Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  (I walk and drip and munch my almond croissant) This something to do with that bloke in the anorak?

  ‘It’s not complicated. You want to teach on Academy property there’s a form, it’s not a tax return. We gave you the village hall.’

  The room off the village hall.

  ‘We don’t mind what you teach. Well, I don’t.’

  What.

  ‘Things are tightening up a tad. These calls to the agency, little posters I run up for you guys, chairs arranged, it’s all on my own time sort of?’

  Right. Because I’m not official. What do I do to be official?

  ‘Don’t mention it. Well, you take one of the mauve forms from under the map there, fill it out, yes that one, and make an appointment at the Academy, ask for Tina Yeager.’

  Map. There’s a map.

  ‘Hello? D’you not have maps in your world?’

  There’s a map there’s a map there’s a MAP! To the north it ends in white, to the east it ends in sort of green, to the south it’s just all symbols, to the west it just goes blue. . .?

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s water.’

  There’s – nothing in any direction. The railway line just disappears.

  ‘Where do I start – that’s how maps are made, Glyn, it looks elegant like that. It’s called A Map of the Village and it’s showing you the village. You can see what you need to see.’

  When does the bus go, where does it go when it comes?

  ‘What bus is this then?’

  There’s – a little guy in a hood sitting waiting for a bus in the rain. Round the corner from my digs.

  ‘Oh. That’s sad. Someone should have a word. How are your digs?’

  The digs are fine. Except I did ask for a wardrobe that leads to a wintry fairyland full of posh kids and magic beavers,

  ‘Did you? oh. There’s a problem with today.’

  What? hang on where’s my pigeonhole. For my stuff, it was right here, I was right here, between BARBARA MACE and JEFF OLOROSO.

  ‘Barbara won’t share, Jeff says he needs the width. I told the students to use your letterbox.’

  They’ll all know where I live. I mean stay.

  ‘They do anyway, so what?’

  Forget it. What was the other thing, hit me.

  ‘It’s just there’s been a bit of a double-booking. . .’

  Actually don’t hit me.

  *

  As I thought, the Saddlers Inn is rammed, forty fools in a steaming line for their Full English. I see Heath and Lily in the queue together counting out some money, behind them I see Ice-white boy and Mimi and the theatre gang, pale ginger girl, skinny oaf in shades. Their faces are grey-pink as if they stayed up all night, idiots think they’re a day ahead now. Over there at her corner table Caroline’s glancing up from a book, my old Hopkins book she goes back to reading. The portly bearded man is wondering may he share the table: she nods, and he shuffles into place. I see Bella and her Academy girls in a huddle over huge green smoothies, checking which is which. By the window a fierce concentrating blonde with dark-lashed eyes. In a red top with shoulders. Is staring right at me.

  Well I really don’t queue, I’m dead, but just this once maybe and I actually make it through the door, ta-daa! tinkle tinkle but six more faces turn to see and I back out, sorry, my mistake, I’m weird, back into the monsoon.

  Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart?

  Full many a land invites thee now;

  And places near, and far apart

  Have rest for thee, my weary brow –

  There is a spot mid barren hills

  Where winter howls and driving rain

  But if the dreary tempest chills

  There is a light that warms again. . .

  I say that last stanza back in my bed under beloved sheets, that’s how fast I ran, called a false start on that subaqueous grey Thursday.

  *

  One morning when we all were young, and the three of us shared a bedroom, and it must have been a Saturday and it must have been raining, we decided to take all of our toys and divide them up between us into three Forces. Alun, the eldest, chose all his favourites and arranged them on the bedclothes. These would be the Thompsons, and they would form the Air Force. Mine were to be the Davises, and we would be the Navy. That left the Army for David, the youngest of us, and he called his people the Walkers. Everybody had the surnames of our classmates. The Navy had a meeting by the pillow, in the light of the bedside lamp, with my off-white timeworn teddy bear Trevor Desmond presiding. In my mind the day outside is almost orange with rain but hell, Desmond’s seen it all. He remembers when there was only him, not all these action figures and puppets, these cheap toys and souvenirs, but you know that old trooper doesn’t do ill-feeling.

  The house is old, the trees are bare

  And moonless bends the misty dome

  But what on earth is half so dear –

  So longed-for as the hearth of home?

  *

  I woke up again at two or so, and hurried through what was now a filthy drizzle to meet Iona McNair at the Keys.

  It’s quiet in here, where’s everyone.

  (She’s brought us tall red Maries, Bloody for me, Virgin for her, celery regardless) Can I switch these when your back’s turned?

  ‘Well you could, but now you’ve told me!’

  Yep, blew it, where are you from, Iona.

  ‘The Kingdom of Fife.’

  You dwell in a Kingdom? Is it under a spell?

  ‘Aye, it is, we’ve done this.’

  We have?

  ‘I think the group are all doing an assignment. I did mine already. Sláinte.’

  I set an assignment? Blimey. Sláinte.

  ‘Not for you, for Roger Batchett, he’s lovely.’

  Is he. What does Roger Batchett teach.

  ‘Poetries of Dissociation.’

  Delightful. Delovely.

  ‘It would be, but it clashes with the reading tonight. I mean it’s seven to nine.’

  What, come on, don’t go. Please, really. It’s the – it’s the Bronte sisters.

  ‘I – well. Okay.’

  Show me a poem. These Academy people they’re – putting events on top of my events, they’re – show me a poem.

  ‘They re doing what?’

  Nothing, probably nothing, show me a poem, show me a poem –

  (She does, and I like them, they’re not bad, they’re about a lighthouse and a holiday, the line-breaks need work) Do you say them aloud, Iona?

  ‘Sorry?’

  Say them aloud, exaggerate the line-break space – wait longer. If the line-break’s right something will justify the silence. If it’s wrong then nothing can and the light will snap and you lose the patient.

  She frowns while smiling, which only good people do, trying to understand, she says: ‘You really should have switched the drinks.’

  Because I’m making no sense?

  ‘I am looking away right now,’ she says, theatrically turning to look askance, and I switch the Maries on her.

  We raise our glasses, nod, get our faces poked by celery, quaff.

  ‘Go on then.’

  Okay (I grab two beermats as one does to explain things, then can’t think what they’re for, put them back, and say) – Say the last thing you said again.

  ‘I said Go on then. This is quite spicy.’

  Before that.

  ‘I have no idea, because you switched the drinks. These are not the actions of a responsible professor.’

  Ah but I’m not affiliated. I’m a clown in a village hall.

  ‘They’ll get you in the end. They’ll surround the place.’

  I know what you said, you said You really should have switched the drinks.

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  Weirdly yes. Imagine it’s a line of verse. It has seven words, so if you’re breaking between words you have six possible places to break. After You, after really, after should,

  ‘I get th
e concept,’

  Or you don’t break at all.

  ‘Some poets break in the middles of words.’

  Some poets can get lost. So, seven options:

  1 You really should have switched the drinks

  2 You

  really should have switched the drinks

  3 You really

  should have switched the drinks

  4 You really should

  have switched the drinks

  5 You really should have

  switched the drinks

  6 You really should have switched

  the drinks

  7 You really should have switched the

  drinks

  Exaggerate the spaces, see what happens to the scene: sense or nonsense.

  ‘It’s turned into a mad cocktail party.’

  Yes they’re all Noël Coward, but go past that. Here’s what I hear: 1 is confident, planned from the start, 2 is Brief Encounter, can’t take his eyes off her, in 3 something’s just happened to them, he knows her better in 3 than he does in 2.

  4 is a fail. You don’t resume after a break with the tail end of should’ve, 5 has cheap rom-com timing, 6 isn’t even good enough for Carry On Switching, 7 only works if the fellow is hallucinating in the space, right? Maybe Carry On Switching directed by Hitchcock,

  ‘Can I write this down?’

  No, do it with your poem. This one works, this one doesn’t. So on and/or so forth. What will you do when you’re home in the Kingdom of Fife, Iona?

  ‘Och, we’ve done this.’

  You did just say och, didn’t you.

  ‘I did, and now I’m saying och aye, I’ll marry Alastair.’

  Aye. You’ll marry Alastair. You’ll. . . marry Alastair. You’ll marry. . . Alastair.

  ‘You’ve had enough celery, you have.’

  Ha! I switched it! Not even my celery.

  *

  MAIDEN in a white flowing cloak, long blonde hair, holding a plant.

  KING, bearded, wry smile, hand raised, interested.

  Poor FARMGIRL in a smock, carries a bowl of something rural.

  Tall arrogant PRINCE in blue, high black boots, hands locked behind.

  DARK LADY in a black flowing cloak, dark hair, sad face, same face.

  SKELETON that won’t stand up, very bendy, very useful.

  MONKEY, one of three. See evil, hear it, speak it.

  Smooth young GENT in a coat and tails, quizzical face, palms to the sky.

  FAIRY child, pink wings, pink things, pink everything.

  WIZARD holding afrozen fire, his own spell cast on himself, fly you fools!

  CRUSADER crouched in battle, blindly slashing for his Lord.

  ELIZABETH, the chilly old ginga, in a great white jewelled dress.

  Not bad for a village shop. How many’s that, Mrs Gantry?

  ‘You have twelve there, professor, you don’t want the cowboy?’

  No I don’t want the cowboy, I’m putting him back.

  ‘Are they for your children?’

  Not these days, Mrs Gantry. They’re for my students.

  ‘Really. Right you are. £47.88. What a horrid day.’

  *

  Heath

  Lily

  Caroline

  moi

  Is this it? Hands up who’s not here. . . Hm, no hands. So no one’s not here. So we’re fine.

  (It’s pouring down outside, it has literally not stopped. Literally cats and dogs. Literally stair-rods on my literal parade.)

  Seriously, a minute, tell me something. Who is Barry?

  Heath very slightly unslouches his position: ‘He’s one out-there dude.’

  It’s just that – he missed his one-to-one today, obviously, but he also skips the readings. He only came to Hopkins because we did it in a meadow and he was stuck there eating a pie. Why does he even do this course?

  ‘Love,’ says Lily deadpan, dike all of us, chief, for love.’

  ‘Well we don’t do it for credit,’ says Caroline. ‘She’s right, we do it for love of books and poets.’

  (I look at her) Thank you Caroline. Nothing slant about the truth. That’s the worst line in Dickinson. Where are the rest? Iona, Ollie, Samira. The other one.

  ‘Niall.’

  Niall.

  ‘They had to register,’ says Heath.

  Register for what?

  ‘The UE course.’

  What’s the UE course?

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Oh my lord,’ says Caroline Jellicoe now fussing her things together, ‘it’s on my calendar. I am frightfully sorry, I don’t think it will take long.’

  Lily’s leafing in a glossy leaflet, ‘It’s a set course for writing students. They make us take it. Here look: Understanding Employability. It’s in Cartwright 504.’

  ‘I hate that room,’ says Heath.

  ‘Yeah well,’ says Lily, ‘I ain’t going right, cos I don’t want a job, and I sure as fuck don’t want a job I can understand.’

  ‘You know, Lily,’ Caroline says as she rises, ‘every time you use that word it has the teeniest little bit less meaning.’

  ‘Is that right, Jelly? And does a fairy die somewhere?’

  ‘Very witty, I’ll be back,’ says the courteous lady closing the door behind her, ‘I want to hear about the Brontes.’

  So. We happy three.

  ‘Chief. . .’

  Uh-huh.

  ‘Not being funny right. . .’

  Mm-hm.

  ‘Why’s your bag full of kids’ toys?’

  Is it?

  ‘There’s like, look, a fairy, a wizard, a knight in armour..

  Well. They were the lesson.

  ‘That is just so cool. Go on then, teach us.’

  Really? Okay. . . MAIDEN in a white flowing cloak, long blonde hair, holding a plant. KING, bearded, wry smile, hand raised, interested. Poor FARMGIRL in a smock, carries Nah. Not feeling it.

  ‘Oh go on chief, can I be this Lady, no this Skeleton guy, look Heath!’

  ‘I bags the monkey,’ mutters Heath, pretending he cares.

  ‘Cool! You’re Baggs the Monkey. Go on chief, who are you choosing?’

  Not in the mood, sorry. There was no possibility of taking a class that day. Look there’s two of you. Two’s not a workshop, two’s a – shotgun wedding.

  ‘You’d need another witness,’ Heath points out, and makes Baggs the Monkey nod in solemn accord.

  They’re figurines. I used to use my daughter Alfie’s, but, well, I’m away from home. So I bought these at Mrs Gantry’s. You would pick two at random. . .

  ‘Dark Lady and Skeleton!’

  You’d write a poem from the perspective of the first – okay, say it’s Dark Lady – you would write words Dark Lady speaks. . .

  ‘What, you’d make up what she’s like an’ that?’

  No, you stick with what you see. Face, clothes, the stem in her hand. Position of arms and legs, folds of dress. Start with that and grow outwards.

  (Lily frowns at the painted figure) ‘I think she’s a bit of a raver but not till you get to know her.’

  Then go there, get there, but start with what you see. Next you write words for the Skeleton: first him, what he’s like, hi I’m boney, then what he thinks of her, crikey what’s she wearing. You do Alone-on-Earth. You do Good-grieftheres-So me on e-Else. Just – grow flowers in the cracks between them. Form them.

  ‘Where you off to, loser?’

  (Heath has packed up and his chair screeches as he goes)

  ‘To find the Bouncy Castle.’

  (He’s gone, the door’s left open. Lily picks up Baggs the Monkey.) ‘He’s a cunt, isn’t he Baggs. Yosh he ish Lily, yosh he ish.’

  Anyway, that’s the exercise. Reduces your infinite options of self-expression to four cold inches of moulded plastic in the same kit forever. Focus on a creature who is frozen in a moment, on its ownsome with its things, with only its fixed expression, only its view to view, only its lines to say. Because, btw, fyi,
that’s how you look to the rest of Creation.

  ‘I’m sad we couldn’t play it, chief.’

  I’m always playing it, Lily.

  *

  That was almost it for the Bronte class. Class couldn’t be bothered. No word from the stars. It rained and rained.

  Lily being now a little friend for life, I passed her a poem by ‘Ellis Bell’. She sat up alertly, stared, and started announcing in her husky cockney,

  ‘Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!

  Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave,

  Have I forgot, my Only Love, to love thee,

  Severed at last by Time’s all-wearing wave?’

  Because I would, I set the Dark Lady on the table in front of her and placed beside it the Skeleton who can’t stand up.

  ‘Cool, Yorick in the house! Stand up! Stand up. . . fine, lie down.

  – Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover

  Over the mountains on – eh?’

  Angora. A place the sisters made up in childhood. Like Gondal and Gaaldine and Angria and Glasstown. Paracosms, write that down. They lived in a lonely house with a graveyard on two sides. There were six Brontë children, and their dad outlived them all. But because they had toys they grew stories, the stories grew people, the people grew poems, the poems turned novels. You find this poem in some books as ‘Remembrance’, but when she wrote it she called it ‘R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida’, that is, the bereft Rosina to the deceased Julius. Make-believe. An organic growth from child’s play. She did nothing else, few weeks of school in Belgium, caught TB at her brother’s funeral, died at thirty. She makes Dickinson look like Dr Livingstone. What am I saying here? Very little. Just that anyone – parent, guardian, government minister – who does anything to curtail or devalue or confine child’s play, imaginary games, music, art or drama class, anything at all – is a fool and a scumbag and a slaughterer of promise and it’s when they do that, Lillian, that a fairy dies, alright? That’s all I planned to say. Go on.

  ‘Cor.’

  Over the mountains.

  ‘Over the mountains on Angora’s shore;

  Resting their leaves where heath and fern-leaves cover

  That noble heart for ever, ever more?

  Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers – ’