Rose-hip

ROSE-HIP
By
Duncan Fatz. Read on Southern Counties Radio May 2001

The doors opened with a swish. They really did. It was as if the
engineers of this German tram knew what sound a door should make and
had made damn sure that it did.

I stepped off the tram and viewed the building before me. It was yet
another monolith to sixties architecture. There had been an attempt to
enliven the grey concrete with bright yellow balconies, stacked like
rungs on a ladder to the pinnacle, but those too had faded into
dishevelled old age. They had faded like the rose bushes surrounding
the gardens, flooding the air with their heavy, dying, end of summer,
scent.

On the other side of the bushes I found a group of children running
around in a friendly scrum, laughing with German voices, using a
rose-hip for a football. But there was one child, a boy, sitting apart.
Tousled head bowed he sat on the edge of the small sand-pit, studiously
covering his sandals with sand until not a scrap of his feet could be
seen. His mother wouldn't be happy with him for that. He quickly stood
up and climbed out of the pit - sand pouring from the slots in his
sandals onto the path. How old was he? Six or seven? Hard to tell, but
he seemed to have trouble with his buckles and hopped on one foot as he
emptied the sand from his shoes. He never seemed to think that it would
be easier if he sat down.

There was a shout and the football, rose-hip, came skittering down the
path towards the boy. Quickly he thrust his foot back into the sandal
to kick the rose-hip back - to be a part of the game. Don't toe it I
thought, but he did, his foot skidded across the top and he fell.

Laughter rattled the air as the other children pointed and called, but
there was a disturbance in their midst. A youth pushed his way out of
their throng. Older, taller, fairer than the boy on the ground, but
otherwise his double, he turned on his playmates, "Shut up!" It wasn't
a shout, it was a scream, a protective curse that ripped through the
mob and locked it still. They didn't move, but the youth did, flinging
the rose-hip away, he bent down to fasten the boy's sandals.

A filling creaked in my clenched jaw and I had to turn and push the boy
back to where he belonged. I wrenched a rose-hip from the bush. My
fingernails bit into its thick carapace, releasing the cursed scent
that had been the bitter-sweet ticket into my past.

Jaw, hands, fingers clenched I made my way toward the dead and empty
flat of my grandfather, Opa, and more conflicts with the past.