by Sally Bayley
Darren was right. Tracy Stone (not my Trace, but a different Trace) let us cover her with white sheets and talcum powder and put her under lights. She didn’t care, because Tracy Stone never did anything but blink.
‘OK Trace, now’s your moment. Move, girl. Put up your arms and wave them about. Imagine you’re Jesus, fuckin’ Jesus who’s just heard he’s been invited to a party for about the first fuckin’ time in his life. “Woo-hoo, I’m Jesus, and I’m gonna fuckin’ par-tee … yeah!” Move your arms, Trace, move your fuckin’ arms so we know you’re coming to life! You’re a person now, a real fucking person! Not just a stoner! Wave, Trace, wave!’ And Tracy Stone waved.
I played Perdita. That was Dave’s idea. Perdita is the lost daughter of the king and queen and she knows about flowers. I was never going to be a shepherd, was I? And none of the boys wanted to say these lines:
… Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares
and take the winds of March with beauty …
Pale primroses that die unmarried …
‘That’s just gay. What sort of guy would put up with all that fuckin’ flower talk?’
‘A shepherd,’ Dave said.
‘But he isn’t a shepherd, is he? That’s the fuckin’ point, Dave. He’s just poncin’ around in a big white shirt. He looks like he’s off to meet his boyfriend at the fuckin’ pier. I mean, who the fuck is called “Florizel”, unless they’re a fuckin’ pansy?’
‘In the seventeenth century, flowers were the language of love and affection. If you wanted to say something, you said it with flowers,’ said Dave. ‘Shakespeare says a lot about flowers. Flowers were also symbols of power and status. You didn’t need to be gay to think about flowers.’
‘Yeah, well Shakespeare was probably gay too.’
Simon, who looked more like a girl than a boy, played Florizel, who loves Perdita. He wore a white shirt unbuttoned to show off his skinny neck and his tiny column of a chest. Dave made out that Simon was the perfect build for a boy actor in Shakespeare’s time, because girls’ parts were played by boys back then. Simon, who didn’t mind handling plastic flowers. Simon, who found himself with flowers stuffed down the back of his trousers or the front of his shirt. Simon, who suffered it all because he looked more like a girl than a boy.
But there were parts for boys too. Dave made sure of that. In the middle of the play there’s a sheep-shearing scene. Dave covered several of the boys with old rugs and mats and they crawled about bleating, knocking their bums and heads together like bumper cars. Then Dave came along and whipped off the towels, which meant they had to get up from the floor and go backstage and stop bleating.
‘Sheep all sheared! Backstage please! Backstage, boys. Now!’
‘Dave, we’ve still got loads and loads of fucking fur to get off. Look at Simon – we haven’t even started on him yet. Simon, you sheep-shagger, get that fucking fleece off you. We want to see what you’ve got underneath! Show us your sheep, Simon, show us your sheep!’
‘OK, we’ll cancel the play and we’ll go back to the classroom. This scene should only take a minute, not twenty-five. We need to get on to the end of the play, back to Sicilia where we can wrap things up. In the theatre you’ve got to keep things moving, you’ve got to get to the climax, the big revelation, the back-together moment. That’s what the audience is waiting for. You can’t spend twenty-five minutes shearing sheep, for Pete’s sake.’
The play ended with Hermione standing in the middle of the dining hall with five boys pointing at her, calling her names. White lights shone on her pale face, making her blink. She looked lost and confused, but not unhappy, because Tracy Stone was always on drugs.
‘Trace, if we were playing musical statues, you’d have lost with that blink.’
‘Yeah, Trace, you’re out. We win. We know you’re not a fucking statue, all right?’
‘Shh,’ said Dave. ‘Keep it quiet for a moment. Keep it quiet, keep it still … musical statues, remember, we’re all playing a game of musical statues. The winner gets £5 extra spending money this week. Hold it still just for a moment … just for a moment!’
And suddenly, from behind the closed canteen shutters we heard the sound of a woman wailing, a sound growing louder and louder, so loud I thought the shutters would break. We all turned around to look.
‘Caterwauling,’ said Dave. ‘The sound of female grief … Pink Floyd, “The Great Gig in the Sky”. You won’t get a better representation of grief than that. Rock Heaven, that is. Rock Heaven!’
The woman’s voice moved higher and higher, up towards the ceiling. ‘Up, up and aw-wayyyyy. Wa-ah-wa-ah-wa-ah-wa-ah-wa-ah, wa-ah wa-ahhhh!’
I heard Dave’s voice piercing through the wailing. ‘Remember, this is Hermione, descending from Heaven, telling her tale of grief and woe. Sing it out, girl, sing it out!’
‘She sounds like her fuckin’ cat just died,’ said Darren. ‘She sounds like a fat black woman whose cat’s just been run over by a fat white bloke and he’s really pleased and she’s really fuckin’ not.’
‘Not just her cat, Darren – her life, her daughter, her husband, her marriage, her kingdom, her country, everything she’s always known – the whole of her reality. Perhaps her cat too, but not just her cat!’
36
The End
What’s the difference between laughter and tears? They’re very close. I think it depends a lot upon your character, whether you laugh or cry. Some people like moping about. Others wouldn’t be seen dead near a tear. I don’t know what makes you a laughing or a crying sort of person. Sad things happen to everyone. Speak for yourself, but I’m a laughing sort of person.
Miss Marple would never have been caught crying. No one in the Miss Marple stories cries much, except perhaps the maids – Gladys and Edna and Mary and Rose and Mabel, girls with names like that. Miss Marple isn’t the sort of woman to indulge in tears. There’s too much else going on: the mystery, figuring things out. Miss Marple doesn’t have time for Madames or Mopers.
‘Madame Mope’, John Reed calls Jane Eyre. ‘Madame Mope’ behind the velvet curtains. Jane Eyre isn’t a moper. She’s a reader, a detective. But John Reed wouldn’t get that. He’s a hitter, a thumper, a lager lout, a moaner, a cry-baby. John Reed wouldn’t care for mystery. Mystery takes courage, a bit of thinking things out. It takes some living with, because mystery is hard to bear.
Mystery depends upon what sort of prayers you say, and prayers are part of the mystery. You want answers, but they never come. The mystery just carries on. And that is definitely, without a flicker or a shadow of a doubt or a lift of an eyebrow, what we want. No matter whether we laugh or cry or what we might pretend to say.
People go on about wanting the truth. Verity. But no one really wants Verity. That’s why she remains dead and buried, her body at the bottom of the garden, covered in pretty pink flowers. No, Verity works better as a memory, a sweet idea. Pink polygonum, pink and going numb, or dumb, in several different ways, depending on how good you are at covering things up, your face going pink year after year when her name is mentioned, The Woman Upstairs, The Mad Woman in the Attic, Sue, Sweet Polygonum Sue, Sue who turns in her grave in many different ways, depending on the story you tell and how you wish to remember her, and then Him, who came before her, and all the others, in their bright pink and purple weeds. It all depends on what is about to be said, and what has already been said, in your silent conversation of prayers on the stairs.
The conversation of prayers about to be said
By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs
Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,
The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move
And the other full of tears that she will be dead,
Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise
Into the answering skies from the green ground,
From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.
The sound about to
be said in the two prayers
For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies
Will be the same grief flying.
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Mum’s favourite poet was Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was Welsh and drank a lot. I don’t know much about alcohol except that the men next door at the Rotary drink it every day after work, and then Saturday and Sunday too, which is why they cause so much trouble.
Drink causes trouble. But drink can also cause poetry. At least it does for Dylan Thomas, because he has a lilt in his voice. Drink makes it so, the lilt I mean. Drink makes you tilty and lilty. Drink lifts you up and carries you away.
Dylan Thomas has a definite lilt in his voice, Mum says. ‘Lilt’ means he lifts the words up at the end. He flies off, over the hills and far away, over the bare and windy Welsh hills.
In Wales there are lots of hills. Wales is mostly made of hills, hills and sheep and then fog and farmers. I don’t know if Dylan Thomas lived on a farm. I think he might have. Dylan Thomas lived on a farm and spent most of his childhood running around the hills lilting. He lilted from his feet to his nose to his hair. Everywhere he went he was lilting.
Vicars lilt. That’s how they get people to listen. Leonard lilts – Leonard the vicar, Greta’s husband, that is. Vicars especially lilt on Sundays.
If you are religious you lilt. Mum thought that Dylan Thomas was religious, and that’s why she liked him. Dylan Thomas may not go to church but he writes poems like prayers.
If you want to be a poet you have to know how to pray. Poets pray hard. They pray so hard that words fall out of their eyes like tears. Words fall down onto the hills until the rain soaks them up, and then they have to start again.
‘A poem is a conversation in prayer,’ Mum said. I didn’t quite know what she meant, but I think she meant that she liked poems to sound like prayers. When you write a poem, really you are praying.
‘A conversation of prayer about to be said by the man in his room and the child on the stairs.’
No, that’s not right.
‘The conversation of prayer about to be said by the man on the stairs and the child going to bed, the one not caring to whom he will move in his sleep turns on the quick and the dead.’
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People move towards ghosts in their sleep. After David died, I stood in the hallway and waited for Mum to come out of her room and down the stair – there is just one small step down – down towards the kitchen. But she never came. Not once, not ever. I asked Maze why, and she said that Mum was saying her prayers and that prayers take a long time if you do it properly.
But I think Mum was saying her Dylan Thomas poem, because it was her favourite and because it brought her comfort. Dylan Thomas, that is.
——————————
After David died, Mum was waiting a long time for the man to climb up the stairs to her high room. She was waiting for God to come upstairs. Mum was waiting for God to turn the final corner of the stairs, the difficult corner, the corner that nearly tilted you sideways and sent you back down again. Mum was waiting for the man who was God to knock on her door and come in.
She knew He would. She knew, she knew, she knew. God would come through the door with an armful of roses and in the middle of the roses would be the gurgling child in his white cotton nappy. David, king of Israel. David, king of the Jews. Sweet Davy. David who gurgles and gurgles and smiles.
And the man with the child in his arms would carry the lilt in his voice right to the final turn, the man who will not care to whom in his sleep he will move, because he knew already. To Mum. To Heaven. To David. Always and always and forever. Amen.
Afterword
I don’t ever remember seeing my mother holding a book. All the reading she did happened before I was born. Books take up a lot of time, and you have to be still and silent as a statue, Mum said, to get really stuck in. She didn’t have time with us lot under her feet. Fat lot of good a book would do her with those nappies to change.
But Mum had words stored up: she had Shakespeare and Hugh Walpole; she had Dylan Thomas – who she forgave for being Welsh, because of his lilt. Somewhere deep inside, Mum had saved some poetry. And this is what kept her going, thorough bush, thorough brier, thorough flood, thorough fire. After all this.
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It was Mum who first sent me to the library. I was six and I learned the way through the woods to the building with the fading green spire. At the library I found the Milly-Molly-Mandy books and Agatha Christie and then Jane Eyre. And I sat on the floor of the children’s library and read and read and nobody back home knew I was there. I read sitting on a shiny wooden floor that squeaked whenever I moved. I learned to sit still and silent as a statue so I could read as much as I could before leaving. Because you were only allowed five books, and five books would last me five days. I would have to come back on Saturday, late morning, after my chores. And that’s how reading was, for years.
Going to the library meant leaving my granite-grey house on Granville Road by the sea and walking to the edge of Lobs Wood. Lobs Wood was where the dogwalkers went in the daytime. Lobs Wood was where murderers buried bodies at nightfall. I sat in Lobs Wood with Greta Clementine and her husband and traced with my finger around the lines and squares of their vicarage home. I imagined murderers from St Mary Mead coming through the front-room window and dragging dead bodies there. I imagined Miss Marple peeking through her window before picking up the phone to Dolly Bantry.
In Lobs Wood I studied diagrams of houses I longed to live in; houses where the chances of a murder happening were guaranteed. Absolutely bet your bottom dollar, without a doubt. Someone would be knocked off before tea.
I read mostly outdoors because there was no room in our house for quiet reading. I read sitting on a wooden stump beneath a canopy of trees. I read inside a white circle of puffy cow parsley. I read blowing the heads off the dandelions. And when I read Jane Eyre I imagined I was sitting with Helen Burns, her clever friend, in the garden of Lowood School; Helen, whose reading age was far ahead of mine, but I would catch up soon, I told myself, and I turned to the pale-faced girl with her head bent towards the ground.
‘Is your book interesting?’ I asked. I had already decided that I would ask to borrow it the minute she put it down.
‘I like it,’ she answered after a pause of a second or two, during which time she examined me.
‘What’s it about?’ I continued. I hardly knew how I dared ask this question, but something about her struck a chord in me, a note of sympathy. I looked at the title written along the spine and I could make out ‘Rass-e-las’. Rass and Lass. Rasse-Lassie. It was a strange name, more like a dog’s than a person’s, a name from far away.
‘You may look at it,’ said the pale girl, lifting her head. ‘Miss Temple gave it to me. She says it is a book for those in search of happiness.’
Then she looked straight at me and I knew at once she was my fairy-friend.
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But fairies can suddenly vanish. They disappear like sprites in the night. One night, Helen Burns dies of consumption; she catches a high fever and dies in her dear friend’s arms. Jane loses Helen, but she keeps her reading. She preserves her friend in words. Jane turns the page and Helen is there, drawing out the words.
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Jane Eyre likes to draw. She turns words into pictures. Mr Rochester of Thornfield Hall asks to see her pictures. They puzzle and intrigue him. He knows they come from a strange world, a world of fairies and genies, goblins and sprites. Jane Eyre is a strange creature. Hers is a world of moonlight and scudding clouds, of tall dark trees and towers. He longs to be part of this world. Given half the chance Mr Rochester would like to be a fairy too.
Because Jane Eyre has imagination, and imagination radically alters things. It changes outlooks and aspects, of people and places, moods and feelings, even the very e
nd of things, who marries who. Imagination can turn your grey house into a bower of flowers. But once you let it in, it is bound to turn you out of doors. Imagination will soon send you packing into the wide green world.
In the public library of my small seaside town I began to find my way into the world. I hadn’t read Rasselas yet, but years later I did.
And when I did, the picture of Jane Eyre in the garden of Lowood came rushing back to me; and close behind her, another picture, of a pale-faced girl on a tree stump in Lobs Wood poised to ask her question.
‘What are you reading? May I see?’
Acknowledgements
It was my grandmother who taught me to read and pay attention to words, so this book begins with her. It was my mother who taught me to love poetry and the sound of words. Much of this book comes from her singing voice.
This book exists because of teachers: Mr Harding of Littlehampton Community College who brought me to Wordsworth in a mouldy hut on the edge of a playing field. Vicky Craver of Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College, and her colleague Margaret Blythe, who taught me Shakespeare and Byron and allowed me to read beyond the syllabus. I have never forgotten reading Clarissa with you.
And then Dave, who brought Shakespeare alive during difficult times; Dave who brought me books when I had few and who showed me what it was to be an Autolycus.
Finally, Stephen Boyd, who taught me at St Andrews University, and whose life was cut short. You brought me the linguistic playfulness of Joyce and then Dante’s La Vita Nuova which you said I must read, and I did. Élan vital, you said in your letter, I must always keep my élan vital.
Many people have encouraged and shaped the writing of this book. I owe a great deal to the students and young people I have taught; this book is for them. I dedicate the final chapter to Noreen Masud, whose journey into voice I have been privileged to share. Noreen, I will never forget teaching you the poetry of Dylan Thomas at Jesus College in your first year: ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’ Your vivid literary imagination and forceful intellect have been a source of inspiration. You have taught me a lot. Thank you.