Counting Backwards

by Helen Dunmore

Blooms in its case.

  There are boys slouched against the wall

  Up to no good, there are white-faced girls

  Running to the shop for a paper of chips.

  There’s the long fall of the Mardyke Steps

  Tunneling the bad way to the docks

  And so the lamplighters muster

  To stop the thieves who can knock you down

  Between one lamp and the next,

  Between one step and the drop.

  The Halt

  We stop somewhere on the plain

  While I am sleeping. As my book slips

  The man opposite leans to stop it

  Still chomping that sausage he cut

  With a penknife opened and cleaned

  On his sleeve, long before I slept.

  He pulls down the window-strap and at once

  We hear birds scurry in the scrub

  That bows and knits to the cuff of the wind.

  I turn my face to the glass

  For I speak his language painfully

  Sentence by sentence, and he will talk to me.

  We have halted for no reason

  In the white glare of noon

  At this shack surrounded by sunflowers

  Pothering hens and a plot of maize

  Beyond which the land gallops unbroken.

  There is also a woman

  Who swings a bucket on her arm

  As she clambers the makeshift platform

  Box upon box, skilfully placed.

  She knows all the long curve of the train.

  Now from the engine a stoker swings

  A stream of water that dings on the iron.

  The rails flash so I can barely look at them.

  Our engine shucks steam as it canters

  Panting, pulling against the brake.

  The bucket clangs. The woman steps down.

  From my sticky mouth the words come:

  Hens, maize, sunflowers,

  Her bowed head and the way she waits.

  Bluebell Hollows

  Are they blue or not blue?

  All I know is the smoke

  That moves under the trees,

  In Tremenheere Woods

  Moths clung to the sheet,

  It was the hour of innocence –

  We developed flowers

  On light-sensitive paper:

  They are still here.

  We could never walk fast enough,

  Seven year olds

  Up in the dead of night

  Climbing to the lookout

  Where bonfires blazed

  For reasons long forgotten,

  But perhaps because the Romans

  Once came this far

  To walk the bluebell hollows.

  A Loose Curl

  I have never known you easily

  Hold my hand as you do now.

  We sit here for hours.

  There’s salt all over the glass

  And however I look to the horizon

  Not a sail to be seen.

  I hold your hand and say nothing.

  Once I must have held

  Your finger, a loose curl.

  You remember in snatches.

  You say you’re afraid of a whale

  Snorkelling through the blue Arctic.

  The ice is so fragile.

  You must spread your weight, like this

  And inch out to the abyss.

  This is not a glacier, it’s only

  A world of ice falling apart.

  I think something is moving slowly

  Deep in your fingers.

  The sea stays in its lair

  But wants to be where we are.

  Hornsea, 1952

  …I by the tide

  Of Humber would complain…

  Yes, but were we happy then?

  The wind blew from the east, you were always cold,

  And there was a boating lake –

  Water trapped on your left, below sea level,

  Murkily waiting to be stirred by boys with sticks.

  You and I must have been conspirators

  All those cold days. The two of us.

  No books, no essays, no bike propped up

  In happy rush. No clangour of bells

  Or notes in pigeon-holes:

  I can’t wait for you, my darling.

  Huge planes take off

  Overhead into loneliness,

  You bake sponge cakes at four o’clock

  For belated homecomings –

  Men drink in the Mess.

  The fortune-teller saw you kneel

  Beside your trunk, packing, unpacking.

  The hour for scholarship came round again:

  You won. You win

  And write Oxford on labels

  Flowingly, beneath your name.

  A small child drags at your hand.

  Another pushes out your belly-button.

  You haul at the pram.

  The two of us. How the wind blows.

  You lose one child and you keep one.

  You will change your accent for no one.

  You could write an essay on this:

  A sozzled officer slow to come home,

  Marvell’s vegetable kingdom,

  World enough and time,

  Another baby fattening

  And your thirtieth birthday on the horizon.

  Festival of stone

  (for Jitka Palmer)

  The chink of hammers is a song

  Like blackbirds interrupted, alarming

  One another in the beauty of the morning

  Over the thud of mallets, raspings on stone

  As the sculptors bend and sweat

  And the skirts of the tents blow out.

  The chink of hammers is the wind that plays

  On plane leaves keyed to a ripple

  In the updraught from the water

  And all is flash and shatter

  As the surface breaks open

  To show the face of the stone.

  A Bit of Love

  He must stir himself. No more hiding

  Behind the skill of hands

  That are not his.

  Those nurses are good girls.

  They’ll do anything for you –

  Within reason of course.

  He must fumble his old fingers

  Get himself moving –

  They all say this.

  Ambulance bells carouse

  Until he doesn’t know where he is.

  Drunks in the street

  Swaying about like Holy Moses

  That’s about the size of it:

  No one listens.

  The lamplighter went home years ago

  There’s no night policeman

  Or dawn milk-chink.

  That stout world is a trinket

  In the eyes of his grandchildren.

  His shifts are over.

  Here’s a bit of paper

  And a book to lean on

  What more does he want?

  In his well-taught hand-writing

  He’ll send her a bit of love

  To make her blush.

  Winter Balcony with Dunnocks

  Close to the earth, creeping, lowly

  Mouse-coloured, unglamorous

  Dunnocks, your dusty wings flirt

  In the dry roots of ivy, you are unnoted

  Untweeted creatures, you turn

  Dry leaves and peck for grubs.

  You come to my balcony, a cloud of you

  Eight floors up and slender-dark

  Tilting your wings to skirt the railing

  And flicker among the geraniums

  As the winter cold comes on –

  Quick, quick, against the dusk.

  You don’t care that someone was here

  Before you: those two fat pigeons

  Dumpily purring, the noisy ones

  Who think I can’t see where they slump

  Between flower-pot and pla
stic bucket

  Breast to breast, at roost –

  No, you are too quick-dark

  On the rim of night, flickering

  Through the chill buds of the camellia,

  Unnoted, untweeted creatures,

  Dunnocks, foraging

  December and the year’s husk.

  Mimosa

  Why is the mimosa here

  Inside its dark frame?

  So down-to-earth, it comes out workmanlike

  Year after year, breaks its own branches

  With plumes that make the sky quiver.

  Let’s sit here, on the bench, under it

  To rest while you get your breath.

  Winter’s over, and look, in this dustbin

  Someone has planted wallflowers.

  There’s pollen all over your arms.

  Nightfall in the IKEA Kitchen

  Nightfall in the IKEA kitchen.

  Even though the lights are left on

  I feel the push of the wind’s deconstruction

  Take the hull of the shed by storm.

  Creak and strain of test and fault-finding

  But here in the glow I am alone

  Expected and consoled. Here is the notice board

  Riddled with reminders and invitations,

  Here are picture ledges and high cabinets

  Kitchen trolley, drying racks

  A sly shoe cabinet, fabric pocket-ties:

  A life so sweetly cupboarded

  I barely believe it is mine. Open

  And another light comes on.

  Here is the place where I begin again

  As a twenty-three year old Finn

  Taking the keys of her first home.

  I use space well here. I waste nothing.

  The floor clock has shelves, the bed lifts up

  And if I yield and sleep

  I will become part of the storage system

  Harbouring dreams and heat.

  Everything is a little below scale

  And therefore ample. Stuva, Dröma

  Expedit, Tromsø, Isfjorden…

  I rock in the peace of their names

  Even as I mispronounce them

  For this is nightfall in the one-bedroom

  Model apartment’s kitchen

  When everyone has gone home

  And there is nothing left

  But the Marketplace itself.

  And say a child is born, no problem.

  With a simple room-divider

  I can create not only child storage

  But also a home office

  From which I will provide for us both.

  Look, here is his football on the floor

  And here a shelf where it may be stored.

  His whole life is in these drawers.

  Call him Billy and see him run.

  When he grows up and moves out

  Just take down the partition

  To have, at last, my own space again.

  Ten thousand times the wind has pushed the doors

  But they have not opened yet.

  Those cupboards. Stockholm. Yes, that green

  Nature can never quite get.

  The Duration

  Here they are on the beach where the boy played

  For fifteen summers, before he grew too old

  For French cricket, shrimping and rock pools.

  Here is the place where he built his dam

  Year after year. See, the stream still comes down

  Just as it did, and spreads itself on the sand

  Into a dozen channels. How he enlisted them:

  Those splendid spades, those sun-bonneted girls

  Furiously shoring up the ramparts.

  Here they are on the beach, just as they were

  Those fifteen summers. She has a rough towel

  Ready for him. The boy was always last out of the water.

  She would rub him down hard, chafe him like a foal

  Up on its legs for an hour and trembling, all angles.

  She would dry carefully between his toes.

  Here they are on the beach, the two of them

  Sitting on the same square of mackintosh,

  The same tartan rug. Quality lasts.

  There are children in the water, and mothers patrolling

  The sea’s edge, calling them back

  From the danger zone beyond the breakers.

  How her heart would stab when he went too far out.

  Once she flustered into the water, shouting

  Until he swam back. He was ashamed of her then.

  Wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t look at her even.

  Her skirt was sopped. She had to wring out the hem.

  She wonders if Father remembers.

  Later, when they’ve had their sandwiches

  She might speak of it. There are hours yet.

  Thousands, by her reckoning.

  At the Spit

  If you lie down at the Spit on this warm

  But sunless afternoon, here on the pebbles,

  Smelling the wrack and sea-blown plastic,

  If you squint at the clouds that sag on the horizon

  Without bringing rain or allowing the sun,

  If you lie down here in the hollow

  And take your backpack for a pillow

  And watch how the pebbles lose colour

  And then, shutting your eyes, listen,

  You’ll hear the tide swell and the wrack dry

  To fool’s balloons, incurably saline

  Crackling under the weight of your backpack

  As you lie down,

  If you lie down and as they say do nothing

  You’ll hear the tongue of the tide licking

  The Spit – O fine appetite! – You’ll hear the click

  And tumble of pebbles, slumbrous

  Geography shifting: this is the land mass

  And this the plastic, the wrack, the mess

  To pick over in search of a home. Go back,

  It’s late and the unseen sun’s dropping

  Hurts the clouds and turns them to rain.

  Drowsy, at home, you lie and dream

  Of longboats and long-shed blood

  Of corner shops and running for sweets –

  O sweet familiarity, geography

  Melting into the known –

  Terra Incognita

  And now we come to the unknown land

  With its blue coves and inlets where sweet water

  Bubbles against the salt. Its sand

  Is ready for footprints. Give me your hand

  Onto the rock where the seaweed clings

  And the red anemone throbs in its crevice

  Through swash and backwash. These things

  Various as the brain’s comb and the tide’s swing

  Or the first touch of untouched terrain

  On our footsoles, as the land explores us,

  Have become our fortune. Let me explain

  Which foods are good to eat, and which poison.

  Four cormorants, one swan

  The swans go up with slow wing-beats

  That strike off from the surface of the water.

  Even the most absorbed games-player

  Deep in his mobile, looks up at the clatter

  Of six swans’ wings.

  After the swans have patrolled their harbour

  They settle singly. One drifts with the current

  To the house-boat window that always opens,

  Another sails towards two cormorants

  Hanging out their wings

  And two coosing, or fishing

  In the shallows beside the jetty.

  Now the whole afternoon hangs

  In the balance between four cormorants

  And a single swan, approaching.

  The first cormorant pratfalls from its perch

  In an ungainly bundle of wings

  Or so it seems. But no, it is flying

  Arrowlike to a fish a hundred
yards off.

  A lover could not be more direct.

  Girl in the Blue Pool

  Years back and full of echoes.

  Chlorine, urine, raucous

  Cuff of voices on broken surface.

  A boy on the edge rowdily teeters

  And you, knees flexed, arms back

  Are on the pulse of your stroke. Suppose

  It is you, now, in the pink bikini, close

  To making five hundred metres

  As the ceiling splinters with echoes.

  Suppose you touch the tiles on the turn

  And vanish. The churn

  Of bubbles streams at your heels

  While you shake water out of your ears

  To catch the voice of your instructor

  Who paces you, outpaces you

  On the blue-wet tiles. How her voice echoes.

  You should not be wearing a bikini

  And you were slow on the turn.

  I am years back and full of echoes.

  The silver stream where you swim

  Has long ago been swallowed,

  But at your temples the lovely hollows

  Play in June light. Suppose

  There is one length left in you, knees flexed

  Arms back. Chlorine, urine, raucous

  Voices on shattered surface. If that boy topples