Jimmy looked blank. ‘William Blake,’ she said. ‘Your style is so like his. Surely you’re familiar with his work? I’m sure the children can help you:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Didn’t we have that in morning assembly only last month?’
And, leaving the class to admire his handiwork, she fetched ‘the book’ from her office: Songs of Innocence and Experience, brought out so often in English lessons and frequently replacing the Bible at prayer time.
Helen had learnt many of the poems off by heart, but I knew the book only by its cover – orange coloured with faded gold lettering and a tasseled silk marker; it held a special place in Miss Quintock’s affection. Others she would willingly lend out or pass around the class, inviting the closest of perusals. But not the Blake. She might share its contents with us; extracts would appear on the blackboard, individual verses set for us to learn by heart but, once this was done, it would be locked away again in her desk. No one, not monitor, parent, inspector, nor – for all we knew – HM Government itself had access to that book, so why had she produced it now? Had Blake also written his Home Thoughts? We didn’t think so. Nor could we remember any other poem remotely resembling it.
All such queries faded as Miss Quintock opened the book, and we caught the full impact of the poet’s intentions, recognising instantly the similarity between his approach and Jimmy’s. Here were verses squeezed between foliage running down the side of each page. ‘The School Boy’, ‘Little Girl Lost’, or ‘Earth’s Answer’ according to Helen.
Angelic figures disported themselves amid burgeoning tendrils, just as the birds had in Jimmy’s picture. ‘That would have been Blake’s “Infant Joy”. Or the dancers in “Blossom Nursing Song”,’ she pronounced.
One I remembered particularly had figures in solemn procession arranged top and bottom of the page.
‘“Holy Thursday” maybe.’
Similarities such as these were to become obvious to anyone who cared to make them. The love of nature. The innate mysticism, an indignation at the wrongs visited by mankind one upon the other. Above all, the determination to speak out against such matters in the only way either of them were able. How could he not have known about Blake, critics such as GL ask, forgetting how out of fashion his poetry was at that particular time.
They needed to have been there, that afternoon in the classroom where it all began. To have witnessed first-hand Jimmy’s surprise. Frustration, envy, resentment – these would have been my own reactions. Picture Captain Scott arriving at the South Pole only to discover that Amundsen had beaten him to it; imagine Armstrong landing on the moon, discovering a Russian flag already in place.
‘Or Tennyson’s frustration on a visit to the theatre. Proud of his description of waterfalls as veils of thinnest lawn only to find this was precisely how they’d always done it on the stage?’ Never short of a literary allusion, my Helen.
Jimmy was not slow to recognise a kindred spirit, though. He was full of questions – the man, his life, the poetry, his artwork, the reception he’d received – with Miss Quintock only too willing to oblige, visiting the county library and returning with two further volumes. Ordering books on Hogarth, William Morris and the like, together with manuals on painting in general and calligraphy in particular. Searching about for paper more suitable for his work, extracting a promise that on no account would he make further use of HMG copybooks. Also to emerge was a side to her character that none of us had suspected: she’d arrive at school each day weighed down by the most lavishly illustrated tomes, hoarded over the years and which – from the way she spoke – must have fuelled imaginary journeys through Florence in the company of the Medicis, to Rome with Leonardo. Jimmy seemed to know far more about this style of painting, theoretically at least. Somewhere, at some point in the past, someone must have had a hand in his artistic education, but he told us neither who it was nor how this had come about.
Being aware that he was not the first to work in this field seemed to give him confidence, as if looking to his predecessor for posthumous support. He was invited to come back and tell us more about his work, demurred, but relented in the face of popular demand and, sure enough, presented himself punctually at the school gate the following week. Meanwhile, we had prepared for his visit. Miss Quintock recalled some Book of Kells artwork sent to her by the education authority and rooted it out from the cupboard. Charlie reminded us how the strip cartoons in comics such as Dandy, Beano, or Hotspur combined words and pictures in much the same way as Jimmy had done and, working in groups, we produced our own adaptations of proverbs or mottos presented in what Frank Murgatroyd would no doubt call the ‘Saintley style’.
Jimmy was delighted. Forgetting his initial reserve, he moved from table to table, finding something positive to say about each one of them; insisting they were displayed around the walls of the classroom. From that point on he became a regular visitor to the school, never interfering with our lessons unless specifically asked to do so, but helping to tidy up at the end of the day, walking home with us afterwards or talking over the nature of future projects with our teacher.
She it was that encouraged the earliest of his experimental artwork. There had been the early treatment of a Kipling poem. This one I could quote from memory: Boots: Boots – boots – boots – movin’ up and down again, with the words consisting of different kinds of footwear: boots, shoes, plimsolls, slippers. Jimmy smuggling the motto for the month, Many Hands Make Light Work, from behind the teacher’s desk and producing his own version, consisting entirely of fingers and thumbs.
And it must have been about this time he grasped the potential of the approach, not merely as a way of combining words and pictures in a novel and pleasing manner, but of producing something having far sharper an edge. Again with Enid Quintock’s support, co-conspirator even. Not that any of us realised it at the time. But the evidence was there, in a folder lying beneath The Encyclopedic History of British Art that I now retrieved from the archive.
Chapter Six
The Postbag Papers
The folder Peter handed up from the archive was buff coloured and A4 in size. The type we still used on a daily basis down at the library. Much older, though, with the rusty imprints of paper clips, stigmata-like, at each of its corners. Inside, a series of pages, about four of them all told, had been skilfully removed from a thinly lined exercise book. A one-inch margin ran down the left hand side of the sheets, each filled with neat copperplate writing – Enid Quintock’s, recognisable from reports elsewhere in the folder; the title – Jimmy’s Postbag; Christmas, 1949 – boldly underlined in red, heading up the first page.
Peter sketched in the background.
With Christmas over, she’d asked her pupils to bring in cards they’d been sent. These were of all shapes and sizes and made a fine display across one side of the classroom. Jimmy, whose knowledge of folklore and custom had provided a completely new dimension to the festivities, seemed delighted. Nevertheless something seemed to be troubling him, and it took Miss Quintock the whole lesson to discover just what this was. Not, as they feared, the sending of Christmas cards. His was a far broader quarrel: the marketing of seasonal goodwill for commercial purposes no less. How they traded on the children’s sentimentality; worse still, the exploitation of human frailty.
Few of the pupils understood. The oldest could have been no more than ten. And he might have given up the struggle had not Miss Quintock intervened. They were seen plotting together in her room, Jimmy adding a number of flourishes to what he’d drawn. His pencil commandeered by the teacher. A cancelling out, or an addition. Striding out to fetch a card from the display. Heads together, conspiratorial chuckles as they considered the outcome. Then, a few days later, Jimmy arrived with the final outcome:
a dozen or so cards that became known as the Christmas Postbag. Each consisted of a single sheet of paper folded in two, having a picture on the cover – no more than a sketch really – with a short message inside. Text, image and size matched to perfection, capturing the essence in a few brief strokes. The pictures had long since disappeared, Peter having only a vague memory of what they looked like, but Miss Quintock had evidently decided to keep a personal copy of the words. For use in one of her lessons, so he’d thought long ago when adding them to the archive, confirmation, now, of the key part she’d played in the development of the ‘Saintley’ talent.
*
The first had been produced on a large hard card with roughly trimmed edges; the text, Jimmy’s imposing version of what we would now call Times Roman Bold:
Now, see here, Dickie, this is the most important card you’ve got and you’re lucky to have it. None of your 70 or 80 gram rubbish here. Just feel the weight of the vellum; look at those distinguished uncut edges, the elegant embossed print. Real quality! As for size – a good ten inches by six, enough to see off even the most pretentious of rivals. And what about the full colour art picture, eh? Not part of the card itself but ever so lightly glued to it. Shows I’ve got taste, you see. Turner it was last year. Stubbs this. ‘Horses’, I told my secretary, ‘and make sure they’re famous. Don’t pay less than £2 per card and be certain that it shows!’
None of your illegible scrawl, either. Not likely! My name is printed inside; there, below the greetings, proving what an exceedingly important and busy person I am, and how very, very fortunate you are to know me. So, you need to give my card pride of place, centre of the mantelpiece, putting all others to shame. None of this sneaking back and slipping someone else’s in its place as soon as my back’s turned. Caught you out doing that the other year, didn’t I!
The next had originally been written in old-fashioned Marion Richardson script. Shaky and uneven, but neater by far than any of Miss Quintock’s pupils had achieved.
Don’t you just love this little card your old Nan’s picked out, special like, just for you, my dear. My, what a time I had choosing it.
Went to the sweetie shop on the corner, I did. You remember where we used to spend our coupons after my Tom, that’s your Dad, got left behind in France. They’re so nice there. Janet’s taken over completely from her mum now – but my, the trouble she’s had with her back – well, she pulls out shelf after shelf of they cards and tells me the price of each, and at last we settle for this one.
The little red puppy dog. Jumping out of the stocking on Christmas morning, licking the little girl’s face. Like Cindy used to do. You remember. Course, we can’t keep our doggies here at Sunnyvale no more. Not since that new matron arrived.
And there’s this dear little poem inside:
‘“This puppy wakes on Christmas Day
To greet his mistress new.
He says “quick, come out to play
All the long day through!”’
Now isn’t that lovely? And look, underneath I’ve written, ever so careful like, without any of they blots or scratching out: ‘to my dear little Richard from his ever loving Nan’.
Where was I? Oh yes. Would you believe it, when I comes to buy the stamp, they put the cost up again, and when I looks in my purse there’s not enough money there. Danged, though, if I can get the hang of these flibbertigibbet coins! Well, I says, that settles it – the bus can go hang. I’ll take the card and walk the four mile home. Then Janet says all of a sudden like, ‘my, someone’s left a stamp on this envelope!’ And so they had. Funny, that, it being there at the bottom of the shelf and all.
So here’s my little card, as usual, and I hope as how it won’t get lost like last year’s did; so, when you brings us over on New Year’s Day it be there with all the others.
The last card had, apparently, been written in childish scroll. Precisely the kind they’d assisted younger brothers and sisters to prepare in the weeks before Christmas:
Hey, what about me! I’m over here! Pushed down behind the Oxfam camels. Between Santa Claus riding an Esso tanker and the Giles family. The snowman in white chalk on untidy blue sugar paper. That’s the one. He’s got a beetroot for a nose and pieces of coal for eyes and I couldn’t quite fit him all in. Took me all afternoon with the Children’s Hour colouring kit, it did. Got paint all over the carpet; it’s on your wallpaper now. Then Mum put her hand over mine whilst I held the pen and we sort of pushed it around the page. Writing came out. ‘To my Daddy’ she said it wrote. But why do you think she was crying?
* * *
So different from my previous image of Jimmy. Miss Quintock too. A strong influence on the ‘rustic woodsman’s’ future development, steering him in less facile, more productive directions. Playing a significant part in Peter’s childhood as well. Just as Daddy had in mine. He’d have adored the Postbag – every bit as much as mother would have hated it. But there’s no doubt which of them would have had the last word…
…the room across the landing from the study had been converted into a nursery. I’d lie there at night alongside my dolls telling them Daddy’s stories. Alert also for the sound of the study latch being closed, the squeak of his chair; sometimes an expression of disgust as he marked the results of a test or set of essays. Just occasionally I’d creep from my room and sit watching him at work. He’d pretend not to notice me. Say nothing. Then, when he’d finished, or heard mother locking up for the night, take my hand, tuck me back in bed. I always slept soundly after that.
Often enough, though, there’d be raised voices drifting up from the kitchen. I’d catch the occasional word, snatches of dialogue –
‘… school like that… dumbing down for dunces… make something of yourself… deputy head by now… hold my head up… Daddy a bishop… should have listened… unless there’s other things keeping you there.’
– not fully understanding what was said.
Later, approaching my early teens, I’d slip into the study to check up on a reference, complete some homework project, or scare myself rigid with the ghost stories – M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare – secreted away among the English poets. To the accompaniment of heated discussions downstairs:
‘…friends she’s been keeping… language… common… cousin Lucy… respect… what she’ll grow up to be…’
Crouched down, my back against the wall. Knees pulled up to chest:
‘No, no, no, Donald. How can you even contemplate it? Grammar school… out of the question… teaching there’s one thing… no daughter of mine… doesn’t bear thinking about… spoil that girl badly enough as it is…’
A muffled response from Daddy:
‘Don’t talk nonsense… think they look up to you?… ruin her chances at Somerville… Henry’s put in a good word for her… honestly think she’ll thank you?’
Daddy, agitated now; words unintelligible, but the sentiment clear. Again over-ruled:
‘… socialist clap-trap… not Henry’s opinion… Parable of the Talent… cost worrying?… he’s got a solution there, too…’
And so off to board at the convent; holidays spent overseas mostly, with new friends. Then university. Infrequent visits back home. Childhood’s end.
Or so I thought…
* * *
The brilliance of Fiddlers Three and Postbag Papers, to say nothing of how Home Thoughts had originated. I don’t know what the pupils made of the Postbag; I almost warmed to the man. But the stories still bothered me. There was something unsettling about them. Over and beyond the constant bloodletting, their overt masculinity, the continuous nick-naming. All the more upsetting for not knowing precisely what this could be. And why, I wondered, had Jimmy not developed the Postbag approach more fully? He’d the capacity for bringing a number of seemingly unconnected notions together. For pulling ideas from the air itself, s
o it seemed. Then why content himself with the embellishment of other people’s work? Why adopt such a time-consuming approach? Painstakingly producing each and every letter afresh wherever and whenever it was needed. The printing press had been available since Caxton’s time. So why not avail himself of it? And, having found his métier, with Miss Quintock’s support added to that of Sir Desmond, why the hasty and unexpected exit from the village?
Chapter Seven
Inkwell and Hourglass
It was simpler for Helen to ask questions than it was for me to answer them. Jimmy’s work is easy to describe, but difficult to define. As to its rationale, the motive force behind it, many explanations have been given. All but the most obvious. Which is that, just like the stories he told, it came with the territory; emerged directly from the situation in which all of us found ourselves.
The war was over, but this made little difference to our way of life. Rationing continued, there was a shortage of petrol and a nine-month waiting list for cars, for those who could afford them. Any colour you liked as long as it was black. Anderson shelters were put to more practical uses: as kennels, garden sheds, storing unwanted furniture, forcing mushrooms and the like.
‘“Dig for Victory”, “Make do and mend”, “Is your journey really necessary?”’ Helen, who’d been involved in a Forty Years On exhibition run by the library, had most of the slogans off pat. ‘Parachutes transformed into ladies’ undergarments, to say nothing of star of the local soccer team running down the pitch decked out in the front-room curtains.’
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