl and Chris when you need ‘em!

I like stories. Full of everything-real and colour.

Small, heavy words soaked with life. Words you can’t find in a dictionary and couldn’t spell even if you tried.

Words that mean more than they ought – because they’re so little and all.

I want to be a storyteller. But my tone is never right. My words always fall short. I stutter and turn sideways and focus too much on grammar and intellect and forget what it’s all about.

I’m no good at telling stories. My grandfather is. So I steal his voice, because I know he won’t mind.

It’s soft, deep gravel that goes Boom Boom Boom and “Boy, I tell you what”. It reminds you of wise men from the East, turned Appalachia, and a little boy running through the mountains with no daddy and no shoes.

When he remembers, you see it in his eyes. When he tells stories, he does it with his hands.

They wave and jump and spread to the tune of him. There’s life in them, and when they still, so will he.

They’re hold-up-mountain strong; and that’s no play on words. That’s what they did. For years.

William was a roof bolter.

He drove steel spikes into the ceiling of the mountain. Sandwiched the layers together so they wouldn’t fall. Machines do it now. Pa did it with his hands.

Hands that were crushed and broken. He had his fingers cut off the week I was born. They sewed ‘em back on. Crooked. One without its tip. He plays the piano with them now.

Hands that laugh and cry and hold the mountain off your back.

Full of stories of life’s been hard ….. but ain’t it grand!

Pa spent the day on the mountain. Fixing his mother’s grave. His hands have kept it from sinking…for years.

No one knew where he was. A man of 70. Of five heart attacks and so much more.

Ma worried. She wrung her hands and waited. When he came home she asked him where he’d been? Why was he up there? All alone?

Something could have happened. No one would have known.

“I wasn’t alone. All my family was there.”

He should know. He was the one who buried them.

Pa doesn’t build coffins. Not anymore. But he builds the graves to put them in. He does it because no one else will, and because people deserve to be laid to a real rest…in a family cemetery….where family do it all. Pa’s been doing it since he was twelve. (WTGWM)

I know why he goes to the Powell Cemetery on Grapevine Mountain. Why he thinks and prays and sits alone with everything that was and will be.

I know because he told me.

Cramped and sweaty, the train moves on. The interesting aunt, is gone.

When I was 25 I spent the summer in the South of France.

—–

Nicky was a homeless rich kid who drove an overpriced sports car and blew his allowance on other necessities (i.e. gambling and girls). We became friends because he sometimes dated my housemate Claire, and lived in her room even when she didn’t.

I lectured him on want and waste. Fed him breakfast. And told him if he ever touched my computer or my Sugar Smacks I’d throw him out the window. He said his Pappou would love me and he’d treat Claire and I to a holiday abroad if he ever got through the term.

——

Nicky’s grandfather was a poor man who made his millions the way most Greeks do, and swore his daughter’s only child wouldn’t see a cent (Or Drachma. Or Euro. Or whatever it was the old man was giving away.) until he went to university and made something of himself, without help or handout (living allowance not included) from the family.

Learn the value of something. Anything, really. That was the plan.

Nicky only pretended to learn. But he pretended well, and left Uni on time.

——-

His grandfather’s home was the size of my old secondary school. When we arrived, the wrinkled old patriarch was sat by the pool. After introductions, Nicky took Claire to tour the house. I stood waiting for a blonde girl to show me to my room.

“You are good friends with NEEkolas?”

Big NEEK was an old man with a thick old accent. He couldn’t move very well, but it didn’t matter….the world moved for him.

I told him the truth.

“NEEkolas doesn’t have any friends. Just a lot of pretenders who want to get something off him. ”

“Mmmm.” The old man nodded. He sat under an umbrella. In white clothes and black shades. He lowered them to stare at me. “Like Americans?” he said.

I wanted to slink off and join the others. But I didn’t. “Listen.” He made me feel bad. Like I was a cheat or a bum or something. And I wasn’t. “I’ve been feeding junior all year, and I don’t get an allowance.” I’d never had an allowance in my life! “If it wasn’t for this American your grandson would be sleeping in a gutter.” (Ok. Sometimes he did. But that was beside the point.)

“He would have been fine.” The old man almost smiled. “I am sure.”

“Whatever.” I don’t argue with rich old Greeks. “I’m not his friend. But I like him well enough. And I deserve this vacation. OK.” I remembered my manners. “Sir” And left.

——-

Claire and I spent the first few weeks doing a whole lot of nothing with a whole lot of wine. Nicky was home for breakfast and out for lunch. He always brought back gifts. I’d enjoy the sun and the luxury that was my strange friend’s life, but I wouldn’t take his grandfather’s money. Claire took it just fine.

What I did take was his yacht… to Monaco. With Nicky and Claire. The old man and his nurse.

A teeny French woman came to fit us for clothes that weren’t our own, and tutted and made weird clucking noises every time she measured my waist. Nicky bought Claire a necklace that she hocked the next year to pay for med school. His grandfather let me borrow a huge rock of a ring that had sat in its box since 1957.

“Pretty girls should wear pretty things.” He said. And “This is what men do,” as he put it on my finger.

It belonged to his dead wife. She never wore it. Said it didn’t sparkle.

One woman’s trash….. You know the drill.

I thanked him. And liked him.

I felt rich in Monte Carlo. With a ring like that. And an idiot dropping thirty grand on the table next to me.

I enjoyed the air and the being there and left the night young. Claire and Nicky didn’t leave it at all. They spent the week practicing indiscretion all over the principality, popping in and out to say hello and drop off bags and change clothes. I spent it on board the boat with the old Greek and his girlfriend/nurse. He taught me how to turn a phrase in MonÃgasque and I taught him how to drawl like a country boy. He told me money made good men stupid. And he worried about his grandson. I told him there were plenty of stupid poor men too. I knew a few. And his boy would get on alright.

He reminded me of Pa. With white hair. And a yacht.

He laughed and slept alot.

I drank champagne and kept my face out of the sun and thought about how momma’s never gonna believe this.

——

When Claire and I flew back to England a few weeks later we took Nicky with us. We fed him coffee and screened his grandfather’s calls. I told him Nicky was doing fine…even when he wasn’t.

“You should come visit. You can sleep on my floor.”

He laughed. “Ahhh. If I were young. But that country hurts my bones.”

The old man died the following Christmas.

He left Nicky his millions.

He left me the ring.

Tall Dark & Handsome had a tough act to follow.

Lunch was air and bellinis. Three thirtysomethings and me (I’m holding tight to 29).

Chaz is in PR. She’s good at it. They say she sold ice to an Eskimo. Twice. Luisa’s a banker. Investment. City firm. Chasing that £2million bonus. Julie’s the lawyer. She hates it, but she likes the money. The power. The old boy’s school she gets to order around.

And there’s me.

The conversation descends to men and why they’re needless and I sit quiet. I’ve got mine, and he’s a good one. They laugh and say Tall Dark & Handsome doesn’t count – he’s an anomaly. They ask if they’re leaving me out. If I have anything to moan about. I say I do.

I say this:

“If I hear don’t you want kids? one more time, someone’s gonna get bit.”

The girls understand. Because they’re more like me than not, and because they’ve heard my gripe before. They know about the uncle who knows everything and warns ‘You don’t want to be raising teenagers in your forties’, and the old school mates who ask ‘Can’t you have them?’.

Because the first is just so obvious and the second so polite.

Here’s the girls:

Chaz: “I don’t want ‘em. Ever. That’s why I have rabbits.”

Luisa: “I’ve never wanted to have children. And I never will. Not with this body anyway.”

Julie: “I only want ‘em when I’m drunk. And only if if they come without a man.”

Here’s me:

I like to be in control. I’ve always had a plan. Escape the farm. (“She’d have never been happy with a country boy like me.” Stephen said it. He was right.) Educate myself. (Because I deserve it.) Travel the world. Alone. (And remember that I did it…every day.) The plan never included children. Then I turned 27, and in an epiphany, realised remaining childless would be a waste of a good man.

So yeah. I want kids. But in my time. Not yours. It’s not unheard of. Outside of the holler. I’ll be a thirtysomething mother. My teenagers will have a fortysomething mom.

And you know what, they’ll do just fine.