Grief is the Thing with Feathers

by Max Porter

  They slapped. A little cuff, a little jab. The short fat younger prince (called Ivan the Lazy, or Guilty Beast, or Greedy Wolf) would move the chair and send his brother tumbling to the cold marble floor. Trips, shin-kicks, tickles.

  Then, as they missed their mother, more and less, the fights got better, worse. The handsome one (called Prince In-a-Bit, or Idle Eagle, or Hungry Deer) would kneel on his brother on the fleshy underarms, and roll his knees upon the slipping muscle. They would lie at opposite ends of the throne-room benches and kick kick kick kick kick until his sobbing brother pleaded mercy, harder.

  Then they bit. Then they tried to drown each other. Then they tried to burn each other’s hair. They tied each other up, they twisted wrists, they wedgied, they spat.

  Then they found a poison book and took turns to make each other sick. Then they hanged each other. Then they flayed each other. Then they crucified each other. Then they drove rusty nails into each other’s skulls.

  One day the king, who happened to be strolling through the palace maze, chanced upon his bloodied sons armed with crossbows, each prince ablaze with murderous intent.

  ‘My little yearlings, my lovely hoyden boys, why do you play this way?’ asked the king.

  ‘Because we miss our mammy so,’ the little boys sang in unison.

  The king roared with laughter and patted his pig-tight belly.

  ‘My darling imps, you’ve got so much to learn about what it means to be king. The queen was no more your mother than she was my own. God only knows which corridor wenches spat you two out, but it certainly wasn’t that friend-of-a-friend I called Queen.’

  So the boys, quite relieved, shook hands and went on to become very successful kings of large and profitable kingdoms.

  CROW

  Krickle krackle, hop sniff and tackle, in with the bins, singing the hymns.

  I lost a wife once, and once is as many times as a crow can lose a wife. Ooh, stab it. Just remembered something.

  He flew a genuflection Tintagel–Carlyle cross Morecambe–Orford, wonky, trying to poison himself with forbidden berries and pretty churches, but England’s litter saved him. Ley lines flung him cross-country with no time for grief, power cables catapulted loose bouquets of tar-black bone and feather and other crows rained down from the sky, a dead crow storm, a tor top burnt bird bath, but our crow picked and nibbled at Lilt cans and salted Durex and B&H, and the fire storm passed over his head, as written history over the worker. Blackberry, redcurrant, loganberry, sloe. Damson, plum-pear, crab-apple, bruises. Clots, phlegm, tumours and quince.

  He looks in a puddle of oil and sees his beak is brightly coloured, striped red, green, purple and orange. Like a fucking puffin.

  He opens his mouth to scream and beautiful English melody comes out, garden-song, like a blackbird or Ivor blooming Gurney.

  This is another one of Crow’s bad dreams.

  BOYS

  Once upon a time our Dad took the bus to Oxford to hear his hero Ted Hughes speak. This was when Ted Hughes was grey and nearly dead and Dad was just out of school. He’d never been to Oxford before and he was shocked that there were normal shops, McDonald’s and stuff. He couldn’t believe there were yobs throwing cans in the bus station. He thought there would only be professors mulling things over.

  He arrived three hours too early, so he bought some records in a trendy record shop. He got something he didn’t want because he was too embarrassed to correct the man behind the counter. He went to a pub and drank two pints of Guinness and smoked cigarettes, one after the other. Our Dad was quiet and shifty and romantic and you could smoke indoors then.

  Our Dad was disillusioned by the size and modernity of Oxford. He had thought he might bump into Ted, or Peter Redgrove, before the reading. Then he was embarrassed at his own naïveté and had a third pint. He was reading Osip Mandelstam and underlining and folding pages, copying bits into his notebook. He had assumed the pub would be full of young thinkers behaving in the same way, but the pub was empty apart from a man in a Spurs shirt with a beagle.

  Our Dad was in a shit pub right by the bus station.

  He had bang-up-to-date views on Hughes and Plath. One of those views was that it was all over. It was time to shed all that crap and assess the poetry without partisan biographical bickering. He was pro-Ted, our papa. On the bus to Oxford he had imagined some vigorous arguments in a wood-panelled pub with a gaggle of Plath fans. ‘OK, OK, we’ll accept River,’ they’d say. ‘Fair enough,’ Dad would say, ‘I’ll have another go at Colossus.’

  To be fair to our Dad, he was authentic. Quiet, shifty and tragically uncool. We had to take the piss out of him as hard as we possibly could. We were convinced that it was what our Mum would have wanted. It was our best way of loving him, and thanking him.

  He got a free drink with his ticket.

  He kept his ticket and still has it in his Ted folder.

  He sat halfway from the front.

  He waited for his hero.

  (Big man with a grubby marked hardback, probably a Barbour jacket, perhaps even the whiff of the Devon farm or a smear of salmon guts on the pocket. The iconic cowslip has fuzzed and faded, Dad knows, but what will his hair be like? A smart Laureate crew-cut perhaps. And will it all be Shakespeare talk, or will there be a poem or two? A new poem or two, Ted? For your young fans? For the boys that have you up there with Donne and Milton?)

  Ted, when he did arrive, looked a little unwell.

  The talk passed by in a reverential haze. He never remembered much of it, except that it was very, very Shakespeare-heavy, and one of the panel was hostile to Ted.

  It was time for questions and our eighteen-year-old Dad already had the hot neck-up blush and sweaty palms of a question-ready fan. At the back, a question about Caliban and empire. Yes, Madam at the side, a question about bad reviews. Yes, Sir, here at the front, a question about Sylvia, met with a sigh from the Ted-savvy crowd, and a polite ‘not relevant’ from the chairperson. Then, joy oh joy, Yes, Young Man, in the middle.

  Dad stood up, which was funny because none of the others had. We chuckle at the standing up.

  His question was very long and very earnest, and it came out a bit muddled, but it was about nuclear war, and censorship, and pollution and James the First. Ted nodded, smiled, nodded, and the chairperson said, ‘Thank you, lovely, more of an essay than a question, but thank you. I’m sorry to say we’re out of time.’

  Dad sat down painfully hard on his bum-bones, crimson, with tears prickling.

  Mum apparently cried once when he told this story, but wait! Wait! we all shout. Wait Dad, you tragic twat! You are not left shamed by the chairperson! This is why we love and mock you. There’s a happy coda.

  As our Dad was shuffling his way to the exit a vast poet’s hand clapped down on his shoulder and the full-fathom-twenty drone boom-dry loveliness of Ted Hughes’ warm Yorkish accent coated our happy Daddy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hughes, looking Dad in the eye.

  ‘Yes?’ said our Dad.

  ‘Yup,’ said Hughes, and turned away.

  And our Dad forgot what he asked, and Ted Hughes died, and so did our Mum, and my brother tells the Oxford story differently to me.

  PART THREE PERMISSION TO LEAVE

  CROW

  This is the story of how your wife died.

  DAD

  I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to hear it.

  CROW

  But that’s the whole point. She banged her head.

  DAD

  Crow, really, it’s fine. I know. I don’t need to know.

  CROW

  Fancy that.

  DAD

  Dear Crow,

  You once stood by my bed and spoke in the voice of black birdcall and told me never to marry again, to seal off my heart and tie up my cock. Us crows are monogamous, you said, and tapped my forehead with your jut-jutting beak.

  Then, later, you stood by my bed and told me the story of Ted. You spoke in the voice of a Yorkshire teache
r and told me to get back on it, find a lover, buck my ideas up, think of the boys. Crack on, you said. You should shack up with a friendly young thing who likes the sound of ‘Stepmum’. Have a roll in the hay. I flung the duvet off and flailed and swung and spat at you but you were elsewhere and I had to fall asleep crushed between what you’d said and what I thought. No sleep.

  Sharp edges.

  Bad breath.

  BOYS

  Once we were doing some drawing at the kitchen table and Dad said, ‘We can never think too much about how important Picasso is,’ and my brother said, ‘Wankerama Dad!’ and Dad was nearly sick from laughing so hard.

  We abused him and mocked him because it seemed to remind him of our Mum.

  Once upon a time we went to a secret place with our Gran. It was a huge semi-circular wall of red sand that was once in the sea. Give it a kick and a shell would fall out. This was in the middle of a bright yellow rapeseed field.

  Dad did not come. That was something Dad had nothing to do with.

  DAD

  She had flu. It was unusual for her to be ill. The boys were tiny and it had snowed and she couldn’t bear us rampaging about the house so we got dressed and went sledging in the park. We were pathetic without her. The boys didn’t know where their hats were. Couldn’t get their joined mittens through their puffer jackets; didn’t want to see other boys, bigger boys sledging on the hill. I was hopeless. I took them out without wellies so before we’d even got down the road their little toes were aching. They both whinged and we all felt, the three of us, that without her things didn’t work as they should. They pitied me. I felt acutely embarrassed that my brilliance as a father had been exposed as wholly reliant upon her. Perhaps if I’d known it was a dress rehearsal for the rest of our lives I would have said BUCK UP YOU LITTLE TURDS, or HELP ME. Or take me, take me instead please.

  DAD

  Things Crow is NOT scared of:

  Ted.

  Biographies of Sylvia.

  God.

  Wind farms.

  Motherless children.

  Bald eagles.

  Tar Baby.

  Scarecrows.

  Man.

  Death.

  Things Crow IS scared of:

  Divorce.

  Plot.

  Business.

  Catholics.

  Barbed wire.

  Pesticides.

  Gossip.

  Taxidermy.

  Keith Sagar.

  DAD

  About two years afterwards, far too soon but perfectly timed, I brought home a woman, a Plath scholar I met at a symposium.

  She was funny and bright and did her best with a fucked-up situation. We had to be quiet because the boys were asleep upstairs.

  She was soft and pretty and her naked body was dissimilar to my wife’s and her breath smelt of melon. But we were on the sofa my wife bought, drinking wine from glasses my wife was given, beneath the painting my wife painted, in the flat where my wife died.

  I haven’t had sex with many women, and I only got good at it with my wife, doing things my wife liked. I didn’t want to do those things, or think about whether I should be doing those things or thinking about the thinking, which meant I bashed her teeth, then knelt on her thigh, then apologised too much, then came too quickly, then tried too hard, then not hard enough.

  But it was good, and she was lovely, and we sat up smoking her strong cigarettes out of the window and talking about everything we’d ever read that wasn’t by or about Sylvia or Ted.

  She left and I felt nervous about feeling cheerful. I walked around the flat as if I’d only just met it, long strides and over-determined checking of surfaces. I looked in on the boys.

  *

  When I came down Crow was on the sofa impersonating me pumping and groaning.

  BOYS

  We seem to take it in ten-year turns to be defined by it, sizeable chunks of cracking on, then great sink-holes of melancholy.

  Same as anyone, really.

  We used to think she would turn up one day and say it had all been a test.

  We used to think we would both die at the same age she had.

  We used to think she could see us through mirrors.

  We used to think she was an undercover agent, sending Dad money, asking for updates.

  We were careful to age her, never trap her. Careful to name her Granny, when Dad became Grandpa.

  We hope she likes us.

  DAD

  Dearest boy,

  One Christmas about three years after your mother died, I had put you and your brother to bed and I was sprawled on the sofa drinking red wine and reading R. S. Thomas when she walked in and said Hello. She was naked except for her socks (never a good look even when she was alive). She tripped on the rug, stumbled, and banged her knee on the coffee table. We went upstairs and I put some arnica cream on the bruise and we bickered about the mess in the medicine cupboard. Then we filled your stockings with presents and tiptoed into your rooms to lay them by your beds. I went to sleep and your mother sat up reading for a while.

  That is completely true.

  Are you being good? Don’t worry about doing stuff or not doing stuff, it doesn’t matter.

  Love,

  Dad

  BOYS

  One brother sat quietly inside the brother bits and tried hard but felt angry. It’s me. I had a difficult few years, now I’m fine, but I’m quiet and I’m unsentimental. My brother calls out KRAAAA and talks to them. The terrible years of my life were stained crow. And here’s a little secret. I’ve never even read it. I don’t like Hughes and I don’t like poetry.

  Insanity. Pretentiousness. Denial. Indulgence. Nonsense.

  I took an air rifle into a field when I was a teenager to shoot crows. I shot one and wanted to keep on going. I wanted to pile up a bonfire pile of dead black birds with nasty beaks. But they are so clever, they knew what I was up to and kept just far enough away.

  I went back to the one dead crow just in time to see it limping off across the flint-stubbled ground.

  Dad had a few girlfriends but never married again, which seemed to be the best thing for everyone.

  I’m either brother.

  DAD

  Moving on, as a concept, was mooted, a year or two after, by friendly men on behalf of their well-intentioned wives. Women who loved us. Women who knew me as a child.

  Oh, I said, we move. WE FUCKING HURTLE THROUGH SPACE LIKE THREE MAGNIFICENT BRAKE-FAILED BANGERS, thank you, Geoffrey, and send my love to Jean.

  Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.

  So I walked into their room in the navy blue middle of the night in summertime and listened to them breathing. Duvets smashed and tangled, little soft limbs emerging from robot and pirate print cotton and assorted soft toys. My wife and I used to come and tuck them in and marvel at how perfect they were asleep. We laughed at how beautiful they were – ‘it’s insane!’ we said. It was, insane.

  And I stood and breathed their air and considered – as always – things like fragility, danger, luck, imperfection, chance, being kind, being funny, being honest, eyes, hair, bones, the impossible hectic silent epidermis rejuvenating itself, never nervous, always kissable, even when scabbed, even so salty I made it, and I felt so many nights utterly, totally yanked apart by how much I loved these children, and I asked them, loudly:

  Do you want to MOVE ON?

  No reply.

  Should we think about MOVING ON? The swish and ruffle of air in nostrils, clacking tongues, sighs, the gentle invisible concentrated upper air of a room in the top of a flat where young people are dreaming.

  No, I said, I agree, we are doing just fine.

  Crow joined me as I left, shutting the door, and got me in a cosy headlock.

  You’re not alone, kid.

  BOYS

  Once upon a time I
am grown up, I have a child. And a wife. And a car. I sound a bit like Dad.

  We drive through the Chilterns, the Downs, the Moors, the Broads, singing British Holidays for British People. My Dad did that, he showed us Britain. Cader Idris, Shingle Street, Mallyan Spout. Now my tiny son shouts ‘cra’ when he sees a crow, because when I see a crow I shout KRAAAA.

  I tell tales of our family friend, the crow. My wife shakes her head. She thinks it’s weird that I fondly remember family holidays with an imaginary crow, and I remind her that it could have been anything, could have gone any way, but something more or less healthy happened. We miss our Mum, we love our Dad, we wave at crows.

  It’s not that weird.

  DAD

  ‘Listen-to-this, too-good-to-miss, rump-pum-pa-pum-paar-rrum.’

  Parp!

  ‘Go away Crow.’

  MAN How do you know when you’ve found something worth picking at?

  BIRD Well much of it has to do with a state of readiness, which is both instinctual (the hungers, the vices etc.) and pragmatic (nice-looking crisp packet, nice-looking widower). You’ll remember with some of my early work with you, that what appeared to be primal corvid vulgarity was in fact a highly articulated care programme, designed to respond to the nuances of your recovery.

  MAN Did I respond as well as you’d hoped?

  BIRD Better. But the credit should go to the boys, and to the deadline. I knew that by the time you sent your publisher your final draft of the Crow essay my work would be done.