Undercurrents
J.S. Danskin

"So when Liam grows up I'll set him free and he'll save me when I'm in trouble with the baddies," Caleb shared his predictions with his grandfather, who was known to his daughter's children simply as "Grandpa", which was the way Sergeant Keith Tracton secretly liked it. Caleb elbowed his ignorant grandfather when he didn't respond to the plans he had for his imaginary tiger, Liam. Most kids Caleb's age had invisible friends and associated with the Tooth Fairy, but this eight-year-old had already long forgotten all about the childish impurities of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, that anonymous Tinkerbell with a deranged tooth fetish. No, Caleb had moved straight onto tigers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course, Iron Maiden.

The figment of innocence playing in the sand with his plastic Stormtrooper (one of the baddie soldiers from Star Wars) was perhaps not as innocent as the little girls playing with their Barbie or Cindy dolls . . . or even Polly Pocket, if those things were still getting past Health And Safety for their size . . . unless they'd turned them into Polly Rucksacks, which was probably the case. These days, everything was bloody Health and Safety.

"Grandpa, can tigers row louder than lions?" Caleb asked sweetly. Keith looked at his grandson and smiled. Perhaps he wasn't as cute as Colin had been, but he was still perfect.

"That's "roar", Caleb," Keith said softly, pausing for a moment, "and I don't see why not. If the tiger's not scared of big tough hairy lions!" he tickled his grandson playfully, who giggled dutifully before returning to his Stormtrooper which was currently surfing on a seashell, wondering if Darth Vader owned a tiger.

Looking up at his other grandson, the nineteen-year-old Colin, who was actually really surfing out in the California Bay Resort Beach at which they were holidaying for a fortnight. Keith thought of how lucky he was to have such wonderful creatures to carry on life after he was gone. Keith ahad done a lot in his life; he had fought in the War, he had married a beautiful wife and had an equally as beautiful daughter, Lisa. He had watched her grow, fall in love, bear children and suffer her divorce from John. Keith had seen happy and sad times, but this scene with Caleb playing at his feet and Colin enjoying sports while Lisa was fetching drinks was the scene he wanted to remember on his deathbed.

Fifteen minutes later Keith, who had been dozing, woke up with a start to hear his daughter screaming by his side, Caleb throwing sand in all directions through his confusion, and the worst of all, six lifeguards swimming out into the bay. Keith leapt to his feet, praying that what his gut told him had happened was very wrong, and tried to calm the frantic Lisa, the cocktails and Caleb's milkshake she had gone to collect spilt over the sand making it squidgy and wet. Keith grabbed Lisa by the arm.

"Calm down!" he cried desperately, "What the Hell is going on?!" Lisa faced her father with her skin in a sweat and tears flowing down her newly tanned face.

"It's Colin!" she wailed, "A huge wave just blew over him . . . he's been swept out by the undercurrents! Oh my God, dad, let him be okay!"

Keith nodded and hugged his daughter tightly, then they stood and watched helplessly as the lifeguards pulled Colin out of the water. Finally he was on the shore and the lifeguards and paramedics were running all over the place trying to calm all the watching crowds. The lifesavers at Colin's side were conducting CPR and shaking their heads at one another, as if in slow motion, like in the drama series'. Lisa watched her youngest son toddle over to Colin, lying unconscious with half his strong body still in the water. Caleb stood ankle deep in the sea and looked with increasing puzzlement on his young face at what was happening to his brother.

"That's Colin!" was all he said, before Lisa ran over to him and scooped him up in her arms, following the men bearing the stretcher into the ambulance. Keith began to follow them until he noticed something in the water, now further out than he could reach.

It was Caleb's Stormtrooper.

The funeral was five days later, when Colin's body was returned to Britain, and the service at the church had been and gone, all eyes on Colin's coffin. No tears were shed until the Crematorium, and it wasn't just a silent weeping, it was a full-on scale of cries of protest and misery as the box containing the nineteen-year-old lowered into the fire slowly. Keith and Lisa held one of Caleb's hands each, more for their own benefit than the eight-year-old's, who was so confused he didn't even know properly where he was. Caleb had hardly said a word since the incident, and Lisa had almost been in denial for the week since the doctors told her that her son had drowned in the sea, and would not be waking up.

Keith's speech at the small family gathering the next week was most probably what set the matter in stone, when the oldest member of the family spoke of his grandson.

"My - our - Colin," he began, his voice (unsurprisingly) cracked, "was probably what girls these days would call a 'hottie'," There was a small amount of enforced laughter from the audience, and Colin's girlfriend Tanya gasped back a sob. "There was nothing that could make him feel happier with life than surfing, which is what he died doing." If there had been crickets in the North of England on a November afternoon even they would be silent at that moment. "However unfair and unconsolable this loss is, we have to find a way to face tomorrow . . . "

The reassurance continued for another five minutes before Keith himself, the solidier, the hard boss of the family, broke down too. That was when Lisa scattered most of Colin's ashes into the water below and handed the urn to Caleb, who turned to her and said: "I don't want to," so very, very quietly, and Lisa burst into tears. Keith was the last one left after the scattering and he remembered how he had pictured that day at the beach to have been the perfect experience, one to remember as a happy time.

"It's so damn ironic," he told the sea, then turned his back on it to try and do his duty as a father and grandfather, even if the only thing he wanted to do just then was scream.

This was for my granda.