Part 2 – The journey home

Grandma's second entry is dated 17 November 2011 and I feel somehow close to it, probably because I took them all to New Street Station to catch the train to York. Rod came to. We met six months before and moved in together a few weeks later. This was the first time he had met anyone apart from Nanna, Grandad and Liz. Grandma must have started on this not long after we blew kisses at one another as the train pulled away.

The editor in me wants to correct mistakes I see in order to reduce any confusion you may have as you try to get to grips with names and events, but as Rod says, it's her memoir, not mine, and we have no idea who she was writing for. Mabs knows about the notebooks and says Grandma sometimes read bits to her. What I didn't know was that Grandma was involved with a reminiscence group which met in Scarborough town library (and still does), every Wednesday morning. She kept that quiet. I'm planning to go along and introduce myself. I'd like to know more, but that's in the future. Right now though, I'm sure you're more interested in what Grandma, better known to the world as Isla Goodchild, wrote (the headings by the way are mine. All she did was write a date before she began writing):

We’re on the last leg now and nearly home. We left Birmingham after lunch and arrived in York late, so we're on the 4.30 to Scarborough. It's been a long week since I last put pen to paper. Sitting here on the train, with Joe and Mabs asleep, you'd think the chug of the engine, which sounds like an old London bus, would keep them awake. In fact it does exactly the opposite. The journey home has been momentous for quite different reasons. I won't be making this journey to see my mother again, and Mabs and I have asked Joe if he’d like to move in with us. The look of disbelief which came across his face was answer enough. It was settled without another word being said.

In the end my mother went quietly. There was no funeral as such. She was forever saying 'If you can't be bothered now, then don't make a fuss when I've gone'. Over dinner at Mary's, the family agreed to have her cremated privately. I'm sure she was happy just knowing that she was being looked after by the Co-op and that the kids would eventually get the divi. She left what she had, the house and her savings (she was always careful with money), to the grand-kids, with half in trust for ten years just in case my brother Lucas should resurface and have kids of his own. If he doesn't, then the balance of the estate will be shared out between my four.

Instead of a funeral, we all gathered at no.55 and, much to my surprise, we filled the through lounge. In the end, there were about twenty of us, including some of the neighbours. Hope and Willy came up from Swindon and Jack came down from Elgin and is staying another week. He says he’s coming to see me before he goes back. We shall see.

Tyrone and Liz came too. In truth, they saw more of my mother than I did and it was Liz, with Ellie, who found her dead on the kitchen floor. I made my long overdue peace with Liz. It's been forty years in the coming, but she made it seem as if we’d been friends for ever. Thinking about it, I just avoided Liz, I was never at war with her. I suspect I’ve always understood why Tyrone and the rest of the family love her. It’s funny the things we know, but refuse to accept. Me and Liz is a story for another day.

Where was I? Oh yes, at no.55. My eldest grand-daughter Angel took the lead and said a few words about her 'Nanna' and 'Pops' (when the grand-kids were little they couldn't grasp the fact that they had grandparents and great-grandparents and came up with 'nanna' and 'pops' to distinguish my parents from me and Tyrone ― they call us 'grandma' and 'grandad'). I was really pleased that Angel spoke about Dad as well, since he died four years ago. For a couple who said little to one another, they had to endure a lot of time in one another's company (yet another story for a rainy day, or is it 'tale'?).

Mabs and I went to Mary's on Saturday and booked a table the night before so the family could come and join us for dinner. Mary's on the Ladypool Road was once a b&b run by Mary, a woman I had met professionally. Generally, I avoid contact with former clients, but Mary was different insomuch as she insisted on staying in touch and telling me what happened after we had stopped working together. She was too embarrassed to tell anyone else she knew how we met, so as far as her other guests were concerned, I just happened to be staying in her b&b. It's a lot easier now. I'm rarely recognised by anyone and when I am, they're usually an 'oldie' like me. I can't remember the last time I was interviewed or on the radio. Now, what I do is much more commonplace. The occasional student contacts the Centre wanting to talk about how we got started for some coursework or a dissertation they're doing, but that it as far as it goes. And I like it that way.

Anyway, back to what I was saying about Mary's. When she retired, a young couple, Shaun and Julie, took it on. They realised that its rambling Edwardian structure over three floors, a large unused basement, a garden big enough to provide private parking and an 'outside room', plus its location a short canal walk from then up and coming Gas Street Basin development, close to Birmingham city centre, made it ideal for conference and concert goers who wanted to stay somewhere discreet. So Mary's, the boutique hotel, was born. They then invited all the former guests to stay half-price on their first two visits. Shaun is the front-man, and once the cook as well (still does on occasions) and I call him 'Mr Comptroller' because of his old-fashioned book-keeping ways. They have never accepted plastic. You pay cash for everything.

When I took over Preston's, it still had a comptroller and, out of sentiment for the old ways, I kept the title until we closed down. Sorry, a diversion I didn't intend, because the Preston's story will take a couple of tellings.

Even when I write I ramble. Hope says it's a release mechanism because, work-wise, I have always been focused. She says we can't be like that all the time, so we let go. Some would say its me just being lazy, but Hope says that's when she has her most creative thoughts and if anyone should know, it's Hope.

Shaun and Julie, now where was I? Oh yes, what they realised was that there was a potential market for good English food and comfy rooms full of 'faded elegance' and they were right. Julie does the décor, manages Mary's on a day-to-day basis and looks after the staff, who rarely ever change. There is something nice about going to a place where everything is familiar, especially the staff. In fact if you're old enough to remember 'Cheers', a TV series set in a Boston bar with the strap-line 'Where everyone knows your name', you'll know why Mabs and I love Mary's.

The day after we arrived at Mary's, Joe, turned up, 'Just in case you need a runner'. For that is what he has become at home. He drives the car when we use it, does most of the shopping and, increasingly, much of the cooking as well. We picked Joe up two years ago when we were still in the habit of cruising Scarborough at weekends in search of some company. After Joe, we did it a few more times, but then stopped. He had the measure of Mabs and me and quickly sussed what we liked. And we had his telephone number.

Joe's surname is 'Grubbochek' and the night we met, he was out alone 'celebrating' his 60th birthday, so we joined him and decided to give him a treat he wouldn't forget in a hurry. In fact, it ended up the other way round. Since then he has called us his 'sassy ladies', with 'sassy' standing for 'sexually active sixty somethings'! He isn't the best looking of men, with a long face, scarred by catching measles in his early-twenties, large ears and a nose like DeGaulle. On the night that we met him he was tidily dressed, if a bit oddly, clean shaven with a crew cut and a barrel chest, which we soon found solid to touch, big hands and short legs. No taller than Mabs or me. We're all about 5' 5''.

He became 'our guy' by default after he met Mab's grand-daughter Sally for the first time and she said 'Who's the guy and why's he in your dressing gown Gran?' After that he was 'our guy'. Joe is as English as they come. Don't be fooled by the name. His dad was a Pole in the RAF and his mum was from Wales. They met at a Polish airfield in Kent during the war. They ended up in Bedford, where Joe was born. He met Mary (who he married when he was nineteen), at school before becoming an apprentice coach builder ― which is how he came to be in Scarborough. He got the chance of a foreman's job at Burlington's, who used to build luxury coaches, but now build 'nipper buses' for estate work and country services. I know all this because Joe has told me a hundred times.

Anyway, Joe and Mary lived happily enough in Scarborough until she and their son drowned, when the ferry they were on sank off the coast of Greece. He wasn't there at the time and from what some of his friends have told us, it took a good few years before he picked himself up. He stayed at Burlington's and was pensioned off as suffering from 'mental fatigue' when he was 56. In fact, he actually lived quite close to us, in a small terraced house off Auborough Street.

One thing for sure. When we met Joe he was a loner. What friends he had were those who made the effort. He never did. They invited him around for Christmas and the occasional drink, but that was the extent of it, until we all met up in the Rose and Crown on Cross Street, not far from where we live on Newborough. That night he told us 'I've waited all my life for this… I never it expected it to happen on my 60th birthday!' We all lay there, laughing our socks off.

Since then I have changed his dress sense. Taken charge so to speak. Like me, he's now a little understated. Mabs calls Joe her 'Coco Chanel man'. The morning after we first met, I remember Mabs saying to him 'Where did all that come from?' and he replied 'I've been storing it up for the last ten years and then you came along, that's what!' I can see him now, in the living room, one foot on a chair, in his vest, pants, with one sock on and another in his hand. Mabs's face was a picture of puzzlement and I could see the cogs of her brain whirring and I knew she was thinking exactly the same thing as me ― 'Has this man really not had sex for ten years?'. 'Do you mean that?' Joe looked at me and said 'You know what, your friend's fucking Miriam Margolyes on acid, that's what', followed by 'Christ, Suzie. I've gotta go, can I come back?'

Suzie turned out to be his cat and when we invited Joe to move in, his first words were 'Suzie too?' So now we have a cat. Mum dies and within days I find myself living with a man for the fourth time in my life: Dad, Tyrone, my Gerry and now Joe. All different in so many ways, but at 72 I consider myself lucky that I still have two men to love. My son Tom doesn't really count in the same kind of way. Emotionally, I've never needed him and from an early age it was his dad that he went to. He left school at sixteen because he wanted to work with Tyrone and still does. Today, they're more like brothers and that's what some people think when they first see them.

I love this train journey when its light, especially when I'm going home. The rolling Yorkshire countryside, the viaducts which give fantastic views deep into this ancient, scarred, landscape, for that it what it is. Every bit man made and still lovely to behold. And along the way there is Malton Station, where the train stops over for five minutes to give passengers the chance to get a cup of tea or coffee, but not any more. Tea that is, but the train still stops. The older ones were better. Then, the trains used to smell of moquette and diesel and there was enough room to collapse into a seat. Not any more. 

The one thing about having a 'senior' railcard is that we can afford to travel first class, so we have more legroom. But now we're chugging along with little to see but my own reflection and the lights of an occasional farmhouse. It's just gone five and dark out there and now I can see two of the three other people in our carriage getting their things together. I don't know why. Scarborough is the end of line. And for me, like countless other folk, this is 'the best journey in the world'. I'm going home.

Joe and Mabs are stirring. The screech of the wheels on the curve where we join the Hull line about five minutes from the station will wake them for sure. They have slept like babies since we left York. I'll suggest to Joe that he goes home and collects Suzie and that we start the rest of our lives straight away. At our age, there's no time to waste!  

I must remember to phone Alan, my business partner, tomorrow and play catch-up. I'm sure he mentioned a talk at some granny event about 'sex in the afterlife'. God bless U3A.

I met Alan for the first and only time at Grandma's funeral. Alan Burcher was a notorious figure in the 1970s and 80s. He has a file all to himself in the news archive and got involved with Grandma professionally. No hint of anything intimate. When she died her half of the Couples Therapy Centre died with her. He's another 'must see' person.