What Remains

Judging by the family portraits they left us, they must have been well-off. The husband and wife are depicted side-by-side, wearing their best clothes. He chose to be painted holding an official-looking document with a red seal attached, suggesting something legal. His wife, more informally, is shown sucking the end of a pencil, with a quizzical expression on her face, as if she was wondering whether she might have left something off her shopping list. In a separate picture a younger woman, presumably their daughter, is also sucking a pencil and clutching a notebook in her left hand, but her expression more resembles a poet searching for the next line.
    They would have been proud of their home, with its brightly-painted walls. They had a dog, and like many home-owners since, they had put up a sign warning intruders that their dog was very fierce. They would especially have loved their neat little garden, which had a few statues amongst the flowers, and we can imagine them enjoying a drink of wine there with their friends in a summer evening. Their surviving pictures show they had good taste, and maybe they regarded the somewhat explicit artworks favoured by their neighbours as a bit vulgar. Our family preferred pictures of birds and plants. One particularly delightful painting shows a young girl gathering spring flowers, so realistic that you can see the blossom falling around her.
     But it was not blossom which fell on our family on that terrible day many years ago: it was something far more deadly. And they are gone, so we are no longer certain even of their names, but their home and their pictures still survive; pictures in which the blossom never did fall, but is frozen forever in an eternal spring.      

Note:-

I wrote this after visiting the magnificent Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum last week. I have, of course, included items which would have been found in many different houses at Pompeii as if they all came from the same house; but that is how they were set out in the exhibition. 

The Last Morning

And now the thunder ends. The eager sun
Strikes diamonds in the glistening July fields.
Larks rise into the blue. The very soil is glad.
The waiting-time is almost at an end.
It was for this
We gathered, left behind the wretched life
Of comfortable homes and mindless games
Endured exhaustion, and the curses, and the pain,
Drenched by the storms upon the open heath,
Blistered our feet along the cobbled roads
Of France, bearing enormous loads;
But we were fiercely glad.
It was for this.
The rolling hills rise eastwards to the sun;
There we shall go today.
Now all is tense
We stand, anticipating the release
The waiting time is almost at an end……
At last the whistles blow, the moment’s come
And morning light is playing on the Somme.

(July 1st, 1916)

Unprepared: a dream

I had spent the morning working on a cupboard-full of someone else’s junk, extracting the few items that were worth saving and putting aside the remained to be thrown out, and then I met Kom. He must have spotted how bored I looked, and he asked me if I was yet ready to be initiated. He had mentioned this before, and this time I said yes.
Initiated into what, you might ask. Here Kom would employ a word which he said was untranslatable: somewhere between a religious faith and a view of life. I took it to mean some exotic form of Buddhism, or something on those lines. I didn’t inquire; but I certainly wasn’t prepared for what followed. Kom led me into the older part of town and through a nondescript door to a courtyard beyond. On the opposite side was an open doorway, which was evidently where I should go. A couple of other people were waiting there already: they did not turn to look at me. Kom said that etiquette required that I should wait for the person ahead to disappear out of sight before I entered. I asked Kom if someone would instruct me what to do, and he said yes, of course.
While I waited a watched an old man in the courtyard who was going through a dance, involving many singular jumps and hops. His bare legs looked wiry and strong, and he moved as lightly as any gymnast or ballet-dancer, He looked totally self-absorbed and took  no notice of anyone else. It seemed plain that he was an adept. After a while the way ahead of me was clear.

Inside the doorway there was a metal ladder leading upwards. I climbed it. The climb took a long time, and was partly in darkness, but at last I emerged into daylight.  
I was high above the town, standing on a platform of glistening white quartz. It looked like a natural formation, though it was not much wider than the top of a column, and the sides were almost as steep. I did not like this at all. I once went rock-climbing with a friend, and felt most uncomfortable on the exposed heights. I sat down, hoping it would be safer. Then the instructions came:
“Conquer your fear. Look down on the city bone-yard and do not be afraid” One of the oddest things is that I can’t remember whether these words were written down, or spoken, or just popped into my head. I looked. There was a city below me, but it did not resemble the town I had come from. In was totally silent, and I could not see a single human being anywhere. Beyond the city there was countryside and further off, faint through the haze, a range of mountains. It was not scenery I recognised. Then I looked to see what to do next. There was a sort of path down, but it looked very slippery and dangerous, without anything to hold onto. More instructions came:
“Why the need to hurry? You can stay here for ever if you wish”

I cannot for the life of me say how I did get down: I have no memory of it whatsoever. I wonder if I fainted. But I certainly didn’t fall, or I wouldn’t be here today. Am I, perhaps, in a sense, still up there on that high and perilous seat? I tried discussing this with Kom, but he cut me short, saying that everyone’s experience was different and it was best not to talk about the subject: he would take me to the next stage when the time was right. What his own initiation involved he refused to say.

Abroad Thoughts From Home

(with apologies to Robert Browning)

Oh, to be out of England
Now that April's here!
For whoever wakes in England
Finds, each morning, as he feared,
That the east wind's blowing with might and main
And the garden pond is frozen again
And the snow disfigures the hedgerow's brow
In England, now.

The Old Bus: a true story

When I was teaching at the High School, someone in authority decided that, rather than always having to shell out money to Bassett’s Coaches for our outings, it would make sense to buy our own transport; and so we obtained The Bus. It was a truly awe-inspiring motor; the year’s latest model - the year in question being somewhere round about 1948. Truly it would have graced any museum of the history of transport; but this did not make it any easier to drive. There was no power-assisted steering, and no synchromesh on any of the gears, which quickly led to one of the geography teachers acquiring the nickname of “Captain Crunch” for his efforts behind the wheel. Max, my head of department, who was a keen motorist, described changing gear as like stirring a cricket stump in a bucket of marbles. He was a little chap, and sometimes he had to employ both hands wrestling with it. “Christ!! Bloody hell!!” he would exclaim as he did battle with the gears amidst heavy traffic in the middle of Stoke. Once, when he was having a particularly bad time on the way back from a trip to the Gladstone pottery, one boy foolishly made some sarcastic comment on his driving. “If you think you can do any better, then come and have a go!” snarled Max, still sweating in his attempts to find third gear. The boy was rash enough to answer, “Okay then!” Max was so enraged that he stopped the bus and charged up the central aisle, with every intention of thumping the wretched youth, but before the blow could land, the handbrake started to slip and Max had to race back to the controls. And by the time we arrived back at the school, Max was far too occupied with the tricky problem of parking the bus (which could only be done in reverse, after first edging the bonnet up the drive of the house opposite, at the risk of doing irreparable damage to the flowering cherry) to take any further action.
The worst journey I experienced came near the end of the one summer term, when we took the first formers on the annual history trip into Shropshire. The first stop was Ludlow, which we reached without mishap; but when we stopped at the entrance to the castle, we were approached by a policeman. “You can’t park here”, he told us, “You’ll have to go to the coach park”. Mark, who was driving, pleaded with him: we’d come a long way and we shouldn’t be there for more than an hour. The policeman eyed the bus narrowly. “I wouldn’t like to have to give a full roadworthiness check to this vehicle, sir”, he said meaningfully. We went to the coach park. The stop for lunch at Stokesay castle passed without mishap, although Nick, our youngest teacher, had with typical disorganisation forgotten to bring any sandwiches, and was reduced to begging for contributions from the pupils (fortunately one boy had been provided by his mother with no fewer than nine chicken legs, and was able to come to the rescue). But then there was an untoward incident in the grounds of Buildwas Abbey, when one of the boys had his shoe subjected to a sexual assault by a randy little puppy. “Sir, it’s weed on me!” he said, inaccurately. The crowning moment of the day came as we drove back through Hodnet. One of the boys complained that he felt sick. We were travelling along narrow, twisty roads unsuitable for stopping, and we were in any case late, so I passed him a plastic waste-bucket already half full of bent coke tines and screwed-up crisp bags. He chundered voluminously into this receptacle, and then a little later approached me again, in some distress. “Sir“, he said, “the brace from my teeth fell in!” I said that if he thought I was going to start fishing for it, he was mistaken. “But the dentist’ll be mad at me sir!” he moaned. When we finally arrived back at school, I made him and another boy who had annoyed me empty the bucket into one of the vast grunions by the gate. During the course of this operation, I observed they both contrived to get it all over their jackets, but I decided I had done quite enough for the day, and went home.
The old bus was still there when I left the school, and I never found out what happened to it. Presumably it has long since left this life for that great multi-storey carpark in the sky - assuming, of course that it was permitted to enter.

The Woods Where Once I Walked

The woods where once I walked
I glimpsed them from the train
From thirty years ago
I still saw in my mind
Catkins and budding leaves
The dappled light of spring
And kingcups by the stream
And bluebells under the trees
As I glimpsed the woods from the train.

But now the trees stood bare
Like a parade of ghosts
In the clammy winter fog
And the grass lay seared with frost
And no-one walked in the woods

And the train swept on to the north.

A Snuff Bottle

George read through the advertisements in the local paper.
     “For sale: several Chinese works of art: soapstone carvings, ink painting of bamboo, blah, blah, amber snuff bottle ….. Hmm, now that might be worth investigating!”
     He had yet to find a really good amber snuff-bottle to add to his collection. Of course, the chances were that this was just some rubbishy modern piece; but even so, it would be silly to let the chance slip away. He dialled the telephone number given on the advert. A woman’s voice answered. He gave his name, and then, in order not too sound too eager, asked about some of the other items first, and only came to the snuff bottle as if was an afterthought.
     The woman gave him a brief description of the object. “It's about two inches high, with a carving of a dragon on it. There's some Chinese writing on the bottom, but of course I can't read it. It's a beautiful golden colour, and it's got a stopper with a little spoon for the snuff", she told him. "I really can’t say how old it is; I’m not an expert at all! You see, I’ve inherited all these things from my aunt, and I need to dispose of them as quickly as I can, because I live abroad. Why don’t you come and have a look at it? And if you think it’s any good, you can have it for ….. what shall we say? ….. fifty pounds? Fine! How about next Tuesday? Three o’clock?  Now, how to get here: do you know Foxton? Well, go out from there on the Brackenford road, and after a couple of miles you’ll see a turning on your left, just opposite the bus stop. Go down there, and after a few hundred yards there’s a big holly hedge on the left and a sign saying Bluebell Cottage. That’s where I am. Park your car in the drive. If no-one answers the bell, it probably means I’m in the back garden, so come and look for me. See you then!”
     After he had put the phone down, it suddenly occurred to George that he might have heard the woman’s voice before, but he couldn’t  quite recall the circumstances.

     As he drove out on Tuesday, George reflected on his possible good luck. The description of the snuff bottle had genuinely excited him: it had sounded exactly like the real business! He wondered how he might turn the situation even more to his advantage. Should he, for instance, regretfully inform the woman that her snuff bottle was a modern fake, but, rather than make the visit fruitless, he would take it off her hands for thirty pounds? or perhaps only twenty?
    He found Bluebell Cottage without difficulty. It was the only building down a narrow country lane. As predicted, a ring of the front door bell brought no response, and he wandered round into the secluded back garden. This also seemed deserted.
     “Hello, George!” came a voice from behind him. He spun round.
     “You!” was all he could manage to say.
     “Yes, George, it’s me! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I rented this cottage specially to meet you again, and here you are. I remembered how you used to collect snuff bottles, and I just had to pray you hadn’t given up the hobby. I hope you appreciate the research I put in, to make sure I could describe one that you’d want! So here we are together again, after all those years. It’ll be just like old times. Well; not quite like old times….”
     And she drew a small pistol from her pocket.