Autobiography (8 page)

The star of the fifth year sports is Pete Gregg, who is kitted out in readiness wherever I’m sent, but his is a manly body of muscle against my whipper-snapper, featherlite twister. I am a torrent of nervous dash, whereas he is solid control and hefty granite legs. However, as I struggle down Oldham Road, out of life’s loop, I know that Jason King and Stewart Sullivan and Annabelle Hurst are zig-zagging across Europe solving the unsolvable, and my pain magnifies.

Of some interest to me are the limericks of Edward Lear and the bordering-on-bathos of Walter de la Mare. There is even more meaning in the scanty lines of Hillaire Belloc:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right

and in this year of 1974, knowing nothing of Hillaire Belloc (in fact, I walk into a bookshop in St Anne’s Square asking for ‘anything by Hillary Belloc’), I had no idea that a complete poem could be as short as two lines (couplet?):

I’m tired of love; I’m still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Naturally, Hillaire Belloc’s name is never mentioned in the unhappy classrooms of St Mary’s School for the Daft, and I find it difficult to track down any information on the rhymist who thought it quite enough to say:

The chief defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String

Belloc sets me out on the hunt for humorous verse, a search as yet largely unmapped. Naturally, I find Dorothy Parker loitering, who offers:

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

And, of course, in the world of words, there is only one Oscar. Now begins a whirligig of dramatic shock as I am awed beyond reason by the poet who gives the whole person, and jabs sharply. They can tell you everything you need to know about your own sorrow, and about the joy and sadness that is usually found side by side. My senses sharpen at the words of Stevie Smith:

Some are born to peace and joy
And some are born to sorrow
But only for a day as we
Shall not be here tomorrow.

Smith had recently passed away after a lifetime of bleeding to death. She appeared to live like a never-opened window, with hardly any right to be, except to pass on a shivery touch of flu.
She lived with her aunt in a Victorian pile in Palmers Green, all so painful yet full of life; absent from life – yet all of it right on top of her; fencing adversity with spilled
ink; 50 per cent blotting-paper and 50 per cent loose tea.

With a face of distressed concrete, W. H. Auden drops into view:

Give me a doctor, partridge plump,
Short in the leg and broad in the rump,
An endomorph with gentle hands
Who’ll never make absurd demands
That I abandon all my vices
Nor pull a long face in a crisis,
But with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I have to die

In 1973 W. H. Auden dies, the words silenced, the heart finally given a rest, all in life’s shocking order. I do not know much about him, but there is so much wisdom in the unfolding words; flinching at the narrow-minded and sighing at the petty irritants. He had been interviewed on television, and I could sense the air of genius even before he spoke – as if a person’s greatness need never be pointed out, for it is there, anyway, in the silent being. Invisible behind a fog of cigarette smoke, W. H. Auden has a face of concentrated power, a voice that comes from somewhere deeper than the body, and a life too full and intense. W. H. Auden has lived through the lifetime that it takes in order to find all the right words. There is a stroking sensuality to the voice, and the richness of tone wards off the listless Yorkshire giggle of interviewer Michael Parkinson. Here, for me alone, is a glimpse of genius of the highest intellectual distinction which nobody could possibly be qualified to question. I am gradually beginning to grasp the meaning of W. H. Auden – with his eyes too large for their sockets, and his mouth stuck in the wrong part of his body. A half-asleep voice of broadcasting tones is carefully warning you that the only way to deal with him is to back down. More affable and screen-friendly is poet laureate John Betjeman (1906–1984), who is a monument to the sadness of human virtue:

I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now if the harvest is over
And the world cold
Give me the bonus of laughter
As I lose hold.

Betjeman puts it all as well as it can be put, in language of simple rhythm, fastidiously straightforward. There is no egocentricity with Betjeman, who is always helpful and at ease, and who is hopeful and is happy with his gift. But, clutching his teddy bear, Betjeman evidently frustrates the will of prickly poets who look on his celebrity as a dry well of formulated thoughts. Even with the misfortune of always knowing what is coming next, Betjeman is without agitation or propaganda. His only connection with fleshy life is through a small door kept locked, and therefore his view of England’s condition is often sugary. Yes, well, I see it now. The crate in the basement contains a living poet who is burdened by an increasing sense of their own idiocy, with pride and self-pity securely as one. The will surrenders to the resolve and dignity of the written word, and I, the gentle self, step forward, pattering up the ramp, one half of an incomplete person, knowing with certainty that I cannot live – yet wondering if I could possibly write? Slight and weary and full of angularity, my heart is never unbroken, but I am unable to call out. I have a sudden urge to write something down, but this time they are words that must take a lead. Unless I can combine poetry with recorded noise, have I any right to be? Yet, let it begin, for who is to say what you should or shouldn’t do? In fact, everyone tries to knot your desires lest your success highlight their own failure. Better, it is thought, that we all swill in the same bucket, just making do. But I have no intention of living backwards, and I have no intention of surviving for eighteen years in order that I might be strangled to death in my nineteenth. I will never be lacking if the clash of sounds collide, with refinement and logic bursting from a cone of manful blast. Here, from the weeds, the situation worsens since each abiding art-form lacks one essential ingredient – and that ingredient is the small and bowed passionate I. Since there is no living being as recipient of my whispers, and since there are no certainties that one shall ever appear, then the off-balance distortion of my everyday feelings
must
edge into the un-cooperative world
somehow.

In what could be termed sheer panic I buy a drum kit, and suddenly I am in mortal danger of doing something productive. The kit fills the bedroom, for the house itself is far too small, and of course a drum kit cannot be played softly. I stare at this mountain of glamor far more often than I slip onto its stool, because each time I thwack out my Paul Thompson formulations I am tearfully useless, and there is no one to ask. Inside my head there is mocking laughter – a little boy play
-acting as people passing the house look up to the window as the pitiful search for scrambled rhythm sounds like someone dismantling bits of furniture. Instead, I will dream the dreams of others, as shimmer by shimmer, the kit and my hopes are dismantled – unable to touch the desire it arouses. Indulgence is rarely projected freely from this particular body, and only the act of waiting registers the truth of the feelings within. Unfortunately, what I am waiting for is
myself
,
as others hahahaha on streets where squabbles threaten and desire is dread.

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) writes in what is termed ‘duple rhythm’, which is a ploy of two syllables per line – almost like two tapping feet responding to each other:

Thus I
Passe by,
And die:
As one,
Unknown,
And go.

The secrets of the female form are Robert Herrick’s poetic pleasures, and he writes repeatedly to his ‘mistress’ Julia:

Julia, when thy Herrick dies,
Close thou upon thy poet’s eyes;
And his last breath, let it be
Taken in by none but thee.

Although they who write modern pop songs could never deliver lines as strong as Robert Herrick’s, there is no one else appointed to attempt such, just as there is no one else so freely delegated. Blend noise and words and save the world. I say this not to myself, but to an imaginary upstart – out there, somewhere – for even the lyrics in the songs that I love are by no means fine art; they merely fit well beside the dexterity of voice and instrument. Stripped of sound, the lyrics of most pop songs are artful dribble; artful as in Dodger, and dodger as in wily. I am caught by what
could
be and
should
be, as the sagging-roof poetry of Shelagh Delaney’s rag-and-bone plays say
something
to me about my life. Showing a very considerable understanding of life is Melanie Safka, who is from Queens, New York, and is fortified with such songs as
I really loved Harold
,
Some say I got devil
,
Johnny boy
,
Tuning my guitar
,
I don’t eat animals
and
Close to it all
. It is folk music, it is pop music, but it is also using recording as a lecture platform, and the sincerity in the voice is overwhelming.

My mother had decided to call me Steven after the American actor Steve Cochran, who had died in 1965, the year of Grandad’s and Ernie’s deaths. No biographies of Cochran have ever existed, but his extraordinary face and gangster swagger leap forwards with sexual antagonism and vendetta smiles. In
Tomorrow is Another Day
(1951),
Slander
(1957) and
I, Mobster
(1958)
he is malevolently magnificent, hooded by virulent beetle-brows and brute lure. At 48 he had a heart attack and died whilst adrift off the California coast with a yacht full of young females. A post mortem probably wasn’t necessary.

Nellie is my father’s sister, and in 1973 she innocently asks me:
‘Have you considered being a butcher when you leave school?’
Nellie is thoughtful – and very kind, but her question is met with a silent howl. Why would I want to butcher
anything
?
Her home town of Dublin offers Patrick Kavanagh, who died in 1967 at 62:

On Pembroke Road look out for my ghost
Disheveled with shoes untied,
Playing through the railings with little children
Whose children have long since died

and, wrongly, unnecessarily, this child weeps, full of the foolish embarrassment that his father has clearly marked out. New air is discovered in the words of A
. E. Housman (1859–1936), scholar-poet, vulnerable and complex. On the day of his twelfth birthday his mother dropped dead, sealing a private future of suffering for Housman, who was said to be a complete mystery even to those who knew him. With no interest in applause or public recognition, Housman published three volumes of poetry, each one of great successful caress, each a world in itself, forcing Housman into the highest literary ranks. A stern custodian of art and life, he shunned the world and he lived a solitary existence of monastic pain, unconnected to others. The unresolved heart worked against him in life, but it connected him to the world of poetry, where he allowed (in)complete strangers under his skin. In younger years he had suffered from the unrequited love of Moses Jackson, the pain of which was so severe that it doomed Housman for the rest of time. All of his work would be governed by this loss, as if life could only ever offer one chance of happiness
(and perhaps, for every shade and persuasion, it does?):

When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did

Housman suffered throughout his life, and therefore (and not surprisingly) his life became an unyielding attempt not to cooperate. The black horizon never shifted, and his emotional lot never mellowed.

He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
and went with half my life about my ways.

At his Wildean lowest, Oscar’s personal sadness had never slumped to such leaden fatigue; Housman suffered and accepted, death always close in his mind’s eye – but not regrettably so.

I did not lose my heart in summer’s even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.

The published poetry makes the personal torture just barely acceptable. The pain done to Housman allowed him to rise above the mediocre and to find the words that most of us need help in order to say. The price paid by Housman was a life alone; the righteous rhymer enduring each year unloved and unable to love:

Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over:
I only vex you the more I try.
All’s wrong that ever I’ve done and said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, here’s luck, goodbye.
But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or shame’s to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you
And whistle and I’ll be there.

It’s easy for me to imagine Housman sitting in a favorite chair by a barely flickering gas fire, the brain grinding long and hard, wanting to explain things in his own way, monumental loneliness on top of him, but with no one to tell. The written word is an attempt at completeness when there is no one impatiently awaiting you in a dimly lit bedroom – awaiting your tales of the day, as the healing hands of someone who
knew
turn to you and touch you, and you lose yourself so completely in another that you are momentarily delivered from yourself. Whispering across the pillow comes a kind voice that might tell you how to get out of certain difficulties, from someone who might mercifully detach you from your complications. When there is no matching of lives, and we live on a strict diet of the self, the most intimate bond can be with the words that we write: