Thinking about my grandad today, Harold Walker. I ‘ve kept him alive in my novel, Tirips Shade, where he plays a kind of Watson-type of character in a Victorian steampunk supernatural novel, where the hero is trying to solve his own murder and other women’s.
My grandad was in the 1st Airbourne Divisional Signals. I wrote about him on this blog before on Remembrance Day cos he was one of the kindest people I ever met. He supported me in everything I wanted to do. And he drew, took a lot of photographs and was into music and travel. And people. He loved socialising and parties. His nickname was Johnnie, and lots of people called him that, but I didn’t know until I was older.
My mum didn’t talk about him after he died cos it was too hurtful – same with my nan. So so much of the family history is missing for me. I know my grandad was in the 1st Airbourne Divisional Signals as a lieutenant corporal and I found a photo of him online with them, two months before the division dropped at the Battle of Arnheim. I googled this and found that the operation was a failure due to meeting German forces and three-quarters of the division were lost. The division didn’t see combat again. He also served in Egypt and was a peacekeeper in Palestine after the war - when troops didn't know what might happen years later when peoples are moved into someone else's territory.
After the war he joined the police and became a detective. My mum told me he worked on cases involving children who had died or been murdered. And my dad said he refused a promotion due to police corruption and he took a sideways move to work in courts.
I remember him being in hospital due to something that
was basically attempted murder, but I guess that’s how it goes if you’re a police
officer. He died of a blood clot in his brain, caused by a man shutting his
head in a door in a court room. I call that attempted murder, to be honest. I remember
my grandad as this amazing, chatty, sociable, supportive, creative, warm guy,
who never had a bad thing to say about anyone. And I remember him running after
this guy who stole a woman’s bag at night-time. He just took off. And then another
random guy helped chase him down too. My mum was having a fit cos he wasn’t well,
but there was me thinking he was a superhero. Anyway, I loved my grandparents’
flat, which smelt of her amazing cooking and puddings, and had this crazy
60s-style white padded bar that was straight out of Austin Powers. And there was this gigantic Weeping Willow outside.
He lived in
Forest Gate and during the war he wrote letters to my nan, hoping his house
still stood! I’ve been to see it! It’s still standing. My grandparents married
after the war, I think. She died before him of cancer. Both were in their 50s. My
grandad’s dad was a labourer and look-out man on the railway, and he lived in
Forest Gate, and he was hit by a train on the railway. It was a dangerous job
back then. My nan’s mum was a nurse at a hospital in Woolwich.
I don’t
know what cases my grandad worked on, but after he died, when I was 12, our
life became difficult. I had two years of hell at school, and my mum started
having problems at work. We had to move to the other end of the country when I was
17, and I hated it there. I had to give up art. I lost all my friends from
primary school. I ended up at the bitchiest school ever in Bexley. It was
horrific. And I always wondered why. Since 2015, my life has collapsed and I
wonder if it’s related to having a grandad who was a detective. I don’t know
what he worked on. But I loved him. Happy anniversary birthday x
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