Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  ‘Don’t mind me! Press on with yer recitals!’

  Barry lumbered into the room beneath a tower of yellow anorak: ‘Ho now, just a little sprinkling eh!’ he beamed, sweeping water from his sleeves, ‘I’d like to show you something.’

  You’d like to show me something.

  ‘Yes. Somebody’s waiting.’

  Are they. Is that me waiting for you at the pub just now? For our one-to-one? Is that me waiting for you to show up to hear the great poets I invite here, Barry.

  ‘Me culpa, me culpa, senor, I do get knotted up in me duties!’

  I know you do, you go ahead, you show me whoever you – oh, oh, do you mean the boy at the bus-stop waiting for a bus that never comes because there isn’t a bus because there isn’t a road because there isn’t anywhere beyond here, Barry, d’ya mean that boy?

  ‘You come along too, Lily Bronzo.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘In answer to that, teacherman, I do mean that boy. I do mean that boy there waiting.’

  He’s – not waiting for a bus.

  ‘No, señor.’

  He’s waiting – for what. He’s. For us, he’s waiting for us.

  ‘Rhyme included, bus/us, I notice!’

  Alright. Alright, Barry. Let’s go and see what’s what. Lily?

  *

  As we left the village hall we met Caroline hurrying back, registered, in her plastic poncho. Across the road four or five smokers huddled in the green-lit porch of the Keys. There was almost mist between us the rain was so relentless. The Ice-white actor was getting a light, and the slouching figure with him straightened up, ‘Get back inside there Max, there’s still an hour to go!’

  ‘Silly girl,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Shall I smite her with my f-word?’ offered Lily Bronzo. ‘Or actually. . . get a smoke off Jakey.’

  Lily hurried off through the puddles in her gold Doc Martens.

  Caroline sighed with scorn, waited for me to agree with her what children they all are. Which tends to produce the opposite effect:

  We’re going on a bear hunt.

  ‘We’re doing what?’

  Ask Barry.

  ‘Barry, what’s happening?’

  ‘Going to see the fellow yonder,’ he said, gesturing down the lane to the distant shelter with its lone hooded tenant, and, when Lily was back, fighting for the life of a damp tiny roll-up, and with Mimi too, and Ice-white Jake with his hands in pockets, we were assembled, off we set.

  The rain seemed to intensify as if to warn us off this course, but we were infused and weathered now, we’d cancelled the day for this. The boy in the hood, now the focus of all attention, stayed still as before while he grew in our vision.

  About ten yards from the shelter I stopped them:

  Look I made a dick of myself earlier with this chap, can someone else say, um, initiate?

  The two who moved quickest cared least or cared most, so I said Let Caroline do it, and Mimi said whatever.

  Then I saw what happened clearly. Once in the dry air of the shelter Caroline stooped gently to inquire if the boy was all right. When he turned his face in our direction his hood came loose and we were all wrong.

  ‘Oh good lord!’ cried Caroline.

  ‘Don’t be startled,’ pleads a small pale woman, ‘don’t be. You’re all safe from Currer Bell.’

  And she rises and leaves the shelter, leaves the lane along a barely trodden path into the trees, and we all but wade after her, helpless, speechless, into the gloom.

  *

  Wha ya may go t’bed.

  I’d rather do anything than that. And Charlotte you’re so glum tonight.

  Well suppose we each had an island. . .

  If we had I would choose the Island of Man.

  And I would choose Isle of Wight.

  The Isle of Arran for me.

  And mine should be Guernsey.

  The Duke of Wellington should be my Chief Man.

  Herries should be mine.

  Walter Scott should be mine.

  I should have Bentinck.

  *

  Well suppose, well suppose. If you’re in the woodland with me, then you come from Well Suppose. If you’re not you don’t know where I am, and good luck with your studies.

  Caroline followed first, sprightly, cheerily, dressed for all weathers, Lily next, blithe and drenched, dye running, city kid turned water-pixie, then me in my dream, my death, my sleep, stark naked what do I care, then worse-for-wear blond Jacob, diffident smoking Mimi, ‘is this how you teach these days Maxwell,’ and Barry lumbering in last place. How did he know she was waiting for us?

  We went through copses and beside them, then between them and below them, and soon there were no more fields or views, we were treading through the sodden mulch, mud-creatures in our habitat. Then our leader stopped for a moment, we all came to our squelching halts in the wood, she’d pulled her hood back on and was whispering to Caroline.

  Caroline nodded, then sucked the air in briskly as she got the message. She turned back to face us, pointed at Lily then Mimi, and beckoned them up the line. She pointed at me, at Jacob, at Barry, and waved us further back. We got the picture too, girls and boys, and complied, and Charlotte went on walking.

  *

  She was the oldest of them who survived childhood (I’d say later in the Keys, where I must have looked a sight, sodden and exhilarated, drumming on the bar as I raved of my adventure!) it was Charlotte started them in their made-up worlds, you see, on that actual night, when the housekeeper said Go t’bed and instead they dreamed up whole freakin worlds man. Charlotte bags the Duke of Wellington to be chief, Emily bags Walter Scott. But then like, time goes by, Charlotte leaves them there, playing, puts childish things behind her. Point is, they carried on, her little sisters did, made new realms, went on with their creations. . .

  ‘Right you are,’ says Norman, pulling a pint of the local bitter.

  Yeah our brother did the same to us, they should do, elder brothers. He got his own room, and left his toys in ours. But we went on too. He called our made-up world Gime — like, mimicking ‘Shall we ply our gime?’ in the lazy London tones we had – and our toys were now the Tuss. These names were meant as insults, but they stuck and were worn proudly – you know, like ‘Whig’, ‘Tory – and his Air Force, the Thompsons – well they had no captain now, right, they were out of control, they turned to hard boys from the east of town, menacing cool kids who did things we couldn’t do, stayed out late, had adventures. Gimeworld got wider, there were countries to have wars with, Knotland, Batland!

  ‘Had a fun day in the woods did we,’ a woman asks beside me.

  *

  The ladies walked ahead through the trees. Of the three male creatures shambling in their wake, only I was trying to listen. Jacob mooched along as if asleep, Barry punctuated our sodden progress with the likes of ‘Rain rain, go away’ and ‘Nice weather for ducks’, comments Jacob met with sniffs of nothing and I met with hm or uh-huh or yep or any of the other insuppressible tics that get me through the daylight hours.

  Caroline was the closest to Charlotte and asked her quiet things politely.

  ‘I’m very well,’ she replied, ‘I wag on as usual.’

  The next question I didn’t catch, but it made both Lily and Mimi look round at us with a common smirk, and I heard Charlotte say quite loudly:

  ‘Do I think men are strange?’ and they all laughed at all of us ever, ‘I do indeed, I’ve often thought so,’ and I grinned as widely as I could so she’d say more about us and I’d hear more about us, though she didn’t turn to look. I could hear her plainly each time she nodded towards Caroline to her left, or the girls to her right, but her words were muffled when she looked ahead. Her thoughts on my weaker sex elicited frantic yelling and yaying in accord.

  ‘The mode of bringing them up is strange, they’re not – guarded from temptation. . .’

  This turned Mimi round to wag a finger of blame at me for some reason as our
little guest went on:

  ‘Girls are protected – as if they were something very frail and silly, while boys are turned loose on the world!’

  ‘You getting all this, Max?’

  ‘Their letters are proverbially uninteresting. . .’

  Way harsh! (I gaily protested)

  Lily asked her what she always asks because she’s always homesick:

  ‘London?’ said Miss Bronte, yes and no. I sometimes fancied myself in a dream. . .’

  ‘Yeah tell me about it,’ said Lily, and Charlotte, not knowing the idiom, began to: ‘I’ve been to the theatre, seen Macready in Macbeth. The Crystal Palace is a wonderful sight – I thought more of it the second time than the first, it’s hard work going over it. After some three or four hours you come out broken in bits.’

  ‘That’s like me in all museums,’ said Lily.

  ‘I’ve seen the pictures in the National Gallery. I’ve seen Turner’s paintings and I saw Mr Thackeray.’

  (I plunged forward) What’s Thackeray like, Miss Bronte?

  I’d tested the line between women and men, and for a terrible while our soaking footfall was the earth’s tense heartbeat. I had resigned to being ignored, beyond the pale, when she responded loud and clear without turning, as if it was Caroline who’d asked about William Makepeace Thackeray.

  ‘He wasn’t told who I was, but I saw him looking at me through his spectacles. When we all rose to go down to dinner he just – stepped quietly up and said – Shake hands – so I shook hands.’

  I dropped back in my sodden bliss, she’d spoken words to a question of mine. She added these for her new sisterhood:

  ‘He’s unjust to women, quite unjust.’

  Said Lily Bronzo, ‘I fu – I flippin’ love London,’ and I saw Caroline lean behind and smile gratefully for that small mercy.

  Mimi had halted to light a cigarette, now the forest cover was filtering back the rain, so we three reached her.

  ‘Where we off to Maxwell.’

  Do you honestly think I know that.

  ‘I think you know everything,’ she said through smoke, ‘this cretin thing’s all an act.’

  Jacob stopped with Mimi, so I went on with Barry, stuck with his wheezy breath, watched his big wellies sloshing along at my side. I needed to ask him things but I was trying to hear the women speak, so all I did was look at him once. He beamed right back, his large face a fairground mirror, and, as if fielding my unsaid thought, sang that trench-song to the tune of Auld Lang Syne:

  ‘We’re ’ere because we’re ’ere because we’re ’ere because we’re ’ere. . .’

  (I bloody hollered my next question) CHARLOTTE, MISS BRONTË, sorry Charlotte, Miss Bronte, these are my poetry students, can you tell us how you and your sisters started writing poetry?

  I deftly accelerated in case she was going to answer, with Caroline both waving me forward and pressing me back, measuring the appropriate distance, settling on five yards or so. I could hear she was asking the question herself, properly, mildly, gently, and this elicited an answer.

  ‘Once I was very poetical, when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. . . We’d very early cherished the dream of – one day becoming authors.’

  Yes, yes! You pretended you were men, you were Currer Bell, Ellis Bell, Acton Bell! (I bleated, a teacher, throwing off all dignity.)

  ‘Ding Dong Bell,’ Barry chuckled to himself, putting the red nose on it.

  The earth rolled its eyes, the earth stopped, the earth turned: Speak, Currer Bell. . .

  Charlotte stopped and the women drew up around her. When she resumed the walk she was reading aloud from a pale shred of paper she’d unfolded: ’It is long since we have enjoyed a volume of such genuine poetry as this. Amid the heaps of trash and trumpery which lumber the table of the literary journalist, this small book has come like a ray of sunshine. The Critic. ’

  I nodded in approval at the taste of The Critic’s critic, and Lily asked her:

  ‘D’you read all your reviews then do you cos I’ll so not do that.’

  A short scornful laugh: ‘The Economist...’ she cackled, as if some case was closed. She didn’t need to read this one, she had it off by heart: ‘the literary critic praised the book if written by a man. Pronounced it odious if the work of a woman. . .’

  Lily and Caroline, gleefully appalled, closed in around her as I trod the manful trail of shame. She was folding away the paper: ‘I don’t like my own share of the work. Juvenile productions, crude, rhapsodical. I’ve not written poetry for a long while.’

  ‘Who are your favourites,’ Caroline prompted at her side with a nudge which made Charlotte stare, shocked, whom should we be reading in poetry?’

  She recovered, went on walking and thinking.

  ‘Let it be first-rate,’ she said, ‘Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith. Pope – if you will though I don’t admire him – Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, Southey. I like Southey. Southey was happy at home and made his home happy.’

  I was happy at home (I said softly, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Barry nodding for me gravely) as Charlotte continued,

  ‘Not only loved his wife and children though he was a poet – loved them the better because he was a poet. I like Southey.’

  On we went, all sweetened by her thoughtful words. It was going to be really very dark any minute. I could still make out the silhouettes of Caroline, Charlotte, Lily together. When I glanced behind to see Mimi and Jacob I saw sodden misty woodland, they were gone, had tailed off, called it a day. Now Barry Wilby clicked on his trusty camping torch and night fell.

  *

  Joining me for a drink are you.

  ‘I have one, thank you,’ and she did, the neat smart lady standing at the bar, in the red top with shoulders, she had some kind of pineapple juice, you know you could claim for them, don’t you.’

  What?

  ‘Your toys you bought for your class. You could claim they are teaching materials.’

  (I downed my vodka so another would come) They’re not teaching materials, they’re for my personal use.

  ‘Did they enjoy your jaunt through the local woodland.’

  What.

  ‘Did they enjoy your jaunt through the local woodland.’

  Are you Tina Yeager?

  ‘Yes.’

  From the Academy.

  ‘In the daytime I am.’

  Pleased to meet you (I shook her little hand in its fawn suede glove and Norman brought me my drink) Everyone enjoyed our day. You should have come too.

  ‘I wasn’t invited. No one was invited. Most of your class weren’t invited.’

  It wasn’t a class. It wasn’t a party. It was a jaunt through local woodland.

  ‘Can I ask to what end, in pouring rain in the hours of darkness?’

  You can ask what the hell you like, you have a heavenly face and you’ve no idea. And I’m dreaming, cheers, and there ain’t no place in this cosmos where you are the boss of me.

  She lifted her glass and shook it so the ice spoke.

  ‘Is that right.’

  That’s right, Tina.

  ‘There’s a better pub than this one.’

  *

  Barry advanced with his excellent torch, remaining behind the women but pointing the beam at the undergrowth where they’d have to be walking soon, like some big fat doomed Sir Walter. I lagged behind alone. It seemed the land was descending, but it was curiously drier as if it hadn’t rained here at all. The beam of torchlight bounced and jiggled ahead, a fox went through it, or something did, the trees were ancient dead-men.

  Charlotte stopped in a misty space. She looked to the women on either side, finally turned and looked at we man-monsters behind. The torch-beam shone on the ground – Barry once again surprising me with his manners – so it was too dark to make much of her face. We all just breathed and waited. From the movement of her head and shoulders it seemed she was wondering where the other two had gone. Perhaps this is why she said what she now
says, to those of us still here:

  ‘Don’t desert me.’

  And as we start to cry Of course we won’t, she says ‘One by one, one by one, I watched them fall asleep on my arm.’

  Then she hushes us completely.

  We listen,.then she does it again, as if to hush our breath itself.

  Caroline hisses to Barry to kill the torchlight.

  ‘Si señora.’ Click.

  And were in total darkness.

  No were not in total darkness.

  There’s a light up ahead, a tiny firelight kindling and cracking a hundred yards away in the trees. Five inhalations praise it for being, four breathe out when it seems to be gone, but it’s just that someone’s moving past it. A dark little dwarfish shape went before it, around it, behind it and there it is again. Someone’s made a lonesome fire in the trees.

  And we wait for our visitor to tell us why she brought us.

  *

  Two stools drawn up against the bar, and Tina’s black-stockinged knees press awkwardly on the panels to avoid the touch of mine. She reaches for the menu.

  ‘So did you find anything in your jaunt through local woodland.’

  God I didn’t even know this pub was here (it’s dim and plush and cosy, down a side-road near the station, couples murmuring in booths, we’ve bought red wine and are sat at the bar) no one’s ever mentioned The Coach House.

  ‘It costs too much for students. That’s what I like. What did you go to the woods for?’

  What did I go to the woods for, what did I go to the woods for. . .

  ‘I can claim this on the Academy.’

  What did I go to the woods for. . . Well. Tina. When I was about fourteen, and my brother about twelve I think, we were still playing Gime, our Action Men were giving a rock-concert. Gimeworld had started to mimic the real one, it was being sort of swallowed up. . .

  ‘Are you exceptionally drunk, Mr Maxwell?’

  Being sort of folded back into reality, and they were in mid-song, the Action Men, and the coloured lights were flashing on their faces, when downstairs the doorbell boomed, and soon came the sound of my mum traipsing upstairs to knock on our bedroom door. Cos it was my mates from school, right, and for the first time of nine hundred times they were asking me to come out with them, walk the streets of Welwyn Garden drinking cider under lampposts till we were drunk enough to explain ourselves in depth.