For Bobby, who taught me that a good story doesn't need to be true, just honest. And for Evelyn, next door, and everywhere.
I. Four Truths and a Lie
When Frank turned seventy, his granddaughter gave him a game for his birthday.
"We play it at university," she said. "You tell four truths and one lie. Everyone has to guess the lie."
Frank had lived in the same terraced house for forty-three years. He had worked the same steelworks until it closed. He did not consider himself a man with many stories, but he agreed to play.
That night, at the kitchen table, he wrote them down on the back of a betting slip.
1. I once carried a man out of a burning building.
2. I have never been outside England.
3. I buried £5,000 in a biscuit tin in the garden and forgot where.
4. I was in love with the same woman for fifty-two years, and I never told her until last Tuesday.
5. I can still hear the works whistle, even though it's been gone thirty years.
He read them aloud. His granddaughter frowned.
"Grandad, number five can't be a truth. That's just... you know, in your head."
"Ah," Frank said. "But I do hear it. Every morning at six. That's a truth to me."
She laughed and picked number one as the lie. "You're too sensible to run into a fire."
Frank smiled. He didn't tell her.
The truth was, in 1978, the old canteen block at the Consett works caught. There was a young lad, Michael, stuck inside after going back for his jacket with his wages in it. Frank didn't think. He just went in. He got him out by the collar, both of them coughing black for a week. Michael moved to Australia in '81 and sent a Christmas card every year until he died.
Number two was also true. He'd had chances: Maggie had wanted to go to Spain once. He'd said the light was too bright. The real reason was he didn't like the idea of being somewhere he couldn't walk home from.
Number three was true as well. In 1990, when the redundancy money came, he didn't trust banks. He put five thousand in a Huntley & Palmers tin and buried it under the runner beans. The next spring Maggie dug the whole vegetable patch over while he was at his sister's. He never had the heart to tell her to look for it. Somewhere under that garden, the tin is still there.
Number four was the one he was proudest of.
It was Evelyn next door. Her husband Jack died in '73. For fifty-two years, Frank fixed her gate, carried her coal, mowed a straight line between their lawns so neither of them had to argue about it. Last Tuesday, after her son brought her home from hospital, Frank knocked with a stew Maggie used to make and said, "Evelyn, I've been fond of you since before my Maggie passed. I thought you should know that, in case it's of any use."
She had looked at him a long time and said, "Frank, I know. I've known since 1974. The stew is of use, though. Come in."
His granddaughter looked at his list again.
"So what's the lie then?"
Frank tapped number two.
"I have never been outside England."
"So you have been? Where?"
Frank stood up and went to the sideboard. From the bottom drawer, under the tablecloths, he took out a small, faded photograph. It was him, twenty-two years old, in uniform. Behind him, a grey sea and a port he didn't know the name of.
"Germany. National Service. Eleven months in '76. I hated every minute of it, so I decided to forget it. Worked quite well, until tonight."
His granddaughter stared at the photo, then at him.
"So you lied about never leaving?"
"No," Frank said. "The lie is that I forgot. I remember the smell of that port. Diesel and cold. I remember it better than yesterday."
She marked his paper with a big circle around number five.
"I'm saying the whistle is the lie."
Frank listened. Far off, or perhaps not far at all, a low, mournful note carried over the cold roofs.
"If it's a lie," he said, "it's the truest one I've got."
II. The Tin
The next morning, Frank's granddaughter came round with a spade.
"Come on then," she said. "We're millionaires."
Frank made tea and watched her attack the runner beans like an archaeologist. She found three lost tennis balls, a rusted trowel, and a plastic dinosaur.
"Grandad, are you sure you buried it?"
"I was sure in 1990."
He joined her, kneeling in soil that was black and cold even in May. His hands remembered the work.
After an hour, Evelyn leaned over the fence. "You two burying bodies?"
"Searching for treasure," his granddaughter said.
Evelyn nodded wisely. "He told me about that tin. 1990. I told him he'd lose it."
Frank looked up, mud on his knees. "You knew?"
"Of course I knew. You came over and asked me to watch where you dug, so you'd remember. I watched. Then you both decided to plant those bloody beans straight over it."
She pointed with her walking stick to a spot directly under the old washing line. "There."
They dug. Six inches down, the spade clinked.
The tin was rusted shut, but intact. Inside, wrapped in a freezer bag, five thousand pounds, damp but real.
Frank's granddaughter held it up like the FA Cup. Evelyn said, "Well, now you can finally take me to Spain."
Frank looked at the money, then at his garden, then at Evelyn. "I think I'd rather get the fence fixed properly this time."
III. The Whistle
Frank doesn't hear the whistle every day now. Only on wet mornings.
He and Evelyn walk to the shops together on Tuesdays. She walks slower since the hospital, he walks slower because he always did.
They pass the old works site. It's a Tesco now, and a Heritage Centre that Frank refuses to go into because they charge £6 to see his own life.
Last Tuesday, they were passing at just gone six in the morning (Evelyn couldn't sleep, Frank never could) when it happened again.
That low note. Long and clean.
Evelyn stopped. "Did you hear that?"
Frank felt his chest tighten. For thirty years he'd thought it was only him, his memory playing tricks, his past leaking.
"You heard it?" he whispered.
"Hear it every week," she said, matter-of-factly. "That's why I never liked Tuesdays early. Jack used to say it was the sound of the town breathing out."
They stood there in the damp, two old people by a supermarket, listening to a whistle from a chimney that wasn't there anymore.
When it faded, Evelyn slipped her hand into his.
"See?" she said. "Truth number five wasn't a lie at all. It was just early."
And Frank thought that was about the best definition of truth he'd ever heard.
Four Truths and a Lie is a work of fiction by John McArdle, a local short story writer.
