The Rhymer

by Douglas Thompson

  Fascinating. Horace strokes his beard. You notice the importance of colours in these memories and dreams? First the red then the green and the white. Colours are like flavours to a very young child in a way that we forget as we get older, immured by constant stimuli of the eye and the neural cortex. Red is the most exciting and appealing, green somehow atmospheric and wistful, but within each nuance of the spectrum a thousand other stories and suggestions are waiting to be detected. This is the basis for our response for instance to oil paintings in later life.

  By Jove, you’re right. Because come to think of it, my next early memory is of a curving country lane with a bank of blood-red poppies in the hedgerow by its side. And my brother and father are up ahead, waiting on me because I am so small and slow. And I see that they are walking towards a dark green pine forest at the top of the road, into which I know they will turn and go. Then later that same night we are woken by a leak in the roof in heavy rain, and I am in the kitchen where I see the same red colour: this time in the plastic of the bucket placed beneath the dripping water from a hole in the ceiling. And I remember a smell: dry rot, pungent. But where the hell was all this? I cannot tell. But you’re quite correct, that pale blood-like red has a particular quality quite unlike the security of rich post-box crimson or the gay allure of violet and pink. But what’s the point of all this analysis do you think?

  Everything. We have established that you were not an orphan for instance, but had a mother and a father and it seems a brother. Just one, or could there have been another? And on and on the evening goes until I nod off half way through a sentence and drift into repose in my clothes I suppose.

  *

  The next morning, my hosts are wakened with a grand surprise. Having noticed their study furnished with various stringed instruments, I open its glazed doors and roll through and after a minute or two have a viola tuned and am administering a sweet reprise as morning medicine to anyone who cares, bringing down the stairs the apparition of an enchanted Emily barefoot in her chemise. I play on, letting the leaves of trees dance in the breeze outside as if in balletic mimetic enactment of my melody, pathetic and affecting in its aesthetic, redolent of the indolent melancholy of angels, pitying humanity to the edge of tears. The years roll over me, music easing as a balm and bringing calm, dismissing fears. Whoever and whatever I am, can rise above this tawdry mortal slot, discard our lot, and offer up a psalm to our unknown creator. Birdsong, word song. No greater honour than holding and unfolding beauty’s banner in this manner, high above the bleak plain of pain’s domain, enjoying momentary sunshine before the grey onslaught of rain.

  What was that tune? Emily, now joined by Horace, gasps.

  But alas, it was mere improvisation, evocation of my current placement in the here and now. They show me sheet music and it’s all Greek to me. Too much a knave for stave and clef. I know how to play in key it seems, but not to replay parrot fashion other people’s dreams, only my own.

  Here, take this instrument on loan. Play and play some more, we’ll teach you how to read and write a score, become a virtuous virtuoso affettuoso.

  But no, I smile, I’ll improvise again every once and a while if I may, tomorrow and today, but nothing more rigorous I implore you. It would only bore me. Just ignore me if I sound like an ignoramus talking out his anus, but such is the unanimous magnanimous verdict of my corpus and my animus. I need to take it easy or I feel queasy. Call me pusillanimous if you must, or take it on trust. Motes of dust fall through the morning air as their amazed faces calculate what to make of this florid protestation. Mouths agape, fit to throw in a grape or two.

  But you must have learned or been taught such skills of hand and ear, then here we have a clue to be sure of your former life, and must hold it dear. We’ll recover your memory yet, before you leave here. I have taken the liberty of sending copies of your fingerprints and X-rays and DNA to a colleague in Switzerland and expect to hear back from him soon. If you’ve been in the hands of doctors or police anywhere then there’s a chance we’ll learn some more of who you were before.

  Snore… I decide to mimic sudden narcolepsy to get me out of future fixes like this. Brain damage can play all sorts of tricks. Strangely, the subterfuge is no gimmick and I find I’m out for fifteen minutes. Woken abruptly by the offspring breezing in with a barrage of ululation, which brings me to a late and unexpected realisation: that they are two too young for parents such as these. Then I hear Emily warning that she’ll tell the girl’s mother if she doesn’t behave and cease to tease her brother, and I have my answer. They are your grandchildren… I observe aloud, as one swerves to avoid the flying dropkick of another.

  Indeed, and a blessing though they are, Emily smiles sweetly, it is a sadness that their mother cannot be with them during the week, while she works several hours away from here in Urbis. Turbulent economic times such as these dictate such crimes in these climes, where one must make sacrifices to earn even a crust. If their father could just have lived, one might forgive our vindictive creator for this sorry state of affairs.

  Tut, tut, Emily! Horace splutters. Must we thus bring God into our utterances? –And not keep our lamentation on a scientific foundation?

  What befell their father? I ask and touching Emily’s hand for a second receive the transmission of what it takes her tongue somewhat longer to unfold: He drowned in a boat capsized, was lost at sea, and so you see there is a certain symmetry in your coming to us, washed up as you were like a dead man on our beach, bereft of identity and speech. It is as if…

  Tut, tut… again old Horace shakes his head at his wife’s irrational intuition tantamount to treason, at odds with his own medical mission to shed the light of mathematical reason upon the sea and land.

  …As if by God’s own hand He sought to return to us a message manifest in man, as a test from above of our love and capacity for faith. And if we could but embrace this stranger, so too will He guard over the soul of the lost and drowned one. The children’s father you see, was our only son.

  Tears fill my eyes and hers, instantly. I am so sorry for your loss. The death of he who was your child is a terrible cross to bear, and yet… and yet we must rejoice that he leaves two children of his own so fair. My hands and Emily’s pile over each other like the vaults of a little cathedral wherein votive candles flicker, honouring the hope she gropes for, which I know to be alive: that we do not die, but fly to a place which no eye can spy, nearer than a heartbeat, more distant than the sky.

  And Robert, our son, you see, he played the piano and the violin, and though we’ve tried to get the children to take lessons, you are the first person to truly bring those sweet instruments to life since last we saw his beloved face. Truly, it is God’s grace that has guided you to this place, from wherever it is that you have come.

  I am humbled, madam, and a little afraid, of the importance you attach to my appearance at this moment in your life’s parade, but suffice to say though I am not your son nor any spokesman for the divine one in which you believe, I can offer you news of the afterlife for such is a place that I visit daily in my dreams and visions, and I shall pray for your son.

  You are a psychic? A priest? A monk? I see her spirits rise, in her widening eyes.

  A mystic and a seer I fear, of just the kind that your good husband would seek to debunk. But I’ll say no more on this for now, lest I darken your brow or his and cloud your domestic bliss with an issue that I see divides you.

  Emily opens her mouth as if to protest this perverse cessation of verse, but Horace interjects with the converse: Quite wise, quite so, Nithna, let’s let it go, all this to and fro on the dubious subject of the human soul. Whether its dissolution is absolute or relative I cannot know, but that the living must concern themselves with life, you, I and my wife can agree, despite our recent blow. Come, play the piano for us and inspire us and the choirs of angels that crowd our invisible environs for all I know.

  And struggling to approach the pianoforte stool, I note the bo
y dressed now in his best and ready for his lift to school, is no fool, but has been taking note as if to learn by rote, from the doorframe’s edge, all that we have said on the subject of his father’s demise and cannot disguise his curiosity.

  *

  Next morning, apt as a warning, I find Horace Stockbridge’s daily copy of the Oceania Advertiser lying before my eyes on a silver tea tray by the porch. And there on the front page is a reference to an article inside on the artistic mage of our age, Dirze Learmot. Who? My brother so it seems, is of as nomadic nomenclature as my mature self, perennial, evergreen and eager to be seen. And there he is on the Arts pages, espousing the delousing of our effectively infection-inflected age with the wisdom of a sage, or a charlatan more like. A harlot and a tyke, with paintbrush in hand, leading his devoted acolytes like deluded Carmelites and Canaanites, ammonites, dripping like stalactites, sanctimonious and trite, as the Pied Piper in full flight, off to his nowhere lair. Who cares? What is this ire I feel rising in my gorge, ere I spy his visage and his daily dressage? What dread deed does this anger feed? What event does this bent of mine presage? But wait. Satisfaction comes late to those who wait. The news is that a scandal brews, added as an unauthorised addendum to this piece, the wily weary reader to amuse. Rumours of booze and loose morals on his boatly cruises of late. Oh cruel fate. A bruise, a stain upon his reputation. An accusation, made by some as yet unnamed woman, disavowed and disabused, pregnant and indignant, cast off by the upstart artistic toff as easily as he weighs anchor. Queasily, the approbating public weighs its rancour, dries its powder, loathe to loose its outraged arrows until the approaching reports grow louder, erring on the side of charity, awaiting clarity. Ironically, for just a minute I feel sympathy for the scoundrel. As if the lives of the great judgemental ‘they’ are any better, or would be, if they but had the opportunity to have their gossamer morality tested pell-mell. Given a free run in hell I’m sure most of them would have my brother bested. But mellowly they dwell in their suburban purgatories of sanitised sanitary ware and air-freshener smells.

  What is it attracts you in that story? –Doctor Horace asks over my shoulder, looking older from his night’s sleep pushing Sisyphean boulders up blue remembered hills in heaven or hell he cannot tell without the right equipment.

  Deportment. In a word, it does not seem quite seemly or sporting how this famous man conducts himself in public.

  Quite so, Horace agrees with a hearty grimace, it’s enough to make you vote for a new republic, communist utopia or such like, wherein such cavorting shrikes could not impale their shite on the tree of life all day and night. But do you like his paintings? –Surely this is the real issue, which even he has forgotten in the sodden haze and misbegotten blaze of his name’s fame. It’s all a game, but at its heart there’s still a puck flicking to and fro.

  Fucked if I know, I sigh. There’s something there, or was once, but now it’s just an endless echo of itself, to produce more produce for the shelf. The man excavates himself but is a quarry long since scooped, no longer serving marble but exquisitely marbled poop.

  Guffaw, guffaw, old Horace holds his sides and yawns his maw, You have a wicked way with words as he with turds. Come let us try our exercises for the day. Firstly, on the beach, to walk a few yards on sticks with your unaccustomed legs and loafers, then afterwards with all those memories out of reach in the comfort of my study and my sofa. And though I’m eager to stand upright again, less like a wheelbarrow and more like the sons of men, I am less enamoured with the glamour of uncovering my past to order, some of it best left over the border in no man’s land out of the reach of prying hands.

  *

  Reading alone some of Horace’s weighty tomes in his leviathan of a reliable library, the little angel Annabel saunters in on snow-white feet to whisper in my ear that her brother Nigel says I am a witch who can talk to the spirit of her father. To which I reply I’d really rather not attempt such intimate communication with a relative of theirs so dear, for fear of causing upset and dismay.

  What!? Her eyes flash, as her grandmother shouts on her to get ready for bed. You commune with the dead in the domain where the dead’s laws hold sway and yet refuse us news of those we love. Are you a raven or a dove? Just with whom are you hand-in-glove? –The devil or the one above?

  Look, I say, and lift a candle by its brass chalice handle, Let us watch the falling wax as it spills across this page, revealing the words of the dead and secrets of the ages…

  I’ll tell! I’ll tell! Squeals Annabel. –Tell Grandpa how you desecrate his books!

  No you won’t I wager, when you take a look at what the hot wax spells. And sure enough, the white spots congealing reveal by what they conceal a different text plucked at random from page 113 of Horace’s original 1903 edition of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle Of The Sands, as follows:-

  Solitudes of sand, ephemeral shallow sea, deeper arteries surround the great convolutions as it were the veins, tide throbbing, infest our fine days by daylight manifest an innocent stranger verify our true course new excitements not in any danger at all, stranded in a spot the constantly recurring question this time we were.

  And this from page 204:

  Enough! I shall never in reality shudder for our self-invited guests with puffing risen for a demon of that unearthly light, they stood like delinquents at judgement passively to accept morning on return finding a shore meant for his friend, anxious little vessel come so far drinks pleasure alone of three since the fog cleared.

  But what does it mean? –Annabel leans in, eyes wide, intrigued.

  You saw me pluck the book at random from these shelves, did you not? And yet it speaks eloquently of my life and your father’s death, as stars set within the same system, linked in some strange way that none of us can yet know. It tells you not to be afraid, but to go on seeking answers as to the true nature of life and death, to revel in the mist of the mystery of the voyage of life, with all the breath we have left. Now off to bed. And banish all this nonsense from your head.

  That was my father’s book. Look, at the front pages where he’s signed it, see? –Are her last parting words to me before she scuttles away, yielding to her grandmother’s pleading. And after she is gone, the candle burning low, I take the old book and press it to my brow and from this fragment forge a voyage through time towards their hapless father, Robert. I see him twist in black space, his face distorting in the last rigours of drowning, then his body rising and falling with the distant tides carrying him far from all the living, forgiving in their kissing motion of nourishment and dissolution.

  Closing my eyes and lifting a pen from the table, I let his spirit enter into the husk of my body for a minute and write a message rapidly in the opening leafs, beneath his own signature. And when I revive with a shudder I read there the words of another, but written in the same distinct handwriting:

  Dearest Bell and Jell, weep not for whom the bell tolls,

  but as the wave rolls, move on and love,

  content with the consent of your dad who smiles above…

  A door clicks behind me, and I catch a vanishing glimpse of little Nigel withdrawing to his granny’s calling.

  *

  Idling in the study in the evening late, tuning a violin a thought occurs to me as to how to re-animate my contraption which my host has been subtly and persistently recalcitrant in providing me with electrical wires for. I shall take up the playing of vigorous and violent traditional reels, get the whole house dancing and in the midst of their squeals break a string with a little razor blade most cunningly concealed. It’s either that or take the cabling from their lights and heating, which would in winter be somewhat self-defeating and ill-befitting a guest so pressed to the breast of his gracious benefactors. Laughter, sounds of delight from a distant room… the children’s mother come home, not a moment too soon, good-timing. I’ll have the whole brood miming my scheme as a team. The miracle of music, none can refuse it.

  Then Mrs Stockbridge swo
ops in and I lose it. The tune, the melody of life. My strings sag. I view by osmosis for a moment, by a dead man’s eyes, this woman as my late wife. And in truth, though I am often over in business in the darkened lands on some supernatural enterprise or another, it hits me hard for once the waste, the bitter taste that death leaves in the mouth of life. She is beautiful and lonely and so lost to him who so comforted her until recently. And who could approach such a monument to love as she-without-he, without defiling such grace indecently? Presently I recover my composure, plastering over my emotional exposure.

  You must be the mysterious Nithna, Horace’s prize patient and guest dilettante savant and clairvoyant fiddler. My little angels Nigel and Annabel have been telling me about your secret sideline as a medium. I am Gladys, pleased to meet you.

  I take her hand and shake it, shaking a little that she already knows what her children have disclosed of my supposed powers. And there over her shoulder, old Horace appears and glowers. I see the thought flowers in his head that he has let something unwholesome and unnatural into his erstwhile rational nest, that a weed has seeded in his bed. To boot, can’t get that thought out of his head once it’s taken root. Thinks I’ll fill a swag bag with loot as soon as my pins are operational, and be for the off, having ripped off a toff. Sensational. Not to be scoffed at, such a scenario, but I avoid criminality as a rule, being conscious of the penalty in this life and the next. Nonetheless, I shan’t vex myself with the complex hex of people’s expectations born of their prejudices, just content myself with avoiding the constabulary and the judiciary.