Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  Then ‘I fucking love this poem,’ he says, glances up defiantly, as if he, in his own way, like Iona in hers, has a sense the place is sacred.

  [Id save a good one for the end

  as if I knew how anything ended

  it would also be quite thankful

  as old walter says be thankful

  and it would touch on all the brilliant themes

  weve already pretty much covered

  and it would choose some pointless detail

  to leave you with so in the pub

  you can say you love that bit at the end

  where he’s got that pointless detail]

  *

  They all smoked in the churchyard, even those who don’t, all sniffed and hugged and yawned in the cold, recounting, retelling, reminiscing themselves free. It was like any group in a churchyard, whether christening, wedding, or funeral, no one wants to be the first to go, the next page of life seemed a bit of a stretch from here. Not a stretch for me – from my spot I could see the crooked chimney of the Cross Keys and my soul was being asked small or large – but a stretch for the broad assembly.

  Caroline was promising anyone who asked her she’d get Niall’s collection copied. ‘For personal use only,’ she stipulated pointlessly each time.

  Gough Slurman, Academy prof, came up with two big takeout coffees, neither of which he gave me: ‘Well read, bro, did him proud,’ as I heard Barry bothering the hipflask-ready Heath where on earth did he get his ideas d’you reckon,’ and Ollie, save the mark, just wanted to know what happens next.

  What do you mean what happens next.

  ‘I mean is class on? Are there one-to-ones? Is there a reading?’

  Well, no, I don’t think so (I was piecing last week together and concluding there’d be nothing) I mean, it was Peter who brought Mr Whitman here, me I’m out of the picture, I don’t have, like, support, you know? I’d’ve done a class on the Brownings for anyone interested, but not now this has happened.

  ‘We need a class,’ was Iona’s plea, we feel like being together, I vote for the Brownings!’

  ‘That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,’ Ollie went forlornly,

  Be together in the pub (I said, more brusquely than intended, I meant let’s all be there) I mean all of us,

  ‘He won’t be in the pub,’ she lamented, meaning Niall, ‘but he would be in our little room.’

  ‘They locked your little room,’ said Mimi, stalking by with Syrie and Jake Polar-Jones on their exit from the scene, we just tried the door. No soul, that lot,’ (and they left not turning round).

  Ollie watched her going too, and his eyes met mine on the way back, ‘Pub it is then,’ he said to me blankly, then softly to Iona: ‘he’ll be there, Mac, he’ll be there.’

  *

  What is it about snow?

  Only a week later, a week, I heard folk say it started snowing then, in the churchyard, on the carvings and the graves like it was Hardy, or The Dead, but it didn’t, it’s fiction, I remember, I was present.

  Does snow spread out in the memory and claim the empty days, like rain does with Mondays, like sunshine does with Saturdays?

  It didn’t snow till later.

  Oh yes it was going to, plainly, the sky was numbly conceding as much, it was lilac-white and hushed and frozen, it was stony, it had no other course, but it didn’t happen yet, we were in the pub when it happened, we didn’t even notice, the green lanterns were lit, there was mulled wine coming, we’d threatened Norman with a riot if he didn’t start mulling it’s December it’s December Norman mull some freakin WINE!!! they all swarmed behind the bar to help him – Roy, Jake, Bella, Lily, Blanche, Syrie, Molly, Mimi – no no! not her, not her!’ he growled – but no one gave a damn what he growled, he didn’t really mean it, he muttered and bore it and tasted and sugared and mulled the dear day away by the gallon.

  *

  O little town of Bethlehem,

  How still we see thee lie!

  Above your deep and dreamless sleep,

  The silent stars go by,

  Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting light,

  The hopes and fears

  Of all the years

  Are met in Thee tonight. . .

  Once in Royal David’s city

  Stood a lowly cattle-shed. . .

  Good King Wenceslas looked out

  On the Feast of Stephen. . .

  Now that’s what I call a jukebox.

  Last days of summer, first days of school, Halloween and Bonfire Night. . . the birth of moi, Remembrance Sunday. . . Thanksgiving, Advent, home by Christmas. . . Here at the threshold, early December, this little crock of silver, is a spell of childish innocence wrenched back from age, fatigue, and the infections of the market. For a handful of hours the old music, old flavours, dark berries, red candles, little gifts, lit windows. . .

  By the middle of the month well be back at our stations, wandering through malls blinking ruefully at children.

  Right now we revere something. Something came again.

  Plus we’d all be gone in a week so we would have our Christmas NOW!

  O tidings of comfort and joy,

  Comfort and joy,

  O tidings of comfort and joy!

  Glor-or-or-or-or-or-or, or-or-or-or-or-or, or-or-or-or-or-orrrrrr-i-AH Hosanna in excelsis!

  Arbitrary, miraculous, implausible, mundane. Badges I collected from the cradle to the what, to the snug at the Cross Keys, with my students who were friends somehow, dear intimate strangers, ever coming and going as the bottles stood and emptied, jokes were told and retold, gossip, rumour cooled to fact.

  In that deafening warm atmosphere, with the lavender sky outside gone dark blue in the length of an in-joke, cheap decorations magicked up in here at staggering time-lapse speed – the gang had begged or borrowed or swiped all the tinsel from Peter at Mrs Gantry’s – I felt once more it was beginning to be over.

  So I tried what had nearly – but never – worked in childhood. Sitting there so aware of the seconds they’d slow down into my hands and I might – I might signal them to stop now, stop it with their passing –

  In the main saloon, standing on a table, Blanche tangled up in hundreds of fairy-lights, seeing me seeing her, softly mouthing Help!

  By the bar Kornelia Nowak primly garlanding Norman with a chain of frosted baubles. . .

  A trio of guys in Santa caps are checking out the jukebox. . .

  ‘Y’alright there?’ Roy Ford is bustling towards me along the red couch.

  Yeah mate, good, just getting through it.

  ‘Yeah you decided on next term yet?’

  I don’t decide on anything, Roy. Got a feeling I’m done here.

  ‘Been thinking of choosing my options for Spring.’

  Aren’t we all. Look, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Roy, how can I put this,

  ‘Go on,’

  Yeah I suppose, like, well. Yes. My question being: where is this.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Where: is this. Like – I mean – in terms of the world, I mean – I don’t –

  ON A DARK DESERT HIGHWAY,

  Oh for fuck’s sake

  ‘Man what happened to the carols?’

  What always happens,

  ‘Mimi says you’ll come back and teach Drama,’

  What?

  ‘You know Mimi, she says you’ll come back and teach Drama in the Spring,’

  I know Mimi, she doesn’t know,

  ‘Lady tells it like she does!’

  Yeah right,

  ‘You being her special subject,’

  What -

  ‘Cheers!’ (he clinks me)

  What did you just say

  ‘How can he teach Drama?’ Molly Dunn demands from the other side of him, ‘when he isn’t even a playwright,’

  ‘He is in fact,’ says Roy as he drinks,

  Yeah I’m also here (say I) if you look, going back a second, Roy, ‘Right,’ says Molly, filli
ng our tin goblets from the mulled wine jug then spilling it all, ‘but he’s not had any hits has he oh bollocks look was that me. . . ’

  Shall I have a hit at Christmas, Molly?

  ‘Yeah you better!’

  Just for you then.

  It’s right about now that the Brownings show up.

  *

  Term-time, autumn-time, Michaelmas, fall, term. . . things that sound absurd make perfect sense near the end of term. Back in September I’d have thought what I first thought about Keats – that some kid had dressed the part, why not dress the part? – but as it happens it was him, John Keats, we met him, and the others were the others, Emily, Gerard, Walt, Sam, John Clare – week in week out they were.

  So when a short dark lady in ringlets, in a black snow-dusted cloak, and a lavishly-bearded gent in a similarly sprinkled fur-collared cape, appeared, politely puzzled, in the blue- and green-lit arch of the doorway, I knew they hadn’t stepped off the side of the Quality Street box – it was obvious who they were. Whatever I’m undergoing it ain’t costume drama.

  What was surprising wasn’t that two poets from the nineteenth century had ambled into our pub – to this event I’ve grown accustomed, what’s a term for but advancing in experience? – it was that I’d been sure the Academy had ended my classes and stopped my Reading Series. I was vaguely packed for home.

  Indeed my first responses to setting eyes on Elizabeth and Robert were two realizations and one plan: Oh christ no one cancelled the Brownings – Crikey look it’s snowing – and Let’s get them some mulled wine.

  The one plan was swiftly accomplished, by Bella and Blanche and Ollie, the second realization sent a few students out for a while to be dizzy wet kids in wonderland, and the first was later explained away at the bar, by one of Santa’s sloshed elves in a mini-skirt:

  ‘They didn’t tell you? Unbelievable!’ Kerri blurted, ‘they didn’t tell you, Dean Jeff said cos Niall had, you know, gone away and you were sad, he said they’d let you finish your term right, your little series, but it was probably cos you all kicked up a stink last week but he couldn’t say that was why, could he, so he said for the other reason, the Niall reason but in a way he should have told you your vagabonds were still coming, not made it a surprise, and what was the other thing oh yeah, they offered Peter his job back but he said no thanks he likes the toy-shop, and the other other thing was could you maybe, once you’ve done your class next week, Glyn, with one n, not two n’s, note, and it’s not me saying, it’s them lot right, could you maybe sort of, not-me-saying-them-saying, sort of never like come back?’

  *

  Lily, Roy, Molly, Mimi, Blanche, Caroline

  R. Browning E. B. Browning

  Ollie, Iona, Heath, moi, Kornelia, Bella

  ‘. . .yet I find some good

  In earths green herbs, and streams that bubble up

  Clear from the darkling ground, – content until

  I sit with angels before better food:

  Dear Christ! when Thy new vintage fills my cup,

  This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.’

  We applauded, we mooed, we mumbled approbation as Elizabeth beamed and bowed her head in return, by god we did our best. We none of us thought they’d be here, we’d been off on the warm sweet wine all afternoon, yuletide fever had turned the Keys to kindergarten, we’d done no preparation, we’d quit on the day, we were plastered, we had headaches!

  And apart from such a crew of wassailing eejits having suddenly to become one mannerly sober audience, I also had to take some kind of lead, me, make it look like it was planned this way.

  Easy enough to announce we’d do the reading in here. The village hall would be arctic, here it was vivid and cheery and thronged. Easy to get my class into the snug – no Samira, who’d been gone since Niallstock, no Peter, who was at the shop dealing with the surge of seasonal demand, no Barry of course, he’d gone out on his rounds in the snow – but the others were here, add to that Bella, Blanche and Kornelia, Mimi, Roy and Molly, we made a dozen, and the rest kept the noise down in the main saloon. Heath had done what he does to the jukebox.

  We got the Brownings warm and dry, draped their magnificent cloaks near the heaters, and settled them down in the two best armchairs, so they could face one another from their ends of the table, with my rabble ranged along the sides.

  I welcomed them and wondered if they might read us a little?

  ‘I don’t mind, indeed,’ said Elizabeth, and her soft voice silenced all, what d’you say, Robert?’

  He spread his arms out, raised his eyebrows, as if inviting her to begin.

  Having blushed and acceded, and read ‘Past and Future’ while we all in secret pulled ourselves together, she then read four of her Sonnets from a cloth-bound book, very steadily and clearly. I guessed she knew them off by heart and was trying not to look at him.

  ‘I love thee with the love I seemed to lose

  With my lost Saints, – I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after my death.

  ‘Didn’t mean to strike a tragic chord!’ she laughed, and seemed ready to finish. But as the applause peaked Robert gestured for more.

  ‘I’ve done, Robert!’ she said and sent the gesture back.

  He considered and sighed, meanwhile she turned to her nearest neighbours, saying with a grin, ‘Wouldn’t do to vex him!’

  But he still seemed disinclined to read aloud, and only consented to after Caroline, who’d been gone all afternoon, and whom I saw now had been in tears throughout Elizabeth’s poems, murmured well-nigh inaudibly:

  ‘Theyears at the spring. . . ’

  Robert heard her words. He glanced at her like I had, must have seen what shone from her cheek. He leaned forward, swallowed, touched a knuckle to his lips, and rendered this in a loud melodious bass:

  ‘The year’s at the spring,

  And day’s at the morn;

  Morning’s at seven;

  The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

  The lark’s on the wing;

  The snail’s on the thorn;

  God’s in His heaven —

  All’s right with the world.’

  That done, he sat back inside the sigh emitted by many, but as the clapping came I felt it marked the end of the readings. I stood up with my drink, harvested one more round of applause for the famous couple, and said, carefully sounding sober,

  ‘We are all like, the beginners here, the beginners as it goes, in the poetry, art, and we would like to know from you, either of you perhaps, we would like, to know how you, you, began,’ and I sat. ‘How you began in it. The poetry.’

  ‘Good speech Max,’ I heard murmured close by.

  Elizabeth looked down at her cloth-bound book and Robert made that gesture towards her again: you tell, you.

  She had one hand on her book, she put the other to her brow which had lined in thought, so I took it upon myself to remind her:

  ‘You do not have to do any thing,’ I said, ‘Mrs Browning, er Barrett Browning, Barrett, miss, if you don’t choose to, it won’t be held against you etc, I mean, officer, whatever, up to you, both you, both of you.’

  I ceased, I desisted, Time disavowed me with a cough and on we went. Elizabeth Barrett Browning drew a deep breath, sat back, took us in, and began:

  ‘I grew up in the country. No – social opportunities. Had my heart in books and poetry. It was a lonely life, books and dreams were what I lived in. Time passed and passed. . . When my illness came,’

  Robert’s mouth opened slightly, audibly, and his hand was raised as if to dissuade her from more, but she caught his eye, paused to sip water, shook her head softly and went on:

  ‘When my illness came I seemed to – stand at the edge of the world, with all done, no prospect of ever passing the threshold of one room again,’

  ‘Ba,’ he said softly, but without compulsion.

  �
��Seen no human nature, beheld no – great mountain or river. Nothing in fact. I’d not read Shakespeare and it was too late d’you understand?’

  Robert seemed about to try harder to stop her, but now the questions came gently from my group, bless them, and I saw him sigh, try the beer we’d chosen for him, seem to come to terms with the candour of his wife’s talk, the way the thing was going. . .

  ‘Mrs Browning when you were young,’ (fair Isabella) who inspired you?’

  ‘I was precocious!’ cried the lady, inspired right there by having a smile to smile at, used to make rhymes over my bread and milk. . . At nine I wrote an epic! – what I called an epic. We used to act in the nursery.’

  ‘Yeah we did that,’ Molly confirmed to her goblet.

  ‘Were your parents encouraging?’ asked Caroline.

  ‘Not really,’ said Molly,

  ‘Not you,’ said Caroline, ‘for heaven’s sake.’

  Elizabeth laughed at a memory:

  ‘Papa used to say – Don’t read Gibbons history, it’s not a proper book. Don’t read Tom Jones – and none of the books on this side! So I was very obedient – never touched the books on that side. Only read Tom Paine, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft. Which were not on that side!’

  The women near her chortled with her, some approved her choices. In this pause the dynamic subtly changed. Bella, Blanche, Kornelia, Caroline, all leaned in closer, and when Robert began answering the same question, he directed it to his own neighbours – Ollie, Roy, Iona, Lily, Heath – as if, for her benefit, he preferred the talk divided, the limelight parted, the tension somehow calmed that way. Sitting midway down the table I could choose to listen to either poet, and, noticing that Elizabeth seemed more comfortable with the women, I turned to begin with Robert. Mimi, opposite me, looked the other way. Molly Dunn scrutinized her hands and made occasional observations.

  ‘I was allowed to live my own life,’ Robert was now responding, ‘choose my own course in it. All sorts of books, in a well-stocked, very – miscellaneous library.’

  Any major influences? (I pushed in, and he pondered)

  ‘My parents’ taste for whatever was – highest and best,’ he admitted, ‘but I found out for myself many forgotten fields, which proved the richest pastures. . . So far as preference of a style is concerned. . . I believe mine was the same first as last. I can’t name any author who exclusively influenced me. . .’