by Glyn Maxwell
He drank and stared at me, sporting a foam moustache, as if sizing up why I was asking. I hoped my face met his physiognomical standards, and began to assume it didn’t when he suddenly spoke up:
‘I was very timid. Very timid disposition.’ He wiped his mouth.
Yes? (The others went silent and leaned in to hear)
‘Had, two or three, haunted spots to pass. Impossible to go half a mile anywhere where nothing’d been seen by these, these old women. . .’
When you were a boy, you mean? You were frightened by – local stories?
He made a little grimace.
‘Best remedy to keep such things out of my head, I – muttered over tales of my own fancy, contriving ’em into rhymes as well as I were able. . . romantic wanderings of sailors, soldiers, step by step. . .’
Right, right, to take your mind off the ghostly places you were walking through at night? You made up poems to take your mind off -
‘Will-with-a-whisp, Jimmy Whisk, Jack-with-a-lanthorn. . . this November month they’re often out in the dark misty nights. Rotten Moor, Dead Moor. . .’
That’s my birthday month for you!
‘Melancholy season,’ he confided to the girls close by.
November, yup, but you – you cheered yourself up?
‘I – loved to see a tale end happy. Intrigues, meeting always good fortune and marrying ladies.’
Lily cackled with joy and her woes were done: ‘Were you in the stories though Mr Clare?’
‘We was not without loves,’ he mused to her delight, ‘we had our favourites in the village. When a face pleased me I scribbled a song or so in her praise, tried to get in her company.’
He glanced around, but again his eyes fixed on Lily’s dyed hair and he seemed very slightly to shake his head, as if processing the peculiar. Then he just as slightly nodded, perhaps thinking some sprite was present and he was noting the phenomenon. I pressed on:
I see this lot writing in the pub, in the cafe, sometimes walking down the high street, where do you like writing, John?
His finger travelled the dust of the table, it seemed to cheer him to remember: ‘Always wrote my poems in the fields. Particular spots I’s fond of, from the beauty or the secrecy. . . It’s common in villages to pass judgment on a lover of books as – indication of laziness. I was drove to – hide in woods, dingles of thorns in the fields. ‘Stead of going out on the green at the town end on winter Sundays to play football, I stuck to my corner, poring over a book. . . Feelings stirred into praise, and my, my promises muttered in prose or rhyme -grew into quantity. Indulged my vanity in thinking how they’d look in print. Selected what I thought best. Hid the others out of shame’s way – laughing-stocks!’
We laughed with him, except for Caroline, who had her own notebook, her own questions: ‘John, it was such a privilege to hear your poetry. What was it like when you first saw a poem of yours in print?’
He frowned, closed his eyes as if to see it better, opened them again.
‘Scarcely knew it in its new dress.’
It’s quite a feeling (said I, having decided to remind my class every three weeks or so that I’m actually a writer too) I remember the first time I -
Caroline said: ‘D’you remember how you felt, John?’
‘My highest ambition was gratified.’
‘To see your poem published?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘To let my parents see a printed copy of my poems. That pleasure I’ve witnessed. It is – thrilling – to hear a crippled father seated in his easy chair, comparing the past with the present – Boy, who could have thought. . . when we was threshing together. . . you’d be noticed by thousands of friends. . . names of great distinction. . . enabled to make us happy!’
Quiet descends on all as we see through our minds’ eyes. He drinks at peace for a while.
Was your family at all – literary, John?
‘Illiterate to the last degree. The Fens’re not a literary part of England.’
Roy Ford says: ‘Loved your reading, mate. First book you ever read?’
‘Robinson Crusoe. Borrowed it off a boy at school who said it was his uncle’s. Very loath to lend it me. . .’
‘Oh shit!’ cries Lily, ‘do you know Byron?’
‘Hey you stole Madam Bella’s question,’ Roy points out and they all laugh, but the question sets John thinking:
‘First publication of my poems brought many – visitors to my house. Mere curiosity – son of a thresher – finding me a vulgar fellow that spoke in the rough ways – a thoroughbred clown -they soon turned to the door, dropping their heads in a – in a good morning attitude. Many of ’em left promises. I had the works of Lord Byron promised by six different people. Never got them from none of’em.’
He drinks and sighs, and we prowl in his anger, then he meditates on Byron: ‘The common people felt his merits and his power. They’re the – prophecy of futurity. They’re the veins and arteries.’
‘Yeah well he’s coming at the end of term,’ says Lily proudly, ‘innit chief,’ and our glasses lightly clink.
Caroline says softly: ‘You have a lovely speaking voice, John, can you remember the first public reading you ever gave?’
He thinks and he chuckles, he tells us: ‘Imitations of my father’s songs! floating among the vulgar at the markets and fairs. . . they laughed and told me I need never hope to make songs like them! Mortified me, almost made me desist.’
You’re saying your first poems got heckled, John?
He grins: ‘I hit upon a harmless deception, by repeating my poems over a book, as though I was reading it..
Hang on you pretended to be reading published poems from a book?
‘Had the desired effect! They praised ’em, said I could write! I hugged myself over the deception!’
Our laughter hugs him too. By this time he’s got through his beers and I go with Heath to get him more.
For some reason I think Heath’s help at the faculty reading means we’re vaguely friends these days, so I test the water:
Good stuff eh, man. Politics in the house.
‘Bit, y’know. . .’
No, bit what.
‘Bit sing-song.’
Well. You heard him, he used to write to ward off being cold and seeing ghosts. Sing-song’s how you do that.
‘Is it.’
Sing-song keeps you walking. Sing-song gets remembered.
‘Maybe for him. I wouldn’t’ve done it like that.’
Heigh-friggin-ho. I like your pamphlet mate.
Heath’s eyes meet mine for what I believe is the first time, then he shrugs away and seems to redden, almost halve in years.
‘Just some – dunno – probably shit.’
Grow up, it isn’t shit.
‘Excuse me?’
I said Grow up, it isn’t shit.
‘Yeah. Well. Alright. There’s the blurb sorted.’
And we each sniggered, a moment apart.
*
‘Eliza now the summer tells
Of spots where love and beauty dwells. . .’
At the third or fourth time I went to the bar for replenishment – this time with Lily, who’d gone back to ranting on the numberless crimes of Tina Yeager – John Clare stood up swaying, steadying himself, and began tremblingly to sing.
‘Come and spend a day with me
Underneath the forest tree. . .’
Lots had joined us now, those who’d felt they couldn’t leave the faculty reading but hadn’t stayed for the sushi and sake – I saw Bella, Peter, Nathan, Ollie and Iona, I saw Molly and Blanche, I even saw Mrs Gantry at a table with some other ladies, and nearby them that portly bearded man was cooing his own harmonies. Norman was impressed for the first time ever by someone I’d brought into his pub. He leaned heavily by his cash-till, nodding his rare approval, while behind him students crowed their orders in vain from the other bar. On went the old song:
‘And where love and freedom dwells
&
nbsp; With orchis flowers and fox glove bells
Come dear Eliza set me free
And o’er the forest roam with me. . .’
*
At the end I wanted him to myself, if only for a while, so in the freezing cold along the lane I waited for them all to go. By the edge of the north-east field, the mist luminous with moonlight, he mumbled a request to touch Lily’s odd hair, now glossy and dark, and Sami snipped a strand as a keepsake for him, using clippers from her bag. Iona embraced him and her scarf clung to his coat. Heath shook hands with him brusquely, nodding, as if untold stuff passed between two men of verse. Roy clapped him on the back and told him not be a stranger.
Then the students set off on their blessed way home towards the lights of where they live, and he and I stood there.
‘I was in earnest always,’ he said abruptly, ‘I know I’m full of faults.’ You were brilliant, John. They loved you. You affected them. They won’t forget you.
He was looking into the mist.
‘We – used to go on Sundays to the Flower Pot, a little pub at Tikencoat. First saw Patty going across the fields.’
Ah, John.
‘I’ ve been no ones enemy but my own.’
John.
He looked at me strangely, as if not to say his name any more. Took a deep breath of the cold night air.
‘Saw three fellows at the end of Royce Wood, laying out the plan for an Iron Rail Way. They’ll – despoil a boggy place thats famous for orchises, at Royce Wood end.’
The moon was blurred with cloud. He took his first step into the field.
‘All my favourite places’ve met with misfortune. . . old Ivy Tree cut down, and my bower was destroyed.’
Were so happy you came – sir, just – so lucky to hear your work. I had nothing left. A short way into the field he turned and said quite fiercely: ‘I recant nothing!’
I’m sorry?
‘A cart met me! A cart met me. A man and woman and a boy. Woman jumped out and caught fast hold of my hands. Wished me to get in the cart,’
Right,
‘Wished me to get in the cart but I refused!’
You refused, and this was,
‘I thought her – drunk or mad!’
Sounds like it!
‘I’s told it was my second wife Patty.’
Oh? Did you not – that’s that’s Patty, who, whom you, met at the pub, the Flower-Pot is that right?
His answer was: ‘I am Jack Randall, the champion of the ring.’
He stared, his fists were clenched, he sucked in moonlit air, then at once he seemed to ease up and his hands just hung.
‘I’m Jack Randall.’
John there’s no one to fight now John, there’s -
‘I’m Jack Randall now. I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.’
I began to nod so slowly that I didn’t move at all.
‘Can’t forget – her – her little playful fairy form,’
And that’s – ?
‘Her witching smile.’
Patty?
‘Thus runs the world away.’
He looked for one last time at the lights of the village, then off into the mist towards wherever he was heading. Then he set off into the damp grass that was lit with the mist. I called after him:
Lots of ghosts out tonight, lots more poems to compose!
But he showed no sign of hearing, walked on, still stooping to look in the grasses now and then for whatever it was, something down there catching his eye, but he righted himself and stumbled on till just a figure against the mist, inside the mist, only the mist.
*
Here I see the morning sun
Among the beech-tree’s shadows run
That into gold the short sward turns
Where each bright yellow blossom burns
With hues that would his beams outshine
Yet naught can match those smiles of thine,
I try to find them all the day
But none are nigh when thou’rt away
Though flowers bloom now on every hill
Eliza is the fairest still
‘You owe me whisky, Maxwell.’
I knew she’d be there, and she was there. The faculty group had been dining late in a private room in the Coach House but I sat tucked around the bar reading my Yeats, eavesdropping on their chatter. They debated the bill and settled for something, paid their shares and filed out through the door, Jeff, Nikki Phapps in her leather, Gough Slurman, Dr Mapping, Suzi and Delphine, none close enough to notice me unless they looked across this way. Tina did that, clocked me, rolled her eyes as if to say of course he’d be in a bar, and then I saw her gesture to someone already gone out into the cold night, saw her turn, still in her big black fake-fur coat, and come to join me, businesslike with scorn: ‘Explain.’
My drink was spiked (I said) I was out of it.
‘Sure you were, sure it was. Mind if I join you? or are you saving this for another midnight lesson.’
She’d already perched on the stool beside me, kicking her silky black legs to get comfortable, plucking out her sparkly purse.
‘And you owe me for standing me up.’
I told you, someone drugged me, fainites, it was Halloween.
‘I don’t mean then, I mean today, our brunch meeting.’
What brunch meeting.
‘Claude, I want – what are you drinking there – ’
Nothing, I’m researching for the poetry class I teach.
‘Poems of Yeats, hmm sure you were, the cabernet? Two glasses.’ If you’re that thirsty get a bottle, it’s cheaper.
‘You said, on the coach, you said you’d meet me in the café by the Ferry Boat Tavern at ten next Thursday. Which was today, in my world.’
I’m not in your world. I really said that on the coach?
‘You don’t even remember.’
It was my birthday. Too much bother.
‘It’s always too much bother with you Maxwell.’
(Claude filled our glasses and she raised hers for a toast. I ignored it. She’d let my students down and I was being aggrieved on their behalves.)
‘Stands me up twice and now gives me the cold shoulder.’ She drank. ‘We were going to talk about making you formal.’
I don’t want to be formal. I don’t like the way you do things.
‘Good. Fine. Next item. Can you stop these weird vagabonds of yours wandering round the village?’
He isn’t a weird vagabond.
‘He looked like one to me.’
He’s a weird vagabond to you because you’ve filled in all the forms. But he didn’t, and I haven’t.
‘I’m fine that you haven’t. It’s sweet having you roam about in your colourful style, but I don’t quite see what you’d add to what we’ve got.’
You’re saying you don’t want me to be one of you.
‘Affiliated, no. It’s what I was going to inform you of at our meeting.’
And now you have. Sl’inte, Ms Yeager. Did you listen to his poem?
‘Pardon?’
It was about enclosure. It was about how English landowners and politicians passed Acts of Parliament that destroyed his world.
‘I did do History, I got a B.’
Then you know.
‘Sure, I remember every word from school, that’s what got me where I am.’
Behind a desk in the middle of nowhere.
‘I have heard of sarcasm.’
D’you get a B in that too?
‘Such a smart-aleck.’
Enclosure’s where it starts.
‘Where what starts, you’re so rude, Claude, refills please. . .’
Enclosure’s where the end starts. Enclosure’s where an Englishman first spies a piece of land and can’t see Englishmen.
‘Or Englishwomen – ’
English children, English souls, can’t see anyone at all. Can’t see anything but money. Can’t see anything at all but calculable value. That’s where it starts fo
r England. Where it starts for me.
‘Oh brill, it’s the life-story,’
It is. Government came in when I was young. Shrunk all life to the selfsame thing like a virus made them do it. Calculable value. Same process.
‘Are we talking Gladstone or Disraeli, see I did do History. Claude’s saying we should buy the bottle. I vote we maybe should, though of course I don’t see a bottle, I just see calculable values, point being that Claude is closing.’
Cowardice broke out. Filthy gibbering cringe in the face of light, blindness to human eyes, to a pair of human eyes,
‘Is that right Maxwell, I think that’s a yes, Claude, were in for a seminar,’
Enclosure makes a few rich, turns the numbers black on a national scale,
‘Make it two bottles, there’s a faculty thing tomorrow, I’ll claim them,’
As if that’s the same as common good,
‘Receipt, Claude, oh is it? thanks,’
When in fact it’s the murder of common good,
‘Oh I know, I know, let’s go, professor.’
I haven’t paid,
‘Yes you have, lets go so where were we. . .’
The digital and the analogue,
‘Up we get, that sounds so interesting, up we get,’
Life is analogue, this is quite like that. Memory, mystery, mercy, failure, forgiveness, not this equals that in value, but this is quite like this, this is quite like that,
‘Is this lecture printed somewhere, just thinking ahead for Christmas,’
We can never know another, we can only say quite like,
‘You just held this door for me while thinking at the same time, you’re quite like a Renaissance man aren’t you Maxwell crikey it’s cold,’It’s love and guesswork,
‘Love? no he’s lost me,’
The analogue imagines, forgives, is – ineffable,
‘I’m putting my effing gloves on, don’t know about you,’
The digital sees only 1 or 0, sees yes or no, profit or loss, buy or sell,
‘Snakes and ladders I get it Maxwell,’
The cowardice of being blind to complexity,
‘Is this a new sentence starting? Oh look there goes your vagabond. . .
Where?
‘Over the field there, bye-bye. . .’
That’s not him, that’s Barry Wilby doing his rounds, case in point,