by Glyn Maxwell
It’s moth-like stars,’ said Wayne, and you a poetry professor.’
When I looked up in the jovial aftermath of that, there was Mimi sitting at the loud end in her suede black jacket, with Roy Ford and JPJ, stirring a Bloody Mary and it’s suddenly gone quite quiet.
‘It’s a wind-up, right?’ says Bella, as per normal.’
‘Straight up, Bell.’
‘What’s going on?’ demands Lily from the other end of the table and Peter Grain says slowly, frowning to absorb it, ‘She’s gone. Left town.’
‘Who’s gone?’
‘Yeager. This morning. She resigned. Apparently.’
I look at Mimi and she looks away, telling the nearest person ‘The words witch and ding-dong spring to mind,’ then she asks Claude for a menu.
*
To the tune of Brahms’s Lullaby. . .
On a day when I lay where I used to forever
And the voices I was watering were in flower as I rose
Then I in the fields with the clouds in my fingers
Could sing till the sun was a road on the sea
*
It couldn’t have gone through.
‘It did.’
I didn’t do the form, Kerri.
(She’s sorting through a drawer) ‘It passed with flying colours! we all thought you’d be pleased.’
Who the hell is we all? You mean Mike?
‘What happened to your big walking thing? Someone said you were in the Coach House having a wild shindig!’
I was, are you saying someone made my application for me?
‘Well you signed the lilac form for me, remember, and you did seem all like keen. So Mike said let’s just fill in the rest from his CV on file.’
Did he. And when did Mike do that?
‘Last week. And it went through on Monday.’
I’ve been on the staff three days. Did Tina know that three days ago?
‘Well not unless Mike told her.’
Not unless Mike told her. And where is Mike?
‘He was here this morning, he and Tina had a meet at nine.’
And then she -
‘Then she resigned. Still can’t believe it. Jeff’s Interim Dean.’
What?
‘Jeff Oloroso. Interim Dean. It’s not my fault, frankly, that you’re never here on Mondays. Oh and Mike’s gone on that course now.’
*
I only went there to argue against a fate accomplished. I thought if I made a good enough case then her few things would still be at my flat, or she would, but she wasn’t and they weren’t. There was no note, neither there nor at the office. Kerri wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me where she’d gone, the map just fades into words and space and symbols, ‘she said she had to feed her goldfish.’
*
IN THE WEST it is oh write it yourself, christ. I scrunched the amber page up and tossed it at the bin and missed.
‘Good shot,’ called the landlord of the Ferry Boat Tavern.
I put that right, and he bought me a cider and I bought him one too. No one else was there. It was the middle of the afternoon, time had stopped for a breather. Out through the window were the grey waters of the lagoon, the short-lived crests of white to and fro, and out there the island, a dark tuft of evergreens.
The landlord of the Ferry Boat Tavern – where West was meant to have been on the Walk, and now was, if a few hours prematurely – did some landlord things with glasses and grubby towels and then stood behind the bar, near the till, not leaning, slouching, swaying, just standing, doing nothing at all.
Excuse me (I said) are we square, Louis, did I – I paid up, right?
He smiled. He stood there, upright, hands down by his sides, a blank, doing nothing. No one ever stands like that.
Are you – expecting someone?
Louis smiled and waved and his gesture took in all the empty room.
Are you – expecting someone? – here? – at the – the Tavern?
Then he mouthed the name of the pub right back at me: F – B – T–
At the Ferry – Boat – Tavern, did there used to be a –
Then he rolled his eyes: who knows?
(There’s a ferry –) There’s a ferry is there a ferry, there’s a ferry-man?
And Louis sighed, like he’d been hoarding breath, and fell against the bar delighted.
*
You know Barry I should fail you, shouldn’t I?
‘I was failed long ago, senor, I’m only here on sufferance!’
He rowed me on the lake with his back to the dark island, the water was rougher than it looked from the shore, the spray sprayed me which was heavenly, and he told me the day’s story.
‘Master Nathan from the Saddlers said the Irish gentleman arrived early, and he asked about the sights to see, and Master Nathan said go see the lagoon, go sail to the wooded island, and he sent me a note by little McCloud to get down there quick-quick, sort the boat and so on, I ain’t used this boat since August, out of shape!’
There’s an August, is there.
‘You and your funny comments! So I rowed the gentleman, and two other parties in addition, little McCloud and my right royal highness, to show the feller round and that, and I said I’d come for ’em all by six as I believe he has a performance?’
What.
‘The Irish feller.’
Whatever. I’ve resigned, the ghosts can do what the hell they please.
‘Ooh ghosts never do that, ghosts try to please us!’
Well you’d know, Mr Wilby.
‘You don’t half stink of booze you do. Not far now. Heave-ho!’
*
Barry tied up the bobbing boat on an old threadbare jetty, helped me out and off we trod down the muddy path through the shivering pines. He had his trusty torch at the ready, but enough light was filtering down through the high branches from a mild hour in the weather. When the path ceased to curve around to the right we spied the lanterns of the hut down a narrow way which brightened as we gained the clearing.
Ten paces took us over churned ground to the wooden cabin, and through the front window we saw the company at tea, at the moment they saw us:
Rowena sat on a wooden throne-like seat at the far edge of a round table – had Barry carried her that whole way? – to her right a slender girl of ten or twelve with straight long silvery hair was playing with a clockwork ballerina, and on her left was seated the man of the hour, striking, grey and stately in middle-age, sipping at a willow-pattern teacup. He glanced at us through the foggy window, set down his tea as Barry led me towards the door, and soon we made a sociable five in the room, our chair-legs planted in the lumpy brown old carpet. A bar-heater blazed from a corner, there was a camp-bed under a frosted porthole, and there were old books everywhere, the place reeked like ancient book itself, like the place that scent will always take you.
The poet had been telling them something and having paused he resumed, while Rowena poured us tea in the blue teacups, ‘One troop of the creatures carried berries in their hands,’ he was saying matter-of-factly, my cousin saw them very plainly.’
‘Fairies. . .’ breathed little McCloud in awe, and Yeats put a finger to his lips.
She wondered, ‘What did they write on the sand again?’
He leaned forward and lowered his voice: ‘Be careful. Do not seek to know too much about us...’ nodding at her amazement as he sat back. I expected him to look away from the girl now, smile in kindly jest at one of the adults, but he did no such thing.
Rowena coughed, ‘We’ve been speaking of childhood days,’ and passed the child the platter of cakes, meaning her to move it on to Barry and me – though McCloud started carefully choosing one instead.
Oh yes have you? (I rather blurted, still accustoming to the tone of it)
‘I’m having childhood days,’ McCloud mumbled with her mouth full, to Yeats’s deep nod of approval, and Rowena moved things on in every way:
‘Earliest memories, Mr Yeats? (You
pass them round, Fiona),’
The big plate orbited his way and he pondered and selected:
‘Fragmentary, isolated, as though one remembered vaguely some – some early day of the Seven Days. . .’ he peeled the wrapping off his cake then raised his hand as if he’d just seen something, ‘I. . . remember sitting on somebody’s knee, looking out of a window at a, a wall, covered with cracked plaster,’ and his eyes were bright seeing only that, ‘Sligo,’ he noted.
McCloud fumbled her toy with a squeal and Rowena hushed her.
‘I’m. . . sitting on the ground looking at a, a, a mastless toy boat, with the paint scratched, and I, I say to myself – in great melancholy,’ he smiled and proffered this to McCloud who again was listening open-mouthed, ‘I say in great melancholy: It is further away than it used to be...’
We sat back, liking that, and I tried again, more calmly:
Early books, d’you remember, sir, first poems or stories?
‘We’re poets too, you see,’ confided Barry, wanna know where you get your ideas!’
No we don’t I mean yes we do I mean no, oh god -‘We’re only beginners, though, teacherman and me.’
Yes, sir (I said directly to Yeats) we are, we are beginners, do you remember when you were that too?
‘He’ll pinch ’em all, I warn you!’ Barry teased and Rowena stilled him very gently.
‘My father read to me,’ Yeats said upon reflection, when I was – eight or nine. Between Sligo and Rosses Point there’s a, a tongue of land, covered with coarse grass that runs out into the sea – or the mud, according to the state of the tide.’ Now he leaned and whispered to McCloud, as if for her ears only, ‘It’s where dead horses are buried. . . ’ and the child gaped and stared at Rowena who did it right back at her like a looking-glass – like a young girl old -and Yeats carried on: ‘sitting there, my father read me The Lays of Ancient Rome. First poetry that moved me.’
‘Sligo...’ Barry re-echoed to his own satisfaction.
‘There used to be two dogs there,’ said Yeats, bringing this tenderly back to McCloud, ‘one smooth-haired, one curly-haired. I used to follow them all day long.’
‘Like Stanley and Jep!’ the girl reminded Rowena who shushed her in agreement as Yeats went on, ‘I knew all their occupations, when they hunted for rats and when they went to the rabbit warren, they taught me to dream maybe. Since then I follow my thoughts as I followed the two dogs – the smooth and the curly – wherever they lead me!’
‘Which one was smooth and which one was curly?’ wondered McCloud, and he wrinkled with a smile of who knows? ‘the very feel of Sligo earth puts me in good spirits.’
My mouth was full of lemon cake but I went for it anyway:
D’you remember the very first thing you ever wrote?
He sat back, spreading out to muse on this, and McCloud suddenly jumped in her chair: ‘Ugh – ants!’
We saw three pioneers setting out in file for a cone of spilt sugar.
Yeats said in the warm voice he was using with the child, ‘What religion do the ants have? They must have some notion of the making of the world?’
Rowena gasped theatrically to show McCloud the gravity of the question. It did seem quite to take the little girl’s mind off disgust and deep into theodicy, as she peered at the tiny things.
McCloud thus preoccupied, Yeats politely remembered what I’d asked him.
‘My father suggested I should write a story. In London I wrote Dhoya — a fantastic tale of the heroic age. He said he meant a story with real people! and I began John Sherman, putting into it my memory of Sligo – my longing for it.’
He paused and I readied my breath for my next of three next questions, but he recollected more: ‘While writing it I was going along the Strand – ’
As in the seashore, right,
‘No no the Strand, The Strand, passing a shop window where there was a – a little ball, kept dancing by a jet of water, I – I remembered waters about Sligo – ’
So right this was prose rather than -
‘That shaped itself into The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’
I choked and spluttered my cake to hear that, and Rowena sent the girl to fetch me some water, she also quoted softly:
‘I shall arise, and go now, and go to Innisfree.. .’
The poet grinned and made the best of the here-we-go-again: ‘I grow a little jealous of the Lake Isle,’ he sighed, ‘puts the noses of all my other children out of joint!’
Is it a real place (I asked him, knowing it was)
‘In Lough Gill,’
‘Sligo!’ Barry sang.
‘Sligo. A little rocky island with a legended past. In my story I make one of the characters, whenever he’s in trouble, long to go away and live alone on that island. Old – daydream of my own.’
Does this island have a name (I aimed this at Rowena)
‘Presumably,’ she said.
And, unsettled by her brusque reply, thrown back on my romantic sorrow and oceanically homesick, I asked William Butler Yeats what he was up to these days.
He looked at me and sniffed, a little dismissive, as if this wouldn’t be interesting for the child, but said: ‘I spend my days correcting proofs. Just finished the first volume – all my lyric poetry. I’m – I’m greatly astonished at myself.’
How so, sir?
‘I keep saying – what man is this? What man is this who says the same thing in so many different ways?’
Oh that’s harsh on yourself!
‘My first denunciation of old age I made before I was twenty. The same denunciation comes in the last pages of the book.’
Early and late, it’s a totally different style, sir!
‘Style’s – almost unconscious. I know what I’ve tried to do.’
Yes. Yes? .. .Mr Yeats?
He breathed deeply, framed it: ‘Tried to make the language of poetry coincide with – with passionate, normal speech. To write in whatever language comes most naturally when we soliloquize – as I do all day long – on the events of our own lives – or any lives where we can see ourselves for a moment. It was a long time before I’d made a language to my liking.’
McCloud dropped her toy with a cry again but Rowena let her be.
‘Because I need a – a passionate syntax for passionate subject-matter – I compel myself to accept those – traditional meters that developed with the language.’
‘Sonnets and the like,’ said Barry glumly, Yeats was helping himself to milk:
‘Pound, Lawrence – wrote admirable free verse – I couldn’t. I’d lose myself, become joyless. . .’
‘The sugar, Wilby,’ said Rowena.
‘If I wrote of personal love or sorrow in free verse – or in any rhythm that, left it unchanged— I’d be full of self-contempt, because of my egotism and, and indiscretion – foresee the boredom of my reader.’ He stirred his tea. ‘I must choose a traditional stanza,’
But wouldn’t that, that kind of, colloquial thing, with traditional stanzas kind of, wouldn’t that be, like, really original?
He said quietly, knocking his spoon on the cup: ‘Talk to me of originality and I’ll turn on you with rage. I’m a crowd, I’m a lonely man, I’m nothing. Ancient salt is best packing.’
And there was a salt edge to the air. Then he gave a short laugh, recalling something —
‘Once when I was in delirium from pneumonia I dictated a letter to George Moore, telling him to eat salt. Symbol of eternity. The delirium passed, I had no memory of that letter. . .’
He shrugged it off and began to stand up, as Rowena pointed out through the door to a small decrepit hut on the far side of the clearing. He finished the thought as he went out, ‘I must have meant what I now mean.’
When he’d gone, McCloud looked across to me and said stolidly ‘he has arised now, and gone to Innisfree,’ which set me off coughing with laughter, Barry hastily correcting her, ‘I think you mean the bathroom!’
I had quotes at the ready too:
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Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. . .
Rowena had something better: ‘Go on, Fiona, say it now.’
‘He’ll come back, I don’t wanna.’
‘Say it quickly, you’ve time, Fiona’s learned one of the poems, what’s it called Fiona.’
‘The poem is entitled. . . Girl’s Song, by W. B. Yeats. Him!’ she hissed, looking warily at the door in case he was returning but the coast was clear, so she clattered down from her chair and stood beside it. She took a deep crackly breath, looked afraid but proved word-perfect, though she wasn’t keen on line-break and the punctuations were all her own:
‘I went out alone to sing a song or two. My fancy on a man and you know who. Another came in sight that on a stick relied to hold himself upright. I sat and cried and that was all my song. When everything is told, saw I an old man young? or young man old.’
Rowena and Wilby and Maxwell applauded, and so did the author, who came clapping back inside, bowed, stooping to shake her little hand like a good king in exile, and told us as we settled back down:
‘Crazy Jane is more or less founded on an old woman who lives in a little cottage, near Gort. She loves her flower-garden – and has an amazing power of audacious speech.’
Wait Crazy Jane is a real person?
He adjusted his wonky chair and chuckled, an old man young: ‘One of her great performances is a description of how the meanness of a Gort shopkeeper’s wife – over the price of a glass of porter — made her so despair of the human race that she got drunk,’
‘Oh lordy!’ cried Barry, but Yeats didn’t mean just drunk, he put one hand on Barry’s broad shoulder, raised the other like an orator, and spoke gravely, comprehensively, to one and all:
‘The incidents of that drunkenness are of. . . an epic magnificence.’
*
Well what, well this. When you’re spat out by time find the timeless things, the writing you love, the place you always meant to go, the complexities of children, the simplicities of wisdom. Find north afresh, begin again. I would spend the night on the island.
Yeats didn’t know who I was, so it didn’t strike him as strange when I told Barry I was staying, there’s a heater, there’s a camp-bed, and I never struck Barry as anything but a puzzle passing through. He offered to row back later in case I changed my mind, but I didn’t think I would, so he promised me he’d be back again at ten tomorrow morning. Rowena had showed me some little snacks in the cupboards, and a star-chart, and a dream-catcher.
