A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  Should I mumble ‘docker’ in the hope of being misheard?

  (‘There he goes, a doctor’s son, and every inch the medical man.’)

  Or should I pick up the hook and throw it down like a gauntlet?

  ‘Docker. My dad’s a docker.’ A whistle of corduroy.

  How about? ‘He’s a stevedore, from the Spanish “estibador”

  Meaning a packer, or loader, as in ship.’ No, sounds too

  On the Waterfront, and Dad was no Marlon Brando.

  Besides, it’s the handle they want not the etymology.

  ‘He’s a foreman on the docks.’ A hint of status? Possibly.

  A touch of class? Hardly. Better go with the straightforward:

  ‘He works on the docks in Liverpool,’ which leaves it open.

  Crane-driver? Customs and Excise Officer? Canteen manager?

  Clerk? Chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board?

  In dreams, I hear him naming the docks he knew and loved.

  A mantra of gentle reproach: Gladstone, Hornby, Alexandra,

  Langton, Brocklebank, Canada, Huskisson, Sandon, Wellington,

  Bramley Moor, Nelson, Salisbury, Trafalgar, Victoria.

  READING NOTES

  ‘I hate snobs,’ said one young male member of a group. ‘People who think they are better than you just because they are posh or have more money.’ Someone else answered, ‘Yes, but who is the snob here? It is not the posh woman but the poorer lad. The group members talked about the way in which the young man betrays his father, then tries to justify it to himself. People felt sorry for the father but Sam wondered why the father did not just say hello. ‘He’s made it worse. Perhaps he feels ashamed or something, too.’ There is so much going on between these three people, some of it spoken, some left unsaid. People in all sorts of groups have a similar reaction – they always want to talk about this real sense of damage and what it is going to do to the relationships after the story ends.

  The poem helpfully carries on the theme and was a great success with a group of warehousemen. Conversation veered between opinions on the young, cavalry-twilled snobbish student and memories of Liverpool Docks; ships on the Mersey, and the famous scene with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in the back of the car in On the Waterfront. ‘The sad thing is,’ said Alan, going back to the readings, ‘they both really love their fathers, don’t they?’

  Clamorous Wings

  I’LL TELL ME MA

  (THE SWIMMER, CHAPTER 5)

  Brian Keenan

  (approximate reading time 13 minutes)

  Brian Keenan is still best known as one of the Beirut hostages. He was born in 1951 into a working-class family in East Belfast. I’ll Tell Me Ma is his childhood memoir.

  Dad loved the outdoors. On summer mornings, he would boil the kettle until it steamed, then pour the hot water into a basin which he would carry with him into the yard. While he sat on a stool or chair, Dad would go about his daily ablutions with great enthusiasm, splashing water everywhere. Occasionally he used a cut-throat blade to shave with. He loved to sing as the blade scraped across his face. I thought he simply needed a good scrub because his work was often dirty and smelly, but it was probably that Mum wanted to use the sink to wash dishes or clothes. Dad was happy to be relegated to the yard. He wasn’t obsessed with dirt or cleanliness. It was more than that: Dad was like a child around water. Water cast a spell on him and transformed him.

  I had my first encounter with this in Alexandra Park. After a sleepless night when my growing pains had subsided into a series of disturbing dreams I awoke to the sound of my father’s singing and sluicing. The noises he made blew away the dreams at once. I came down the stairs more asleep than awake and stood in the doorway of our scullery and watched him. He was unaware of me for some minutes and I was content to stay and watch, attracted by the animal abandon with which he washed. After some minutes he turned to me, vigorously drying his ears by pushing the towel into them. ‘Bad dreams again, son?’ he said without making any fuss about the fact. I nodded, half afraid that the acknowledgement might bring the dreams flocking back. ‘Well it’s very early, but it’s going to be a big bright day. So why don’t me and you go off to the park and maybe the waterworks, just the two of us?’ I was swept away by the suggestion. Most of the street was still asleep. The milkman hadn’t even arrived, rattling us all awake with his empty bottles and aluminium crates. And I had never been outside the front door or beyond the yard at this hour of the morning. In no time we were gone. The empty streets were new to me, though I had made this walk hundreds of times. Dad was quiet too. He never did talk much unless I asked him something. So we stole through the streets like a couple of conspirators. It seemed like no one else in the world was awake.

  When we arrived at the main gates of the park, they were locked. But there were plenty of bars missing in the wrought-iron railing that enclosed it so we squeezed ourselves through. Dad first, then I handed him the small army canvas bag he had brought with him and finally I stepped rather than squeezed myself into the forbidden parkland. I was afraid of the park keeper catching us but didn’t say anything. Dad walked briskly across the grass and on to the pathway. His casual demeanour made me forget the keeper, but not my sense of being afraid. The park, like the streets we had walked through, had lost its familiarity. The lack of distant traffic noise and the absence of voices of other children shouting and playing made the place seem twice as big. The trees I had tried to climb seemed larger and the bushes and shrubs that I had played hide-and-seek in did not invite me at this unearthly hour.

  Instinctively we headed to a natural embankment that was crested by several well-formed trees. One had great muscular branches that grew out over the sloping landfall. Years ago someone had climbed the tree and crawled out along one of these branches to attach a rope, which drooped down and dangled over the embankment. It provided hours of fun for local children who would swing out from the edge and then drop to the ground. It was a constant challenge to see who could swing out the furthest and drop from the greatest height. When I went to the park with my parents and sister, I would watch the other lads screaming in panic and delight as they flew out from the hilltop and then plunged like a shot bird to the ground. I watched from a safe distance, never daring to join them. But this day, Dad hoisted me on to the ‘Tarzan swing’ as it was called and pushed me out. I clung on like grim death as the ground beneath me receded further and further. I was dreading that Dad would push me out even more when the swinging rope turned back on its arc. I said nothing as his hands received me then launched me back even further and higher into the empty air. I clenched the rope but felt only the numbness of my hands. I was glad we were alone and desperately hoped my dad could not see me white with fear. Suddenly I thought of his plane crash into the mountains and simultaneously heard him call ‘Drop’. The noise of the command blasted into me and I released my grip and fell to the earth.

  I landed easily and rolled a few feet to where Dad stood waiting. I was dumbfounded by what I had done and the fact that I was still in one piece. ‘You see, son, I knew you could do it,’ Dad said. He was genuinely thrilled and it spilt over into me. I was amazed at my feat and was annoyed now that no one except Dad saw me fly. Something new bubbled up inside me. I felt tingly and unafraid. The park seemed less big and foreboding. ‘Want to try again?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I answered, surprised by my sudden confidence. For twenty minutes he pushed me then encouraged me to run with the rope in my hand, launch myself off the precipice and drop at the highest point of the swing’s incline. ‘You’d make a great parachuter,’ he commented encouragingly as I completed another flight and fall. The remark brought me closer to him and our model aeroplanes and to his unspoken adventures during the war. Now I was glad no one else was here. I didn’t mind that the rest of the screaming jumpers hadn’t seen me. When he suggested that we go swimming my new-found confidence fell from me faster than my fall from the swing. I didn’t want to say no, but my fear of wate
r was so great that I couldn’t speak. Part of me also felt that to say no or to make some other feeble excuse would erase the magic of the past hour. ‘Come on,’ he said, picking up his haversack.

  Instead of walking in the direction of the waterworks, we walked quietly towards the lake in the centre of the park. Swimming here was forbidden. The lake was surrounded by a low iron fence which was only three feet high. So it was not meant to keep people away from the deep water, only to emphasise the prohibition. I had never seen anyone swim here, except a family of swans. I had heard that the lake was maybe forty feet deep. The banks down to the water’s edge were steep and overgrown with tall weeds. One reason I think Dad liked this park was its informality. It was more like the countryside than the term ‘park’ suggested.

  ‘You wait here and mind this stuff. I won’t be long,’ he said without looking at me. I was immediately relieved and immediately apprehensive. The edges of the lake had swathes of water reed growing and beyond that a film of algae that looked like green confetti. Only at the centre could you see the still black sheen of unmoving water. It looked pretty at first glance, especially when the swans moved across it. But the thought of it was ominous, and the swans scared me. They were not like the birds in the reservoir lakes who were used to the proximity of people with their toy boats and the fishermen and families who often fed them bait or breadcrumbs. The lake swans never got close to human beings because of the fence, the bank and the reeds. The lake was their home and they patrolled it with austere assurance.

  Dad stepped over the fence with the rolled-up towel and swimming trunks he had brought in the small haversack. Within minutes, he had changed and was descending the bank. ‘Daddy, Daddy, what about the swans?’ I asked, becoming more fearful by the second. I had seen the water-works swans hissing and charging at dogs they thought were too near their nests. I had watched them stand up and spread their wings, flapping furiously. ‘The swans won’t come near me,’ Dad assured me calmly as he slid down through the waist-high weeds and entered the water like a sea snake. He breasted the reeds and the water without a sound. A few water hens scurried out and skimmed to the far side of the lake. Other birds called out their warning at his alien presence in the water. Everywhere else around us was complete silence.

  But Dad was no alien here. He swam on through the algae into the middle of the lake. I saw his head and face crusted with the green scum and his black shiny hair sitting on top of the water. He looked like a seal that had suddenly emerged out of the black depths. Then he disappeared again, only to reappear a few seconds later. I watched him intensely and felt lonely and afraid. He moved across the water as if his head was fixed to a submerged stick and an invisible hand was moving it under the surface. He wasn’t himself. There were no signs of movement of a body beneath the dull water. For a moment I hardly recognised the thing in the water. All I knew was an overwhelming sense of distance between him and me. His hand came up out of the water and made a slight wave. And then he was swallowed up by the lake again. I knew the wave was an encouragement for me to be unafraid; but it was a passing gesture, as if he was only half conscious of me or anything else. There in the middle of the lake he hardly made a splash or a ripple. He seemed so content. Water was his element and he melted into it. I didn’t know him. I only knew the man who made aeroplanes and who brought home animals. This aquatic beast who looked back at me like a ponderous seal, rolled languorously as a beaver, shook his wet hair and snorted like a water buffalo, was from another world.

  If anyone was the intruder there, it was me. I wasn’t part of this man who an hour ago had encouraged me to fly and be unafraid. I recalled that he had only brought a towel and trunks for himself. Obviously his decision to come here was premeditated around this swim. Something more than wanting to bring me this early in the morning had called him here.

  Then I saw the swans emerge and move across the lake like two patrolling gunboats. I wanted to shout a warning but was afraid. I watched as they bore down on him silently and swiftly. I knew that at any moment there would be an eruption of water and wings blasting around my dad. ‘Daddy, come on, hurry up,’ I urged. He didn’t seem to hear me or notice the birds. Then he calmly swam away and ceded the centre of the lake to the swans. They accepted and their bodies sank a little in the water as they ceased their pursuit.

  Dad remained a few feet away, watching the birds while they began preening each other. Then he swam to the bank and emerged slowly from the water. His face, shoulders and chest were clotted with algae. It was as if he had grown green scales on his skin. He dried and dressed himself quickly and I knew we would go home now. Something had been appeased. The elemental gods of air and water had touched us separately and it was time to leave.

  THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

  W. B. Yeats

  The trees are in their autumn beauty,

  The woodland paths are dry,

  Under the October twilight the water

  Mirrors a still sky;

  Upon the brimming water among the stones

  Are nine-and-fifty swans.

  The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

  Since I first made my count;

  I saw, before I had well finished,

  All suddenly mount

  And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

  Upon their clamorous wings.

  I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

  And now my heart is sore.

  All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

  The first time on this shore,

  The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

  Trod with a lighter tread.

  Unwearied still, lover by lover,

  They paddle in the cold

  Companionable streams or climb the air;

  Their hearts have not grown old;

  Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

  Attend upon them still.

  But now they drift on the still water,

  Mysterious, beautiful;

  Among what rushes will they build,

  By what lake’s edge or pool

  Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day

  To find they have flown away?

  READING NOTES

  Both story and poem are about memories, and readers often want to talk about the difference in the way we might see the same thing in childhood and as an adult. Or the way that time leaves some things apparently untouched while irrevocably changing others. The poem is beautiful and about beauty so why is it so sad? ‘Mysterious, beautiful’, is the poet’s description of the swans, but they are many other things too.

  The boy in the story is seeing and experiencing something different. Readers have thought hard about the nervous, fearful child. They have talked of their own childhood nightmares as well as their relationships with their fathers and shared special memories of doing things with Dad. How difficult would it be to recall your childhood in order to write a memoir? Are things such as Tarzan ropes, watching your father shave, the park, easier to remember than feelings?

  ‘I hardly recognised the thing in the water. All I knew was an overwhelming sense of distance between him and me.’ The idea of the possibility of distance and separateness existing at the same time as close and loving feeling is something which has really interested readers.

  Many readers have remembered Brian Keenan as one of the Beirut hostages and have talked about their own memories and thoughts of that time.

  The Paths of Our Lives

  DAVID SWAN

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  (approximate reading time 14 minutes)

  We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events – if such they may be called – which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying their near approach, by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life
would be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan.

  We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy. After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer’s day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade, and await the coming up of the stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday; and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of.

  While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening’s discourse, as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference were all one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan.