An Episode of Remnants.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this work has content some listeners may find distressing, including themes of war, violence, and grief. This episode contains:

Discussions of war

Implications of experiences of homophobia

Mentions of war

Brief, reflective discussions of mental illness, including depression, suicidal ideation and a failed suicide attempt (not detailing these experiences, but referencing them as events in the past)

Descriptions of death by natural causes

Discussions of grief

Discussions of WW2, with non-detailed, condemnatory references to the Holocaust

Transcript

SOUNDS OF DISTANT MECHANISMS WHIRRING

SIR
Ah, there you are.

APPRENTICE
How big is this place?

SIR
As big as you can imagine.

APPRENTICE
Very big, then.

SIR
I suppose so.

PAUSE

SIR
Have you thought since our last conversation?

APPRENTICE
Yes.

SIR
Can you articulate further?

APPRENTICE
I’m not sure.

SIR
Might you try, perhaps?

APPRENTICE
Well. It’s about judgement, isn’t it? Shelving and discarding?

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
So the girl. She was sweet. The boy was not.

SIR
Indeed.

APPRENTICE
Is that the criteria, then? Keep the sweet ones, throw out the rest?

SIR
If you like.

APPRENTICE
I don’t think I do.

SIR
I see. Is this conclusion of your thinking?

APPRENTICE
Not sure I came to one, really.

SIR
So you still will not pass judgement?

APPRENTICE
No. Especially not on– he was bad, yeah, but he didn’t mean to kill the dog. And when he hurt his nanny he wasn’t thinking about it. And he was just a kid.

SIR
So was the girl.

APPRENTICE
So?

SIR
If his behaviour is not of consequence due to his age, nor should hers be.

APPRENTICE
But, right. I get it. So if they are both reshelved, then–

SIR
That is the judgement?

APPRENTICE
No! No. I don’t know enough.

SIR
What more is there to know?! You read the remnants, you pass a judgement.

APPRENTICE
Yes, but. What for? On what?

SIR
You said it was the sweetness, or lack thereof.

APPRENTICE
Yeah, but that’s not– I don’t get to pick what– I’m learning, I don’t know what I’m doing!

SIR
It is a lack of… confidence, then?

APPRENTICE
I don’t– maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

SIR
You do not trust your judgements will be sound?

APPRENTICE
How can I when I have so little to go on?

SIR
I see. May I make an inquiry?

APPRENTICE
Ugh. Sure.

SIR
What was it about those remnants which upset you so?

APPRENTICE
Oh, I– I dunno. The fact that they were children, maybe? That they both suffered so much in such short a time? I dunno.

SIR
I see. Would it help to know that if their lives were longer, likely those moments of suffering in childhood would have been overcome by adult thoughts and feelings?

APPRENTICE
No. That actually makes me feel worse.

SIR
And why is that?

APPRENTICE
I dunno, like. If they’d lived longer, they’d have had a chance to move along, too, you know, live more, see more, feel more.

SIR
They felt happiness, too, along with the suffering.

APPRENTICE
They did.

SIR
This does not seem much consolation to you.

APPRENTICE
I just– is that all there is? All there can be? When we look back at our lives is suffering always going to be such a big part of it?

SIR
Is a life well-lived one in which joy outweighs suffering in those moments that linger on?

APPRENTICE
Ach– I don’t know? That doesn’t. It seems wrong to say someone’s life wasn’t well lived because some terrible things happened to them. That’s hardly their fault, is it?

SIR
Hardly indeed.

APPRENTICE
Their deaths were so sudden, so short.

SIR
Is a long death which comes long anticipated preferable, then?

APPRENTICE
Maybe it’s not the death itself, maybe it’s when it happens; they were so young.

SIR
Ah, yes. Youth. It does seem to bring a sharper pain when those who pass are younger. Why is that, would you suppose?

APPRENTICE
I dunno, sir. And I dunno why you’re asking me. I dunno anything about them, or this place, or what I’m doing here.

SIR
What you are doing here, dear apprentice, is learning from me.

APPRENTICE
What?

SIR
I will show you.

APPRENTICE
Oh?

A WHOOSH, A HUM, AND THEN A BRIGHT, METALLIC SOUND

SIR
Here. An apology, in a sense.

APPRENTICE
What is it? A ring?

THE APPRENTICE PICKS UP THE RING

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
Oh no, not another remnant, please sir. I’m not ready.

SIR
I promise this one will not hurt so much as the last.

APPRENTICE
(apprehensive)
Okay.

SIR
Now, tell me what you see.

APPRENTICE
Uh. A ring. It’s not a particularly interesting ring. It’s just silver and plain, there’s not even– oh. Wait– oh, shit–

FABRIC MOVES

THE APPRENTICE CRIES OUT, AND IT GETS RAPIDLY QUIETER

AIR WHOOSHES. SOMETHING RINGS LIKE A BELL, OR THE END OF A CRYSTAL GLASS.

THE APPRENTICE BREATHES IN AND OUT, THE WHOOSH OF AIR FALLING AWAY

His father’s hand is cold around his, his ring even colder, as cold as the snow he is hauled out of. It’s mid-January, the sun is setting, and everything is blue.

Gerald spends three weeks in bed lapsing in and out of wakefulness. He eats warm soup and his mother reads to him; stories; recipes; snippets of the evening news. He shivers and coughs, and dreams of cracked ice buckling under his body, how his scarf and coat, so cosy moments before, are made of lead, and they’re dragging him down, down, down to the depths.

One morning he wakes and the sun is pouring through the gap in his curtains. He watches iotas of dust dance, as though trapped by it. The sweat on his skin is drying. For the first time in weeks, he does not feel cold.

‘Gerald?’ his mother says from the chair beside his bed.

‘I’m hungry,’ Gerald tells her.

WHOOSH. CHATTER.

The lights in the auditorium dim. Gerald clutches his mother’s hand. A hush falls across the audience as though the darkness is a blanket, muffling the sounds of their voices.

The theatre is so new that Gerald can smell the fresh paint. His father helped finish the walls and ceilings and his mother took him to visit one afternoon when they were installing all the seats. The place looked vast, dizzyingly so. How anyone could concentrate on the stage in such a magnificent space, Gerald had no idea.

‘I’ll get you tickets, opening week,’ Gerald’s father promise him. And now they were here.

As the curtains draw open, to a ripple of applause, the stage was lit in a soft glow of light. It’s light a dream; it is all Gerald can see. They are real people on the stage, he knowa, playing parts, singing songs, all words written by someone else years before and well-remembered. But, like magic, the events unfold and feel so real; the lights; the music; all of it guiding Gerald’s emotions the same as the handlebars guide the front wheel of his bicycle and the rest follows.

WHOOSH. SOUNDS OF CONSTRUCTION WORK.

Gerald’s father shows him around the Aldwych Theatre. They are preparing for a new production of the Cherry Orchard, due to start the following Friday.

Gerald is fifteen. His job will be to do whatever he is told. Lift this or that heavy thing. Sweep these floors, bring these items to that location. He doesn’t mind; he’s just happy to be in the theatre again.

Right now, the space is lit with thought only towards providing enough light to work by, a far cry from the drama of the show lights. Still, the work lighting brings a different sort of magic, which is only heightened when the pit orchestra come in to practice mid-afternoon. They play broken fragments of melodies, sporadic bursts of harmony. They pause now and then to tune up.

Gerald thinks of his first trip to this theatre to see Bluebell in Fairyland, which was only the second time the theatre’s curtains had ever opened before an audience. To Gerald, he feels like he’s in fairyland now. Behind the curtains, he sees the magic that makes the theatre work. Rather than shattering the illusion, it makes his love even deeper, despite the number of times he is told off for daydreaming.

WHOOSH.

Gerald comes in early to fix the lighting rig. During the previous night’s production of Proud Maisie, he’d noticed some of the cues were not hitting where they ought to.

It was early, not yet eight in the morning, and usually when Gerald came into the theatre at that time, he’d see only the cleaning staff. However, as Gerald stepped out onto the bridges above the stage, he heard the tinkling of piano keys, the start of the Moonlight Sonata.

He sits quietly and listened for a moment, not wanting to disturb the pianist. When the movement came to an end, Gerald tried to carefully set his wrench down, but it clunked loudly on the metal.

‘Hello?’ called an unfamiliar voice.

‘Hello,’ says Gerald, awkwardly.

‘Who goes there?’

‘The ghost of the theatre?’ says Gerald. He cringes.

There’s a pause. ‘A ghost here so soon? The place has barely been open six years.’

Gerald laughs. He climbs down the rigging and drops onto the stage. A young man peers up from the piano in the orchestra pit with wide light brown eyes. In the bright golden glow of the pit, they seem like twin stones of shining amber.

‘I’m Gerald. I’m a technician,’ he says.

‘Simeon,’ says the pianist.

‘You play beautifully,’ says Gerald.

Simeon shifts on the piano bench, ducking his head and turning his bright, gem-stone gaze back to the piano keys. ‘I’m nothing special, but I’m excited to play for a living.’

‘The Aldwych is a beautiful theatre,’ says Gerald. ‘I’m sure you’ll love it.’

Simeon smiles shyly, not turning back to Gerald. ‘I certainly hope they decide to keep me on, then.’

WHOOSH. DUCKS QUACKING. WATER SPLASHING.

It’s a chilly day. Gerald’s breath fogs in front of him. The edges of the ponds at Regent’s Park are frosted over, but a few ducks were paddling through the icy water, all of them eagerly heading towards where Gerald and Simeon stand, a hand’s width apart, holding a paper bag full of bread between them.

‘I think you’re supposed to throw the bread near the ducks, not at them,’ says Simeon, with a laugh.

‘In find this more efficient,’ says Gerald, throwing another bit of crust at the bright green head of a drake. Gerald coughs; it honks across the park. His ribs ache.

‘Are you alright?’ says Simeon.

Gerald nods. ‘I was ill as a child. Fell through a skating pond. Almost died. My lungs have not been the same since.’

Simeon’s face crease with concern. A rush of guilt runs over Gerald. He doesn’t want to make Simeon look so sad. He wants to make him smile. That’s all.This thought makes Gerald’s insides writhe like a bucket full of snakes.

‘I live just off the park,’ says Simeon. ‘We can sit in there, warm you up a little before we go to work.’

Gerald’s heart squeezes. He searches Simeon’s face. It shows only the same concern as before, no trace of anything untoward.

‘Alright,’ Gerald agrees.

Simeon smiles so warmly Gerald swore the frost on the pond begins to melt a little.

It is a very short walk to Simeon’s home, which is a pair of rooms in a boarding house. The building is handsome and grand, and Simeon’s rooms are neat and orderly. Simeon sits Gerald on a plush leather Chesterfield and makes them a pot of tea, which he brews with slices of dried orange in the pot.

‘How curious,’ says Gerald.

‘It’s beautiful,’ says Simeon. ‘A man I knew in Valencia always brewed his tea this way. I thought it sacrilege at first, but. Well, try it.’

He hands Gerald a cup. Their fingers brush, and Simeon meets Gerald’s gaze. Gerald holds it, his insides squirming again. He sips the tea; it’s sweet and vaguely orange flavoured. ‘You’re right, Simeon, it’s beautiful,’ says Gerald.

‘Like you,’ Simeon says, quietly.

There is a beat of silence, eyes holding eyes, the taste of sweet orange tea in Gerald’s mouth, the warmth of it on his lips.

Simeon draws a sharp breath and turns away, walking across the room, back to the cabinet where he kept his tea. The lines of his body are hunched, curling inwards, like a daisy at dusk.

‘You can have some dried oranges to take home, if you like, if you think that—’

‘I think I will just visit again,’ says Gerald. ‘If I fancy more.’

Simeon’s posture unfurls. He turns back to Gerald, his eyes wide. ‘Is that so?’ he asks.

‘Very much so,’ says Gerald.

WHOOSH.

Gerald runs his finger up Simeon’s sternum, stopping to trace the outer edge of the Star of David resting on it, hung from a thin gold chain around his neck.

‘Guilt is eating me, Gerald,’ he whispers. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

‘Don’t let it,’ says Gerald.

‘If were a question of principle, I’d feel more grounded,’ says Simeon.

‘The army won’t take me either,’ Gerald reminds him.

‘But you have a real illness, Gerald! To be turned away because I am– I am— unsound of mind?!’ Simeon squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face in his hands.

‘I love the sounds of your mind,’ says Gerald.

Simeon sighs. ‘I’m sure plenty of loons get to go and fight. I just had the misfortune of being caught with my head in a rope.’

Gerald sat up abruptly. ‘Never say that as though it is a bad thing someone caught you before you acted again,’ Gerald snaps. ‘Never.’

Simeon lowers his hands from his face and moves so their faces are level. His warm, dark honey eyes flicker between each of Gerald’s, stirring something deep in Gerald’s chest. He could feel his own eyes stinging with the fierceness of it.

‘I’m glad you can’t go to war,’ Gerald whispers. ‘I could not stand to lose you.’

A small half-laugh, half-sob tumbles out of Simeon. He drops his head to Gerald’s shoulder. ‘I love you,’ Simeon whispers into his skin. ‘I love you.’

WHOOSH.

It is dark on the street. Simeon pays the cabbie as Gerald knocked on his parents’ door. His mother answers, looking frazzled. She throws her arms around Gerald at once, ushering him inside and up the stairs.

Gerald’s father is lying in his bed. He is so utterly still that for a moment Gerald thinks he is already dead, but then he stirs a little on his pillow.

‘Gerry,’ his father says, softly.

Gerald sits on the floor beside his parents’ bed, the spot where he had once sat to open the presents stuffed into his Christmas stocking. Downstairs, Gerald hears Simeon offer to help his mother with the washing up. In the quiet, the clink of crockery in the metal sink echoes, softened only by the soft gentle, senseless hum of their quiet conversation, muffled through the floorboards.

Now and then, Gerald’s father wakes enough to speak. When he does, he asks questions, some big, some small. He wants to know if Gerald remembers falling through the ice. If he remembers learning to ride a bike on the street outside. How embarrassed he was when the clothesline broke and all his underpants landed on the road. Did he remember going to visit at the Aldwych before it opened, when his dad was one of the jobbing builders on the site, so long ago.

To each question Gerald answers the same and tries his best not to cry. ‘Yes dad, of course dad, I love you dad,’ he says.

There is another long, still quiet. Downstairs, Simeon makes Gerald’s mother laugh.

‘That Simeon is a nice lad,’ says his dad.

‘Yes, he is,’ says Gerald.

Gerald’s dad sighs. He takes off the silver ring on his right hand, placed it into Gerald’s palm. ‘Good lad,’ he says. He pats Gerald’s knuckles. ‘Good lad.’

Gerald’s father closes his eyes. His fingers tighten around Gerald’s hand.

‘Dad?’ Gerald says softly.

His dad’s fingers go lax. He sits very still and very quiet, only now noticing that in the silences before, he had heard his father’s rasping breaths. Now they are gone. It is just Gerald sitting cross legged on the floor, holding his father’s hand, listening to Simeon talk to his mother downstairs.

Gerald does not know how long he sits this way, his hand between both of his father’s, the silver ring pressing into his palm.

It is only when Simeon opens the bedroom door he realises any time has passed at all.

‘Gerald,’ Simeon says, softly. ‘Has he gone?’

‘Yes,’ Gerald whispers.

‘You should tell your mother,’ says Simeon. ‘She’s fallen asleep on the sofa.’

Gerald nods. ‘Yeah.’

‘When did he pass?’ says Simeon.

Gerald sniffs. ‘Um. An hour or so ago, maybe?’

Simeon is quiet for a moment. ‘Shall I stay with him?’

Gerald feels hot tears on his cheeks. ‘Yes. Please? Please, would you? I don’t want him to be alone.’

‘Of course I’ll sit with him. You go speak with your mother.’

‘You’re sure?’

Simeon nods. ‘The dead shouldn’t be left alone. I’ll sit with him, watch over him. Keep him safe. Don’t worry.’

Gerald takes his hand out from beneath his father’s. ‘He said you were a nice lad. Then he gave me this.’ He holds out the silver ring.

Simeon turns the ring this way and that. He smiles crookedly. ‘Isn’t that something?’

Gerald tries to smile back, but it starts to dislodge the tears at the corners of his eyes again so he looks down at the carpet between his knees instead.

Simeon tries to hand the ring back to Gerald, but Gerald shakes his head.

‘I want you to have it,’ says Gerald.

Simeon is quiet for a moment. ‘Thank you.’

Gerald stands up. He kisses Simeon on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ he replies.

WHOOSH.

Simeon has been wrong for days. They walk through Regent’s Park a foot a part, and Gerald reaches across the space between them so that their knuckles might brush together. Simeon pulls his hand away and stuffs it into his pocket.

‘Gerald,’ Simeon says softly. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

Gerald laughs nervously. ‘Goodness, I hope it’s not serious.’

Simeon stops in his tracks. He looks beautiful, with his overcoat hanging open over his pale green shirt. Gerald can see the thin gold chain which holds his Star of David, which hung over his heart.

‘Gerald,’ Simeon says again, his voice only a whisper. ‘I’m getting married.’

‘Married,’ Gerald repeats. He laughs. ‘Whoever to?’

‘A friend of my sister. Her name is Miriam.’

‘Miriam,’ Gerald repeats. ‘A pretty name.’

‘She’s very pretty to match it or so I’m told,’ says Simeon. His voice cracks and wavers at the edges, eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

The smile has fixed itself in place on Gerald’s face. He remembers the first time they had come here together. The first time Simeon had taken him back to his rooms. The many times he had tasted orange tea on Simeon’s warmed mouth. The fear in his voice when he told Gerald that he feared he would never be loved. That everything had looked so dark that he had thought for a moment that he should end his life.

‘If I could be your wife, I would,’ says Gerald. The words wobble as they leave him, tremolo on the edge of every note. ‘I’d convert and be Jewish, even, if you’d have me.’

Simeon’s face twists, anguished. ‘Please, Gerald.’

‘Please what?’ Gerald asks. ‘What would you ask of me now? Ever? I will do it. Anything. I would do anything for you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Simeon. He takes his hand out of his pocket. He pulled off the ring, laid it flat on his palm and held it out towards Gerald.

Gerald backed away, repulsed by the sight of this. He shook his head. ‘No need,’ he says. ‘No need.’

‘It’s your father’s ring,’ says Simeon, his voice cracking slightly. ‘I can’t keep this.’

‘It’s yours,’ says Gerald. ‘I love you,’ he says. He had already turned his back on Simeon and was beginning to walk away.

‘Gerald, wait!’ says Simeon.

Gerald stops. He hears the hurried crunch of Simeon’s feet on the gravel path. Gerald closes his eyes. The footsteps slow as they came within a few feet of Gerald. Gerald’s heart pounds in his chest. He feels the warm of Simeon’s breath on the back of his neck. ‘I will love you forever,’ Simeon whispers. ‘Whoever else I have, I will always love you. Please. Know this.’

Gerald’s whole body trembles. ‘Goodbye, Simeon,’ he whispers back, and he walks away.

WHOOSH.

Sweat runs down Gerald’s back under the midday sun. His mother calls to him from the kitchen of their cottage, asking if he wants to stop for lunch yet. He glances at the sky; it;s not yet noon. He barks this back to her and carries on tilling the soil.

As Gerald works, the wind stirs the leaves on the tomato plants. He has just finished laying nets over the sprouting carrots, onions and potatoes, and now he’s tilling the ground to get read for beets and lettuce. They’ll eat well all summer and spend the autumn pickling, as they have every year since they moved out of London to the countryside.

Gerald’s mother calls his name again.

‘Not yet, mother,’ he calls back. She doesn’t respond.

Gerald shakes his head and rolls his eyes and carries on digging. He digs, scatters seeds into the earth, covers them gently in loosely packed soil. As he finishes tucking in the very last seed, a droplet of rain hits him square on the back of the neck.

Before he can even make it back to the house, the rain was hammering. Gerald stepped inside with a laugh, taking off his sodden rain hat.

‘Yes, I’ll get the mop,’ he starts, but his voice dies in his throat.

His mother was lying on the floor. He pulls her up into his arms. Her eyes stares up at the ceiling.

He thinks of the soft smile on Simeon’s face the night his father had died. How long had his mother laid like this, alone?

WHOOSH.

Children screech in delight as they run ragged over the dunes. They are some way from Gerald’s cottage, but the wind carries their voices. They’re shouting about dinosaurs and mythical beats.

From his bench in the garden, Gerald can just about see them running back and forth, ant-sized in the distance. Most of them are evacuees from London. Some of them had never seen the sea before. The young boy staying at the cottage next to Gerald’s, he’d never even seen a cow before he got to Devon.

On the radio, Gerald hears that London is being bombed. Out here in the countryside, near the sea, it doesn’t not feel like there is a war at all. You’d hardly know anything was different if it weren’t for the soldiers passing through from the nearby base and the planes puttering overheard three or four times a day.

Gerald thinks about the last war, the days leading up to it. He thinks of Simeon and his desperation to fight. The dread that urgency put in Gerald’s stomach. This war felt so different than that one had. Back then, there had been a sense the war would be the war to end all war going forward, that it was a noble thing to fight in it, the last bastion of honour. But that was before anyone knew about the guns and the mud. What glory was there in dying in a puddle?

As he heads back inside, Gerald thinks more of Simeon. Months ago, before the war had properly started, Gerald had needed to go into London on business, and he just so happened to pass by a theatre. He’d not been in one, not since Simeon, and there on the poster was Simeon’s name under the title of musical director. Gerald clings to the memory of this poster. Somepn is alive, or at least was recently. Alive and playing piano.

Gerald wonders what Simeon thinks of this new war. If it enrages him as much as the last one did, or maybe even more. It enrages Gerald in such a deep and profound way.

He thinks of the Star of David around Simeon’s neck, how it caught in the early morning light if they didn’t draw the curtains. He thinks of Simeon sitting with his father, telling him about sitting shiva for his mother when he was just a boy. All those small things which were a part of Simeon and part of his faith. Although Simeon did not practice his faith often it was a part of him, it had shaped him and it had shaped Gerald too, though he did not believe in any god.

Gerald is filled with a strange, ear-piercing rage, a sickness low in his stomach. For the first time in his life, Gerald wants to go to war, finds himself cursing his battered lungs and aging body. He thinks of Simeon. He thinks of his fingers across the piano keys. He thinks of kissing him in the light of dawn, warm under their blankets despite the cool breeze coming through the open window. He hopes Simeon is alive and safe and each time he hopes it feels like a branding iron in his heart.

WHOOSH.

Gerald groans as he lowers himself down onto the bench in his garden. It’s been a long morning of instructing the grandchildren of his neighbour in how to properly turn over the vegetable patch.

They’re eager to learn from him, encouraged by their young, long-suffering mother. Gerald knows she sends the children round to help him under the guise of asking for his expertise. He doesn’t mind, ridiculous as he finds it all.

Gerald is about to nod off, thinking about what he’ll have the children plant next, when he hears the clatter of the gate being opened a few feet down the garden path.

‘Excuse me,’ says a soft, smooth voice. A young man was stands a few feet in front of Gerald, blocking out the sun. ‘Are you Gerald?’

‘Yes,’ Gerald tells him.

‘My name is Edward Pocket. I’m with Cratchet and Pocket, the solicitors?’

‘Never heard of you,’ says Gerald.

‘I’m here on behalf of a client of ours, at special request.’

Gerald knows the young man is going to say Simeon’s name before it comes out of his mouth. He does not hear the rest of the words. He stands up, nodding like he’s listening, but in his ears he hears only the rush of his blood, like the sea against the shore.

He begins to walk up the path, not looking at the young man, who is still talking. When they reach the cottage door, the young man sets a sealed envelope into Gerald’s slightly trembling hands.

There is no address on it, just Gerald’s name. Simeon’s handwriting is just as Gerald remembers, looping and beautiful in a way that is entirely unnecessary.

‘Thank you,’ Gerald says gruffly, and he starts to close the door.

‘Wait,’ the young man says.

Gerald stares at him.

‘I just– I need to know who you are, after what I’ve heard.’

Gerald shakes his head. ‘I’m nobody.’

The young man laughs. ‘Not to him you’re not.’

Gerald closes the door and walks slowly to the kitchen. He makes himself a cup of tea and sits down with the envelope propped against the pile of books sat on the coffee table.

It takes three days for Gerald to open the envelope, another three to finish reading it.

Contained on six creamy sheets of paper are the details of Simeon’s life since Gerald had gone out of it, how Simeon had gone looking for Gerald, couldn’t find him, how it broke his heart. How it had taken years to learn to love his wife, though he adored their children, but eventually he accepted who she was. How when the war started he thought of Gerald, just as Gerald had thought of him. How he longed to know where Gerald was and if he was happy. How he wished Gerald could meet his children, see them laugh and play. What a good father, or at least a strange uncle, Gerald might have made for them. How the eldest, Rachel, is so gifted with the piano it would make Gerald weep to hear her play. How he was dying now, dying, and he was trying to find Gerald but there was no time, not time left. Instead he told his children about him, again and again, had them promise to keep looking even after Simeon was dead to keep looking for him.

Even if Gerald didn’t forgive Simeon, he says, it was more important to know how much he was loved. Always. Even though he wasn’t there, the whole time, Simeon went on loving him, and that love would outlast him, because that is what love does.

WHOOSH. CHILDREN LAUGH. WAVES STRIKE A BEACH.

Gerald nervously clutches his cane tighter in his hands, rearranges his hat, straightened his jacket. He can’t remember the last time he felt so nervous. Probably the last time he went on a date. In that moment, he laughs at himself. That must have been decades ago.

A young woman approaches the bench. Her expression is nervous but curious. Gerald knows her immediately. ‘Rachel?’ he says. ‘Simeon’s girl?’

Rachel smiles, and there is Simeon in the cut of her lips, the creases around her dark, shining eyes. She is beautiful in how she carries him, his memory right there on her face. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You must be Gerald.’

Gerald and Rachel walk down the beach. On the sand, Rachel’s own two children were laughing and throwing sticks for their dog, screeching as they dipped their toes into the waves. She thanked Gerald for making the trip, explained how they’d all moved our to Brighton not long before Simeon died, to try to get out of the city.

Rachel talks about the Simeon she had known; a firm but kind father who raised his children with a passion for music. ‘Even little Charlie, who is totally tone deaf and can’t pick out a melody to save his life.’

‘That was Simeon,’ says Gerald.

The more Gerald talks, the more honest he becomes, and the more of Simeon he remembers. He tells her things a parent cannot share themselves with a child. Precious things he’d carried for years, about the softness of Simeon’s hands, of the way he would sit at the piano bench in nothing but his socks. ‘The pedals were too cold on his toes otherwise,’ Gerald explains, and Rachel laughs. He remembers so much more than he’d known, all in great waves which rush and slam against him until is weeping, Rachel’s arms looped tightly around him as she cries too.

‘You know he always said he had two great loves in his life,’ Rachel says. ‘One of them was mum. But the other was this person he’d met when he’d first started playing piano in the theatre. He spoke about you to us all the time, before we even knew who you were. We’d all crow, us kids, ‘what was her name?’ and he’d smile and say ‘Gerald’ and we’d all laugh, except mum. She would shake her head and smile and kiss dad on the cheek. She’d call him an old sap. And then we’d move on to talking about school or whatever else.

‘Even before we knew about you properly, we knew. Dad loved you so much, Gerald.’

And then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a silver ring. It gleams in the afternoon sun.

WHOOSH. KETTLE BOILING.

Gerald turns the silver ring around his finger. Rachel’s kids are in the garden, squabbling over the strawberry patch. Gerald was full of bread and cheese, and Rachel and her husband were in the kitchen, chattering as the kettle came to a boil.

‘Did you want a slice of cake then, Uncle Gerald?’ Rachel called.

‘None for me, thank you,’ says Gerald. ‘I’m quite finished.’

He settles back on the sofa and closes his eyes. The warm touch of the sun through the window on the back of Gerald’s neck is like a kiss.

The children’s voices catch on the wind, twisting away from him.

On the gentle breeze, he hears the faint tinkling of piano keys.

Each note seems to sing ‘I love you’.

WHOOSH.

THE APPRENTICE BREATHES SHAKILY, EMOTIONALLY.

SIR
Ah. You weep. My apologies.

APPRENTICE
Nah, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

SIR
I would not have regardless but I appreciate the gesture offered in your granting me permission.

APPRENTICE
Uh, yeah. Sure thing.

SIR
I do not understand.

APPRENTICE
What?

SIR
Why this has upset you so. He lived a long life. He was loved.

APPRENTICE
Yeah. Yeah I know.

SIR
Is it the separation from his lover?

APPRENTICE
No, I– I. I’m not sad, I. Yeah.

SIR
Alright.

APPRENTICE
Yeah.

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
If you don’t mind, I think I just. I need to…

SIR
To rest?

APPRENTICE
Yeah.

SIR
Of course. Rest.

END

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