‘What was your Nana like?’ my granddaughter Sophia asked pointing to a photo of a tall, slender woman, with long hair smiling into the camera, as we flipped through an old photograph album. Nowadays, most people use their phones instead of albums. We were sitting in the summerhouse sipping freshly squeezed apple juice made from the fruits of trees my grandfather had planted many years ago.
‘When I was sixteen, my Nana caught me admiring myself in her wardrobe mirror while wearing her blue and gold kaftan dress—’ I began, as memories flooded back. I could almost hear her voice called to me over the years.
‘Gwendolyn, are you in my old wardrobe again?’
I adored the vintage clothes Nana kept there. When I was little, she would tell me the clothes once belonged to an Indian princess, and I believed her.
‘Goodness, at sixteen, you’ve nearly grown into that one. I was twenty when I bought it in India,’ Nana said, leaning against the door frame with a brightly coloured towel wrapped around her and another around her head. ‘Remember Gwendolyn, my friends will be here soon.’ Nana disappeared from view. ‘I’ll need to be ready before they arrive because we can’t be late,’ she called from her bedroom.
I slipped the dress and long, brightly- coloured glass-beaded necklace onto its hanger and returned it to the wardrobe. I dropped to my knees beside the guest bed, lifted the bedcovers, and dragged out a dusty box from beneath the bed. I remembered seeing the old red leather photograph album with an embossed Indian elephant on the cover that Nana kept there.
‘What are you doing now?’ Nana called, but before I could answer, the sound of her hair dryer starting u, silenced my words. Since discovering the album as a child during a school holiday, I’d wanted to ask Nana about the photographs, but she was always so busy.
‘Gwendolyn, come here,’ Nana called.
I pushed the box back under the bed, straightened the bedcovers, and closed the door behind me. On the landing, I found Nana outside her bedroom, dressed in tight-fitted trousers and a skin-tight polo neck top. On her head, she wore a hard hat that made her look as if she were about to scale Mount Everest.
With a cheeky grin, she asked, ‘What do you think? Do I look the part?’
‘What are you up to, Nana?’ I laughed and hugged her. She giggled.
‘Oh no, Mum’s going to be cross with you again, is she?’ I said trying to sound like a stern adult, as the doorbell rang.
Nana kissed me on the cheek lightly before rushing downstairs to the front door, calling back over her shoulder. ‘You’ll find out later, Gwendolyn.’ Then, with a bang, Nana was gone.
Nana and Glived next door to us for as long as I can remember. Granddad was so different from Nana. He was up at first light and used to potter around the shared garden long before Nana was up.
Most mornings, on opening my curtains, I saw Granddad busy in the vegetable plot. The early morning sunlight shone off the top of his head, giving him a saintly halo as he bent stiffly to weed between the carrots and the rows of beans. The garden seemed to offer Granddad sanctuary from Nana’s hustle and bustle as she rushed from one group meeting to the next.
My Nana wasn’t like everyone else’s grandmother, Sophia. She didn’t walk to the shops; she jogged. She never complained in the same way as Granddad did. ‘One must make your voice heard,’ was one of her sayings. Another was, ‘if you want change, make it happen— don’t just sit back and moan about things.’ My mum treated me as if I was still a child, unlike Nana. I remember one occasion, when my granddad had phoned Mum to say Nana was at the police station. Both, he and my father were unavailable to collect her, so it fell to Mum and me.
‘Your Nana is nothing but trouble. As much as I love her,’ ‘She’s been a real embarrassment all the time I was growing up. It doesn’t look as though she’ll ever grow out of it, Gwendolyn! Why couldn’t I have had a normal mother like other people?’ Mum exclaimed, reversing off the drive at high speed.
‘Slow down! You don’t want to be arrested for dangerous driving, Mum!’ I shouted, hanging on to the door handle for dear life. According to my Nana, mum and granddad are too conventional, conforming to the ideals of what a grandfather and mother should be.
Mum always said if her father hadn’t been so level-headed, she would’ve grown up in a commune in the Wilds of Wales, living off wild food. From what I’ve seen on the internet, Wales is a beautiful place to have grown up in, It wouldn’t have been a hardship for Granddad he loved being self-sufficient. Mum ran a sewing business repairing and altering people’s clothes, which fitted in perfectly with the ideology of a commune.
As I was coming downstairs, I heard the phone ringing. Mum sounded furious as she answered it, ‘Is she still alive? Oh, so she's just broken her ankle. No, don't tell me. What was she thinking? She’s too old to be pulling such stunts!’
You see My grandmother has always been a bit of a fighter, not one to sit back and let life pass her by. As Mum swung the car into the hospital car park, we saw a local TV camera crew climbing into their van.
‘Wonder why they were here?’ Mum said, reaching for the bag on the back seat.
‘Maybe someone famous has arrived at the hospital,’ I suggested.
‘Maybe. Hopefully, I’ve thought of everything your Nana needs, but I’m not sure how long she’ll be staying in. I won’t be long. It’s so annoying of all days. Poor Dad.’
‘The game might have finished by the time you arrive, Mum,’ I said, closing the car door and took the bag from Mum and waved her goodbye.
At the reception desk, I asked for Mrs Soule’s room number. The receptionist laughed and said, ‘Oh, you must be our celebrity’s granddaughter.’
‘Celebrity,’ I chuckled as I went along the corridor to find Nana’s room. As I entered, Nana looked up from her book and smiled brightly at me.
‘Hello Gwendolyn. Where’s your Mum?’
‘Hi, Nana. Mum’s gone to pick Granddad up.’ Nana seemed to have aged as she sat in the chair with her leg up. To me Nana was an ageless free spirit.
‘Oh dear, I forgot all about Roger’s bowling match today. I bet they’ll both be cross with me this time. Never mind, it couldn’t be helped. It’s nice to see you. Howres things at school?’ Nana pushed strands of her fine, white hair back from her face.
‘Okay— Nana, would you like me to fix your hair up properly for you?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said. A bright smile returned, lifting the years away from her face. I reached into the bag Mum had given me, took out a hairbrush and grips, and began to brush her long hair up into a French pleat. I kissed the top of her head when I’d finished.
‘That feels much better now; I’ll be back to my old self in no time at all,’ She smiled up at me,
‘What happened this time, Nana?’ I asked, turning to hang up her dressing gown.
‘I suppose your Mum’s cross with me again?’ Nana whispered.
‘You know she worries about you.’ I turned back just as Nana pulled the old photo album from the bag I brought in. ‘I thought you might like to look at it with me.’
My Nana lifted her head slowly, wiping at her eyes. I pretended not to notice and brightly said, ‘We’re learning all about the 1960s at school, Nana. I thought the photographs might help you to remember what it was like.'
‘How could I forget the best years of my life, dear child? I was young then, wild, and free.’ She gave a childish giggle.
I pulled the chair closer to hers as she moved her leg slightly; the pain marked her face briefly before vanishing. Nana turned to the first page of the album and pointed to a snapshot. A long-limbed girl with blonde hair falling to her narrow waist sat cross-legged beside a log fire, looking up into the camera lens, and making the peace sign. Nana took the picture out of the book and turned it over. ‘India Sky,' she read, a soft smile touching her lips.
‘Oh, was the picture taken in India?’ I asked.
Nana laughed. ‘No, that’s what I called myself in the ’60s. It sounded so much better than Doris, doesn’t it?’
‘Such a lovely name. I wondered what name I would have chosen, if I had lived then.’ I said.
‘It was known as the summer of love.’ Nana’s face lit up as the memories flooded back. ‘We all went off to find ourselves. That's why we changed our names— to escape the confines of society. By naming ourselves, we freed ourselves from whom our parents wanted us to be. We were the new generation with their new ideas and dreams.’
‘Did you find yourselves, Nana?’
‘In a way, I suppose. It shaped the people we became and changed the way we raised our children. Until then, we did everything our parents wanted us to do. Most girls, I knew only dreamt about getting married and having children straight after school, but not me. I wanted to see the world before I settled down.’
‘So how old were you when you left home then, Nana?’
‘Twenty-two isn’t that young to you, but in my day it was. I packed a bag, with a small amount of money I'd saved and joined my friends. We travelled to India on the bus. It seemed like fun at the time— All that freedom and Shangri-la— but like all dreams, once it becomes reality some of the sparkle is lost. There were times when I wished I had listened to my mother.’
Nana turned to the next page. Among these snapshots, an old London bus appeared decorated in a kaleidoscope of colours. An array of psychedelic patterns covered it, even the windows. In front of the bus stood a group of twenty young people, but it was hard to tell the men from the women as they all wore brightly coloured clothes, necklaces of glass beads and flowers in their long hair. I pointed to a girl who stood next to a man with a goatee-type beard, holding a guitar, ‘Is that you, Nana?’
‘Yes it is. Don’t I look young?’
‘Who’s the man you're with?’
‘He was the driver and a poet—’ Nana’s voice trailed off and a far away look appeared in her eyes. ‘He wrote so many beautiful songs. As we drove across the different countries, he would recite his poetry to us.’
‘Wow, that’s sounds lovely, Nana.’
‘It was a wonderful experience, Gwendolyn. It also opened our eyes to what poverty was, too. Living on the bus, we had to be careful about our money, as we needed to buy fuel as well as food to feed all of us. We learnt about healthy living and a different way of looking at the world. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about all my travels to find myself,’ she said, and closed the album.
‘No, please go on.’ I begged.
‘Your Mum wasn’t ever interested.’
‘I’m not like Mum, Nana.’
She reopened the album to a series of snapshots. In the first, the poet wore white jeans and an unbuttoned white shirt that fluttered around his body like angel wings. The photo captured him leaping into the air, on a wide beach of white sand with his long, dark hair streaming out behind him frozen for all of eternity. The next one was a portrait of him. His smouldering dark eyes stared out at us.
‘His name was Byron,’ Nana said, with a sigh, tracing the outline of his lips with her fingertips. ‘We knew we couldn’t run away forever and would talk about what we hoped to achieve when we returned home.
‘You look so happy together.’ I said turning to the next page. A series of photographs showed India Sky and Byron arm in arm in front of the Taj Mahal and down by the banks of the Ganges. Women, dressed in colourful saris, washing clothes in the background. There were pictures of the temple at Khajuraho, with its highly decorated shrines.
‘We were very happy together until we came back to England and then Byron wasn’t Byron anymore.’
'So when did you meet granddad? I asked.
‘Doris, my darling, I couldn’t go on being Byron forever, but you have always been my India Sky.’ I turned and there in the doorway stood Granddad with Mum.
I stared. Granddad was the barefoot poet Byron on the beach. I felt my cheeks colour.
Granddad laughed, ‘Yes, I know I had hair then.’ He ran his hand over his smooth head as he sat next to Nana.
‘Mum was always telling me, you were the serious one.’ I said.
‘I was young once, you know, but there comes a time when you have to take on responsibilities— like the birth of a child, your mum.’
‘You think I lived too much in the past, Roger,’ Nana snapped. ‘Some crazy notion about hanging on to my youth when all I wanted was to stay healthy. I loved Byron and all he stood for, his ideals and freedom, but when we came home, you changed. What happened to the wonderful dreams we had? We were going to change the world and make it a better place. You even stopped writing your amazing poetry too. You became dull, Roger.’
‘Mum!’ My mum retorted, ‘After all the things Dad has done for us. He has worked hard all his life to give you the freedom to follow your dreams. Don’t you think you’re being a little selfish?’
‘Am I? I don’t see why being a grown up means you have to lose sight of your dreams.’
‘Come on, Mum. Your life with Dad wasn’t so bad, was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t.' Nana took hold of Granddad’s hand and smiled at him. ‘You gave me a beautiful home, the car, and the wonderful garden. You did all the things we were supposed to do when we grow up, We had Lucy and now our granddaughter Gwendolyn, but Roger, don’t you remember Byron and India were going to change the world? Instead, it changed us.’
‘Oh Mum, when have you ever conformed? Dad and you have always been aging hippies. Gwendolyn, you won’t believe the protest marches your grandparents took me on— from saving whales to saving the rainforest.’ Mum slipped her arms around Nana’s neck and hugged her.
‘Where has it got us?’ Nana protested. ‘We still need to fight for what we believe in, and to make others listen.’
‘I know, Mum. At your age you need to begin to slow down a bit.’ Mum said.
‘Lucy,’ Granddad said smiling, ‘That’s like a red rag to a bull. Don’t you think I’ve tried telling her? She still has the spirit of the sixties child in her, my India Sky. I love her even more for it. So what was your protest about today, love?’
Nana smiled innocently, ‘The rights of pensioners.’
Granddad kissed the end of her nose, and they both laughed. The years rolled away, and they were Byron and India Sky again.
‘What were you thinking, abseiling at your age down an office block? Is it going to further your cause, Mum?’
‘At least I’ve brought my point to the local papers and media attention; it’ll be on the television later this evening too.’ Nana said smugly.
‘So the camera crew were here for you?’ Mum and I said together.
‘Yes, they filmed my little mishap this morning and then rushed me in here.’ Nana explained what a wonderful time she had coming down the side of the building, but the landing was rubbish, and that’s when she broke her ankle.
‘That’s my girl, my India Sky,’ Granddad said as he sat proudly beaming, with his arm around Nana’s waist.
After the doctor checked Nana’s ankle, he told us she needed to rest it but he would allow her home. I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out a beaded necklace, and slipped it over Nana’s head. ‘It’s time we took you home, India Sky.’ I said proudly.
‘Are Byron and India Sky happy together in heaven now,’ Sophia asked as I finished my story.
‘Yes, they are. After Nana came home from the hospital, Byron began writing poetry for his India Sky again. I managed to get them published, along with some of the photos in a beautiful book for their wedding anniversary. Next time you visit, we’ll read Byron’s poetry together.’
about the author
Paula R. C. Readman is a prolific writer and has penned six books and over a hundred short stories. She lives in an Essex village with her husband, Russell. Blog: https://colourswordspaper.blog or just Google Paula R C Readman, and something’s bound to pop up. Did you enjoy the story?
Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.
