Open Writing

Mr Charlie had the most interesting face I had ever seen. It
was long and thin and his cheeks were like little caves,
sunken and dark. His lips were so thin they seemed to have
disappeared and his hair was white as Father Christmas's.

He had grey bushy eyebrows that looked like friendly woolly
boys and eyes that never seemed to be quite open, because they
were always looking down on his allotment garden and never
rose from his carrots or his onions or his potatoes. Not even
when my mother asked him how much she owed him for the
vegetables she had collected from him. He just dug the spade
really fiercely into the ground, and shook his head.

"Is Mr Charlie deaf?" I asked my mother.

"Shush," she said.

"I can write it down for him..." I said. (I was very proud of
my writing. Mr Murray at school had said it was really neat),
"...if he's deaf."

Mr Charlie's head bent ever so slightly lower.

"Shush," my mother said again, softly, "he can hear us; he's
not deaf. Come on, let's leave him in peace."

She put some coins on the old chair that stood by Mr Charlie's
shed door and tugged me gently away.

"Thank you, Charlie," she said.

"Bye, Mr Charlie," I called, very loudly so that he would be
able to hear me if he was deaf.

Mr Charlie carried on digging.

"I'm sure Mr Charlie's a bit deaf," I said, with the
persistence of childhood.

"No," said my mother, "he's not deaf. He... just likes to be
quiet."

"Why?"

My mother didn't ignore my "whys" like some mothers did. She
always tried to answer them, no matter how difficult she found
it. As we walked away from the allotment and across the field
towards the hill where our house was, she said: "Mr Charlie
was away at the war and since he came back he just wants some
peace and quiet."

"Like my... dad," I said.

"Yes," said my mother, "yes, like your dad."

My dad had been in the Second World War. I had been born while
he was a serving soldier and hardly saw him until I was six
years old. Then suddenly there he was, this stranger who would
sit silently for ages in my house, holding my mother's hand,
and then suddenly jump up and pace rapidly to and fro.

I still hadn't got used to it, even after a year, but my
mother had tried to explain that he had had to go away and
leave us and that he had seen very sad things in the war and
they made him unhappy sometimes. His silences and his pacings
made me wonder if I had done something wrong and if I was
making him unhappy, though I tried very hard to make him
smile.

Things got better when I went to stay with my nan for a week
and when I got back there was a super surprise. We had a baby:
a tiny baby with sprouty gingery hair the same colour as my
dad's. My nan said my mother had found it under a gooseberry
bush.

That was why I asked my mother if I could go down to the
allotments with her. She went once each week, like everybody
else on the street, to buy vegetables for our dinners.

While she was busy looking through Mr Charlie's vegetables I
was busy looking for a gooseberry bush. To be honest I had no
idea what a gooseberry bush looked like, so I'd bent nearly
double looking under every bush in Mr Charlie's garden, but I
couldn't see any babies growing, so I wondered if he didn't
have any.

I thought about what my mother had said about Mr Charlie
wanting peace and quiet after the war and how he never looked
up and didn't smile. I bet a baby would make him smile, I
thought; ours made my dad smile... when he wasn't pacing.

"Mum," I said now, as we begin climbing up the hill, "shall we
take our baby to show to Mr Charlie?"

My mother looked at me in surprise.

"I don't know if he'd like that," she said, "he likes to keep
to himself, not be bothered with people."

"Oh yes, he would," I said, with great certainty, "because
she's a miracle, our baby. We've done miracles at school."

"Why is she a miracle?" my mother asked, smiling.

"Miracles make magic things happen," I explained, "and our
baby made my dad smile and I heard Mr Murray telling Mrs
Farrar that it would take a miracle to make men smile after
what they'd been through in the war. Can we, Mum, can we take
her to make Mr Charlie smile?"

"We'll see," she said, holding my hand really tightly and
putting her other arm around my shoulders hugging me to her.

In the end she agreed, so the three of us went down the long
pathway to the allotments. Mr Charlie, as always, was digging.
He didn't stop as we approached, even though I rattled the
pram handles so that he would know that there was a miracle in
his allotment.

I sat on the old chair, my legs swinging.

"Mr Charlie," I said, "do you believe in miracles?"
There was a sort of grunt from above the spade.

"I do," I said, "because a great miracle happened to us, you
know, like in the Bible. Mr Murray told us about miracles,
wonderful things that happen. Do you want to know about our
miracle, Mr Charlie?"

Mr Charlie, his back to me, nodded.

Delighted, I said: "Well, I went to my nan's and while I was
away you'll never guess what! My mum found a baby. Under a
gooseberry bush. That was a miracle, wasn't it? Was it one of
your gooseberry bushes, Mr Charlie?"

He didn't say anything, but he had stopped digging.

"I bet it was," I said, "because yours is the best garden in
the world and it would have had to be one of your gooseberry
bushes, because my mum says you are the kindest man who ever
lived, making vegetables and flowers for everybody, so I know
it was one of yours because you'd want to make my dad smile
after the horrid war."

Mr Charlie's back went so stiff that I began to worry that I'd
upset him mentioning the war. My mum had told me I had never
to mention the war. After a minute or two, though, he began
digging again, so I went doggedly on, because I had to know.

"Please, Mr Charlie, was it one of your gooseberry bushes?"

Very, very slowly he turned round. He still didn't look up,
but he moved a little way down the garden, then half turned to
see if I was following, as I was. He stopped by a clump of
bushes and pointed.

I looked at the bushes, then at Mr Charlie.

He cleared his throat and coughed very loudly, then he said,
gruffly: "There's no babies in my gooseberry bushes..."

Talking seemed to make his face ache, because he rubbed his
cheeks as if he had a pain in them.

"It must have been another one then," I said, a bit
disappointed, but still determined. "Do you want to see our
baby, even if she didn't come from your gooseberry bush?"

He nodded.

I held out my hand very shyly and just as shyly he took it and
walked over to the pram. For a long moment he looked at the
baby and for the first time I could really see his eyes. They
were blue, very, very pale blue as if God had run out of blue
paint when he made them and had had to mix the paint with
water like we did at school, but they were open. I stood there
looking at him, waiting.

I held my breath.

Would our miracle work for Mr Charlie like it was doing for my
dad?

For a long, long moment Mr Charlie stared down at the baby.
Then he turned away and began to walk up the garden.

My eyes filled with silly tears and I brushed them away with
the back of my hand. I had so wanted to make him smile.

I felt my mother's fingers curling round mine, very very
tightly. She bent down and held me close to her.

There was a touch on my shoulder, as gentle as the touch of a
butterfly's wing, and I turned and looked up.

Mr Charlie was standing there with his head bent low, holding
a rose in his hand.

Without a word, he handed it to me.

Then he smiled.