A warm welcome to new subscribers! I’ve had quite an influx lately and I’m thrilled and hope you’ll enjoy catching up with episodes of Larchfield!
Tonight’s episode is a pivotal moment — when Wystan and Dora finally meet! She encounters the Wystan I found within the poems and in my research: an unusual and deeply kind person. At the bottom of this post you will find the text, if you prefer to read rather than listen. If you enjoy this post, please share!
The Kindness of Auden
I feature here a fascinating article by Edward Mendelson, Auden’s biographer and executor, about Auden’s kindness. You can read the article free if you register with the link.
The Orators
Also in this week’s episode Wystan tells Dora about The Orators, the genre-busting collection he is working on whilst in Helensburgh. It is described as his ‘first work of genius’ and provided background and imagery for the Wystan I was creating in Larchfield. Although it doesn’t ‘make sense’ in a normal way, I found it to be one of the most exhilarating books I’ve ever read, simply for its sheer vigour and freedom of thought. It also contains a lot of references to Helensburgh. I recommend it, both for Auden fans and writers who are looking to escape a bit of writers block. Auden writes whatever the hell he likes, and it’s good to be reminded that it’s possible to do that — and in fact that is where progress lies!
Auden’s debut
In this week’s episode Wystan recites from his first book of poems and receives a cool reception in Helensburgh. His debut is a wonderful companion to Larchfield.
I’ve left the best reading spot in the world, to talk about the books!
No Hour Club this evening!
There’s no Hour Club this evening, because I am in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Book Festival chairing an event with Lavinia Greenlaw and Samantha Harvey about their extraordinary new books The Vast Extent and Orbital. Hour Club will be back as usual next week. In the meantime, I know some of you are planning to devote the hour anyway, and so to help you on your way here is a motivating quote, inspired by the energy and freedom Auden showed in his thought and imagination.
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
WH Auden
Taking risks in your writing
For new subscribers, here is the link to my first memoir piece on the practice of writing, which uses the leap of faith in this episode and Episode Seven of Larchfield as an example. Enjoy!
For more Craft Essays and to join Hour Club, please take out a paid subscription. You will also be helping me to continue writing and to develop this site for others. I’m so grateful to all of you.
And now to Larchfield!
PREVIOUSLY IN LARCHFIELD: Dora escapes a threatening incident at baby group and takes a risk on a magical discovery. In 1930, Wystan’s practical joke reaches its shocking conclusion. and evolves into a life-lesson for the boys. ‘The Snake’ by DH Lawrence weaves a link between Dora’s story and Wystan’s.
To return to Episode Seven:
EPISODE EIGHT: In which Wystan and Dora meet for the first time. In 1930, Wystan attends a party thrown by the Wallaces, tackles some oysters and finds what he’s been looking for.
Chapter twenty
Wystan and Dora
How could it be that, when she had been summoned (for was that not what the message in the bottle was, a summons?), her destination should vanish?
Sleet howled in her face. The Helensburgh she knew was gone. The cherry trees lining the streets were a forest of twisted branches writhing overhead. Dora focused on the pavement, and the sodden toes of her boots trudging past La Scala. The art deco frontage was swallowed by leaves and creepers and the wind was so fierce that her eyes blurred. She knew she was heading in the right direction only because the road was sloping upwards.
What if Larchfield itself was gone?
It couldn’t be. She had been summoned.
Her ears stung beneath her thin hood. The wind echoed with dis-
torted voices. If she called out herself, the sound would be stretched like that. ‘Wystan!’ she found herself crying, and no sooner had her mouth opened than the freezing air snatched the name out with a balled icy fist and hurled it away, sending it back to her in the sound of a child’s cry.
Should she turn back?
Behind her, the trees closed in further. Only if she looked straight ahead, up the hill, could she see a break in the iron sky. Could she duck into a shopfront to shelter, catch her breath? But everything was sucked away into the shadows.
When she got there, it would be all right. Larchfield would make sense of everything. Nothing worth having is easy. Her grandmother, Bea, had said that, long ago.
The last part of Colquhoun Street was very steep. The wind heaved against her and she had to turn her back to it to catch her breath. She moaned in panic as she saw that Helensburgh, the sea, everything, was swallowed in a blizzard of leaves.
Dora shoved one foot in front of the other. It was all a terrible mistake. A mirage. Her sodden clothes chafed against her, as if to remind her of her egotism and stupidity.
She paused to cross an empty Montrose Street near the top of Colquhoun Street. Twigs and old cans sped down it instead of the usual mash of cars. Judging that she would probably collide with all these things no matter what she did, she pressed on. The moment both her feet were on the opposite kerb, something changed. The screech of the wind abated. The sky opened, extending a shaft of light, and she saw that she was standing in front of the gate at Larchfield, her numb fingers once again on the gold lettering.
Larchfield’s garden was a twisted mass of rhododendrons laced with frost. The sun bathed the building, making it look both magical and crumbling. The gables were peeling and a blackened chimney at the top pumped smoke out into the crisp air.
There was silence, broken only by sounds from the school: scraping chairs and adult admonishments, a piano, some uncertain singing.
So. She had made it. And what now?
Sodden and shivering, she took a deep breath, as if about to dive underwater, and ran through the gate. Up the front steps . . . Was he here? The hall was empty, so she turned into a little snug off it, with an unlit fire and a bench on which had been placed some lumpy hessian cushions. The room was freezing. A faded watercolour of the Waverley hung over the mantelpiece. Lines whirled into her head, those same lines from Lawrence. Why? . . . That he should seek my hospitality / From out the dark door of the secret earth . . .
There was a cough. She turned around, and there he stood.
Of course she recognised him. It’s a famous face – mostly the older version, with its deep map of folds and lines. The young face was striking in that it held something of the older one, and, at the same time, nothing at all.
‘Hello,’ said Wystan, standing decorously just out of reach. ‘This door! Always drifting open . . .’ He disappeared from view for a moment and the front door slammed. ‘Are you being . . . attended to?’
Dora said, ‘I got your message. In a bottle. Here –’ She thrust the note out to him, which he took with his long fingers, glancing briefly, then sliding it into his pocket. Dora continued, ‘I’m so very, very glad to meet you. It is you, isn’t it? Mr Auden? Wystan?’
Wystan Auden said nothing.
Dora pressed on. ‘I mean . . . I am an admirer, a real admirer. I’ve been reading you, and all about you . . . We studied you at school! And I’m meant to . . . I’m meant to . . .’
Dora’s mind’s eye was released from its mooring, dismaying her with its revelation. Here was a woman in the middle of her life, lost and clearly desperate. It was perhaps the worst outcome of all for Wystan: hoping for a keen young man, he had simply attracted someone’s eccentric mother.
She said, ‘I’ve just realised you were hoping for someone else. I’m sorry.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. His voice was quite high, but warm. ‘I had quite forgotten about it, that’s all. How do you do?’ And out came the long arm with its big hand, into which Dora’s blue-tinged one briefly slid. ‘You’re very cold,’ he said.
Wystan rested an elbow against the doorframe and studied her. ‘We should go to my room. Olive will bring us some tea there. The fire is lit, and I’m above the boys’ dormitory, so I get some rising heat.’
A bell outside the door exploded into life and Wystan jumped, hands over his ears. ‘I will never get used to that din! But it signals my freedom – for fifty minutes, anyway.’
Dora followed him up a multitude of stairways and twisted half landings. His tall frame, ahead of her, loped awkwardly, but there was something solid and certain about him.
The bedroom was a spectacular mess, the bed unmade and the air grizzled with cigarette smoke. Nicotine stained the walls and the fire glowed feebly in the grate. Papers and books were piled on every surface, but there was a reverence to the mess, as if it arose because every single scrap mattered and simply could not be thrown away.
Forgetting herself, Dora went immediately to the swamp of coffee- ringed papers that lay all over the unmade sheets. Some were typed and therefore legible; some were carbon copies and the ink came off on her fingers. Dora laid her hands flat on the pages to feel the gentle warmth that paper always seems to have.
Wystan fished in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. He held out the box.
‘No, thank you.’ She sat carefully on the edge of the bed. He nodded and lit up, and then studied her closely.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
Dora gave it, and waited.
‘And where did my bottle wash up?’
‘Down the bottom, there . . . Lower Hel.’ Dora waved her arm vaguely down the hill.
‘It went a long way in one way . . . and nowhere in another, then.’
His eyes travelled over Dora, causing her to glance down at herself. She was wearing a long tweed coat that went almost to the ground, and neat lace-up boots. Her soaked anorak and leaking walking boots were gone. ‘How did you come by it?’
‘I went down to the beach . . .’ Dora began and then stopped. She began again, but her memory had folded in on itself, like a dream on waking, and the words stuttered to a stop.
‘I know that I ...’ she began again. ‘I ... have broken some kind of rule . . .’ She took a disbelieving breath. ‘Hurt someone, maybe . . . ? Oh, God, did I hurt someone?’ She stared as if he might have the answer, but he simply nodded inscrutably. She said, hesi- tantly, at last, ‘I’m lost. That is why I am here. I am completely lost.’
Wystan leant in a little and said, ‘I can see that. I can see that you are lost. But don’t worry. You’ve come to the right place. I’m sure of it.’ Dora began to cry. ‘I’m so tired . . .’ she said. ‘I took a wrong turning somehow.’
Wystan coughed a ghost of smoke into the air. He said, ‘Or a right turning? When you were not guarding against such a thing?’ He handed Dora a grubby handkerchief from his pocket. She blew her nose and nodded.
‘I’ve wanted to be here so much. With you. More than anything in the world.’
‘And now you are.’
Into the resulting silence he said, ‘There’s a boy I saw, some time back, and I keep looking for him. I have only seen him once, for two minutes. Daft, don’t you think? But I feel there is an answer there, somehow. I just can’t work out what it is. I suppose I wondered if, by some magic – do you believe in magic? – he would find my message. But now I realise it was meant to be you. I believe there’s purpose in that.’ He winced and stood awkwardly.
‘I have . . . lower-back pain. It’s excruciating. I either have to stay on my feet, which is exhausting, or I recline . . . like so.’ He arranged his pillow and what looked to be an overcoat wrapped in a blanket on the floor. He then lay on his side, slightly propped, like a weary lady of the house. ‘I need a chaise, really,’ he sighed. ‘But one doesn’t come with the job.’
The sun poured through the windows, creating a plank of warmth against which Dora’s face pressed.
Wystan stubbed his cigarette out in a little enamelled ashtray. ‘Do you know about Emile Coué?’
‘A little . . .’ Dora lied.
‘It’s the philosophy I live by. You will become what you believe you will become. Can you subscribe to that, do you think?’
‘I can try . . .’
‘Because everything is going to get worse before it gets better. That is how things are.’
‘I see.’
He looked at her thoughtfully. Here—’ He picked up a notebook from a little pile beside him. It was a beautiful hardback notebook, with a swirly design on the cover and thick creamy paper inside.
‘This is for you . . .’ he said.
Dora took it from him with a gasp. ‘Really?’ She ran her fingers over the cover and rubbed the paper between thumb and forefinger to check its thickness.
‘I knew it! You’re a stationery lover!’ He smiled. ‘I get these from the hardware store on the seafront. The twins. Who’d have expected they would stock the finest notebooks in Britain? Have this too.’ Out of his jacket pocket, he handed Dora an ink pen. It was made of hard rubber and grew warm in her hand.
‘Thank you,’ Dora whispered.
‘You know, Dora, I have two brothers. We’re not close. I was always an oddity. The thing is . . . I always felt as if I carried a feminine self, sort of like a sister . . . inside me.’ He looked at her shyly, clearly never having articulated this before. ‘And now . . . here you are.’
They smiled at one another.
‘Well, now that you are here, how about you help me with this? McLeod’s design for the cover of the Larchfieldian. I’m resurrecting the school magazine. Encouraging the boys to write a bit of poetry, perhaps a play, with me.’ He turned the picture back round to himself and considered it. ‘A bit militaristic?’
‘It’s good. How old is he?’
‘Ten. Destined for the army, like a lot of these boys. Hmmm. Not sure.’
‘It’s very colourful . . .’
Wystan peered at the figure. ‘Maybe.’ Then he picked up another sheet from beside him and gave a great bark of a laugh. ‘This is from a little lad . . . Jamie . . .’
Jamie had submitted a poem to the Larchfieldian:
UNCLE WIZ
Uncle Wiz is a very fun chap
Teaches Eng/Fr and wears a cap
Rugby’s boring, says Uncle Wiz
D. H. is best and school a swiz.
‘Well, that’s definitely going in!’ Wystan placed it on the growing ‘yes’ pile on the bed. There was a silence between them, then Wystan said, casually, ‘I suppose this is where we can test Coué’s method. Am I any good? Or am I . . . going to be any good? In the future?’
‘Yes!’ Dora said without hesitation. A beam of boyish pleasure spread across Wystan’s face. Dora thought how wonderful it was that a genuine smile transformed a face, any face, and created beauty. Despite his façades and pretentions and his ostensible indifference to his success, underneath, Wystan was a delighted little boy that all his efforts were not going to be in vain. It made Dora pleased to be the messenger.
Olive rattled in with a tray on which was a single teacup, a teapot and a plate with two fat slices of raisin cake. She looked for some- where to lay the tray, but Wystan held out his hands. ‘Just leave it with me, Olive. Thank you.’ She nodded, and hesitated, observing the renewed squalor, but he waved her away. ‘Don’t worry about me, Olive. There’s a purpose behind it all . . .’
‘You look most uncomfortable, Mr Auden. Don’t you want to sit on the chair?’
‘Thank you, no, Olive. You’re very thoughtful.’
She frowned and closed the door behind her.
Wystan placed the tray on the floor between them and filled the cup. ‘You have this – I have a tooth-mug over here.’ The giant arm uncurled and lifted a cracked mug from the basin. He wiped it on his shirt and filled it too. Then he held out the plate with the cake and Dora took a slice.
As the poet gulped his tea and gobbled his cake, something came to Dora.
‘It’s so peaceful here,’ she said.
‘An illusion,’ he said. ‘It’s quite mad. I wonder, every day, how long I am going to last. I’m working on something very odd, a sort of mess of poems and speeches . . . in response to the madness. I’m going to call it The Orators. It’s got an airman in it. A very hand- some balls-up.’
‘Can I see?’ Dora said, excitedly.
He laid the Larchfieldian papers to one side and, with a wince, went to sit at the desk. ‘I’ve been working on the beginning. It’s a kind of spoof speech. I’m modelling it on Larchfield, the boys getting their prize-day speech. But this one is all about destroying that part of themselves that will destroy them if they don’t.’ He handed her a sheaf of papers.
The writing was minuscule and spidery. She stared at it for some minutes, taking in the extra scribbles in the margins, the lines leading off to new scribbles. His words were virtually illegible, but the paper seemed to give off an energy all its own. She could feel his youth and the sheer torrential vigour of his ideas.
Dora laid her hands on the pages. They were tired hands. She turned them over, taking in the wrinkling of the skin at the knuckles and the bitten nails. Whatever these hands had been doing, it wasn’t writing poetry. And yet, looking at Wystan’s scribbles, trying to decode them, latching on to a sparkling phrase here and there . . . it felt familiar. It felt fun.
Just then, the door flew open and a little boy ran into the room. He hovered uncertainly.
Wystan shrugged. ‘Bit of an open-door policy, here. Come on, then, Jamie. I’ve got cake!’
The little boy came in cautiously, looking back at the door to make sure he still had an escape.
He looked up at Wystan and said, ‘Can I—?’
‘Draw? Why not? You know where everything is.’
Jamie grabbed some paper from a pile at the window, and a pencil from the desk, then curled up near Wystan’s feet and began drawing. The child made Dora nervous. Children were so much bigger than their size. They radiated – what was it? Need. They broke all kinds of rules, all the time, just by being alive. It was impossible to know how to be around a child, especially one like Jamie, so fragile-looking and so vulnerable.
Wystan absently wiggled his toes against Jamie’s tummy as he returned to the papers on the bed. The little boy giggled and pushed the toes away. Wystan began to read a page, but his attention kept drifting to the child on the floor.
‘You are ticklish!’ he said. ‘This is just too easy!’
Jamie held up a picture of a house with three people standing outside.
‘Ah, a family scene!’ Wystan beamed. ‘Very good, Jamie! You know,’ he said to Dora, ‘it’s really very sad the way they spend so much time drawing pictures of home, or writing tragic love poems about their sisters. This environment is terrible for a boy. Dragged from home, all alone with a bunch of other savages. Really, it’s a miracle we’re not all stark staring mad. Or maybe we are. What do you think, Jamie? Are we all dotty?’
The little boy’s hair was sticking up. ‘You’re a bit mad, sir,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Talking to yourself and all.’ Wystan clapped his hands in delight.
‘Jamie, you’re not wrong there. Now –’ he looked at the clock ticking loudly on the mantelpiece and ruffled the boy’s hair – ‘off you go. That bell is going to explode in a moment and you need to be in my French class.’ Jamie pushed the picture into Wystan’s lap and ran out of the door.
‘Here, have this,’ Wystan handed it to Dora. It was a simple, very cheerful drawing. A big U-shaped smile was on each round face.
‘But he gave it to you.’
‘Truthfully? I have dozens of them. Keep it as a memento.’ Dora took the paper and folded it carefully, slipping it into a pocket of her coat.
‘I don’t know how people can send their boys here, really,’ Wystan said. ‘I see Jamie and I think of myself – lonely, missing my parents.’ He took a final swig from his tooth-mug and set it down. ‘Dora,’ he said, ‘I am so glad you’ve come . . . Why don’t you stay here, make yourself at home? I must go and teach these little boys some French.’ He paused at the door and gave Dora a wink.
Dora was alone, among W. H. Auden’s papers. Delight filled her as she surveyed the room with its glorious mess. Now that Wystan was not here, with the force of his presence, it was easier to study the interior, to think about her place in it, to enjoy herself.
She turned to the desk, laid out the notebook on top of the scrib- bled sheets, and her pen slid smoothly over the page.
She wrote her name, turned the page and hesitated. Then she began to write, filling the page with neat, frenzied handwriting. She wrote with breathless speed, trying to preserve what had just happened, this meeting that changed everything, before her faulty mind took it away.
Chapter twenty-one
Wystan
Wystan examines the embossed invitation with a sinking heart.
Mrs M. Wallace requests the honour of the company of
Mr W. H. Auden
for
An Easter Party at Dunluin
Smart attire.
Did Cecil go to these things?
Christ. It is everything he despises and his pen pauses over the RSVP note. Mr Auden regrets (does he hell) that he is unable to attend your (life-extinguishing) delightful party (for liars and spies). Oh, how he would love to refuse. Christopher would do it, without a blink.
The gathering will take him from his work, leave him hungover and anxious, and drain him for days to come. But Wystan knows that he cannot say no. These invitations are polite commands. Helens- burgh society would like to meet him. He must pay his respects to the ladies of Helensburgh society. Wallace is a benefactor of the school and the invitation to the Wallace Easter Party is both sought after and cannot be refused.
In later years, he will simply say, Sorry. No. But he is only twenty- four and a hired hand, and it would cause consternation. And, here, what people think carries real weight. Other people hold the power over his job, over his freedom. He decides, instead, with new con- fidence, that he will simply sail through it. They cannot touch him, not really. Wystan is whole, he is solid and, most important of all, he believes that magic happens.
On the appointed day, he pulls out his suit. It’s not very clean, but there’s no time to do anything about it. He half-heartedly asks Olive to give it a brush-down. He’s going to wear his bow tie, which is yellow, and his fedora, and they can fuck off.
The Wallace house is one of the largest mansions in Upper Helens- burgh. In the lamplit garden, newly opened camellias sprawl over a pergola. It is a warm, slightly damp spring evening. Opening the iron gate sets off a chorus of yapping from inside. Tiny dogs with fat eyes are bouncing in the window. He presses the bell and, to his surprise, McLeod answers the door, dressed in a footman’s livery, grinning shyly. This is another tradition of the Easter Party: the eldest boys get to dress up and serve the guests, receiving payment for their efforts.
The dogs fly out to his ankles. Pekingese? Chihuahuas? Animals do not intrigue him, and tiny ones even less so. He steps high, taking care not to crush them, and follows McLeod to the drawing room.
Mrs Wallace – ‘Call me Marilyn, dear, everyone does’ – speeds across to him, assesses him, from her low height, as if he were a relative who has grown. She is much as he expected: thin, where Pop is thick, with the nervous, slightly starved quality that the wives of unpredictable husbands often have. ‘Am I late?’ he asks her.
‘Oh, no, dear. Everything is early in Helensburgh.’ She leads him into the room, where Wystan’s heart plummets to see Jessop leaning against the mantelpiece, deep in conversation with a sensible-looking young woman with flowers in her hair.
‘You know Mr Jessop, of course?’ says Marilyn, leading him inexorably towards Jessop’s sneer. His colleague nods. Every face is turned towards Wystan, and it feels as though there is not quite enough oxygen to go round. Thankfully, Wystan is intercepted by Wallace himself, who pumps his hand and indicates an array of whisky bottles lined up on the sideboard. ‘We’ve decided to further your education,’ he grins. Wystan can see the memory of their previous conversation etched beneath the cheerful expression. Pop Wallace drops his hand and turns away. ‘What would you like?’
The rugs have been taken away and all the furniture pushed to the edge of the room to make space for dancing. The interior is immacu- lately decorated in a pale yellow, with trompe l’œil panelling. A huge chandelier in the middle of the ceiling casts a sparkling glow over the party. In the corner, a young woman in a gold dress is playing a harp. About thirty or forty people are gathered, glasses in hand, immaculate in their smart attire, the ladies in long, unostentatious dresses. No flappers here. Nobody has knees in Upper Helensburgh.
Marilyn appears with an etiolated brown-haired girl in spectacles. ‘This is Anne,’ she says, and the girl smiles. ‘I thought you would both have lots to talk about. Anne is a teacher as well. And she has lots of unusual notions, the sort of thing young people have.’
Anne is Anne Fremantle, a young woman of adventurous ideas which are going to fall on stony ground in Helensburgh. She is very excited to meet Wystan and she presents him with a copy of his poetry book, which she has bought from the tourist office on the shorefront. Her height marks her out in the room. ‘Would you sign it for me?’ she asks. She even has a pen.
‘Of course.’ He scrawls his name and adds, after a hesitation, for Anne, with warmest regards. She peeps around his arm as he writes and holds the book to her breast when he has finished.
A tumbler with a dark amber liquid appears. ‘Here we are; this is Talisker. Have a go at that,’ Pop says.
Wystan does have a go. The liquid burns a track down his gullet and he tries not to cough. But as it reaches his stomach, a pleasurable warm glow spreads through his body and causes a click of confidence in his mind – a click that says, I can win this.
Pop is tapping his glass with a fork and the talk dies down, along with the soft notes of the harp. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Marilyn and I are delighted you’re all here for our Easter Party once more. We have a small announcement to make.’ Marilyn nestles at his side and slips her arm through his.
‘Our beautiful daughter, Amy, whom I know you all know . . .’ He indicates the sensible-looking girl next to Jessop. ‘Well, I’m delighted to tell you that the young man standing next to her, Mr Jessop, came to me earlier today to ask for her hand in marriage.
‘Arthur is a fine young man, and, of course, I gave my blessing, and so these two young ones are now engaged.’
Sighs ripple through the party, and then applause. Some of the women go to embrace Amy; some of the older ones embrace Marilyn. Jessop is surrounded by men slapping his back, guffawing congratulations. Wystan stands very still with his glass in his hand.
‘I enjoyed your book,’ whispers Anne. ‘I’ve been wanting to meet you so I could ask you about it.’ She takes a delicate sip of sherry. Wystan nods and smiles at her. Theakston and McLeod appear with champagne, and now Wystan’s whisky has been replaced by a glass for a toast.
‘To Amy and Arthur!’ says Pop Wallace, beaming proudly.
‘To Amy and Arthur!’ repeats the party, like an amen.
Wystan throws down the champagne, noting that the sensation is not a warm one, the bubbles ricocheting their way upwards to his brain, making him dizzy for a moment.
Anne is still by his side, face turned to his. How quickly men and women take on the appearance of their adult roles, Wystan thinks. She stands demurely, trying not to emphasise her height, which would put her taller than him. She holds her drink, which she plainly does not like, in the way she has been taught. And she grasps the reins of conversation, though it seems to him that she would like to be giggling, or running about outside. And he, too, is standing now as he ought, dipping his ear to catch her not-too-loud voice, positioning himself at a slightly protective angle, as men do with women, an indulgent smile upon his face. She is about his age, but here they are, new gentleman in town and young provincial girl, already moulding themselves into something like their parents.
‘I don’t know how to put this exactly, but your poems seem unchristian.’ She has clearly rehearsed this statement. A frown appears behind the spectacles; she does not want to be rude. ‘But big-hearted.’ Wystan does not know quite how to reply. He takes a fortifying sip of his drink, raises his glass slightly to Pop Wallace, who is across the room, watching him.
He says, ‘I’ve rather fallen out with organised religion. I find myself much more interested in people.’
‘Do you go to church?’
Wystan shakes his head. ‘I’ve no direct aversion. It’s just you know.’
‘And are you a Christian?’
‘Well, if you’re putting a gun to my head . . .’
She blushes. ‘Oh, no! I’m just trying to fathom . . . Oh dear. I’ve been rude. I’m not accustomed to talking to the author about their work. You seem very spiritual, that’s all, in your work. But there’s no God.’
‘I believe in God. But, possibly . . .’ And, here, he pauses. ‘Possibly he has ceased to believe in me. I’m sure it’s only temporary.’
‘What I think Anne is getting at,’ says the widow Laithwaite, who has appeared in full rustling skirts between them, ‘is that your book is rather eccentric – for us poor types far away from London.’
Anne looks at him with appeal in her eyes. ‘I didn’t say that,’ she says.
‘What I personally hope for in a poem,’ continues Mrs Laithwaite, ‘is beauty and joy. An uplift of the spirits. Those of us who’ve suffered loss in the war . . . well, we turn to poetry for solace, don’t we?’
McLeod appears at his elbow bearing a silver tray on which are piled oysters. ‘An oyster, sir?’ Beside him, Theakston brings china plates with tiny silver forks.
Wystan has never had an oyster before, and doesn’t like the look of them, with their snot-like appearance and their briny undertow, like a woman’s knickers. How he wishes Christopher were here – or, more to the point, that he was with Christopher. His friend would not set foot in such a gathering as this, knowing it for what it was.
‘Well done, you two,’ says Wystan to the boys, and, with a shudder, lifts an oyster on to the plate Theakston is holding.
‘Only one?’ says Marilyn. ‘You need feeding up, Mr Auden.’
‘Oh, I’m fine just now. I’m a slow eater of fish.’ Auden lays his drink down and tackles the oyster. It slips down his throat in a but- tery mass and he stifles a retch.
Plates come and go, McLeod appearing like a sprite at his elbow. More oysters. Funny biscuits with pâté. Pineapple pieces, which he really can’t stand. Under Marilyn’s watchful eye, he takes some of everything he is offered.
Then a commotion behind him and a large roast of pork is brought in, which the cook shreds before their eyes and heaps on yet more trays, with an arrangement of greens.
Wystan likes this more and, indeed, calls McLeod over to top up his plate. He’s just got his mouth full of delicious melting pork when Pop Wallace announces loudly, ‘We have another special guest tonight: Mr Wystan Auden. Mr Auden is a poet, a real poet, who has published a book.’ More sighs, more faces turning to study him. Wystan feels their eyes scraping up and down his clothes. Pop goes on, ‘Perhaps Mr Auden would care to read us one of his poems?’ An ocean of silence swells through the room. Fearing the guests can hear him eating, Wystan gulps his mouthful unchewed.
‘Mr Auden’s reputation precedes him,’ pipes up the nervous voice of Callum Wallace. He gives a friendly admiring smile to his mentor. ‘People still talk about you at Oxford. In Helensburgh, we may be finding your work unusual, but there they have been talking about this book all year!’
‘Oh, yes, do read us something,’ says Anne eagerly, offering him her copy of his book. Callum’s bright, bony face is full of encourage- ment and Wystan decides he can simply speak the poem to Callum and Anne: the two young people can be his audience. So, he takes the book from Anne’s proffered hand, closes it, because he does not need to read his own poems from the page, crosses his hands in front of him and closes his eyes, as if he is praying. The silence goes on for long enough to cause Pop Wallace to cough uncertainly.
After an agonising forty-five seconds or so, Wystan raises his head and begins to recite:
‘It is time for the destruction of error.
The chairs are being brought in from the garden, The summer talk stopped on that savage coast Before the storms, after the guests and birds:
In sanatoriums they laugh less and less,
Less certain of cure; and the loud madman
Sinks now into a more terrible calm . . .’
A long silence greets this, the audience being neither sure whether the poem has finished, nor what it is about. Then there is a cough from someone by the window, and a ‘Bravo, Mr Auden.’ A single clap.
Pop Wallace mutters into his drink, ‘Doesn’t sound like poetry to me.’
‘Father!’ hisses Callum.
‘Thank you, Mr Auden. I wonder . . . Do you have any poems not about sanatoriums?’ asks Mrs Laithwaite.
Anne takes the book back, gently, from Wystan. ‘I think the poem is profound,’ she says from her great height. ‘And we haven’t heard it all, anyway – just a few lines. Mr Auden is telling us about the decay of the nation.’
Pop Wallace frowns, trying to work out right from wrong. These young people seem to like bad verse and to enjoy its subversive message.
‘Mr Auden, I can’t work out if you are insulting the company or not. What’s the “savage coast” if it’s not here? There’s no coast in Birmingham, or Oxford! What is the “destruction of error” if it’s not a call for revolution!’
Mrs Laithwaite draws a little closer. ‘You seem awfully nice in person, and I am sure your next book will be much better.’
It is Jessop’s wicked smirk that enrages him the most.
Wystan gives a slight bow to Mrs Wallace. ‘I’m afraid I was not prepared to read a poem. I apologise if it was the wrong one. It was the only one to come to mind on the spot.’
‘Oh, but Mr Auden, we are just trying to talk!’ cries Marilyn. ‘Please don’t take offence. It’s our way of, well, taking part.’
Just then, the liveried boys come in and take away all the plates. They are followed by a quartet of musicians, who immediately start up a bouncy tune for dancing. Wystan is forgotten as the men take their partners and begin the Lindy Hop.
Anne is standing hopefully by his side. He knows what he has to do.
‘Would you do me the pleasure . . . ?’ he asks her, offering his hand.
‘Oh, thank you! Yes!’ says Anne, and her hand slides into his.
And Wystan’s mortification is complete as he shuffles through a poorly executed Lindy Hop, grateful only for the fact that Anne is almost as clumsy as he.
Why would anyone do this?
This is Hell, to be sure. Couples laced together in conformity, dancing a dance that looks as though it is trying to break them free, but is just more of the awful same.
When I go to Hell, Wystan muses, it will look like this: eternal Lindy Hop in a Helensburgh drawing room.
When the tune finally ends, Wystan says to Anne, ‘I’m very tired. Please, will you excuse me? I must go.’
A goodbye to the disappointed hostess. McLeod appears from the shadows and escorts Wystan out of the room. His footsteps sound like gunfire on the parquet floor.
The air outside is soft and thick, with a taste of rain to come. Then there is a hand on his arm. ‘Mr Auden, Wystan,’ says Callum. ‘I loved your poem, and I do hope that tonight won’t make you break off our acquaintance.’
‘Of course not! Although, clearly, your father would be no more pleased about it, if he knew.’ They share a secret grin. ‘I don’t want to be someone who corrupts an idealistic young man, but, well, it pleases me greatly that you borrow my books. And take my eccentric opinions seriously.’
‘I will always come,’ says Callum, and he slips back behind the door. Wystan feels a wave of relief wash over him that he has escaped. What did he expect from a gathering like this? To be understood?
It’s no time to go home, though. Night has fallen and it is the perfect time to enjoy a walk. Wystan sets off, not quite sure why he is heading with such a decisive step towards the railway station. Except that he longs to see something, someone else. He longs to see that boy.
Wishing can make all kinds of things come true. He firmly believes this. The world is a place of magic – and longing is the greatest magic of all. It is the stuff of which we are all made, the simple force of love trying to exist.
The station is lit with a dim glow. People are milling in and out, on and off the trains into Glasgow. It is comforting to sit on a bench and watch people with other, bigger, lives passing him, bringing gulps of city air his way. He lets the patterns of people and voices swim across his eyes and his brain.
And then he sees him.
Him.
The boy with the pocked face and the frame as lean as a cane. He’s with no one, and he looks different. Thinner. Paler. The shirt is patched at the elbows and lifts out of his trousers where the material has been cut off to make the patch. He’s not smoking this time, just watching, much as Wystan is simply watching.
He hasn’t seen Wystan yet, which gives the poet time simply to enjoy the unutterable thrill of seeing him again. Then the boy’s eyes meet his, and they are locked together in a moment of shocked recognition. Wystan will never forget as long as he lives the moment when the young man recognises him, though they have never met, and raises his hand in greeting. In that gesture is the validation of all that he is; it is the gesture of a comrade in loneliness. Who knew that sometimes love comes to get you, drags you from the ashes of your life, the terrible empty heart of everyday life?
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Thank you for reading and listening.
Until next time!
Polly x
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