Once Again Assembled Here
Page 28
Afterwards he chose to walk with me across the park to Carson’s house. I was going for a look round while deciding whether to sell it.
We paused by the plant house and stood by the pond. It was frozen, with waxed bread wrappers, discarded by those who came to feed the ducks, trapped in the ice.
‘I shall be going in the summer,’ Gammon said.
‘I see.’ Would it have been too much to cheer? To push him on to the ice.
‘Connolly will be taking over for the time being while the governors decide on a permanent replacement for me.’
‘I see.’
‘I shall be taking up an appointment in Hunslet. Pastures new.’
Not in Hunslet there aren’t, I thought. ‘That’s Milton,’ I said.
‘What is?’
‘“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” It’s from “Lycidas”, where Milton mourns his dead friend, his friend who drowned.’
Gammon wrestled with this crux for a time. We walked on and reached the road. Carson’s house stood opposite. In order to relieve Gammon of the burden of response, I said: ‘And I take it this will be a promotion for you.’
‘I shall be concentrating on geography,’ he said. I had never seen Gammon miserable before. He had a wizened and pathetic look.
‘It’s a large field,’ I said.
He looked for a moment as if about to issue a rebuke, but remembered himself. ‘You mustn’t think I knew,’ he said, almost imploringly.
‘Knew about what?’
He hurried on. ‘There were others much better informed than me. My only concern, Maxwell, my only concern was for the school.’
‘If you say so, Gammon. You must excuse me now. I have to go and look at the late Captain’s house.’
‘I acted for what I hoped was the best. I hope there are no hard feelings. We are colleagues, after all.’
‘Yes, we are, aren’t we?’
As to Smallbone, on the evening after the sea voyage I went to see Shirley in the hospital, and I found he was there before me, reading to her from, for some reason, Ivanhoe. At first she seemed to be asleep, but she opened her eyes and glanced from me to Smallbone and back. With gratitude and relief I recognized the goodbye look.
‘Maurice has been ever so good,’ she said. Smallbone, of course, did not ordinarily permit the use of his Christian name.
‘I can imagine.’
‘I’m sorry, Stevie, about before. I lost track of where I was.’
‘Let’s not worry about it. As long as you’re here, with Maurice to look after you.’
Bone gave me a dark look: caught red-handed being kind.
When his mother died a couple of years later, Smallbone sold the stamp business. He and Shirley moved to the seaside and, naturally enough, opened a bookshop. I went up to see them not long after they opened. Shirley was pregnant. They wanted me to be the godfather, and of course I agreed, and was there at your christening, Eleanor, in a church overlooking the grey North Sea.
And then, as sometimes happens, neither entirely by intention nor accident, we lost touch. I don’t imagine you know very much about me, if anything. By now you’ll have heard more than enough.
For years, ten, twenty, I waited for the blow to fall. It never did. Perhaps the matter was no longer considered of interest, no longer a story. Well, we shall see about that.
Percival Street and Maggie’s house were demolished under compulsory purchase and made into a carpark for the new Infirmary. I liked to watch the building work from the railway-crossing gate. The city was not, it seemed, wholly immutable, though the trains still ran along the line beside the woods and then across the bridge over the creek, where, after its last night-voyage, Lorelei remained moored for a long time, until one day I noticed it was gone.
I returned the pistol to Mr Feldberg and told him I hoped that my debt was paid. He agreed, but we were never quite on the same terms as before. David went on to Cambridge and read PPE rather than history, and later married Rachel, who specialized in paediatrics. Afterwards I lost track of him too for many years, until one evening I was watching the television news and he was interviewed as a representative of the Israeli government’s team during some phase or other of the always-doomed negotiations with the Palestinians. He was, of course, intelligent and articulate. He was also cold and implacably intransigent. I was not surprised.
And this manuscript is yours, Eleanor. When I die, it will be sent to you with the copy I made of Carson’s document (of course I was lying: what would you expect?) to reach you at the university. Do with it as you see fit.
Evening falls over the fields and the woods and where manoeuvres continue. I, though, seem to have finished. There is the bell of the lightship on the incoming tide, far downriver. Out beyond that lies the place where some of the bodies are buried.
ALSO BY SEAN O’BRIEN
Poetry
The Indoor Park
The Frighteners
HMS Glasshouse
Ghost Train
Downriver
Cousin Coat: Selected Poems, 1976–2001
The Drowned Book
Collected Poems
The Beautiful Librarians
Essays
The Deregulated Muse
Anthologies
The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (editor)
Short Stories
The Silence Room
Novels
Afterlife
Sean O’Brien is a poet, critic, playwright, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He grew up in Hull and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Drowned Book won both the Forward Prize for best collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His collection November was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the International Griffin Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, The Beautiful Librarians, won the 2015 Roehampton Poetry Prize. Once Again Assembled Here is his second novel.
First published 2016 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-4472-3813-3
Copyright © Sean O’Brien 2016
Cover image: © Christine Amat / Trevillion Images
Author photograph: © Caroline Forbes
The right of Sean O’Brien to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The extract here is from Collected Poems by Louise MacNeice, published by Faber & Faber.
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