by J M Gregson
FOUR
Christmas came and went. Jamie Norris went back to Leeds and tried to feel at home in the midst of his fractured and rather distant family He pretended to his mother and the rest that he was doing well in Brunton and that his writing career was looking promising. No one believed him.
Dick Fosdyke found this a lonely time, though he affected to be unworried by that. There were no newspapers on Christmas Day, Parliament was in recess, and the world’s more public idiocies had shut down for a time. There was precious little for a cartoonist to comment upon. A woman he had slept with in November offered to take him to her parents’ home for a family Christmas. Dick was tempted for all of two minutes, but he declined. Better not to get involved. Better to meet her again on his terms, not hers. He made a drawing of his wife beside a roaring fire in their old home, with an acid comment beneath it, but he didn’t send it to her. Instead, he put it on the mantelpiece above the gas fire in his flat, alongside the other three cards he had received.
Sharon Burgess spent Christmas cocooned in the warmth of her family. They were kind and welcoming and she felt glad to be with them. She beamed with the others as the grandchildren grew boisterous over their presents; food, wine and bonhomie flowed freely round the very warm room. But she was conscious throughout the day of people keeping an eye on her, knowing that this was her first Christmas without Frank. They didn’t know everything about that relationship and they never would, she reflected. No marriage was completely public and Sharon was pleased about that. It seemed to give her the shaft of independence she needed amidst all this tenderness.
Enid Frott turned down an invitation to spend the day with Charles and Althea and the boys in Cheshire. She hoped the children would be a little disappointed by that, but she knew the parents wouldn’t be. It was good of Charles to ring her at eleven o’clock on Christmas morning, but she could detect the relief in his voice. She spoke briefly with her nephews, but Althea was busy cooking the lunch and didn’t pick up the phone. But Althea sent thanks through Charles for the beautiful M&S sweater. No doubt the bitch would change it in the next few days.
Enid walked a brisk mile with a present to the home of one of her bridge partners, who was also alone, having been divorced three years ago. They downed mince pies and a considerable quantity of mulled wine and felt quite cheerful together. Her friend asked if she wanted to watch the Queen’s Christmas message and Enid’s reaction was unprintable, causing both women to descend into giggles quite unsuitable for sexagenarians. They both agreed that Christmas without a man was a great improvement. A solitary bed was much better than the complications which men brought with them. Or women either, no doubt – more giggles, followed by the ceremonial opening of the cognac Enid had brought.
It was towards the end of Boxing Day that Ms Frott received the unexpected phone call. ‘Enid? It’s Sharon here. Sharon Burgess. Belated compliments of the season and best wishes for the coming year and all that jazz. This is about something you said at Frank’s funeral.’
Enid couldn’t think for a moment what that might be. ‘I hope I didn’t cause any offence. They’re emotional occasions, aren’t they, funerals? For you most of all, I’m sure.’
A slight, half-muffled giggle. Had Frank’s widow been indulging herself with the Boxing Day booze, in the bosom of her considerable family? Enid sought desperately for the names of the grandchildren she had chatted with at the funeral reception at the golf club, so that she could speak glowingly of them and win herself some neutral-ground brownie points. Those pleasant adolescents would surely have been safe ground, but the names wouldn’t come to her. Then Sharon said, ‘They are emotional occasions, yes, and I’m sure we all behave out of character – well, those who were closest to the deceased, anyway. But this is nothing to do with Frank.’
Enid divined suddenly what was coming, but she couldn’t work out on the spot what her reaction should be. Dismissive, or welcoming? Did she really want any further contact with this woman, in view of the history they carried? She switched the television off and said formally, as if she was back at work, ‘How can I help you, Sharon?’
‘It’s your suggestion of a book club. I think we both thought it was a good idea.’
‘Yes. I haven’t gone any further with it.’ Enid was still playing for time.
‘Perhaps we could meet, then, to discuss whom we might invite to join us. It might be important to get that right. I fancy that once you invite someone, you’re stuck with them. We’d need to give it some thought. You could come round here, if you like.’
Enid Frott had to summon all her resources to make herself polite, yet friendly. She needed time to think about this. ‘Yes. Excellent idea, Sharon. We could meet early in the New Year.’
The snow fell softly and silently, but steadily. It was picturesque, almost hypnotic. The large white flakes descended inexorably, softening the uglier lines and shapes in the Tesco car park. It was the seventh of January. The snow had come too late for a white Christmas, as usual.
Jamie Norris was still working here, even with all the regular staff back after the holiday. He wasn’t permanent yet, but the manager had said he might be, soon. The manager had even said he was pleased with his work. Jamie tried to despise himself for being so absurdly joyful over that crumb of praise.
It was seven o’clock in the evening now. He had used his tea break to come to the door with his beaker and gaze out at the snow. There was no wind, which was what allowed the flakes to fall like this, obscuring the night sky behind them, slowly enveloping the landscape in their descending curtain of white. There must be material here for a poet. But only the conventional words and the conventional phrases would come to Jamie, as he stood and allowed himself to be mesmerised by the monotonous beauty of the vision.
‘Have you mark’d but the fall of the snow / Before the soil hath smuch’d it?’
The voice was quiet and even, but it made Jamie start nonetheless.
He turned and saw a figure in the shadows, wearing a trilby hat so that the brim gave further shade to the thin face beneath it. Jamie said as if he resented it, ‘That’s verse. But I don’t know whose verse.’
‘Ben Jonson. He isn’t much read now. It’s a love poem really: “Have you seen but a bright lily grow / Before rude hands have touch’d it?”’
The figure stepped forward and took off its hat. It was a man. A man with a sallow, experienced face, heavily lined but not old. A man in his forties, Jamie reckoned. He said, ‘I don’t know any Ben Jonson. I try to write poetry myself, sometimes.’
The man seemed to have expected that. He didn’t seem shocked or alarmed or amused, the way most people did. ‘That poem’s a celebration of maidenhood and chastity and innocence. Those aren’t popular qualities, in our secular age. You wouldn’t expect them to be celebrated nowadays. But fresh snow always reminds me of innocence and chastity.’
Jamie Norris didn’t know how to reply to that. He’d had quite a lot of trouble with chastity in his short time upon this earth. He’d never thought of celebrating it in his attempts at poetry. He turned to look again at the steadily falling curtain of snow. ‘There’s not much wind, so it shouldn’t drift. But it will be quite thick by morning, if it keeps on like this.’ He paused for a moment, willing the man to speak, but he heard nothing from behind him. ‘I was trying to think of some lines about the snow. I wanted to catch its beauty and its power in words, but phrases from other poets keep coming into my head. Better phrases and better lines than I can think up.’
‘It’s inhibiting, knowing what others have written. You need to read poetry, because it excites you and it tells you what good verse is about. But it gets in the way when you try to write yourself.’
‘That’s just how it is, yes. I love reading Philip Larkin, but when I go into an old church myself, his verse always seems so much better than anything I can manage. I end up discarding even what I think were promising images, because his always seem so much better.’
‘Y
ou should keep working at it, though, even if you often have to throw your efforts away. It’s only by hammering away at it that you get better. Mediocrity is something you have to go through to produce the good stuff.’
It was encouraging, Jamie supposed, even if the man made writing seem even harder than he’d supposed it would be when he’d set out to be a poet. And he was sure that what he said was true: it echoed what he had been discovering for himself by the hard process of trial end error. It would be nice to have a few more successes and a lot fewer errors.
He said, ‘You sound to me as if you write poetry yourself.’
The wan features melted into the first smile Jamie had seen there. ‘I’ve written a little, yes. Most of it isn’t allowed to see the light of day. I end up burning or shredding most of it. But it sharpens your appreciation for the efforts of others. For Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. I don’t know any of them personally, of course, but they seem like old friends by now.’
After not moving at all since he had first spoken, the man stepped forward into the light, removed his trilby, and held out his hand. ‘Alfred Norbury.’
‘Jamie Norris.’ He took the hand and shook it, noting how cold and sinewy it felt.
‘I don’t like the Alfred and I hate Alf. But I’m stuck with it. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” Didn’t mince his words, Larkin.’
‘Alfred was good enough for Tennyson.’
‘True. And he wrote some good stuff, did Alfred. Even after they made him Poet Laureate, unlike most.’
‘I’d like to write just one poem as good as his.’
‘The Lotus Eaters, that’s what you should use as your model. Or Morte D’Arthur, if you like. Not the charge of the bloody light brigade – though if you want to know about the rhythms of verse, you could learn a bit there.’
‘I’ll look at them. I don’t know enough poetry.’ Jamie was afraid of being exposed as a sham by this strange man he had never seen before.
‘Read as much as you like, but don’t stop writing. Don’t let the masters inhibit you. Find your own voice. Larkin did.’ Norbury stood back a pace and looked at the uncertain young man in front of him. Not as young as he’d thought at first: late twenties, probably. But young for his age; young and probably vulnerable. ‘What time do you finish here tonight?’
‘Eight o’clock. Sometimes there’s a couple of hours of overtime, but there won’t be tonight. People won’t be coming out in this.’ He looked back at the steadily falling flakes which had stubbornly failed to inspire him.
‘You could come round to my place if you like. Discuss this further. I’ve got quite a lot of books of poetry there.’
Jamie Norris was suddenly back in his childhood, with his mother telling him that he must on no account go anywhere with strange men. But he hadn’t even been allowed to speak with them, and he’d certainly done that. And that was then and this was now. He was a grown man and he could look after himself, couldn’t he? It would be a poor thing if he couldn’t do that when he was twenty-six and knew all about these things.
‘I haven’t got a car. I can drive, but at the moment I—’
‘It isn’t far from here.’ The man scribbled a note on the slip of paper he drew from the pocket of his coat. ‘They’re flats. You’ll see the name Norbury among the others. Ring the bell beside the name.’
Jamie glanced down at the address. Wellington Street. An old street of high, posh Victorian houses. Near the centre of the town and not far from here, as Alfred Norbury had said. Four hundred yards, perhaps. He had his wellies in the staff cloakroom and he could easily walk that, even through the snow. Wellies for Wellington Street. He liked that thought, but he didn’t think it would amuse Alfred. Perhaps he might get an idea or two for a poem, on the way.
Jamie Norris said with a sense of impending doom, ‘All right. I’ll be there.’
They often went to the pub after the evening class. That was the advantage of adult education. Mature students were only there because they wanted to be. They really enjoyed learning and they often wanted to continue discussions informally, after the official class was over.
The night of the seventh of January was different, however. The attendance was thin, for a start. Snow had been forecast and it was falling steadily by the time the class began. Many regular and enthusiastic attendees decided that discretion was the better part of valour and reluctantly conceded this night’s class to the weather. They had only eight instead of their more normal eighteen. They packed up early as the snow deepened outside the church hall where they met; they agreed that this was no night for the pub.
Jane Preston had prepared well for an evening on William Thackeray, but she’d scarcely begun her spiel on Becky Sharp and Vanity Fair when the session was aborted. She told herself that it was just as well: she’d have a bigger audience for her pearls of wisdom next week and the discussion which followed would be much livelier with a full complement. She really enjoyed teaching this group and she felt that Thackeray, who was nothing like as well-known or well-loved as Dickens, would give them all food for thought and provoke productive arguments.
She put on her coat and the fake-fur hat which the oldest member of the group had said made her look a little like Julie Christie in the film of Dr Zhivago. Pity the two younger men weren’t here tonight, but you couldn’t have everything. There was nothing to prevent her wearing the hat again next week.
Meanwhile, it would be good to get home. She turned the collar of her coat up and prepared to dash to the car. She’d need to watch for wheel-spin in the side street, but the main roads should still be all right. Good thing they’d packed up early, though.
‘No chance of a drink tonight, I suppose?’
Jane was startled by the voice behind her, which seemed unnaturally close in the silence. She turned and smiled, searching desperately for a name as she recognized the speaker. It was the pleasant older woman who had asked her earlier how important she thought George Eliot was as a successor to Thackeray. ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. I think we all need to get home as quickly as we can, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s a pity, though, because I had something to ask you, Ms Preston.’
She forced a smile. ‘It’s Jane to my friends, of which you are emphatically one, Sharon.’ The name had come to her just in time: much better than ‘Mrs Burgess’. She embellished it with one of her wider smiles.
This young woman looked very pretty in her fake fur hat and crimson coat, thought Sharon. More Red Riding Hood than Lara in Dr Zhivago, perhaps, but no doubt that depended on your point of view. ‘It’s a simple enough thing. I could ask you here, really. I don’t need a couple of gins to give me the courage for this.’
It was still snowing steadily, as Jane could see through the gap beyond the door she had begun to open. She shut it again reluctantly and forced a smile. ‘Is it connected with our course her on the nineteenth-century novel?’
‘No, not at all. Well, only very indirectly.’ Sharon was abruptly embarrassed when it came to the moment, when earlier this had seemed to her a simple and reasonable request. She blurted it out all at once, like an embarrassed child who was anticipating refusal. ‘I’m starting a book club. Well, two of us are, really. We’ll all read a book and then discuss it. Perhaps once a month, we thought. Would you be interested in joining?’
Jane Preston didn’t really want to get involved. Probably a lot of old biddies discussing books she’d never have dreamed of reading for herself. But that was unfair and ageist. This was an intelligent woman who’d made good contributions to their discussions here and supported her loyally. The trouble was, she didn’t really want more commitments with an unknown group. But then she thought of the man she wanted to contact. He was part of the Brunton literary set, wasn’t he? He might even be a member of this group. Or she might in due course be able to suggest him as a member, if she joined.
Jane Preston heard herself saying, ‘Yes, I’ll probably give it a go. I
t sounds fun. Can I ring you in a day or two to give you a definite decision?’
Jamie Norris had a shock in Wellington Street.
He found the house easily enough. Number twenty-three. A high, gabled Victorian house, looking even taller as it towered blackly above him amidst the falling snow. Before he could mount the steps to locate the right bell and ring it, the door opened. But it was not a man but a large dog which stood at the top of the steps. It looked to Norris like the Hound of the Baskervilles, its dark outline massive and forbidding against the orange light of the hall behind it. The beast gave a single deep bark and hurtled down the path towards him.
Jamie didn’t like dogs. He hadn’t thought about it much before, but in that single moment it was clear to him that he abhorred them. He shut his eyes and waited, not wishing the see the eager fangs as they prepared to attack his defenceless body. He wanted to cry out, but he knew there was no point. He thought he had probably emitted a strange, strangled croaking noise, but he wasn’t even sure of that.
And then there was a warm head against his hand, a snuffling insistence that he gave attention, a soft, damp tongue nuzzling against his palm. A voice from the doorway of the house said, ‘A traveller, by the faithful hound / Half-buried in the snow was found.’
Alfred Norbury stood benignly above him as the dog frisked around him, excited by the snow to a display of impromptu gymnastics. Friendly, thank God, despite its size. Norbury said as Jamie cautiously moved nearer, ‘Drinkwater. No one reads him nowadays. Probably they should do, but they don’t.’ He stood aside to let man and dog past him, wiping the animal’s large paws with a towel as Jamie stamped his wellies on the top step to get rid of the accumulated snow.
Jamie said, ‘I’d better take these off.’ He removed the wellies and banged them vigorously together beside the top step before he followed Alfred and the dog down the hall and into the door of a ground-floor flat. There was a gas fire which was so good that he thought at first that the flames were real. Ten-foot-long curtains, maroon with gold tracery, concealed what he was sure was an impressive window. The television in the corner had doors on its front, an appendage he hadn’t seen since he was a boy visiting his grandmother’s house. He wondered if his strange new friend had had them specially made to mask the ubiquitous presence of the most insistent of modern media.
