by Glyn Maxwell
But it’s tea and I was England-born. We gather near the Rajah’s sofa, the old men in tailcoats make a fuss, and Jimmy checks we got everything we ordered.
‘Tray bong,’ proclaims Bartholomew, stirring his tea with his pencil.
Slade calls shyly across to the Rajah: ‘Thanks very much for the book, you’re very kind to think of me/ and the Rajah both nods at the courtesy and waves away the compliment. Then he counsels one and all:
‘If you’ve not read Tess of the D’Urbervilles do so.’
‘Hardy’s a marvel,’ Bartholomew says blowing on his tea, ‘but he spoilt The Return of the Native with sins against art and, and, probability. The book’s perverse.’
A voice rings out clearly from the sideboard along the wall, where there’s a tall fair-haired fellow in a long green coat with his back to us, sorting himself some lunch: ‘I heard he was annoyed by my article in Poetry and Drama.’
Jimmy gives me a nudge and whispers: ‘They call that chap the Ambic.’
‘I-ambic,’ the sharp-eared Rajah corrects him loudly.
‘On account of he always meets you same pub same time, right?’ Jimmy nudges Ghost who smokes and smiles in confirmation.
‘Said he was a peasant,’ chuckles the Iambic, turning his long tanned face towards us, then past us towards the congregations on the lawn. I turn to see what he’s seeing because I realize who he is.
‘Under the Greenwood Tree is perfectly charming,’ Bartholomew avers, going back to Hardy, ‘Shakespearean in feeling.’
Slade is sitting beside me with his teacup, a yellow wafer-biscuit half-eaten in the saucer, and returns to our old conversation as if no time had passed: ‘Nobody told me what to read. Don’t think I knew what real poetry was till I read Keats.’
Interesting (I say so he might say more, and I see Ghost turn his handsome face in approval) – Me I started out with Byron (I plough on) well Edward Lear when I was little, but Byron later! (I find it hard not to exclaim every word I say)
‘I, I, galloped through Byron when I’s about fourteen,’ Slade stammers, ‘but – more for the story. . .’
‘I’m deciphering Salammbo,’ Ghost offers, ‘not that it’s difficult reading, but every syllable deserves attention. Flaubert has my vote.’
Since we seem to be voting, the Rajah makes his pronouncement as he rearranges cushions: ‘The best story ever written is Other Kingdom, by Forster – very charming person.’
‘I think Hardy’s a better poet than novelist,’ says Slade quietly.
Bartholomew peers around at us all, adjusts his spectacles and suddenly breaks out into a pleasant grin: ‘Tea-drinking and smoking, with a piano and book-talk!’ Simply sounding the chord of the moment.
‘Room With A View’s very good,’ the Rajah added, ‘Forster, charming person.’
An assortment of biscuits adorns the Rajah’s plate, and he’s perched on the very edge of his sofa, trying to choose where on earth to begin – the shortbread? the Rich Tea, the Royal Scot, the Bourbon? – but the task seems too delightful to complete, and he grins when he looks up and finds me watching him, because he knows I know it is. He frowns at me, chuckles to himself. Simply can’t decide.
if I should die think only this of me
that there’s some corner of a foreign field
that is for ever England
The Iambic saunters past our group, great walking-boots on the green-and-white tiles, to watch the crowds from the window. Jimmy taps me on the knee, gestures to say let’s meet him, and we join him where he watches. He glances at me when Jimmy tells him my first name.
Three-quarters Welsh! (I sort of gasp) and my parents tried to bring us up bilingual in Hertfordshire but no one else spoke Welsh in our town! So – un dau tri pedwar pump chwech!
The Iambic sniffs and sorts in his coat pockets, delves, brings out a pipe: ‘If you can discover a possible Celtic great-grandmother, you’re at once among the chosen.’
Ha! True! We did climb Cader Idris once, on holiday at Barmouth!
He raises his eyebrows, allows this: ‘Remember the proverb: if a man goes up Cader Idris at night, by dawn he’s dead, or mad, or a poet.’
‘This feller’s a poet,’ Jimmy explains, and the Iambic nods politely.
You know the Frosts? (I babble like I do)
He gives a wry smile: ‘They’re rather incalculable.’
Then he draws something out of his other deep pocket, a book, his little worn red copy, ROBERT FROST, MOUNTAIN INTERVAL.
‘Every day I read a sonnet or two.’
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood! (I start and fade, and in the silence I wait to wake up, fall down, die, be born, I see the sun is only cloud-light over hilltops now and the sky’s not blue it’s yellow-pink, and nor is The Road Not Taken a sonnet oh god)
‘Great stuff,’ goes Jimmy, happy to fill space.
‘I’m glad you like Frost,’ the Iambic says simply.
‘Ella Wheeler Wilcox?’ Jimmy wonders, ‘By the left that’s fine stuff!’
‘The most widely-read poet of the day,’ grimly states the Iambic, and Jimmy quotes her with delight: ‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you!’
‘She can’t ever stir an inch beyond what’s being said,’ runs the Iambic’s critical opinion, and Jimmy looks downcast.
I feel sad for my guide, who’s been so kind all day, but the Iambic’s way ahead of me, his hand is clapped on Jimmy’s shoulder: ‘Today’s been perfect. We must sit in a pub or two,’ and all is healed. The Iambic takes in the whole company:
‘Had a strange dream last night. Began with me crouching, with a great fear of something – which I knew to be – dragonish – behind me, about to grip me by the, the nape of the neck. Then someone I knew but couldn’t see – and I don’t know who – bent down and whispered HE is in the orchard! Then he bent and whispered still lower: there IS no orchard. . . ’
The others shiver and murmur approval.
‘This is my copyright,’ stresses the Iambic, drawing tobacco from a pouch.
The Rajah stands tall, he’s stretching, he’s leaving:
‘I once dreamt I was in the gardens of Heaven, walking between great odorous beds of helichrys and asphodel. . . Turning a corner I met the Headmaster of Rugby digging up all the flowers. I hit him on the nose, and asked what he was doing. He said he was planting vegetables for food instead. He began to swell as I gazed. . . he blotted out the sky.’
And soon he was gone, a fond hand-clasp with Ghost, a nod to Slade and Bartholomew, and a murmur to Jimmy and me as he brushes past the Iambic: ‘I leave the muses of England in his keeping. . .’
Slade had trotted back to his easel, we saw him folding away his sketchbooks. Bartholomew was gone too, lowered down the piano lid in silence, his footsteps still echoed down the Pavilion. Ghost went on leafing and frowning through his magazine. But the Iambic had a place to be, informing us briskly ‘I’ve an utterly uncongenial crowd of books to review.’
And soon we saw him walking fast across the gardens, turning a circle once with his arms out as if to say, nonetheless, what a place this is.
that I forgot my friend
and neither saw nor sought him till the end
when I awoke from waters unto men
saying I shall be here some day again
We – had better find Barry, eh?
‘Wossat?’ Jimmy jumps.
To take me home again. I saw them walking that way. There must be something happening out there beyond the lawn.
‘Blimey. All them crowds, where the blinkin’ heck they all gone now?’
I don’t know. Don’t you know?
‘Me? You must be jestin’!’
We readied ourselves to go. I began to rather panic. But without the Rajah and the rest of our odd little reading-circle all sense of company had drained away, so Ghost wasn’t listening to whatever we were doing. I felt I should do something to mark our departure, but all I had was –
All right Wilfred?
<
br /> He turned a page of his magazine and said without looking up again, a propos of what he was reading: ‘I quite see the origin of Theosophy. It’s the same as that of Heaven: desperate desire.’
*
. . .Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried, but my hands were loth and cold.
Let us sleep now. . .
from ‘Strange Meeting’, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
*
Jimmy led me down the tiled colonnade, down some steps on to the lawn, which by now was a cool shadowy blue. There were still some folks about, but those that were were still making their way in the sole direction: to the far end of the great lawn, through the gate and over the crest and on into the twilit fields.
We, we meeting Barry up there are we Jimmy? Barry? Rowena?
‘Howzat,’ my guide said sadly, keeping some thought to himself.
Big Barry, Barry Wilby who brought me here, hes going to take me home –
‘Ah well snag the feller somewhere.’
And on we go in silence.
*
Over known fields with an old friend in dream
I walked, but came sudden to a strange stream.
Its dark waters were bursting out most bright
From a great mountain’s heart into the light.
They ran a short course under the sun, then back
Into a pit they plunged, once more as black
As at their birth; and I stood thinking there
How white, had the day shone on them, they were,
Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hiss
And by the mighty motion of the abyss
I was bemused, that I forgot my friend
And neither saw nor sought him till the end,
When I awoke from waters unto men
Saying: ‘I shall be here some day again/
‘A Dream’, Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
*
There was a great crowd out there in the last of the light. Jimmy suggested we skirt around the crowd to one side, along a line of trees and so we do, passing by young men, young women, shoving and chattering company, I can’t quite see what’s at the centre of what these hundreds – thousands? – have assembled for, but I see most heads are turned one way.
I glance at Jimmy and he’s frowning. I say:
We will find Barry, won’t we Jimmy, I don’t know how I got here, and it is, it’s it’s, my birthday.
‘Your birthday? Gordon Bennett! Put years on me you do.’
What?
‘a-Happy Birthday to a-Yew, a-Happy Birthday to a-Yew — ’
Please don’t do that (But of course he does, and those we’re passing through join in as they always will) Thank you, thanks, yep, ta, – what are they all waiting for, Jimmy?
His long friendly face looks down at me with a grin:
‘Lord knows, lad, but they’d better bloody start soon!’
And as if on cue they do. With a deafening whoosh a black trace of rocket zooms high into the rosy dusk –
‘Gott in Himmel!’ cries Jimmy –
And the whole crowd draws its breath like a child –
*
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a living thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
'Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver – what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe –
Just a little white with the dust.
‘Break Of Day In the Trenches’, Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
*
BANG!
‘Remember, remember, the Fifth of November!’ Jimmy roars in celebration,
It’s not the fifth it’s the seventh, Jim!
Ah well, close enough eh? Happy Returns!’
Red, yellow, green and pink explosions make the sky amazing. Wherever we are it’s Firework Night, and I can glimpse at the glowing heart of this enormous sloping meadow the wooden pyre these people built all day is now staggeringly lit, flames gusting and cowering, wagging and raging.
I scan the crowds for the few I might know here, and see one man watching the fireworks, standing apart by a little tree. I only think it’s Bartholomew because when he tilts his head to look up at all the fabulous detonations, the two tiny lenses of his spectacles go green, go dark, go red, go dark. . .
*
Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two -
Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:
Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went
A noble fool, faithful to his stripes – and ended.
But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
Of line – to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,
Till the politest voice – a finicking accent, said:
‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there’s a hole.’
Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –
‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ There was no hole no way to be seen,
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.
Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –
And thought of music – and swore deep heart’s deep oaths
(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,
Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.
‘The Silent One’, Ivor Gurney (1890-1937)
*
All faces green, all faces amber, the noise is incredible! Jimmy’s hustling me along now and I don’t know what’s the hurry. We have to push the wrong way through the crowds, our backs to the vast bonfire, and I have to watch the sky because it’s red now, red and golden, green and golden, bangs and crackles and screeching and sighing – I stumble and trip because the gradient’s rising, field trip, field trip — Jimmy helps me up and on we go -
Where the fu – where the blazes are we going, Jimmy?
‘Higher up,’ he’s panting, ‘better view, better grub!’
I’m done with strangers for the day, man, it’s my birthday -‘Strangers ain’t done with you!’ he’s laughing -I want to go home, Jimmy!
‘Don’t we blummin’ well all!’
Home to where I’m from, also, also, home to the village, home to where I woke this morning, home to where I work —
‘Blimey, how many ’omes you got,
lad? Don’t be down in the mouth, not long now!’
Bangs and crackles and cracks and showers, all faces pink, white, blue – SURPRISE!!!
*
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
Tliat is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blessed by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds, dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
‘The Soldier’, Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
*
And it’s everyone, of course it is it’s my birthday what did you effing think would happen, young men and women in winter coats and jumpers, with their baked potatoes all swathed in crinkly foil, their mugs of steaming wine and chocolate, cold strangers whose faces turn dear in the glow – turn to Ollie, has to be, yes Iona with her trusty woollen scarf, to Wayne and Roy Ford, to Molly and Jake and Syrie and Blanche and Mimi sodding Bevan, lit sweet faces flickering orange, to Lily and Sami each with a hand kept warm in the other’s coat, to Bella and Kornelia, Peter Grain in his West Ham bobble-hat, there’s Nathan in his mad sunspecs, Caroline in her dufflecoat applauding, there’s Kerri Bedward with six sparklers all dazzling her at once, and Niall and Heath shrieking, stumbling, banging together tankards, Rowena blinking at the galaxy unconvinced from her silver chair, and Barry beaming at me as ever, half-blockhead half-angel, for if’s all gone off as planned, and the fiction lot and the drama lot and the god knows who and the who cares what, they’re all singing Happy Birthday and they know every last damn verse I taught them.
