THE TICKET INSPECTOR

 

The Ticket Inspector

“Tickets please,” the inspector said out loud, “thank you madam, change at Kings Cross,” he added.

“Tickets please,” he said again as he walked slowly through the train carriage. “Thank you sir, change at Basingstoke.”

He heard a voice say: “when do we arrive in London?”

“I’ll check,” he said.

There was a pause as he put his left hand into his blazer pocket and pulled out a timetable. “thirteen o-two hours,” he replied remembering to say the 24-hour clock. “Thank you,” the voice said.

‘Looks like a businessman dressed like that’ the ticket inspector thought to himself.

He picked up the handset which links to the train’s public address system and spoke into it: “Good afternoon,” he said, “We will shortly be arriving in London.”

As he began to talk he felt a tugging on his forearm.

“Come along Mr Arnold,” the nurse said, “it’s time for bed now.”

Michael Sams

MONOCHROME DAYS

Monochrome Days

In my salad days

When I was fresh and new, everything was black and white.

We listened to Dan Dare, or the Black Museum,

Black and white pictures formed in our heads.

In times of the wireless,

It gave much to an atmosphere.

Black and White shoes whilst walking in snow,

An absolute delight with our black and white dog.

A black and white cat, curled sleeping by a black hearth.

A black and white newspaper lay folded on a black table.

Black and White Minstrels

Performed on the wireless.

Around a black-lead range, we’d huddle for comfort,

Flaming wicks from white candles lit up the gloom.

Spiralling wisps of black smoke, a smell of candle-wax,

A burned match, turned to charcoal, lay in an ashtray.

Black and white photographs

On mantelshelf and walls.

In freezing days of winter, white covered all,

While black and white skeletal trees stood tall.

In howling winds, a black crone’s finger beckoned,

Clawed black bones reached out to grab us.

A sound of creaking branches

Made us feel haunted.

Schooldays of blackboards with white chalk writing,

White rulers and erasers, black ink in inkwells.

A black piano-stool where Miss Black used to sit

To play black and white keys on a black piano.

When the sky became black at night,

It was full of shiny white holes.

In my salad days when I was fresh and new,

Black and white birds would visit my garden.

My whole world was painted in black and white,

When I close my eyes, I’m back in monochrome heaven.

Josie Smith

IN MY DREAMS

In My Dreams

A flowing river

sparkling and clean.

Not a dry ditch

unfit to be seen.

Arias of birdsong

to sing me on my way,

as I sail upon the water

to a perfect day.

New life in abundance

vibrant and strong.

Wind in the trees

rustling a lullaby song.

Happy and free

no care to weigh me down.

I would smile and sing

and never wear a frown.

A spirit I am

conducting nature’s choir,

my Cathedral a river

filled with living fire.

Water will wash me

and take away a thirst.

I’ll never be last again,

I’ll always be first.

Josie Smith

WHO AM I?

Who am I?

Running criss-cross over land,

sometimes fast sometimes slow,

I am always close at hand,

without me life means nothing, you know.

I am clear blood, sustenance to life,

no prejudice or malice I bear,

trust me, I’ll please your wife,

give her food, and clean garments to wear.

Home I am to millions,

life of all forms within me share,

know me as a minion,

I’ll quench a thirst, because I care.

I sometimes form a blanket covering,

fall from mountains, lie in basins on earth,

sometimes I’m a cotton-wool smothering,

exciting little children in playful mirth.

And all the beautiful and the pure,

even the wild flowers along the trail,

the hillside may become obscure,

as I form a wedding veil.

I am the trickle that sparkles bright,

Ice-blue my crown, or grey and cruel,

I will shimmer in the warm sunlight,

clothed in a Queen’s garments and jewels.

Once an object a small child hurled,

splashing around in tears that are mine,

a blue ribbon that wraps around the world,

my highlights sparkle, glimmer and shine.

I will always attend their christenings,

blessed when sitting upon their brow,

I will be there, light and glistening,

I was there then and I am still there now.

Josie

THE BUS STOP

The Bus Stop

 

Not the ideal place for a bus stop, you’d think.  I mean, it’s alright during the daytime but on dark winter nights it can be seriously creepy with all those yew trees rustling away and the wind sending its dreary sighs into every corner of the cemetery.

Tomorrow night I shall have my little car back from the garage and I can settle down into its welcoming warmth before it takes me home.  I won’t ever have to come anywhere near this dreadful place again.

I glance at my watch.

 “Oh it’s no good doing that, love.”

The voice is friendly, but I hadn’t realised there was someone sitting just a yard or so away from me.  I turn towards her but it’s difficult to see.  There’s little moonlight and, this being a rural road, only the occasional rather reluctant street light.

“No. the bus should have been here at ten past but it never is.  It’ll come eventually though.”

“Oh, you live round here, do you?  You know this place?”

There’s a pause while she considers, then, chuckling, says, “Well not live, exactly.  But I spend a lot of time here.  After all, this is where all my friends are.”

She has a gentle voice and I instinctively begin to warm to her, to think how good it might be actually to be counted among her friends.

And so we chat and I learn about her late husband, her children and other relatives.  We reminisce about places where we’ve both spent time and find ourselves swapping recipes and ideas from our favourite books.  And I’m gratified when she says,  “Oh that’s a good idea” or “I must remember that.”

And we have a few laughs of course.

There must have been sad moments in her life, surely, but she doesn’t seem to remember those.  So I try to recall some of the fun things that have happened to me, mostly when the children were small, and proud moments like Sophie’s graduation and Luke’s promotion to head prefect.  I know there are things I should be getting on with this evening but it’s strange how these seem to be less and less important as we reminisce.

I’ve actually forgotten all about the bus, but suddenly there’s its steady growl as it climbs the hill, getting louder and louder.  I’m glad, of course that I’ll be able to see my new friend at last in the headlights but, strangely, when the bus responds to my insistent wave and stops, I have a strange premonition, a feeling of dread.

I turn and, as expected, she isn’t there.

I wave tentatively at the gradually fading forest and think how strange it is that the night somehow seems a little colder, a little less friendly.  And then I  know  for certain I’m alone.

Will I come back?  I don’t think so.

But I’m so sad that I didn’t think to ask her name.

Anne Hill

  

INTERMEZZO

Intermezzo

No breath of air to break the wave…

The sea is quiet tonight. Slow gentle ripples, one unhurriedly following the other to trickle over the sand. The moon is up, light spread evenly like this high tide over the shallow beach, to coat the rooftops of the huddled houses. It’s not cold, but he draws his collar up for comfort. He cannot sleep, probably too late now to wake anybody to let him in. A breeze jingles the rigging of the lobster boat, stirs the fresh stink left by the last tide’s catch. They’ll be coming soon to go out on this one. A dog ceases its barking. He feels glad, imagines its tail wagging and the whimper as the door opens at last, hopes it is not cursed by its owner.

He longs for peace, for the buzzing in his brain to be quieted. He looks up at his bedroom window. A candle is burning behind the thin curtain. Half an hour ago, or less, or more, he can’t tell, the flickering light moved and a grotesque shadow grew and faded, returned, sank down. Then all was still again. It must be near 2 o’clock by now.

Around the harbour entrance the curving wall looms above where he stands, solid, a curled arm to cradle them, keep them safe against storms. But not this one. It’s inside, slapping against the side of his head, beating in his brain, foaming wind-whipped spume over his attempts to keep calm, think things through. He shivers, his throat taut and dry, a heavy sense of dread holding him there, keeping watch.

At least she’s safe and warm.

How could I do that to her? Oh my God, let her live, please God, I beg You, please! It’s my fault, my most grievous fault. Punish me, but spare her! He’s thrown across the seat by a violent lurch, bangs his head against the window frame. He feels no pain as he pulls himself upright, his bitter laughter rocking him in contrary motion to the swaying of the frame that holds him, suspended over grinding wheels, alone, the only consolation, alone, as thin warm moisture trickles through his fingers. He’ll have a bruise there too in the morning. Poetic justice.

He rummages in his coat pocket with his free hand, finds a handkerchief, smaller than usual, to staunch the bleeding. The small enclosed space is suddenly perfumed with the sharp yet sweet savour of lavender. How did that get there? Then the memory startles him out of self-pity. He saw her through his tears, practical as always, open her reticule, take out her handkerchief, put it in his hand that involuntarily reached out to take it, her steady gaze holding him, calming him. Did he thank her?

A breeze rises, plays with his hair. A transient breeze…. How welcome is each gentle air…..

Now the lines come back to him, how they’d laughed the other evening, over how to pronounce the strange title - Giaour. He’d tried to pronounce each syllable, stumbling over the vowels. She’d made them smooth, a single modulated sound, French. It was the first time anyone had made him laugh, since … he couldn’t remember when. The serious, quiet one. The one who’d taken control, the one they looked to for what to do.

Anne, Anne, what is to be done next? The brother, the married one with the hysterical wife. And even his brother officer, who he’d seen in command so much at sea, always in control, looked to her, with a strange pleading look, at the quiet one who talked poetry with him.

He couldn’t remember the lines. He’d wanted to impress her. That understanding smile. Of course, they come back to him now. He recites them, to the soft slow strum of the waves:

Make glad the heart that hails the sight

And lend to loneliness delight.

There mildly dimpling, Ocean’s cheek

Reflects the tints of many a peak

Caught by the laughing tides that lave

These Edens of the eastern wave….

He wonders whether they will meet again, so he can say them to her properly.

Across the beach, beyond the closed up bathing machines, the church clock strikes from somewhere hidden up the hill, through the darkness, three steady strikes over the whispering water. He stirs himself. His legs are stiff and heavy. Did he fall asleep standing? The light in the window looks fainter now. He must walk to keep warm.

What happened, exactly?

It was all so sudden. One moment they were talking, about nothing in particular, he can’t remember through the embarrassment, the awkwardness he still felt, a grown man, talking to a stranger, especially a girl, who seemed somewhere else, just giving polite stock answers to his attempts at conversation, bored with him probably, waiting for the walk to be over. Then the soft thud and the scream and the shouting and the girl, what’s her name?, she was fainting in his arms! Luckily Miss Elliott was standing by her, they held her up together. Brought her to with smelling salts the older sensible woman had at hand, as if prepared for any emergency like this.

The bleeding has stopped. Just a scratch. There’s half the handkerchief unbloodied. He can see its whiteness in the gloom. It’s lucky there’s a full moon tonight. They are passing a churchyard. The graves seem to be standing up, the dead waiting to be released on the last day. No, don’t think of that. Not now, of all times. He holds the handkerchief close to his nose, inhales deeply on the fading aroma of lavender, wanting to be soothed, a female soft hand cool on his brow.

He’s standing by the steps now, at the same spot where it happened. Yesterday morning. A blurred lifetime ago. The other girl, the one playing up to Wentworth, had fallen somehow. He didn’t see. No time to ask. Left her sister with Miss Elliott and the others. He just found himself running, running as if for his life, fearing already it was too late to save hers. The way everybody else around seemed to be standing still, staring at him open-mouthed.

The smooth material of her cloak sleeve slipping through his fingers. She must have twisted, just missed him. He knew, just as it happened, it was wrong. A second later he knew whose fault it was. To let a girl take over! Why did he let her? Fool! What would any of his men think? The look Harville gave him when they came on the scene. Mrs H took over. Thank God he married a nurse. Another strong woman, like his sister, like Anne, practical. No nonsense.

Crewkerne. Time to change horses, stretch the legs. The clatter of the hooves and rumbling wheels resound from the sleeping walls of the inn. He jumps down into the dark. The lamp light shows the tear in the knee of his breeches. He didn’t notice earlier. It must have happened when he came down onto the pavement. He remembers the impact, the sharp pain in his knee.

Swaying lanterns. A yawning groom. A dog rushes out, barking. Sharp words from his driver and mate. They want some grog, a bite to eat before pushing off again. He prefers to stomp about in the yard. Wishes he could take charge, get on. Too much sitting, cramped, being bounced around. How much longer?

He is glad there is nobody to talk to, he can fret in silence. They were silent earlier that evening, still shocked, on the outward journey back to Uppercross, which seemed shorter than when they had ventured on this trip a couple of days ago. Whose idea was that? Was it Musgrove’s bossy wife? The one who’d overruled his plan for Anne to stay behind and take care of the poor girl and probably useless brother too? At least he can rely on the Harvilles, and Benwick will be around to help out.

No breath of air to break the wave…. Break the blue crystal of the sea. It looks black now. He has climbed the stairs she fell from. Stands looking out into the night sky. The moon has gone behind a cloud. He can see a light in a boat, perhaps the lobster boat moored near the Harvilles’ house, which he can make out along the jetty. Her bedroom is on the far side, so no light from there. He feels something hard in the depths of his greatcoat, under his shirt. The locket.

This is the first night he hasn’t removed it before going to bed, to kiss it, say goodnight to his beloved Fanny. She seems more distant now, her face indistinct. How many months now since she died? He remembers Wentworth more clearly than her, breaking the news to him, holding him steady while he sobbed, having made the journey from Plymouth to where he was berthed in Portsmouth, travelling day and night, rowing a boat out to the Grappler; he’d taken leave of absence to stay with him, not like a senior officer, but the brother he never had. And tonight, where is he? Staying over after breaking the news to the parents? How will they have taken it? No one better to break it to them.

A slap of water against the sea-wall. It brings him back to yesterday morning. It was the wind, bothering the ladies clutching their bonnets, their long coats and dresses blown up. They’d gone down the stairs to the Lower Cobb, one at a time, he was in front, got down first, followed by the other girl, then Anne, the other couple behind, Wentworth and Louisa last. He remembers calling out: Watch Your Step. It’s steep. Take care! He might as well have saved his breath.

And now this girl is in his bed. Strange thought that. He’s remembered her name, though. Louisa. Poetical name. He hears her light merry laughter, how she teases Wentworth, makes him seem younger. He puts the locket back, unkissed.

The horses are slowing. Could this be the last climb?

He’ll have to stay in the inn till morning light. Maybe have a nap and freshen up before going over to report to the Harvilles and Musgrove. Pray God there’s no news waiting at the inn. If anybody is still up, other than the stable-lad coming out to help put the chaise and four horses to bed. His eyes smart again as the shame returns, like a recurring wave of nausea. How he let himself be persuaded, persuaded by a teenage girl, against his better judgement, for her to jump down each step into his arms, like she would when crossing stiles back in Uppercross, those carefree days on shore leave, no responsibilities, just enjoy her falling into his strength, her innocent laughter. A child laughing.

Like when he startled Anne one day when the little 2 year-old, Charles’ younger son, was playing with her, playing on her. She was on her knees, caring for the older boy, who was lying on a low sofa, recuperating from a fall from a tree that had caused a slipped collar bone. These Musgroves! So accident-prone! There was someone else in the room, another man, a young curate who seemed not at all pleased to see him come to pay a visit, rather curt, buried himself in the newspaper. The toddler wouldn’t get off her back. She ordered, entreated, insisted, but he wouldn’t get off till she had to push him, then he chuckled, great game, jumped up and onto her back again. She became angry. He had not seen her like that before, not when she was younger, about the age of Louisa and Henrietta, when she had jilted him. Eight years had passed since then, when he had gone to sea, to the war, gone away from her and their dream of sharing a life together. His self-confidence had been bruised. He had been angry with her for meekly complying with her snobbish, vain father’s judgement that he was socially inferior to the Elliotts. She was to blame. She could have left her family, struck out with him, like his sister, now married to an Admiral whom she had had no qualms in joining on his voyages, in his victories. Now he was rich too, like them. Eligible. A good war. He had made his fortune as he said he would. On his own merits, not because of what he had been born to. But here he was, holding the little boy up in the air, throwing him, catching him with squeals of delight and cries of “Do it again! Do it again!” While she remained on her knees, looking up at him, and smiling. How he longs now to see that smile again.

But it is Louisa he should be thinking of, Louisa, who thrilled him when she jumped into his arms from the tops of stiles on their family walks across the fields from Uppercross. Who jumped once too often when he thought the game was over, heard her call, turned to see she’d gone back up the steps to surprise him. And now? What now? Will she recover? If not, he has ruined a young woman’s life, her prospects. And her family’s happiness. He knows he’s not in love with her, or Henrietta. He feels his age, his failed responsibility. He must not see her again. It would upset her too much. Leave her be, in quiet. Let her recover with her brother and sister-in-law. Nothing he can do but add to their distress.

And Anne? Has he made another, even fatal mistake there? He suddenly recalls the well-dressed young man who made way for them the other morning, at the top of another flight of stairs from the beach , stared at her, saw her quiet beauty and vigour he had not noticed till that moment when she smiled thankyou and he was startled by a pang of jealousy. And there was something about him staying at the same inn, even distantly related, another of the Elliott clan, perhaps favoured by her father.

He shakes himself, angry again. He is overtired, needs sleep. How long ago since he was last in bed? Anne’s face comes into his mind again as the chaise judders over a junction of ruts, and turns to go down the long slope to Lyme. Cottages are coming into view and across their rooftops a darker expanse stretches into the night, the ocean. But he does not notice it, absorbed in the image that will not go away, Anne, asleep, a strand of hair lingering on her shoulder, in bed beside him.

There is a rapture on the lonely shore.

There is society where none intrudes.

By the deep sea, and music in its roar

Wide awake now, alert, he has never stayed out like this on a night before, not on land. A light wind has risen, ruffling the sea. He walks more briskly along the top of the Cobb, hears the approach of the horses and carriage, a man’s voice calling out to them to slow down. Who can be coming here at this time of night? And he’s running again, catches up with them at the innyard’s entrance, and yes, it is the same chaise that took the young women and Wentworth away, and here he is again, back already, getting down, stretching himself…. In the lamplight, with voices calling, they meet, James Benwick running into the other’s outstretched arms.

Before entering the inn, they sense the offshore wind.

“Still coming from the south-east.”

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll on…”

“I’m hungry. Let’s go in”

And the night remains, and the waves lap on the shore, murmuring.

Eric Williams

11-12 July 2020

• With apologies to Lord Byron, Jane Austen, and fellow-lovers of Persuasion

FAMILIARITY

FAMILIARITY

He woke, but didn’t open his eyes. Sleep was something so long and hard to find that you didn’t let it go easily and quickly. Nonetheless, he let his mind free to investigate and establish his situation. To his left there was a sensation of warmth, and an upward curve of the quilt not to be explained otherwise. His ears told him that there was a sound of level breathing. He assessed his needs.

Deliberately and consciously, with minimal superfluous movement, he eased himself from under the quilt and swung his legs out, over the side of the bed and down towards the floor. They were precise, segmented motions, the way a crane on a building-site delivers a pallet of bricks or a load of already mixed cement where they are wanted. At the same time as his legs moved down, the quilt slid back on to the bed as a formless, inanimate mass, which no longer retained the shape of his former presence, and his upper body, released, rose up, twisting and turning, but steadied and supported by his hands on the edge of the bed. As a manoeuvre in space the whole thing had a sense of co-ordination and balance which resembled a gymnastic exercise.

However, it was interrupted, before its smooth conclusion in his standing upright beside the bed, by a pause. His hands were placed palm-down on the mattress, but his fingers, extending further, had encountered the cold roundness of a metal bed-frame.

That’s the bed we had in Madeira, he thought, years and years ago, when there were thunderstorms every afternoon, and to start with we avoided them, made sure we could shelter somewhere with a beer, and watch the rain splash down and jump up again, and then walked back with the ground steaming around us and froglets hopping in and out of the puddles, but then – then – we let ourselves get wet, drenched, soaking, so the water joined us together, as if we had no clothes on at all, and we ran back to the hotel, dripping through the foyer, leaving a flood up the stairs, oh, the maids must have hated us! And then we were in our room, and our clothes were gone, but the water was still on our skins, and it had grown as warm as were, and it joined us together again, and nothing could have separated us, not even the noise that wretched bed made, all the rest of the afternoon and most of the night!

The interrupted movement continued, his feet expecting the welcome shock of cold marble in a warm climate – but what they encountered was something different, smooth in one way, but not in another, and of itself neither warm nor cold.

The hours I spent sanding those boards! he thought. And the knots stuck up, and the cracks let the draughts through, and wherever I stopped and started afresh I made a great gouge like some glacial valley, and the varnish was so shiny that the rugs always slipped, and then there were those three boards on the landing that creaked like Beethoven's Eroica, and always woke Freddie up, and when he started Jessica started, and after a couple of hours of that, when there was peace and quiet at last, and we were sneaking back to bed, one of us forgot about the boards, and it all began again!

He was about to open his eyes, to avoid a squeaky board or a treacherous rug, but as he turned to his left, and brought his right foot round, the surface he felt beneath it changed. Not stone. Not wood. Nothing natural.

It’s that hotel, he thought, at the conference, plastic, all of it, even the little cups for the drinks, too many drinks, too often, and disposable, all of it, all of us – no wonder people clung to one another –

That was when he opened his eyes, because he wanted to see where he really was, even if it was pitch-dark in the room – she could never abide the least bit of light. His feet told him. The carpet was soft, and warm. He wriggled his toes in it. It wasn’t grass. It wasn’t sand. But it gave him comfort, which was what he needed on his way to the lavatory. The cistern wasn’t some piece of exotic and antiquated plumbing, nor something cast-iron and rusting above his head, nor a button on a cupboard, but a familiar low-level one he could support himself on with one hand while he did what he had come for.

Meanwhile, in the solitary darkness, her back arched, her legs moved, her lips formed shapes that might have been words, and breath puffed in and out between them. She had a sense of absence, of incompleteness. But there had been absences before, and she had coped. She knew she had a world inside her, if ever she needed to explore it.

There was a disturbance, a movement of air, a shifting of weight on the mattress, a suppressed grunt, a shuffling, and the sense of a space being filled. Such small things gave a sense of presence. Some people, she supposed, thought they were all that mattered. Little signs, involuntary indications, hairs in the wash-hand-basin, the cap left off the tooth-paste tube. Reassuring and irritating at the same time. She smiled to herself, and was surprised at the movement of her facial muscles. Habit, she thought, as she re-asserted her grip on the quilt. How hard it can become to tell the difference between habit and choice. How hard to know which one you really want.

There they lay, side by side in the darkness, keeping one another company, as sleep slid over them, now deeper, now shallower, like a tide coming in and going out, rolling them together, rolling them apart, until, eventually, one day, when time had passed, they would, in the right weather, become what they looked like now: two mounds beneath a covering of white.

Frome, 10.45-12.45, 05.vii.2020

GYPSY GROVE

GYPSY GROVE

Not what you would expect. It runs at the back of the houses, and used to be lined with trees – but trees grow too tall, or else not at all, or push over a wall, and so they have to be removed and only scrub grows back. There are, of course, old sepia photographs to substantiate my fantasies, which grew out of what I really experienced fifty years ago, when, to my surprise, I found Gypsy Grove taking me tranquilly and directly from St James Road to Shirley High Street. There was a bit of rubbish, and some graffiti, but hey, it was the seventies, and the Shah was still in power and had to be brought down by people writing things on walls in Southampton. Sometimes, the writing on the wall was in Persian. Around that time, I learnt that if you could peel an apple so carefully that the peel remained whole and formed one single piece it would spell out the name of your future spouse. I was never quite sure if I was destined to marry The Shah of Iran or Down With.

What fascinated me about Gypsy Grove was not the name – though it would have been good to see a vardo parked somewhere along it, and a hobbled horse cropping the grass – but the way it sneaked straight through between all the houses, which had been built from the 1880s to the 1950s in various estates and developments, each laid out with curves and crescents and cul-de-sacs, creating a ground-plan that might have been the envy of a Renaissance expert in fortifications, like Leonardo da Vinci, whose skill at that kind of thing, designed to fool besiegers and make direct frontal assaults impossibly dangerous, made him more attractive to your average Italian prince than his ability at anatomical drawing or aeronautical invention. In other words, it was easy to get lost, following what you thought was a straight line, but wasn’t, because the road had a dead end, and when you retraced your steps to take the next side road you found there was a bend in it that had you facing the wrong way.

That was and is the thing about Southampton: there are paths through it that take you places you don’t expect to go, alleys you never anticipated that lead straight from the dead end of one street to the dead end of another one. They conduct you past garden fences, over a stream whose existence you wouldn’t guess, except for the faintest whisper of water and a wisp of mist late on a summer night, because the air above the stream is cooler, and then they let you out somewhere quite different. Southampton has been dropped on to a pattern from the past, covering it but not effacing it.

Some of it may come from the days when it was all prime farmland – which it must have been, and still is, to judge from the tenacity with which plants of all kinds force their way up through the asphalt and out of the cracks between the paving slabs. Some of it may be relics of the parks associated with the big houses and grounds that spread north inland from the town and port, to accommodate successful merchants and associated trades – gone now, leaving their names on the streets and roads that lead away from The Avenue into the developments of the late nineteenth century, which commemorate the heroes and heroism of their times, Alma Road, Gordon Avenue, Kitchener, Khartoum, Omdurman, Livingstone…

But what determines the shape of Southampton are its rivers. To begin with, there are the two which define the central triangle of settlement: Itchen to the east, Test to the West.

Itchen, if you like, is the local one, because it rises near Cheriton, flows north to Alresford to fill a lake covered with waterfowl, then turns left and fills watercress beds before making its leisurely way past Avington House where Charles II took all kinds of pleasure, then through a fine but decayed system of water-meadows to Winchester, where it turns south and turns a mill, and keeps the roots of the cathedral moist, and waves reeds and bulrushes at the back of the College and sustains an obliging path that lets you walk all the way to Southampton, as if you were a mediaeval pilgrim, who might even have claimed the Wayfarers Dole at St Cross, on the last leg of your journey home from a visit to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury, to take ship for foreign parts.

Test seems to come from further away, and to be more purposeful than Itchen, striving ever southward, set on reaching the sea. It is a solitary stream, flowing largely through the grounds of the rich, rarely past homely back gardens, debouching finally into reed beds that are hospitable only to waterfowl and marsh-dwellers. A road roars across it, looking down on the many-arched old bridge, the diving-board for tombstoners. Once south of that, it ceases to be a river and turns into an arm of the sea, its shore available for exploitation.

Once, if you left Southampton Central on the Down side, you found yourself on the beach; now, you have to cross a busy, more or less four-lane road to reach the ragbag of architecturally offensive consumer units on reclaimed land, some of which was reclaimed from the sea, and some from the Pirelli factory. None of the socially interesting suggestions for the use of that suddenly available space so near the centre of the town ever came to anything.

But from the road that runs along it, where once the waves washed and the mud stank, you can see The Walls, which rise impressively high above you. With the lack of forethought which characterises so much of government policy, to the present day and beyond, they were only built after the French raid of 1338, which sent much of the town up in flames. Before that, the major danger was perceived as coming from the rest of England, rather than overseas. Norman merchants’ houses, which probably doubled as warehouses and stood immediately on the quay, had doors and windows blocked with stones and were thus incorporated more or less overnight into the fortifications. Through West Gate, Henry V and his men marched on to West Quay to embark for France in a temporarily successful attempt to make good his claim to the throne of at least part of that disparate region, many areas of which continued to belong to England, in various ways, for a good few years more.

What interests me is the sudden disparity in height. Southampton is on a long peninsula between the two rivers, poking its sharp tongue out at the sea, which calls itself Southampton Water, and that peninsula slopes down quite gradually towards its slightly vulgar end. But every now and then, there are sharp and unexpected drops. One, for example, is the swoop of Bevois Valley, named after Bevis of Hamton, who slew the giant Ascupart in some romance or other. This particular big dipper is a thrill for cyclists going towards town, and a torment to them coming back, and probably derives from a stream coming off the main north-south ridge of the peninsula, which is The Avenue, or possibly from a landslip of some kind. Hard to tell, when so much of what might be the flood-plain is covered with buildings.

Covering interesting areas with nondescript buildings is a habit of Southampton, in which it was aided by the Luftwaffe, who enabled the redevelopment of a large area of the oldest part of the town, south of the West Gate, as a buddleia-speckled lorry-park, including a couple of Norman churches that were sentimentally preserved as roofless ruins, looking like decommissioned bus-shelters. The demolition of a considerable number of Victorian terraces, filled with small and interesting junk-shops, which lay over the duly excavated Saxon settlement of Hamwih, largest port and trading entrepôt in Europe in the 7^th century, culminated, not in the creation of a Visitor Centre on the model of the Yorvik Experience, but in a forest of traffic-lights and an asphalt-covered road-interchange that was in the running for Most Confusing Junction In Europe.

I have tried not to stray across either Dark Water, and wish to remain on The Land Between the Two Rivers, but I have to mention the Itchen Bridge, because it illustrates the same strange discrepancy of levels that haunts me in this city. Once upon a time, the road from the east came down a slope to cross the Itchen, and arrived at a Floating Bridge, which one might call a Chain Ferry. It was pulled to and fro by chains on drums, and left the channel free for boats of all sizes to go upriver or down-river, as they wished. L.S. Lowry portrayed it, in his inimitable fashion, when he came to visit a lady-friend in the city, and his version hangs in Southampton City Art Gallery. But it constituted a bottle-neck, and so a bridge was built, high above the water, taking traffic to what was once a lively part of town, by the old dock-gates, where, if you look, you can find Terminus Station, from the days when the next stage after the railway was the sea, and, if you look even harder, The Old Bowling Green, that claims to be from the thirteenth century, even before Geoffrey Chaucer’s father was here. Of course, to reach ground level after the bridge, or to reach the bridge from the earth, traffic has to whizz round a tight-curved helter-skelter on full lock in low gear with foot down. And the bridge attracts its share of tragedies in the making.

When I lived in Southampton, I taught at the University, and had most to do with that part of the town – but even though I walked from home to work, I still found unexpected surprises of a physical kind, which, on reflection, seemed to me, if not metaphysical, then metaphorical. It wasn’t just the Big Dipper of Church Lane, or the unexpected cut-through from Highfield Crescent, or the vast rough open space between the back of Broadlands Road and the back of Granby Grove and Sirdar Road – it was, in one particular instance, the precipitous garden of the house that belonged to the Professor of French. Madrigals in the garden, one summer evening – and a flight of steps, down from the patio, where the singing went on, into the darkness, at an angle that would not have been out of place on a Cornish cliff-face! Was it just the result of deep dissection by drainage as the geography textbooks would have it? Or, as I know for sure about the drop at the south-western corner of the main university campus, and suspect about other unexpected declines, was it a clay-pit? They dug out the earth for the footings, and piled it up, and turned it into bricks, and fired them in kilns on the site, and built the walls for the foundations, and followed the seam of brick-earth to build the rest of the houses… And that meant digging away a great deal, and that left a hole, which will, eventually, be filled up, with all kinds of stuff…

Let me finish this exploration of my past, and Southampton’s past, with my own understanding of what it’s all about. Unexpected links between one place and another. Patterns that persist. Building things out of what’s underneath you – and the way that that process leaves traces, which themselves absorb other random materials, and bring them, too, together, which may, I hope, make yet more connections…

Frome 17-21.vi.2020

Consult googlemaps satellite view for the features I mention...

THE STRING QUARTET

THE STRING QUARTET

The two couples sit and listen. The sun sets slowly over the lake. The waves on it seem calmed by the music, glistening as the level light strokes them. The lake used to be a small gravel-pit, but no one who knows that mentions it.

The four players are happy, except for those moments when the music moves them to be sad. They look at one another when they need to. They are glad to be here, in these pleasant surroundings. The scent of jasmine steals in from the trellis by the veranda where they are sitting, playing music they love. If they have time, between their entries, they can steal a glance at the view over the lake, even though it is behind them.

The one they can see is reflected in the mirror above the fireplace. It is smaller, darker and further away than the one in reality behind them, but one cannot have everything. It is only right that the owner of the house and his guests should be able to enjoy the view while listening to the music. He has paid handsomely for all of it.

The players are happy with the money they will take away. They do not need to worry about where it has come from. A fine dinner is waiting for them. They smelt it being prepared as they came through the marble hallway into the summer salon – it is a small villa. They are also relieved that they will not have to make conversation with their employer – he calls himself their host – and his guests. He told them when he hired them that he respected their artistic independence, and understood their need to regain their own inner calm after the emotional stresses and strains of playing such a work. They did not contradict him.

They will eat well in the small dining-room, adjacent to the kitchen, where the staff, the cook and butler, will eat last of all, when dinner has been served and the host and his guests have expressed the desire to be left to their own devices. By then the players, dined and wined, will have made their way, instrument-laden, down the hill through the soft darkness to the gently glowing railway station, to catch the last but one train back to the city. There they will part, the second violinist to his young family in the suburbs, the viola-player to the large flat he still shares with his elderly mother, the cellist to the half-villa on the edge of the city that his wife inherited from her aunt, and the bachelor first violin to a game of cards and a few glasses of schnaps with his regular circle, not too far from his spacious and expensive apartment in the inner city.

They finish playing – and only just in time. It is a long work, and the sun has already set. There is only just enough light left to read the parts on the music-stands in front of them. The players are glad that the host has chosen to demonstrate his sense of culture by providing the stands. One thing less to carry. The first violin decides he should visit his friend the optician before the winter brings darker days. They hold the last chord together, flawlessly, because they have been playing together a while. The last vibrations die into silence. Their bows still rest on the strings. It is a kind of game. Will the listeners know when it is over? They are polite, or perhaps experienced, and wait till the players relax and lift their bows before even shifting their own positions. Even then, they do not applaud, but murmur appreciation. The players understand. Four people do not constitute an audience. They are individuals. The sound of breath released that has been retained is enough of a tribute.

One by one, the players stand and begin to pack away. As if by arrangement, the listeners move forward and mingle with them, trying not to disturb them in their activities, but each separately intent on having a word, commenting on a particular passage, expressing how moved, impressed, touched, even surprised they were by one particular moment. The players, though different in their characteristic movements, all essentially respond in the same way: a deprecating gesture with one hand or the other, an understanding nod of the head, a pinching of the mouth, a wrinkling of the lips, the sort of response made to the tasting of an unfamiliar wine, a recognition that different people have different tastes and that there is, in the long run, little point in discussing them, and none at all in contradicting them, which would only give offence.

The first violin, who has dealt with their host before in other contexts and to whom the approach was made which has led to this engagement, suspects strongly that their host has primed the other listeners, though he is not entirely certain why. Nor does he think that concerns him and his fellow-players. He nods away the comment being made in his ear with a convincing impersonation of agreement and appreciation and snaps his violin-case shut. Then he turns to his fellow-players, nods at them, just as he does when signalling an entry, and the quartet files past the listeners, who are lined up as if at some formal garden-party given by a figure of distinction, shaking hands down the line.

The host moves across and shuts the door leading to the hallway. Then he moves to open the door which leads into the large dining-room. Candles are already lit. Open windows admit the scent of jasmine. Barely-noticeable fly-screens exclude undesirable intruders, which occasionally flutter at them with a subdued drumming. Four places are set at the lake end of the long table. No one is seated at the head. The host directs his wife to sit opposite him, while the other couple are placed correspondingly, so that each man has a woman as his neighbour, as is normal in polite society.

“Did you enjoy it?” asks the host, as he pours the white wine. His wife covers her glass. He pours the wine himself because he does not believe in discussing things in front of servants. Besides, the cook will be busy serving the quartet. Moreover, he does not believe in mixing conversation with the appreciation of food. He is a great believer in distinction and separation. He will summon the dinner when he is ready.

It is the male guest who answers first. He is younger than the host, his hair is blonde and unruly, his skin pale, freckled, his eyes ice-blue, his teeth prominent and flashing.

“Well,” he says, “it’s not what I’m used to, it’s not perhaps my taste, but I can appreciate it.”

“Good,” says the host, sipping his wine, as he pours some sparkling mineral water for his wife. The wine is not quite cold enough. He replaces the bottle in the cooler and sprinkles some salt on the ice that surrounds it. “I like honesty.”

“I admire the skill,” says the male guest. “Even though it’s not something I’d wish to be able to do.”

“Oh yes,” says the guest’s wife, shifting on her chair with excitement, “the way their fingers flash up and down, always making different sounds and always getting it right! I couldn’t take my eyes off them!”

“Yes, they’re clever, Jewish fiddlers,” says the host’s wife, sipping her mineral water.

“Are they – all – ?” asks the male guest, turning to his host’s wife.

It is the host who answers him. “Yes. Does it matter?”

“Well – no – not really – if they’re good at what they do – ”

“And they clearly are,” says the host. “Your wife is very impressed with their capabilities.”

“Aren’t you?” asks the male guest, a little uncertain.

“Oh, yes,” says the host, laying his right hand on the left hand of the woman next to him, “I share many of your wife’s tastes. If not quite all of them.”

The guest’s wife looks at the host beside her in a way which suggests that she has looked at him many times before, in different circumstances. “No,” she says, smiling, and slipping her hand out from under his to adjust her dress, “not quite all. But most.” And she puts her hand back, on top of his.

“And you, my dear,” says the host to his wife, “what do you think? How did the performance strike you?”

The host’s wife dabs her lips with her napkin, leaving a little lipstick on it. She notices, and purses her lips in annoyance. “I think they stir up our emotions too much,” she says. “I don’t think they have any business doing that. A beautiful melody is one thing. Anyone can enjoy that. You don’t have to sing along, or march to it, or dance to it, or bellow it out at the top of your voice over a whole orchestra scraping and puffing away. You can appreciate it inside yourself. But those harmonies, those sliding, slipping ambiguities, those places where you can’t be quite sure whether you’re dealing with pain or pleasure – to me, they are signs of sickness, inner sickness. And worst of all is that people should make their living by doing that kind of thing. Bad enough that they can’t help it themselves – but to encourage it, to parade it publicly, to call it art! People like that are spreading it like a disease.”

She drains her mineral water in one go, as if she wants to wash away the taste of the words she has just had to take into her mouth. Her husband sits and looks at her for a moment, then reaches a little awkwardly with his left hand, his right still being occupied, to grasp the bottle of mineral water and refill her glass.

“My wife,” says the host, “is extremely forthright in her opinions. I cannot say that I share them, but I see what she means.”

“And yourself, sir?” asks the male guest, toying with his empty wine-glass.

“Ah,” says the host, “let me, before I speak, refill your glass – I fear I have been remiss in my duties.” He frees his right hand, pours for the guest’s wife, the guest, and himself. His own wife drinks off her mineral water, and pushes her glass forward. He fills that, too, though he needs to take another bottle from the cooler to do so, but the cork comes out easily.

“I appreciate a string quartet for its organisation,” he says.

“Do you mean the music, or the group of players?” asks the male guest.

“Both,” says the host, moving his wine-glass so he can use his left hand to drink from it. His right hand twines its fingers round those of the guest’s wife, and the two hands lie together on the table as one. “In the music, it is that integration of apparently disparate emotions which appeals to me especially – just as it appals my wife. There is an added piquancy in the juxtaposition of pain and pleasure. The presence of each reminds one of just what there is to appreciate in the other.”

The male guest nods, as if to suggest that he understands. But his eyes indicate that he does not – at least, as far as his own emotions are concerned.

“At the level of performance,” continues the host, “I am fascinated by the way that the members of a quartet respond to one another, defer, make way, appreciate dominance and submission, while acknowledging that every one of them is necessary for the functioning of the whole. There is none of that crude striving after equality – rather, there is recognition that everyone has their place, and that the right thing to do is to be content with that, especially if those who have the greater importance and therefore the greater responsibility pay due tribute to those whose positions are lesser and lower, but equally vital. By saying which, of course, I am paying tribute to those who cook for us and those who serve us, and whose patience I shall now reward.”

The bell is within reach of his left hand. Dinner begins. Hands are separated. Conversation is limited to reflections on the food. More wine is poured. Different wines are brought and consumed. Plates are removed. Servants are formally dismissed. The host rises.

“My wife, I know, is weary,” he says, “and you – ,” he indicates the male guest, “were at work early this morning, and must catch the very last train back to be at your desk in the morning, but your charming wife has consented to stay overnight, not least to enjoy the rising of the sun, and see how it colours our lake. We shall have to walk round to the other side, to see how it rises above this house.”

Those who have been dismissed, depart. They know their places. There is a small room, just off the dining-room, called a cabinet, which contains two chairs, a table and a couch, provided for just such an occasion as this. It is used for the purpose for which it was designed and intended – that, in itself, is part of the pleasure, the host thinks. One must not confuse things. Only one person can possibly sleep on the couch. And then, only during the day. Robes are hung on the back of the door. There is no need for the messy process of dressing again after the delights of undressing. Discreet servants will restore the necessary order in the morning.

Alone, as, in a sense, he always is, the host reflects. This is the coda, in which themes are reviewed and their implications explored. What, he wonders, will eventually become of the string quartet, or rather its players? Will they survive the changes that are to come? Do they need to? They have produced beauty and piquancy for him. Their function has been fulfilled. Once you have the honey, do you still need the bees?

Before he goes to bed, he wants some fresh air. He extinguishes the candles. There is moonlight. He lets up one of the fly-screens and breathes in deeply. Almost at once, a large moth flies in. His reactions are quick. He has it by one wing. It flutters. He holds it tight while it does so and looks at it. It is very beautiful. But it is in the wrong place. He crushes it in his hand and drops the tattered remnant on the floor. Someone else can clear it up. He knows his place, and for now it is bed.

The good thing about music, he reflects as he goes up the stairs, is that you always know when it is over.

Frome, 12.00-15.00, 07.vi.2020