Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  ‘You were playing with dolls at fourteen.’

  So I had this momentous choice. Go on with the game in the World of Gime, or abandon it forever and start being a teenager. . .

  ‘The suspense.’

  I know. I abandoned it forever. And I guess once I’d gone my brother did too, in fact I know he did, he’s fifty and I’m fifty-two, like a deck of cards but you know. . . we left our Supergroup still playing that song.

  ‘This place shuts at two by the way.’

  Nothing happened in the woods.

  ‘Why did you go then, help me out here.’

  Because I’m dreaming. We saw nothing. We found our way home. I say home. I found my way here.

  *

  Charlotte stands alone, the rain seethes in the branches.

  And then she says quite suddenly: ‘Papa bought Branwell some soldiers at Leeds. When Papa came home it was night and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door. . .’

  Our eyes are becoming accustomed, there are two small children doing something by the fire in the circling tiger light, one is darker, one fairer, they are working on something, there are things strewn all around them. Thrilled to recall the morning, Charlotte cries: ‘Emily and I jumped out of bed and I snatched up one and exclaimed This is the Duke of ‘Wellington! Emily likewise took one and said it should be hers. When Annie came down she took one also. Mine was the prettiest, perfect in every part.. .’

  The children are playing with hundreds of toys, toy soldiers, castles, palaces, galleons, cliffs, by the light of their thundering fire.

  ‘Emily’s was a grave-looking fellow, we called him Gravey. Anne’s was a queer little thing – very much like herself – he was called Waiting Boy. Branwell chose Bonaparte.’

  Charlotte’s standing ahead of us, some ten yards off, clasping the trunk of a tree like a friend, silhouetted, moving only to the effort of these words. I glance at Caroline, with Lily backed against her, the elder has her arms around the shivering younger, the fireglows on their faces. Right behind me Barry shines his torch below his big chin, grinning like a scary pumpkin, I say maybe not do that?

  I want to ask a question, but I sense it will bring an end to this. Then I ask the damn thing anyway, for the rotten race of men.

  Where is your brother, ma’am?

  (It doesn’t bring an end, it brings this after a silence. . .)

  ‘Nothing remains. . . errors and sufferings. Life had no happiness for him.’

  There’s happiness here, look (and for the first time she quarter-turns, I tremble to have caused it.)

  ‘My sister would never go into society,’ she says, and it’s the darker child who’s in her eyeline, she’d say What’s the use? Charlotte will bring it all home to me. . . ’

  She tenderly detaches the tree from her embrace and advances on the flickering glade. When she’s very close she kneels down. Behind her, we all fall slowly earthwards too, as if cut down by a spell for even venturing into earshot.

  The fairer, slighter girl is curled up on the leafy earth with a book, writing intricately in it, as if listing all the dignitaries she’s set in ranks before her, turning a page, sighing, hard at work in her delight.

  Whereas the dark girl in her dirty dress just stares at us.

  Maybe not at us, maybe just stares. I hear the rustling of paper, and, again, Charlotte has drawn something from her cape. As she reads it out, the tall dark child peers forward and frowns, as if trying to make out birdsongs. Charlotte drives on anyway: ’There are passages in Wuthering Heights of which any novelist, past or present, might be proud. The thinking-out of some of these pages is’ – her small voice clots and thickens – ‘the masterpiece of a poet.’

  She seems to sag there, folding the paper, weak with pride.

  The child just pouts, I think she’s missing her game.

  ‘The Palladium,’ Charlotte mutters to us, ’late justice, too late.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ sings the child, turning away from the darkness and back to look at all that’s lit by the fire. She points at what the fairer girl’s been doing, assembling several dignitaries she’s still noting and underlining.

  ‘The Gondals,’ Emily states, and Annie looks up from her book.

  Emily solemnly beholds the scene: ‘The Emperors and Empresses of Gondal preparing to depart. For the coronation, which will be on the twelfth of July.’

  Now Annie rises in rapture, her work curated, and explains into the dark woods to anybody out there: ‘Emily’s engaged in writing Emperor Julius’s life. I’m engaged in the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s. She’s read some of it.’

  Charlotte quietly asks them something I don’t catch, and as if in answer they both start going about the clearing, checking, picking up things, pondering and placing.

  ‘Emily and I have a great deal of work to do,’ says Annie, ‘We’ve not yet finished our Gondal chronicles,’ at which Emily tops her – ‘There’s no open rupture as yet – all the princes and princesses are at the Palace of Instruction – ’ (and we spot the tiny figures assembled on a green plinth as Annie joins her, twin giantesses towering over the Palace walls): ‘The young sovereigns with their brothers and sisters. . .’ (The idea of it almost makes them resume, as if there were no ghostly sister out there to report to – let alone strangers – then Annie hurries to the left side of the clearing, to some fallen kings on a pile of dead leaves) ‘The Unique Society were wrecked on a desert island returning from Gaaldine. They’re still there,’ (she gestures sadly to their sorry plight) ‘but we’ve not played them much yet. I’ve many schemes in my head.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Emily says again, having trod on a troop of horsemen, ‘oh dear, oh dear. . .’

  ‘She’s writing some poetry too,’ says Annie, and Emily hides her face in the game.

  Annie contemplates this for a moment, then lowers herself to her knees beside her sister, brushing leaves from her back, then gathers the figures she wants in her hands and says strongly and deliberately, without looking up again, ‘Take courage, Charlotte, take courage. I’ve the same faults I had.’

  At which she joined in where they’d got to in the game. Charlotte rose, turned quickly and walked away right through us, not through us, slipped between us, I heard her ragged breathing do its best. The instant our eyes followed her all was extinguished, the woods went dark, there was no fire, no glow, no light in a clearing, and when Barry clicked his torch back on there was no one to follow either. What with his venture-scout know-how and Caroline Jellicoe’s common sense we soon found our way to a road again, saw the lamplights of the village a half-mile off down the dale and did the one thing left to do. All together now, Lily and Barry and Jelly and me, to the tune of Auld Lang Syne:

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

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

  It was as if nothing had happened, which made it easy to say so.

  *

  We wove a web in childhood,

  A web of sunny air;

  We dug a spring in infancy

  Of water pure and fair;

  We sowed in youth a mustard seed,

  We cut an almond rod;

  We are now grown up to riper age –

  Are they withered in the sod?

  Are they blighted, failed and faded,

  Are they mouldered back to clay?

  For life is darkly shaded;

  And its joys fleet fast away. . .

  Are you done?

  Uh-huh.

  Are you teaching that?’

  I dunno, are you learning it?

  ‘I mean teaching it to the students. It doesn’t sound very. Anyway.’

  I wasn’t teaching that. I know it, it’s Charlotte Bronte remembering her childhood.

  ‘Is everything you teach sort of old?

  Everything I’ve learned is.

  ‘Not a mover with t
he times, then.’

  A shaker with the times.

  She finished signing for the drinks, and we left The Coach House so the owner Claude could get his beauty sleep. The night was foggy and damp, the lane was dark and narrow, far away at its end I could see the lamplight of the village green, four lanterns haloed misty bronze. Claude’s footsteps clacked away on the cobblestones. I asked if she wanted to come back to my digs and her mouth fell pretty much Open.

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’

  I’ll pretend I didn’t say it.

  ‘You know, you can’t just – do what you’re doing. The students find you funny, but you can’t do what you’re doing. The meadow last week, the woods, the,’

  Knowing this is all a dream and so on,

  ‘Well. Yes. Case in point.’

  I’m not affiliated Tina.

  ‘You can be. If you want to be. Make an appointment. I’ll give you the form.’

  I’ve got the form, it’s mauve.

  ‘Fill it in then. Come to the office on Monday.’

  I only exist on Thursdays.

  ‘Oh ha-ha. How about we start fresh next week?’

  Does Thursday work?

  ‘See Kerri. I’m going this way. You’re going that way. That way. No. Go that way. Good. Left right left right, there, you can do it. . .’

  *

  There was a limp sodden envelope on the mat inside my door. It said H. BANNEN on the outside in smudged blue ink. I assumed Heath was quitting the class so in the middle of the night and fair lost to reality the phantoms hear me say Sod off then why don’t you. Then a rustling of typed paper, and they say Wrong again, the phantoms, they say Wrong again, professor.

  *

  From J. J. Bones to the King of Somewhere

  Looks like I’m grinning at you. I look open-eyed.

  The day’s dirt sticks between my ribs, my foot’s a foot-long stave of toes. They can do what they like with me. I bend anywhichway. My fists are cups that hold jack shit. My pelvis is a heart-shape with a stake through it aka my backbone. You got crown hair beard boots & tunic breeches bracelets sword scabbard you hold your hand out making your point must be you’re king of somewhere cos there’s nothing to be done with you, can’t move or change, you just snap back into shit you were born into. I’m watching from inside you cos you’re made of the selfsame crap I’m made of.

  Heath Bannen. (Figurine assignment. Prof Maxwell. Week 4)

  * * *

  Week Five – October 24th

  Sometimes I’m telling this to my daughter as a child. Sometimes I’m telling it to my folks in middle age. Sometimes I’m speaking to total strangers in a queue, sometimes to you on a balcony, and on a rosy blaring morning I tell it to my three chums outside Double History, peering down the corridor, guys, guys, no listen. . .

  I found myself in this place where I didn’t know a soul. But they were all in their ways familiar and they wanted to know what I knew. I didn’t think I knew jack self but somehow sitting there at a great big table all sorts of matters came to mind in the middle of the afternoon and the thing made total sense? Then in the evenings it grew weird and wild. Great amazing writers came, and I tried to do them honour, guys, no listen, listen. . .

  I crashed out at night and when I woke up it seemed a day, a week, a month, a year and a life had all gone by together lately, hand in hand. A village, town, city, country, island, realm, an empire, lately, arm in arm together, over the hill and away they went. I lit candles when I wrote. I had ideas for classes I forgot when I taught classes. There was this local boozer quite a lot was wrong with. I met a short blonde woman I couldn’t help disliking. And students were everywhere. And it was always Thursday. . . Don’t know where the other days went. You?

  You tell me in your own time.

  I loved my little room. I loved my view from here. Loved to be far away yonder and spot my place from there: those three lit windows slanting in the roof, no one’s in right now. Loved my walk to breakfast even while it rained like hell.

  I didn’t know who was running things, I didn’t know why the weather changed, I didn’t know the way home. I suspected I might be home. I didn’t know where anything led, where the trains and buses came from, let alone why they never came. I could never get a signal.

  I’d go to the woods for books sometimes, that was never a wasted journey. I’d go to the edge of the lagoon, gaze out at the little wooded island.

  I couldn’t make sense of Time at all.

  So I nested in its care and right here is where you’ll find me.

  I believe I’ll be home for Christmas.

  I believe in Father Christmas but he doesn’t need to call on me when the time comes, he already got me everything I hoped for. Either I’ve been good, or I’ve been bad and it didn’t matter. Either way he’s coming, probably dressed like me.

  O Wedding-Guest! This soul hath been

  Alone on a wide wide sea:

  So lonely ’twas, that God himself

  Scarce seemed there to be. . .

  Alfie, mum and dad, ladies and gentlemen; pals from Double History, golden lads and girls, chimney-sweepers, Father Christmas, Wedding-Guest – I am trying to tell you all a most fantastical story. Only nothing ever comes that’s any different from my life.

  *

  My one-to-ones that morning were more couple-therapy than litcrit. Caroline had decided there’d be no more poems about her ex-husband Ronald. She unduffled her coat and dumped the sheaf down on our usual brunch table at the Saddlers and said that was that, that’s the collection, take it or leave it.

  I didn’t feel like picking over line-breaks with this facet of Caroline, and was damn sure she didn’t, so I asked what order the collection was in and she said ‘Order? chronological.’

  I said free them from that. What he did to you is man-shaped. He hurts She at zero, leaves She to heal by numbers. Don’t respond by the clock. Make your response in your own shape. I’m healed already, mother-lover, feel free to sing along. So order them by form. You have these fractured free-verse poems, lines floating over the page in a mood – or you have full rhymes in quatrains, or you have all sorts in-between.

  ‘I’m getting better at form, they rather creak a bit.’

  Let them. Creakings bones, creaking’s stretching, creaking’s honest. The accomplished formless poem falls dead silent, oiled with choice. Nothing’s straining: we’re supposed to. But Form is Time singing about itself. Stretching, creaking, singing. Its ABCDEFG is music – the notes that play seconds-minutes-hours-days-weeks-months-years are all jiving on the staves.

  Start with the best rhymed songs you have. Not the oldest or the newest but the best. What do you mean by it? I can now sing what happened, because time has (a) absorbed the shock and (b) made me better at this.

  Then do some free ones. What do you mean by them? Here’s how I was once hurt, though you know I’m not hurt now (see pages 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 13). Then gradually introduce more form, metre, rhyme. What do you mean by these? Song became more dear to me than anything you left behind. The effect of your leaving was song. Song and I say stay away. Song and I say don’t come back.

  ‘Who says I want him back? God no!’

  Make the poems scoff like that. Music liberates you from the clock, the calendar, the schedule, Caroline. Rhyme, form, metre, it’s the language reaching out to you: we’ve got this, we’ve done this, we were there before, we can help. They even say it when they can’t, which makes them just like you.

  Free-verse is always now. History went by and smashed your window on the way. Fragments bleed and bleeding’s of the moment. Fine, you want to show the hurt, the harm. Just don’t – timetable it. Don’t answer He’s question. Don’t balance He’s equation. Can we talk about the woods now?

  I got nowhere with that. She just kept saying how much she liked their poems, the Yorkshire girls.’ Look I do ask all the questions you would, I try to understand – but my students don’t think anything’s strange,
so they’re not the ones to ask.

  She asked me round for shepherd’s pie at her digs. I said I can do Monday and she said the hell you can.

  ‘We both know that,’ she said, duffling up her coat and leaving the table, ‘I’m not an idiot.’

  Ollie didn’t want to talk about poems at all. Except to say he’d stopped writing them to Mimi – ‘It was a good call, man, but it’s not working for either of us. She hangs with her drama crowd, she says they’re all gay, they don’t look gay.’

  Gay’s not a thing you look, Ollie.

  ‘I know, and it’s great and stuff, but you know. . . now that Jake Polar-Jones turns out to be. . . you know.’

  Turns out to be what. The white-haired guy?

  ‘Hot, hot, they’re like a double-act, everyone wants in on them.’ That guy never says a word, what the hell’s hot about him?

  ‘He was the Chocalux Man.’

  Again?

  ‘The Chocalux Man, turns out that was JPJ. That’s why he dyed his hair. So no one here would clock him.’

  JPJ? I want a drink.

  ‘It’s twenty past eleven.’

  A drink, man, not a time-check.

  We walked each other to the Keys, where I left him with Iona, who was pouring green tea and sharing poems with Niall Prester. She’d be bright and motherly, and Niall’s melancholy air would give Ollie some cheering up to do, he always rose to that kind of thing and he went right to it, yo K-man and so on.

  Then, just as I was bearing my small-or-large-large pinot grigio from the bar Samira swept in surprisingly late and flustered.

  ‘Lillian Bronzo said to say in a note she sent that she’s unwell at the moment and I can take her place for tutorial today.’ She pointed to one of the quiet booths, where we now spend a peculiar half-hour on stanza-breaks and vulpine behaviour.

  In Samira’s poem ‘Vixen’ the speaker – ‘it isn’t me, obviously – appears to dream about a fox. It strikes me as outright sexual -‘I’ve used alliteration, look’ – not to say unsettlingly, seat-shiftingly sexy – ‘it’s also about poetry, like for example The Thought-Fox by Hughes’ – and I share an e-cig with her, the green tip passing to and fro like a thing we shan’t mention, as I arrow and star and underline her words like the best confessor ever. The one time I catch her eyes I almost reel at the shock and joy in them. It’s like Lily’s staring out as well. Then she grabs her poem and leaves looking weirdly proud, with not a word to her classmates.