Jammy Dodger (3 page)

We were very pleased, then, when we came up with
Lyre
. It was classy and classical and unambiguous, and felicitously alluded to a famous work by Shelley, one of our favourite poets (
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is
 …) Scholars would also know that the instrument itself was invented by Hermes, who was the messenger of the gods and the god of literature in his own right – which made us feel clever. We also liked to think that we, as editors, were following a line all the way from the harp pluckers of Ancient Greece in providing a harmonious space for the poetic impulse. But that's by the bye.

So, once you've got the name right, you then have to formulate a coherent editorial policy and this is trickier than it sounds. I mean, what do you say when you set out your stall in the first issue? ‘We will only print stuff that is
good
'? Kind of obvious. And yet, that is somehow what you have to tell them, the standing army of would-be poets. Not that it will make any difference in the long-run to the quality of the submissions. (You could always try something like: ‘Please note, if your stuff isn't quite up to scratch, may we suggest you send it to –
insert name of rival magazine
.')

Okay, you have your title and your policy; you also have to decide on a format. Let's play it straight: A5 size, an oldstyle font such as Garamond for the poems and a sans serif for the titles, let's say Arial. Now you need some stuff to put inside – and this is where the trouble begins. Once you fire the starting pistol you will not believe the avalanche of psychic waste that will explode through your letterbox. Who knew there were so many tortured souls pouring their hearts out in back bedrooms and garrets in all the cities of the night? Who knew there was so much backlogged
angst?
So much pent-up ambergris? So much pain? Not me. I was shocked by the outpourings triggered by my first couple of ventures. The manuscripts, with their accompanying letters (by turns pleading and belligerent), came in waves, week after week, and for a while I really did try to keep up. I relived the feverish torments of adolescence and lost love, nodded in slack-jawed recognition at the brutal injustice of society, wept empathetic tears over mankind's inability to live in peace. I endured bad spelling, horrifying syntax, nightmarish typography. I had insights that no young man should have. I became a human superconductor in a
weltschmerz
machine.

(Here's another quick tip for the novice editor: discard immediately any submission that begins with ‘
As a fan of the good old-fashioned kind of verse
 …', includes works entitled
Ode to My Cock
or
Period Pains
, or is accompanied by a photograph of the sender in a state of undress.)

Needless to say, it had to stop. It was them or me. I had lost the capacity to risk damaging these fragile egos by sending their stuff back
and
the will to read anything that wasn't obviously good within the first four lines. Consequently, manila envelopes (some of them very heavy) began to pile up in my spare bedroom. As the gaps between the magazine's appearances lengthened, they spilled out of the bedroom into the living room and from there into the hallway. Their presence, their sheer
bulk
became oppressive. I was racked by guilt. At first I tried sticking a couple of them under my arm each morning and leaving them on the bus but it became apparent that that would take years, especially as upright citizens kept running after me and handing them back. I also briefly tinkered with an arson plan but in the end I just went out and found another flat. And I never looked back.

Of course, after a while you master your qualms: you realise you have a responsibility to the reading public. To literature. To art. You are a custodian of all that is true and real, a nurturer of intellects, a shaper of sensibilities, a midwife, a parent, a judge.
A piper at the gates of dawn
. There will be casualties: tears, broken hearts, livers the size of space hoppers. Some will have to accept that there is just no room for them, standing or otherwise, in the pantheon. There are no extenuating circumstances you see, just
the thing itself
.

There will always be some (rejected versifiers mainly) who demand to know by what or on whose authority you act.
Surely it's a matter of taste
, they cry.
Who polices the police?
And so on and so forth, and that is to some extent true. But here's the real beauty of it, the killer line when the whip comes down and the bolt is shot and the fat lady has exited stage left – when all the bitching and whining and carping and theorising is done: THE EDITOR'S DECISION IS FINAL.

God, it feels good.

 

*

 

Occasionally I would call for Oliver in the morning at his flat in the student-infested Holy Land (so-called because of the street names: Jerusalem Street, Palestine Street, Damascus Street, and so on). It was a ten minute walk in the opposite direction to the office but there was a good patisserie on the way and if I could get him moving early it meant we had more chance of getting some work done before the first tea-break.

Later that week I rang the bell for a third time and at last heard the sound of a second-floor sash window being hoisted upwards. Oliver's head appeared over the sill, puffy and full of sleep. He focused on me and withdrew. A minute later a cluster of keys landed with a complicated jangle at my feet and I let myself into the pungent hallway.

As I picked my way through the usual student-house snowdrifts of flyers and junk mail a young woman emerged from the ground-floor flat. She was naked. Her body – not slim, not plump – was luminously white. She held her hand up as a shield against the sunshine streaming through the fanlight and when she saw me gasped (I had a sharp intake myself) and jumped back over the threshold, shutting the door behind her. I stood there for a few moments, listening, then, blinking rapidly to savour the eidetic imprint of her nudity, I proceeded up the stairs. What was that line of Milton's?
In naked beauty more adorned / More lovely than Pandora
 …

Oliver greeted me in a quilted satin dressing gown I'd never seen before, bright amber in colour with crimson oriental-style embroidery. It had a large upturned collar and a slight flare above the knees. Even by Oliver's haphazard sartorial standards this took some beating. He looked like a gigantic Christmas cracker.

‘I didn't know you were gay,' I said, handing him his keys.

He yawned elaborately and clawed at his groin.

‘What time is it?'

‘Nine-thirty. Are you ready?'

‘Does it look like I'm ready?' He shuffled towards the bathroom.

I surveyed the wreckage of his living room. Had he been
burgled
? There was an odd smell.

‘No. It looks like you had a good opening night at the Old Vic and celebrated with rent boys and Angel Dust.'

‘Didn't catch that,' he called. ‘I'm having a quick shower.'

I headed into the kitchen. The smell was stronger now – sickly, sharp. I filled the kettle at the sink, which was overloaded, needless to say, with soiled crockery. Crumpled Chinese takeaway cartons lay across the worktop; a pizza box complete with gnawed crusts had been discarded on the cooker. No obvious culprits. Then, as I turned to rummage in a cupboard for the coffee jar I saw them: about a hundred empty milk cartons in a jumbled heap beside the bin. At some point there had been an attempt to stack them but they had cascaded. The remnants of their contents were all over the floor. Sour milk! That was the stench. I opened the fridge. It was full of milk.

‘Oliver,' I said, when he had completed his
toilette
. ‘What's the story with all the cow juice? Are you bathing in it?'

He was ensconced in the armchair opposite me, trying to unknot the laces of a pair of caramel brogues. At his feet, which I was avoiding looking at and, indeed, across most of the floorspace, were his possessions – books, records, videos, clothes, used tissues – abandoned where they fell.

‘Oh the milk, yeah, I'm trying to win an all-expenses-paid round-the-world trip.'

‘Right. And …?'

‘Well, you need tokens from twelve milk cartons to enter.'

He was concentrating hard on the shoes now, avoiding eye contact.

‘And …?'

‘And I intend to enter many times in order to maximise my chances. You also have to come up with some slogan about the Sunnyland Farm Bunny – ' He waved a hand in the air. ‘But I'll crack that.'

He was hiding something. I already knew what it was.

‘Am I right to conclude you're using
Lyre
money?'

‘No, no, no. Well, kind of …'

The bastard.

‘I'll pay it back though, don't you worry. And it'll be good for me to see the world – broaden my horizons and so on. It feels like I've been in this place forever. It's too small. And nothing ever happens.'

‘
Gods make their own importance
,' I reminded him. ‘By the way, I just encountered a buck-naked female in your lobby.'

‘What?
When
?' I had his goggle-eyed attention now alright.

‘On the way in. Woman who lives below you. I've no idea what she was doing but it was a very pleasant start to the day.'

‘You lucky – What was it like?'

‘You mean what does a naked lady look like?'

‘Yes. I mean no. Was she … nice?'

‘Very. Who is she?'

‘Dunno, she only moved in a week ago. I think she's final year accountancy.'

‘Ah well. Never mind.'

‘You're such a snob. Bugger it! These laces are knackered.'

The smell of rancid milk was beginning to make me feel ill so I went outside to wait while Oliver scoured the crime scene of his flat for functioning footwear. A moment later the door opened and the startled nymph from earlier appeared, concealed in a crisp linen shirt and jeans, her dark hair untethered. She started up the street then stopped, turned and looked at me. She retraced her steps.

‘Look, this is really embarrassing,' she said in a low voice. ‘Was that you earlier on?'

‘You mean … in the hallway?'

‘Yes.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm really sorry, I thought you were the postman.'

‘Pardon?'

‘I didn't think there was anyone there, I was just coming out to get my post.'

‘Oh, I see. Well, you know, these things happen. I didn't … I wasn't …'

She was watching me very intently. Cool blue inquisitive eyes. (Or they might have been green, it was hard to tell.) Now it felt as though I was the one that had been caught in the buff. How did that happen? I turned and stared at the door, willing Oliver to arrive and cauterise the situation. No show.

‘Anyway, no harm done,' she said. ‘Worse things happen at sea.'

‘Indeed.'

She lingered. I didn't know what to say.

‘Well, cheerio then,' she said.

‘Yeah, see you.' That didn't sound right.

I watched her walk away.

‘Hold on, what's your name?' I called.

She turned again.

‘Rosemary McCann. What's yours?'

‘Artie Conville. Pleased to meet you,' I said, moving towards her and extending a hand, which she took and held lightly as though judging its weight.

I ransacked the air for something to say.

‘And are you, in fact, the Star of the County Down?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘
Young Rosie McCann, from the banks of the Bann
?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘It's a song. Same name as you. She's the gem in Ireland's crown. It's famous.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Never mind.'

She grinned. Nice teeth.

‘I have to go now,' she said.

 

We arrived at the office just in time for the morning tea-break. While Oliver busied himself in ‘the kitchen' I had a shuffle through the pending file of material for the forthcoming issue. Whichever way you sliced it, this was thin fare: a borderline prose poem on love across the barricades, a sonnet sequence detailing Catholic persecution, and a haiku entitled
Protestant Guilt
.

‘Bad news,' said Oliver, poking his head out of ‘the kitchen'.

‘You're not wrong,' I replied. ‘This is woeful.'

‘No, I mean there's no milk.'

I gave him my most ironic stare.

‘You've gotta be fucken kidding me.'

‘Relax, it's no problem. I'll just scamper out and get some. Now, where's the petty cash?'

‘As if you didn't know,' I muttered.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

I listened to his heavy footsteps (cerise Dr Marten boots) fade on the staircase and then strolled to the window and opened it. A smell like ice-cream vans drifted up from the street, and from somewhere else a scent of cut grass (
Brief is the breath / Mown stalks exhale
 …). Early summer was the best time. Down below I could see Oliver – highly visible in his khaki and orange Hawaiian shirt – crossing the road diagonally, headed for the mini-mart. Sandwich boards on the pavement outside the newsagent's proclaimed the day's headlines: Six Soldiers Killed in Lisburn Bombing, (
Long, long the death
 …), Provos Claim Fun-Run Slaughter, (… 
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace / And that high-builded cloud
 …), Ten Civilians Injured In No Warning Blast, (… 
Moving at summer's pace
.)

‘Moving at summer's pace.' I said it aloud. Sublime. …
In the white hours / Of young-leafed June / With chestnut flowers, / With hedges snow-like strewn
… My grandfather – long since gone out of the world of light – once told me he had measured his life by the number of summers he (likely) had remaining. ‘When you're young you've got so much time,' he would say, rolling one of the cigarettes he would continue to smoke into his eighties. ‘And then, as you get older it disappears like water down a plughole.'
Whether or not we use it, it goes …
He had fought in the second battle at Ypres and walked away from the impact of a heavy artillery shell (‘They were known as Jack Johnsons after the heavyweight champion') that killed nine of his company, including his best friend. ‘You never take anything for granted again after that,' he told me. When he arrived home after de-mob he married my grandmother within a month and cradled his first child in his arms within a year.