Ronald Moralee Teasdale died on the twenty-third of October 2006, aged ninety-six. Today is the third of July, the day after my birthday, and I am visiting my grandfather for the last time. It has been well over a decade since I last saw him. The streets are growing ever more familiar as we – my mum and I – approach his house, and I’m growing curiously nervous. What will he think of me? Will he approve of the person I have become? The conversation in the car stumbles and falters, and we drive the last few miles to his house in silence, me staring out the window, gnawing on my fingernails.

As we pull up at the house, I’m transported back nearly fifteen years to when I was last driven down this drive - an excited eleven-year-old, ready for adventure. It is, it was, a glorious day. I can, could, see the flashes of summer colours from the higgledy beds in the fairytale garden. I can smell the sticky sap from the tall, slender pine trees in the spinney at the end of the garden, where the Huldufólk live - though I was never as quick at spotting them as my grandma Mae. I was seven years old when she first introduced them to me. She was Akala in her local scout group, so she was always keen to pass on tracking and survival skills. 

‘They’re useful people to know,’ she explained. ‘When you have to survive in the jungle, they’re the first people to speak to.’

‘Will I have to survive in the jungle?’ 

‘If Mowgli could do it, there’s no reason you can’t.’

‘That’s not real. It’s just a story.’ 

‘I don’t see the difference.’

I see one now, scuttling among the begonias, sending petals falling. Mae’s going to be furious with them, I think. But then I peek through the window to the space on the baby blue velvet sofa, where she should be sitting, and I remember. 

It was three years ago when I found out. I was still a student in Leeds back then. Or perhaps more accurately, I paid exorbitant fees to attend the student bar. Still, it was Thursday night, and my parents were visiting. I met them at a French restaurant, where we sat in the slim bay windows, and I pretended, somewhat unsuccessfully, that I was tired from work and not from a warehouse party last night and that I wasn’t hungry because I’d had a big lunch. No, they didn’t need to worry about me, I explained.

‘So, we need to go and visit Mae and Ron,’ I said,  attempting to steer the conversation away from the fact I was several shades paler than snow. 

I’ll never forget that pause. 

The hubbub faded to radio static, the bright lights dimmed, vignetting the room. In sepia, my mum leaned over and squeezed my hand. I took a deep, jagged breath.

‘We didn’t want to say. Not here. It happened two years ago. We only just found out.’ 

My grandfather is here, though. I can see him through the immaculate white-framed window, where he rests, as he always does at this time of day, in his red leather recliner, a battered old book splayed open on his broad chest. He’s wearing the same leather-elbowed tweed cardigan now as I walk up the drive, as he always does, my memories; still, remarkably, he has the same luxurious head of hair, the same leonine moustache. It’s not until he sees us and heaves himself up with an all-too-practical grey steel walking frame that the dual-time spell is broken, and I realise the old man I imagined he was when I was eleven is now the person in front of me. 

I know the man I’ve missed is still there, though, when he answers the door not with a greeting but with a wry smile and question. ‘So, you’re still wearing those railroad worker trousers, are you? Shame you can’t afford a proper pair.’

 Jeans, you see, weren’t popularised until the 1950s, making them an intolerably modern invention. 

I can’t help but smile, too. It’s all a contrivance, of course. Once, many years ago, when I was seven years old, I heard my grandma announce that there was a new postman. 

‘I’ll go test him out, dear.’ My grandfather got up and, perhaps looking more confused than usual, offered the postman a friendly wave. 

He opened the front door as the poor postman attempted to push the letters through the box. ‘Have you got the sausages?’ 

‘Er. I’m sorry, sir?’

‘The sausages, man. Have you brought the sausages?’

‘The sausages?’

‘The other postman always brought the sausages. Dammit, must we starve?’

To his credit, the postman did an admirable job of rummaging in his bag before coming up empty-handed. 

‘Do try to remember tomorrow, won’t you?’

There were nods of agreement. 

‘How is he, dear?’ My grandma enquired when he returned. 

‘Seems like a lovely young man. Sure, he’ll do splendidly. ‘

‘Good, good.’

I remember being astounded that you could behave in that way. There were rules, weren’t there? A correct way of doing things. That’s what my teachers had always told me. I think about asking my grandfather about the incident now as he leads us to the front room, but he would only deny it. I’m sure he would have denied it even if I asked him at the time. 

‘Dreadful lies,’ he would have said, shaking his head with only the merest hint of a smile.

‘I told you. We should thrash him soundly at the start of each day,’ Grandma would proclaim. ‘He’s bound to do something to deserve it.’

The reintroductions take a while. My grandfather has to do a carefully choreographed dance, holding onto his frame with one hand, then the other, to get in all the requisite hugs and how-do-you-dos. He offers us tea, but, old contrarian that he is, immediately sits down. He never offered to make it – ‘I see you’ve still not taught him to listen, then?’

 He is, however, wrong. This time, I do listen. 

I listen when he tells me about their life together and tales of their adventures living in Kenya – did you know they were once beset by a gang of monkeys for a day and a half? My uncle, who is still a bastard to this day, threw a rock at, and hit, a baby vervet monkey. “Fraudulent director banned for five years” was the headline the day he was convicted of stealing from pensioners. I still think this is the worst thing he’s done. The whole monkey tribe returned to seek retribution. They missed a trick when they didn’t give him up. 

I listen when he tells me about his time in the war before he became an English teacher. 

‘You were one of the Dambusters, weren’t you?’ I ask. 

He proffers me a bristly smile. ‘I actually flew the trial run for Operation Chastise the day before the raid.’

‘I’m still counting it.’

‘Quite right. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’

I listen, somewhat aghast, when he tells me about his new girlfriend who he met, or rather re-met, three years ago, when he was a sprightly ninety-four. She’s the same girl he proposed to before the war. She still has the ring, apparently.

I’ll even listen, enraptured as he regales me with tales, bursting with pride, about the brother and sister I’ve never met.

‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ I ask, pointing to a picture in an ornate silver frame on the old oak dresser beside me. He nods, but he needn’t; it’s me in a dress. It couldn't be anyone but my sister. 

We’re about to go, to get up and leave for the last time, when I have my daily bout of sneezes (five a day, without fail). 

My grandfather doesn’t’ miss a beat. ‘Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes, for he can thoroughly enjoy the pepper when he pleases.’

‘Wow, wow, wow, wow.’ I finish reflexively. I realise at that moment how much of an impact he has had on my life. I remember him reading Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh to me. I remember him explaining how Tolkien invented a whole new language for The Lord of the Rings. 

Then it’s all over. Two short hours is all I get. We do the cheerful goodbyes and promises to visit soon. I don’t know about the call my mum will get in six months’ time. How I’ll hear one side of that dreadful call. That terrible pause. How I’ll feel the colour drain away once more. 

‘When’s the funeral?’ my mum will ask. 

…

‘Last month?’

…

‘More awkward for who, Gavin?

…

"For whom?" I’ll imagine my grandfather saying.

I’ve never been bitter that my biological dad left, but on that day, in that moment, I’ll realise I’m never going to forgive him for that cowardice. My real dad will point out that my biological dad’s dad had just died. He’s right, of course, my real dad. He was always a thousand times kinder than Gavin. Perhaps that’s why I never minded that he left. I got an upgrade when I was two, and honestly, I’ve never looked back. Neither did Gavin, it seems.

‘At least we got that late visit.’ My mum will say. 

In another sixteen years, I’ll think back to this visit as I sit in front of my computer, and I’ll wonder what he would have thought of me, doing a master's in his subject, writing out my memories of his memories. I’ll wonder if I’ll have kids, tell them about sausages, and quote Carrol at them, too. I’ll sit, and I’ll wonder how far the ripples of these memories will travel.