Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  Lily put her arm on his shoulder: ‘Do you drink wine often, father?’

  He loved that and laughed to me in a loud aside: ‘This is to ply the lash and be unpardonable. . . ’

  Later – a half-moon was up by now – I told him we’d been pretending it was summer, we’d had such a warm unseasonable day, and someone mentioned climate change, someone could not forbear to, and then there was quiet but he nodded like he knew.

  ‘Some geologists say – the last end of all continents – and dry land altogether – is to be washed into the sea. And that when all are gone, water will be the world’

  ‘Fools’ll still be saying it’s got nothing to do with Mankind,’ Samira said drily.

  ‘Yeah while they’re friggin drowning,’ said Lily.

  This brought the stars out in earnest for the saying of farewells. Some of the gang had stuff to do and were on their way already. Away across the dark meadow glittered the lamps of the student halls. Little silhouettes – Caroline in her wide hat, two people arm-in-arm, then Heath – went stepping through the lights with shoulder-bags and baskets.

  ‘It’s October, chief, get over it,’ Lily told me as she turned to go.

  Samira called: ‘Lillian are you going to Cartwright?’ and when Lily didn’t turn or respond, she said anyway ‘We’re all going to Cartwright,’ and followed her through the field.

  Some twenty yards away Barry was a-rummaging in his sports-bag. I was expecting him to ask his usual daft question, so I called out:

  Got your cricket pads in there mate?

  But Hopkins turned at that – broke off from extolling Thomas Hardy to Niall: ‘The sword-exercise scene in the Madding Crowd! – the wife-sale in The Mayor of Casterbridge!’ – to suddenly wonder brightly ‘D’you play cricket here at all?’

  Not me (I said) I’m football, me!

  But he was lost in an old joke of his about his time in Ireland: ‘A Tipperary lad. . . lately from his noviceship, at the wicket – another bowling to him. He thought there was no one within hearing – but from behind the wicket he’s overheard – after a good stroke – to cry out: Arrah! Sweet myself!’

  He roared, we roared – and in the din there roared the ghost of an Irish poet I knew who’d be loving that joke somewhere – and elsewhere deep in all that Niall bade his shy goodbye, passed the little man something and was gone, and what with Barry Wilby still checking his sports-bag some way off, I was alone a short while with our visitor.

  ‘Sweet myself .’ he grinned, subsiding.

  For some reason I was dumbstruck without the others around me, so we scanned the constellations till one of us could speak. He did.

  ‘Out of much much more, out of little not much, out of nothing nothing.’

  Yes.

  Then I was suddenly going to ask him -

  I am suddenly going to ask him – I ask him -

  Father.

  He turns.

  Where are we.

  Inevitably, to my dismay, this brings Barry to his feet over there and here he comes setting off towards us with all sorts of coats and blankets. I feel the moment’s lost but the next one proves me wrong –

  ‘In careful hands,’ says Hopkins, and he said that for sure, and then I’m sure I hear him murmur ‘I’m so happy, so happy,’ and then I think I hear him say: ‘I loved my life.’

  ‘Plotting something, are we?’ booms big Barry Wilby as he reaches us, looming over the little priest in his suit of cloth, ‘Coats, Father, jumpers and coats, gloves and what-have-you, provided by the village!’

  Barry is indeed encumbered with warm clothes – he was the only one of us to think of it – but gently Gerard passes on this gracious offer, save for one dark woollen scarf he loops around his neck. It’s hours till it will strike me that’s what Niall gave him.

  It feels like our conversation is over, but then he enquires softly whether we’ve ever set eyes on the Northern Lights. What follows I took, shall always take, to have been meant for me.

  ‘Beams of light and dark, like the crown of rays the sun makes behind a cloud. Independent of the earth. A strain of time not reckoned by our days and years, but – simpler – as if – correcting the preoccupation of the world.’

  Neither of us had seen them.

  ‘Northern Lights. . .’ Barry Wilby mused: ‘Lights. . . but of the North. . . ’

  Two thorough handshakes and the priest was gone, treading away in the grass, the way he came, soon swallowed up in the gloom of the east. The air smelt of soil and smoke, muddy football boots, mulled wine. Time flared and flashed with seasons coming, for it too could fall and gash gold-vermilion. . .

  ‘Northern Lights,’ said Barry.

  I couldn’t stop myself saying:

  He – Father Hopkins – just – told me he loved his life.

  I glanced at Barry alongside me, he was looking straight into the dark.

  ‘Ho now,’ said Barry, ‘why shouldn’t he love his life.’

  Not love, Barry, loved, past tense – he said he loved his life. As in, his life is over now. I think he did, I’ll swear he did.

  ‘Now now, señor, no swearing. . . Don’t reckon ya caught that right.’

  The wind blew cold.

  Do you – know something, Mr Wilby?

  ‘Me? Ho no. I know he likes his Greeks.’

  He said he didn’t like the Greeks.

  ‘Did he? Oh. Heigh-ho. Well I know the Northern Lights. Crown of rays, he goes, I’d like to catch that someday. Shall we walk?’

  *

  O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumns being,

  Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

  Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

  Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

  Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

  The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

  Each like a corpse within its grave, until

  Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

  Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

  (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

  With living hues and odours plain and hill:

  Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

  Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

  ‘Hey that’s not your usual style there, is it senor.’

  How would you know my usual style, Barry.

  ‘You usually go on a bit, sort of thing.’

  That isn’t the whole poem.

  ‘Oh well. Another time, I got a date down this here lane here.’

  You do? Okay then. Later.

  ‘Off I go then.’

  Right. Bye, Barry. It was Shelley, by the way!

  ‘Come again?’

  IT’S ENGLISH TERZA RIMA!

  ‘COME AGAIN?’

  Never mind.

  *

  The Keys is buzzing, but none of my class are there, and I remember they had an event of some kind – why do their events always clash with my reading nights? I squeeze against the bar, and Norman spots me with a gloomy nod. I see he’s making with intense annoyance some devilish cocktail out of all sorts of pricey liquids.

  Hey Norman. What you making there.

  ‘Beats me, it’s her again, she wrote it down, look.’

  A – Fat Like Buddha. Rum. . . Cointreau. . . Benedictine?

  ‘Bloody annoyance is what it is.’

  There s Mimi round the short side of the bar, cackling to some soulful young guy with ice-white hair.

  ‘Hey Max. You made my drink yet Norman?’

  Norman darkens into his catchphrase, ‘Bloody students and their bloody drinking. . .’

  ‘Oi Max this is Jakey!’

  Yo: Jakey.

  ‘Hes famous.’

  ‘I’m so totally not! Don’t listen to her!’

  ‘Dont listen to him, Max.’

  Shall I just not listen to anyone?

  ‘No
change there,’ says Mimi, turning.

  ‘Nice to meet you, professor,’ says the ice-white kid, politely enough, following Mimi away.

  She only does it to annoy you Norman.

  ‘Do what she damn well likes, but it ain’t just me who’s getting annoyed is it, it’s my whole clientele and that includes you.’

  I’m not annoyed. I spent my afternoon in the summer.

  ‘Eh? What’s this say, Dubonnet, now I have to trot downstairs for Dubonnet – nobody benefits from this madness, no one!’

  *

  ‘The circle is complete,’ says Wayne as I slump down opposite.

  Evening, format.

  ‘Its a small f, Glyn.’

  I said a small f, pay attention. How did you get a job here, Wayne?

  ‘You know. Channels. You taught me everything you taught me.’

  How long ago did I teach you?

  ‘Wanna know exactly?’

  Not really. I’m thinking of taking your class.

  ‘Good man.’

  Not really. Why don’t I teach at the Academy?

  ‘Have you applied? . . . Well there you go.’

  I don’t even know what I’m doing here, Wayne.

  ‘You’re talking to me.’

  Jesus what are you drinking?

  ‘A Redheaded Slut. Jägermeister, schnapps, cranberry juice. Mimi Bevan bought it and left it there.’

  What’s it like. (Bevan?)

  ‘It’s like Jägermeister and schnapps, but with cranberry juice.’

  Rupture equals structure. Hm. You, I don’t suppose you know where we are, do you? In the universe, this is.

  ‘This is the saloon bar. That’s the public bar. It’s full of playwrights. I hear I missed Hopkins. He was soft sift in an hourglass. By the way what’s inscape.’

  Shut up.

  ‘Who’ve you got next week?’

  I won’t be here next week. I’ll be awake, I’ll be alive, I’ll be home.

  ‘See you then then glyn.’

  Likewise, format.

  *

  i hate Caroline by n prester (g maxwell)

  9 chairs at peace all night

  have not a word 2 say

  about who did u wrong or right

  this time yesterday

  *

  FEAR of “God”

  Maxwell: ‘Poetry’ elective, week 2

  Only the Rolling dice of Chance

  say FEAR MYTHOLOGY!

  Poetry Rises for the dance

  the Truth sits silently

  ORlando faRaday

  *

  Riddle for Caroline

  crops up a lot in Love Me Do

  but not in Let It Be

  a little word you’re welcome to

  that’s fuck-all use to me

  Heath Bannen

  (Hots for God assignment.

  Prof Maxwell. Week 2)

  *

  Hating Lily for the Sake of Poetry

  For four lines I must ‘hate your guts’

  in ABAB rhymes;

  poetry exercises do not half

  get on my t**s sometimes!

  Caroline Jellicoe, Flat 5, Marlin House

  *

  I leave the curtains open so I can look the sky in the face. It’s clouded over now, all the moon and stars are gone. It has its reasons. You have your reasons. I can hear the distant noise of a party from the student halls. Shall I go? Best dream ever. I drag my sheets the other way, bounce and sigh and stretch for comfort, try to sleep, can’t sleep, recall these lines I learned for my class, my dad used to incant them too, remembered them from school he did, the rhythm ought to send me off. . .

  So be beginning, be beginning to despair.

  O there’s none; no no no there’s none:

  Be beginning to despair, to despair,

  Despair, despair, despair, despair.

  Spare!

  I wake up, sit bolt upright – rain’s torrential on my windows.

  I have no idea where I am.

  And then I remember – I have no idea where I am. Restored, I lay my head down calmly and not remotely sleepy. It dawns on me with a gasp that I’m smiling like my skull.

  * * *

  Week Four – October 17th

  Morning. Outside it’s wet, it’s violet, it’s absolutely pouring with rain and I take it personally.

  Of course I do, of course, when all it is is the balance being restored, the delusion corrected, all it is is the thorough-going reminder one doesn’t have a say.

  The rain rain rain drums on the skylight, blusters at the windows. I feel I should close the curtains and have done with it but I can’t, it would feel like my interment, I’m already choosing hymns.

  Abide with me; fast falls the eventide. . . The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. . . When other helpers fail and comforts flee look I’ve a class to teach. Probably only in my mind, but still.

  I curl away from the hammering rain, I remember the following dream.

  *

  I was walking along a sandy beach in a coastal town. In my mind it was the east coast of England. . . There was a pier in the hazy distance. My brother was with me, we were due to appear in a play that evening and it would soon be time to get into costume.

  Then that wild awareness came that seldom comes, that I was dreaming and I knew it.

  I halted on the sand, and grinned and said Look. We don’t have to do the show.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  We don’t have to do the show.

  There was a pause in the dream which only angels know the length of.

  Then he said: ‘We can’t let everyone down.’

  I said: We can, because you know what? I’ve realized I’m dreaming.

  And on we walked, with our two short shadows rippling over the white sand, and he seemed to be considering the weight of these words: that he was in a dream, and not even his own dream. Except, what he said was this:

  ‘I still think we should make an effort.’

  We walked on in silence over the sand. I was proud of his strength of character, and proud of having dreamed this.

  *

  I look in the cavernous wardrobe that yawns beside the door. Lamplight? yes I did try it for the passage home through a snowy wonderland of fauns and queens and Turkish Delight, but I just banged my head on the back, mothballs orbited my head and it hurt, okay? this is not a magic world. Things don’t just happen.

  That aside, the wardrobe has the things I need: raincoat, waterproofs, umbrella, hipflask. When the class is done and the reading’s done, and I’ve one last crazy ghost-tale to tell the living clustered round the juke-box yawning What? I will pass right through them, I will leave tonight, not sleep, start walking, rain or shine, be some ancient washed-up mariner by the very furthest lamppost: Hey who the hell is that, you alright mate? There was a ship. Excuse me?

  Bloody waterproofs, look at me, dressed for the weather, the opposite of sadder, the opposite of wiser, already rocking the morrow morn.

  *

  The zigzag path is of pink and yellow stone, red and brown in the heavy downfall. Everything I wear is crinkling and squeaking, I’m sucking rain off my philtrum. The road up ahead is brimming with puddles, the rain goes sweeping by in sheets, there’s no one about – save a downcast hooded little kid at a bus-stop – there’s a bus-stop?

  Hey there what time’s the bus? I don’t see any timetable. . .

  (The kid nestles into his hood as if yearning to take no space) Where does it go when it comes?

  He says nothing and it keeps on raining. Where does it go when it comes, for pete’s sake, how would you answer that? Seems I’d rather craft a cool line than get my questions answered, but we knew that.

  The bus-stop has its back to the trees that fuss and flail in the downpour. It looks more likely they will swallow the village back to ancient forest than that a bus will come for him. Ah well, his business.

  Then again, no one likes to be ignored. Something comes to m
ind, and I call out jovially through the bucketing rain:

  There was no possibility of taking a walk that day!

  Just came to mind somehow. It gets the deafening, cosmic silence it deserves, the kid sits still like loss in a coat and don’t worry I’m on my way.

  *

  The Keys looks shut at first, then I see a light inside, but no one through the window, an unattended functioning bar, the fruit-machine flashing like it will when we’ve quit the planet: WIN WIN WIN. Norman must be down the ladder in his underworld, Vulcan taking it out on things. I walk on. It feels like mid-morning. The Saddlers it is, there’s sure to be a crowd, but just as I’m about to take that route I see Kerri Bedward in Student Services over the road, lit up at her desk, hair in a bow, typing away by some colossal potted plant. Women hold up half the sky, all the sky, are the sky.

  I splash towards the office with this suddenly in my head:

  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. . .

  Which I must have learned for something – which reminds me who I’m teaching. Whom I’m teaching, get a grip. What I called out to the bus-stop kid is how Jane Eyre begins, my mum used to say it on rainy days. Wrong sister, though, heigh ho. Now Emily would have taken a walk, Emily would be out there bare-skulled if it were hailing.

  *

  ‘Before you ask.’

  Ask what.

  ‘I’ve not heard from them.’

  From – you’ve not.

  ‘Not a word since we booked them. These sisters of yours.’

  Don’t they just – usually show up? People have so far.

  ‘The agent generally confirms but I keep going straight to voicemail.’

  Voicemail? I just get a hiss, Kerri.

  ‘The signal comes and goes. Goes, mainly. We get a signal on Tuesdays.’

  I’m never here on Tuesdays.

  ‘That solves that then. Have the rest of my almond croissant, you look hungry.’

  (I take it. Kerri stops typing) ‘And you know I’m not even, really, meant to be doing this.’

  No (through croissant) why’s that then.

  ‘Crumbs on the carpet.’

  Sorry what do you mean not meant to be doing it.

  ‘They’re a bit like, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not, you know, affiliated. Students can take your class, but only if it doesn’t clash and they don’t get any credits. You’re dripping all over my magazine. Stand by the plant, it needs it.’