A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  I suddenly burst into dazzling sunlight. An arm reached out; a hand grasped the handle of the bucket. There was a lift and I felt the solidity of earth beneath me. It was good to stand on something that didn’t move, to feel the sun on your face.

  He stood watching me, his outstretched arm bridging him to a grey box-tree that seemed strangely like himself.

  I thanked him then sat down on the rubble for a yarn. I told him about myself and something about the people I had met. He listened without moving, but I felt the power of his interest drawing words from me as dry earth absorbs water.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said before I left him, and I shook his hand.

  I went away, but before I reached the trees I turned and waved to him.

  He was still standing against the grey box like a kindred tree, but he straightened quickly and waved in return.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he called, and it was as if a tree had spoken.

  MIRACLE ON ST DAVID’S DAY

  Gillian Clarke

  They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude.

  ‘Daffodils’, William Wordsworth

  An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed

  with daffodils. The sun treads the path

  among cedars and enormous oaks.

  It might be a country house, guests strolling,

  the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.

  I am reading poetry to the insane.

  An old woman, interrupting, offers

  as many buckets of coal as I need.

  A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens

  entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic

  on a good day, they tell me later.

  In a cage of first March sun, a woman

  sits not listening, not seeing, not feeling.

  In her neat clothes, the woman is absent.

  A big, mild man is tenderly led

  to his chair. He has never spoken.

  His labourer’s hands on his knees, he rocks

  gently to the rhythm of the poems.

  I read to their presences, absences,

  to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.

  He is suddenly standing, silently,

  huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow

  movement of spring water or the first bird

  of the year in the breaking darkness,

  the labourer’s voice recites ‘The Daffodils’.

  The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients

  seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.

  Outside the daffodils are still as wax,

  a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables

  unspoken, their creams and yellows still.

  Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,

  the class recited poetry by rote.

  Since the dumbness of misery fell

  he has remembered there was a music

  of speech and that once he had something to say.

  When he’s done, before the applause, we observe

  the flowers’ silence. A thrush sings,

  and the daffodils are flame.

  READING NOTES

  This story rendered a usually vociferous library reading group, temporarily speechless. Firstly because no one was quite sure what had happened and secondly because of the story’s strangely haunting quality. Two sentences in particular were looked at closely: ‘He was akin to trees and they spoke through him’ and ‘his silence was not the silence of absent speech, but the eloquent silence of trees.’ Conversation covered the effects of living close to nature; the grandeur and importance of trees; what trees say to us; the courage of the narrator – is it really his own fearlessness or a sense of trust and confidence in Silent Joe that enables him to go down the shaft?

  After listening to ‘Miracle on St David’s Day’, what are your first feelings? Are they to do with loss – the years lost to illness; ‘the dumbness of misery’; the sad ‘absences’ – or are you moved by the power of memory and the final vision of the daffodils as ‘flame’? The quotation from Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’ invites attention both for itself and for its part in Gillian Clarke’s poem.

  Most people have learnt poetry at school. What do you have in your own inner anthology?

  Letting Go

  FLIGHT

  Doris Lessing

  (approximate reading time 12 minutes)

  Above the old man’s head was the dovecote, a tall wire-netted shelf on stilts, full of strutting, preening birds. The sunlight broke on their grey breasts into small rainbows. His ears were lulled by their crooning, his hands stretched up towards his favourite, a homing pigeon, a young plump-bodied bird which stood still when it saw him and cocked a shrewd bright eye.

  ‘Pretty, pretty, pretty,’ he said, as he grasped the bird and drew it down, feeling the cold coral claws tighten around his finger. Content, he rested the bird lightly on his chest, and leaned against a tree, gazing out beyond the dovecote into the landscape of a late afternoon. In folds and hollows of sunlight and shade, the dark red soil, which was broken into great dusty clods, stretched wide to a tall horizon. Trees marked the course of the valley; a stream of rich green grass the road.

  His eyes travelled homewards along this road until he saw his grand-daughter swinging on the gate underneath a frangipani tree. Her hair fell down her back in a wave of sunlight, and her long bare legs repeated the angles of the frangipani stems, bare, shining-brown stems among patterns of pale blossoms.

  She was gazing past the pink flowers, past the railway cottage, where they lived, along the road to the village.

  His mood shifted. He deliberately held out his wrist for the bird to take flight, and caught it again at the moment it spread its wings. He felt the plump shape strive and strain under his fingers; and, in a sudden access of troubled spite, shut the bird into a small box and fastened the bolt. ‘Now you stay there,’ he muttered; and turned his back on the shelf of birds. He moved warily along the hedge, stalking his granddaughter, who was now looped over the gate, her head loose on her arms, singing. The light happy sound mingled with the crooning of the birds, and his anger mounted.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted; saw her jump, look back, and abandon the gate.

  Her eyes veiled themselves, and she said in a pert neutral voice: ‘Hullo, Grandad.’ Politely she moved towards him, after a lingering backward glance at the road.

  ‘Waiting for Steven, hey?’ he said, his fingers curling like claws into his palm.

  ‘Any objection?’ she asked lightly, refusing to look at him.

  He confronted her, his eyes narrowed, shoulders hunched, tight in a hard knot of pain which included the preening birds, the sunlight, the flowers, herself. He said: ‘Think you’re old enough to go courting, hey?’

  The girl tossed her head at the old-fashioned phrase and sulked, ‘Oh, Grandad!’

  ‘Think you want to leave home, hey? Think you can go running around the fields at night?’

  Her smile made him see her, as he had every evening of this warm end-of-summer month, swinging hand in hand along the road to the village with that red-handed, red-throated, violent-bodied youth, the son of the postmaster. Misery went to his head and he shouted angrily: ‘I’ll tell your mother!’

  ‘Tell away!’ she said, laughing, and went back to the gate.

  He heard her singing, for him to hear:

  ‘I’ve got you under my skin,

  I’ve got you deep in the heart of . . .’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he shouted. ‘Rubbish. Impudent little bit of rubbish!’

  Growling under his breath he turned towards the dovecote, which was his refuge from the house he shared with his daughter and her husband and their children. But now the house would be empty. Gone all the young girls with their laughter and their squabbling and their teasing. He would be left, uncherished and alone, with that square-fronted, calm-eyed woman, his daughter.

  He stooped, muttering, before the dovecote, resenting the absorbed cooing birds
.

  From the gate the girl shouted: ‘Go and tell! Go on, what are you waiting for?’

  Obstinately he made his way back to the house, with quick, pathetic persistent glances of appeal back at her. But she never looked around. Her defiant but anxious young body stung him into love and repentance. He stopped. ‘But I never meant . . .’ he muttered, waiting for her to turn round and run to him. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  She did not turn. She had forgotten him. Along the road came the young man Steven, with something in his hand. A present for her? The old man stiffened as he watched the gate swing back, and the couple embrace. In the brittle shadows of the frangipani tree his grand-daughter, his darling, lay in the arms of the postmaster’s son, and her hair flowed back over his shoulder.

  ‘I see you!’ shouted the old man spitefully. They did not move. He stumped into the little whitewashed house, hearing the wooden veranda creak angrily under his feet. His daughter was sewing in the front room, threading a needle held to the light.

  He stopped again, looking back into the garden. The couple were now sauntering among the bushes, laughing. As he watched he saw the girl escape from the youth with a sudden mischievous movement, and run off through the flowers with him in pursuit. He heard shouts, laughter, a scream, silence.

  ‘But it’s not like that at all,’ he muttered miserably. ‘It’s not like that. Why can’t you see? Running and giggling, and kissing and kissing. You’ll come to something quite different.’

  He looked at his daughter with sardonic hatred, hating himself. They were caught and finished, both of them, but the girl was still running free.

  ‘Can’t you see?’ he demanded of his invisible grand-daughter, who was at that moment lying in the thick green grass with the postmaster’s son.

  His daughter looked at him and her eyebrows went up in tired forbearance.

  ‘Put your birds to bed?’ she asked, humouring him.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, urgently. ‘Lucy . . .’

  ‘Well what is it now?’

  ‘She’s in the garden with Steven.’

  ‘Now you just sit down and have your tea.’

  He stumped his feet alternately, thump, thump, on the hollow wooden floor and shouted: ‘She’ll marry him. I’m telling you, she’ll be marrying him next!’

  His daughter rose swiftly, brought him a cup, set him a plate.

  ‘I don’t want any tea. I don’t want it, I tell you.’

  ‘Now, now,’ she crooned. ‘What’s wrong with it? Why not?’

  ‘She’s eighteen. Eighteen!’

  ‘I was married at seventeen and I never regretted it.’

  ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘Liar. Then you should regret it. Why do you make your girls marry? It’s you who do it. What do you do it for? Why?’

  ‘The other three have done fine. They’ve three fine husbands. Why not Alice?’

  ‘She’s the last,’ he mourned. ‘Can’t we keep her a bit longer?’

  ‘Come, now, dad. She’ll be down the road, that’s all. She’ll be here everyday to see you.’

  ‘But it’s not the same.’ He thought of the other three girls, transformed inside a few months from charming petulant spoiled children into serious young matrons.

  ‘You never did like it when we married!’ she said. ‘Why not? Every time, it’s the same. When I got married you made me feel like it was something wrong. And my girls the same. You get them all crying and miserable the way you go on. Leave Alice alone. She’s happy.’ She sighed, letting her eyes linger on the sun-lit garden. ‘She’ll marry next month. There’s no reason to wait.’

  ‘You’ve said they can marry?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘Yes, dad, why not?’ she said coldly, and took up her sewing.

  His eyes stung, and he went out on to the veranda. Wet spread down over his chin and he took out a handkerchief and mopped his whole face. The garden was empty.

  From around a corner came the young couple; but their faces were no longer set against him. On the wrist of the post-master’s son balanced a young pigeon, the light gleaming on its breast.

  ‘For me?’ said the old man, letting the drops shake off his chin. ‘For me?’

  ‘Do you like it?’ The girl grabbed his hand and swung on it. ‘It’s for you, Grandad. Steven brought it for you.’ They hung about him, affectionate, concerned, trying to charm away his wet eyes and his misery. They took his arms and directed him to the shelf of birds, one on each side, enclosing him, petting him, saying wordlessly that nothing would be changed, nothing could change, and that they would be with him always. The bird was proof of it, they said, from their lying happy eyes, as they thrust it on him. ‘There, Grandad, it’s yours. It’s for you.’

  They watched him as he held it on his wrist, stroking its soft, sun-warmed back, watching the wings lift and balance.

  ‘You must shut it up for a bit,’ said the girl intimately. ‘Until it knows this is its home.’

  ‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs,’ growled the old man.

  Released by his half-deliberate anger, they fell back, laughing at him. ‘We’re glad you like it.’ They moved off, now serious and full of purpose to the gate, where they hung, backs to him, talking quietly. More than anything could, their grownup seriousness shut him out, making him alone; also, it quietened him, took the sting out of their tumbling like puppies on the grass. They had forgotten him again. Well, so they should, the old man reassured himself, feeling his throat clotted with tears, his lips trembling. He held the new bird to his face, for the caress of its silken feathers. Then he shut it in a box and took out his favourite.

  ‘Now you can go,’ he said aloud. He held it poised, ready for flight, while he looked down the garden towards the boy and the girl. Then, clenched in the pain of loss, he lifted the bird on his wrist and watched it soar. A whirr and spatter of wings, and a cloud of birds rose into the evening from the dovecote.

  At the gate Alice and Steven forgot their talk and watched the birds.

  On the veranda, that woman, his daughter, stood gazing, her eyes shaded with a hand that still held her sewing.

  It seemed to the old man that the whole afternoon had stilled to watch his gesture of self-command, that even the leaves of the trees had stopped shaking.

  Dry-eyed and calm, he let his hands fall to his sides and stood erect, staring up into the sky.

  The cloud of shining silver birds flew up and up, with a shrill cleaving of wings, over the dark ploughed land and the darker belts of trees, and the bright folds of grass, until they floated high in the sunlight, like a cloud of motes of dust.

  They wheeled in a wide circle, tilting their wings so there was flash after flash of light, and one after another they dropped from the sunshine of the upper sky to shadow, one after another, returning to the shadowed earth over trees and grass and field, returning to the valley and the shelter of night.

  The garden was all a fluster and a flurry of returning birds. Then silence, and the sky was empty.

  The old man turned, slowly, taking his time; he lifted his eyes to smile proudly down the garden at his grand-daughter. She was staring at him. She did not smile. She was wide-eyed, and pale in the cold shadow, and he saw the tears run shivering off her face.

  EVERYONE SANG

  Siegfried Sassoon

  Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

  And I was filled with such delight

  As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

  Winging wildly across the white

  Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

  Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

  And beauty came like the setting sun:

  My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

  Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone

  Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

  READING NOTES

  ‘Sometimes I think I understand this poem,’ said a member of a hospital reading group, ‘and then
I lose it again.’ The group spent some time talking about the mixed feelings of joy and sadness the poem seems to convey, and puzzled over the final words: ‘O, but Everyone was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.’

  The end of ‘Flight’ was found to be similarly enigmatic: what is the reason for the girl’s tears? There was much to say about loving and letting go and the difficulty of coming to terms with your children becoming adults. Some knew the feeling of loneliness and redundancy when children grow up and leave home. For many parents, the time when children leave home coincides with their own parents becoming more dependent.

  The poem and story are full of complexities and oppositions: love and hatred; captivity and release; youth and age; sounds and silence. Much food for thought here.

  Where We Live

  ON THE BLACK HILL

  (CHAPTER 1)

  Bruce Chatwin

  (approximate reading time 13 minutes)

  For forty-two years, Lewis and Benjamin Jones slept side by side, in their parents’ bed, at their farm which was known as ‘The Vision’.

  The bedstead, an oak four-poster, came from their mother’s home at Bryn-Draenog when she married in 1899. Its faded cretonne hangings, printed with a design of larkspur and roses, shut out the mosquitoes of summer, and the draughts in the winter. Calloused heels had worn holes in the linen sheets, and parts of the patchwork quilt had frayed. Under the goose-feather mattress, there was a second mattress, of horsehair, and this had sunk into two troughs, leaving a ridge between the sleepers.

  The room was always dark and smelled of lavender and mothballs.

  The smell of mothballs came from a pyramid of hatboxes piled up beside the washstand. On the bed-table lay a pincushion still stuck with Mrs Jones’ hatpins; and on the end wall hung an engraving of Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’, enclosed in an ebonised frame.