Viva Brighton Issue #58 December 2017
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COLUMN<br />
...........................................<br />
John Helmer<br />
Silent<br />
Illustration by Chris Riddell<br />
“What do you want for Christmas, Poppy?”<br />
“A saxophone.”<br />
“Alto or tenor?”<br />
“Like the one Lisa Simpson plays.”<br />
“That’s a baritone.”<br />
“No, it’s a tenor.”<br />
“It’s a barry…” We bicker about this for a while,<br />
then Poppy pulls out her phone and checks on<br />
Google. “OK, it’s a baritone. But I want an alto.”<br />
It’s Saturday and I’m in Lewes, dropping Poppy off<br />
for her 11am flute lesson. I’ve completely forgotten<br />
the house number, but I needn’t have worried: the<br />
sound of two flutes locked in mortal combat guides<br />
us to the door. Poppy’s flute teacher, Marielle, lets<br />
us in. “Just finishing up.” Poppy and I sit and<br />
listen as Marielle and her friend run through<br />
the duet again. Then suddenly there is a<br />
loud explosion from outside.<br />
“Honestly,” says Marielle, “the fireworks<br />
go on for ever in this town…”<br />
“I think it’s the two-minute silence,”<br />
I say, checking my watch. Words die<br />
on our lips.<br />
In the silence I think of my<br />
grandfather, who died in 1974.<br />
We didn’t get on, clashing over<br />
a number of things, but mainly<br />
over our different tastes in<br />
music. I had no time for the<br />
military brass band tunes that<br />
were the only sounds he seemed<br />
to like, and he was no fan of Led<br />
Zeppelin. Mostly we kept away<br />
from each other – but there was<br />
one occasion when he required my<br />
company.<br />
He was incensed that day because<br />
some ‘long-haired lefty’ in the Times had written<br />
an article saying that the famous Christmas truce –<br />
when the two warring sides in the First World War<br />
put aside their differences and played football in<br />
no-man’s land – never happened.<br />
Summoning me to the dining room, he took out<br />
letters that he’d written home from the trenches<br />
in Northern France. The letters were pretty<br />
boring, mostly: requests for warm socks, a lot of<br />
terminology I didn’t understand; including one<br />
term, ‘breastworks’, that I would have tittered<br />
at had the atmosphere in the room not been so<br />
serious. And then in one of the letters there it was:<br />
a description of the game they had played, and<br />
a request to be sent a football just in case<br />
it ever happened again. He showed me<br />
photographs he had taken of his fellow<br />
soldiers in the trenches, most of whom<br />
had never come home, and of the<br />
German troops they met and mingled<br />
with that day. I felt moved, not just<br />
by the gravity of what he was telling<br />
me, but because he clearly felt it<br />
mattered what I thought and<br />
believed. No adult had ever<br />
given any sign of that being<br />
important before.<br />
While Poppy has her flute<br />
lesson I get a coffee in the<br />
High Street, watching rain<br />
falling on the Ouse. Then I<br />
walk across the road to WH<br />
Smith and buy a paper. “Would<br />
you like a Terry’s Chocolate<br />
Orange with that for one pound?” says<br />
the sales assistant.<br />
“I’ll settle for a poppy.”<br />
....41....