Arriving home

I opened the gate and Grandad shuffled through it.

“Thanks lad”, he said.

The sun was doing its best to compensate for the heavy silence. We walked at shuffle pace down the hill, towards the remnants of the Roman fort by the river.

Grandad stopped halfway down the hill and touched my arm. “Look”, he said, pointing across the valley. “See that church? That’s where we married. Now, look right from there and back a bit, that’s Abblesden.”

That was the council estate they’d lived on for forty five years, after the war was over and Grandad had demobbed.

“Of course, I was so lucky the war ended when it did, because they were going to post me to Burma.”

“Really?” Of course, I’d heard the story before.

“Oh yes. On the front line. I would have been fighting the Japanese. But then of course, they dropped the bomb and the Japanese surrendered. And I came back home.”

“Thank God for that”, I said.