Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     All I ever knew about Gerry is what didn't count. There were these things he cared, became passionate, about and there were the gaps. The gaps didn't make sense and when he made the news with what he did, those gaps helped to piece something of the story together, something more than you got from the tabloids' headlines, but never enough. Not understanding seems a key to it all, to Gerry, to Geraldine his girlfriend, and to the 'gasuir' - 'the boy' -that was me. Some day I may write to him, hope that my letters will get through, and that he might even write back. I'll have my answers after all. But, the more I think this through, the more I believe I'm best off not knowing, that it is a more just thing to know ignorance, than to have known the real Gerry Flanagan. The newsprint is old and faded and what Gerry did will be all but forgotten except by historians and victims. That's the Gerry that I don't know, that I can't talk about, but perhaps it's time now that I said something of what I did know and have known, time to get it down right afore I too forget and bear false witness against my neighbour.

     I don't know why Gerry gave the Don such a hard time, but he was good at it. What made it more mad is that the Don thought the world of Gerry: fellow countryman, keen mind and this genuine love of literature. Gerry, shock of flame hair, an explosion of freckles spat in his face, and the pale eyes as if intent on crying, seemed to spend most of his time as if he wasn't really there, otherwise preoccupied or distracted. He only ever came alive around literature. He'd rave, light up and burn with passion for books, for studying, for extra reading, for anything, except his girlfriend Geraldine, Liverpool Irish and proud of it. People thought it funny that Gerald and Geraldine were together, but what I thought was funny, was the way that they weren't, and then, finally, I thought it wasn't funny at all, that was when I did them the disfavour of pitying them.

     I was late, not that it was my fault, but Gerry called out of his window as I was passing his ground floor room. He said to hold on, while he found some clothes. He was naked, the skin of the man like sour milk and the mad tangle of pubic hair flashing all the more brightly for it. There should have been a law against that kind of thing - and there was, but Gerry didn't give a stuff. You felt like a voyeur, not that you wanted to look, but you did. He was bold as balls on a dog that one and I had to laugh. Geraldine was less amused. I just saw her small hand, tiny, bird-like fingers, clutching at the curtain drawing it across. There seemed to be a lot to that drawing of the curtain and what she was trying to shut, though I couldn't tell whom she wished to exclude, Gerry or myself. I wasn't surprised that Geraldine didn't wave or acknowledge me. Two nights before, three in the morning, she had knocked at my door, hating Gerry again, wanting out, almost scared of him. We chatted and smoked to six. She gave me a tired kiss goodbye but promised more before leaving, before saying that she was going to sort everything, that everything would be fixed right. Since then she did her best to avoid me. I wasn't bothered. Gerry, not Geraldine, was my mate.

     In those days I smoked, so rolled an 'Old Horrible' as I waited for the main man. It was autumn, but a dreary one, no autumn gold, no blaze of colours, just brown, dead leaves, soggy and wasted as giant used tea-leaves, thrown out to improve the lawn. The lawn needed it, blathered brown and dying. A lone gardener, bent double raking the leaves, may just as well have given up and turned the whole lot into a compost pot. You couldn't make good on litter, leaves and dog muck; not even in summer did this place look good.

     People passed, I didn't look, just heard their cute accents, all seemingly from the south, good schools, some twang with a future to it. Ma doff trailed off into the grass, sucked to the nubbins and expiring like a dud firework. I coughed and gypped and vowed to give up again soon. I felt like rolling another one, Gerry was taking his time, then his voice hit me hard and got me moving, the roar of it seemingly coming out of the ether - daydreaming again, no doubt.

     Come on, gasuir, we'll be late at this rate. Can't stand about either or that bloody woman will be at me again. Did you hear the argument?

     I told Gerry that I hadn't and I hadn't. All I heard was the soggy stumble of the rake in the leaves and those superb southern accents, so quaint in their very correct Englishness. Gerry was talking ten to the dozen, the boom and furore of his voice echoing off the huddle of buildings in front of us, all concrete grey, struggling for anonymity, stolid as gravestones. I couldn't believe he'd done all the reading. Art degrees are dead easy to do badly, little set lectures, little to do but read and write. But to do well, there's no end to the reading, the writing and all the extra researching. Gerry, that gangling, shambling strip of a man, put together by a couple of pipe-cleaners and the wild enthusiasm of a child, had done it again - he'd read it all. I hated him. I don't know how he did it. And it didn't do him any good, and sometimes when I'm feeling low and evil, I still hate him for it, despite the way things went, that I was the one who got something of a degree in the end. What the hell - sin a bhfuil.

     We were late. We hovered outside the Don's door waiting for a break and waiting for some time, as McClennan went off on one, about Yeats setting the artistic agenda for the Irish Free State. I scratted around my jean's pocket, trying to find a pen, just in case anything turned up vaguely interesting and worth cramming. I got pulled up short by Gerry, snorting like a horse in the stalls, snorting like a horse breaking out of his stalls.

     Lan cac!

     Gerry was away in Irish again. It sounded like lawn cack, and it didn't really matter what it sounded like as Gerry, cheeks glowing like a consumption victim, kicked open the door. That was just the beginning of the interruption, Gerry hit the Don hard with everything that he had, had against William Bulter Yeats and the rest of it too:

     That Blue Shirt, fascist, fairy-chasing turncoat did nothing but put an artistic stranglehold on the Republic. The great writers, the writers that couldn't stomach his tweedy banalities left or drank themselves to death: Joyce and Beckett on the continent; Behan and O'Brien dead with drink; Christy Brown would have walked but for being a cripple of a man; and the rest of 'em; crippled by De Valera's Ireland and his chief Bard…

     There was more. Gerry wouldn't let up. The Don fought his corner stood up for Yeats, stood up for more than that too, for somehow it got around to 'The Emergency', that is to say, the Second World War, and the Don tried to defend De Valera running around to the German embassy to offer his commiserations on the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Gerry was having none of it. And, to be honest, we just left them to it. There was a keen guy on some sort of scholarship from what was then Czechoslovakia, there was the pretty lass from Wales who wouldn't say anything, well not to me, and went home weekends; then some lump of a lad who didn't like anyone, didn't like English and didn't mind getting a full grant for the privilege of not enjoying it. I stepped through the door, pushed it to with a creak and made myself a coffee.

     The Don wasn't good for much, but free coffee and a sympathetic ear if you shoved in assignments slightly late. He was an aging, genial, and softly spoken man, but he nearly lost it that day as he stood up to Gerry.

     Gerry had lost it. His arms, thin twigs of limbs, with balled fists spinning, cursing the ghost of Yeats and the arse-lickers, begrudgers after him, hating Heaney, hating all that smug rural banality; praising Carson, McGuckian and Muldoon.

     I drank my coffee. I even made a note here and there, not as many as the Czech guy, but then again I never did. Idle - idleness has always been my problem. Somehow, face flushed as crushed sun, Gerry managed to get it back, get it off his chest and he sat down and shut it for a time. We had been late and there were the next class, shuffling and coughing deliberately noisily outside. The Don thought it prudent to wind up. He hummed and hawed a bit, getting his wind back, I suppose.

     So, we have heard a very interesting debate today. And, as you are no doubt aware, Gerald, Mr Flanagan, and I have rather differing views on the status of Yeats in Irish literature. But maugre and in spite of differences, what is plain is Yeats' importance and his legacy to Irish Letters. No one has had a greater influence, perhaps not even Joyce, in shaping the artistic aspirations of this new, but yet ancient nation.

     The Don, all soft vowels and slight Limerick lisp, had brought it all nicely to an end, closing the debate just in time to open the doors on the next throng of semi-eager scholars.

     Gerry jumped to his feet, mock clapped, the sound dull, tired and unbelievably sardonic; its faint echo like some kind of whispered slur; the strange acoustics of the sixties architecture.

     Well said, a-rithist, a-rithist!

     Gerry was back at the Irish, asking for an encore.

     Listen, Yeats was not Irish, not even a West Brit - Yeats was just another confused Englishman.

     With that Gerry left, slamming the door, almost slamming it on me as I raced to follow him. He was still ranting as he ran through the strict narrow lines of corridors; he could run like a whippet. I gave up. I knew where I'd find him anyway.

     On the table already was one dead pint, an untouched drink for me and a pint glass with a smidgen at the bottom held tightly in his hand. I picked up the soon-dead glass, took it to the bar, ordered the round. Gerry was on for drinking, nothing unusual in that, but something was wrong. He had argued with the Don before, called Heaney, the sort of Irish poet loved by the English; called him a third-rate rural rhymester, called him the last of the mediocre Victorians. Now, that debate had been heated, but there had been a great deal of humour about it and academic teasing. There had been none of that leg-pulling evident on the row just barely over.

     So? Gerry didn't reply directly to my question. My fault, I suppose, it wasn't much of a question. But around the dregs of his third or perhaps fourth pint, he got to talking, not that it mattered, not that it helped.

     You see, gasuir, the civil war really split Ireland. It was never the same afterwards. There comes a time in any dispute between two Paddies where which side they were on in the civil war starts to get in the way.

     For God's sake, Gerry, you weren't even thought of during the civil war! I banged my glass down; Gerry, a man whom I really respected was talking crap, full of shit - Ian cac.

     Really, really you think so, gasuir? What sort of Irishman are you, gasuir? Where do you stand on this civil war? What sort of Mick are you?

     An English one. I'll not be just another Plastic Paddy who's eaten a prata, supped a pint of leann dubh, with a couple of grandparents eligible to play football for 'Oirland'. I looked into those eyes, eyes made for weeping and pushed over my glass. For once, Gerry almost looked at me with respect. I blushed; shit, it was as if I had a kind of teenage crush on the man.

     Gerry got in the round. He didn't say anything. He just drank his beer down and looked like for all the world that he was sulking.

     I have to go.

     Gerry did that. I just thought he meant back to his room, back to bed with Geraldine. They argued, they rarely spoke to one another, but they shagged like they just invented it. No, Gerry left that night, with Geraldine and a couple of suitcases. The first I knew about it was finding a note and a key that had been pushed under my door at some time or other early in the morning. Gerry had made me a present of all his books. I was touched. I was bloody annoyed, annoyed at them both, what the hell did they think they were doing?

     Five years later I got the chance to find out. Aye, I had my chance after all... It was raining hard in Bradford. I was just one of Mickey Dunn's men and it was my first day on this particular site - some pipes needed laying. Well, nothing was getting laid that morning. The men huddled in the cabin, swapping dirty jokes, reading the paper, playing cards, smoking and brewing up. It sounds fun. It was tedious. We were all self-certificating and that rain was earning us zilch. I'd given up smoking by then, that was one right thing that I had managed at last to do, of that, I was unduly proud.

     William Butler Yeats didn't do yous an awful lot of fecking good!

     I turned towards the door, recognising the voice of the man who'd come in, but not believing it.

     Gerry!

     How you doing, gasuir?

     Gerry, you mad feck where the hell you've been? What the hell you been doing?

     Nothing original. Got Geraldine barefoot and pregnant and been regretting it ever since. So, you shower of wankers doing anything today.

     Not me! Not in this! You mad, Gerry.

     So yous keep telling me. What sort of Irishman are you to be scared of a bit of drizzle?

     A dry confused English one, Gerry. Aye, a dry one at least.

     Come on then, forget today, let me go and get you completely, utterly and internally wet.

     Gerry took me to a pub just off Carlisle Road. It was rough and cheap and the beer was badly kept and unpalatable. Not that Gerry minded. He just sipped at a half, then later got the girl behind the bar to make him a coffee or two.

     It was good to see him, hear his voice again, still full of fight, still enthusing about a couple of things he was working at. Thinking about Open University, thinking about starting his own literary mag, thinking about that book he wanted to write - Gerry talked and it was good to know that he hadn't changed, hadn't been beaten, despite the flack and shit he got working for his brother-in-law.

     I had a few beers, too many for driving and supped at his words. I didn't tell him what I was doing, because he could see what I was doing. There was nothing to say.

     We pushed the car onto the site and locked up. It was still raining hard. Gerry had invited me back to his gaff just outside St Helens. He rang on the mobile. He warned Geraldine that he was bringing home a guest. I tried to guess her reaction, just hearing the faint buzz of her voice it was hard to tell. Mobile phones weren't what they are now, something slim enough to fit into your wallet, but a crude lump of plastic the size of a brick, and the call saturated with static.

     I sort of dosed on the way back. Gerry played something wild on the tape machine - Birtwhistle or something. That was just like Gerry to be into that sort of shit: modern contemporary music, jazz and anything that no one but a boffin with a beard would dig. How I managed to kip I don't know, but I did, coming round at a turn by a line of shops. It didn't look a bad neighbourhood and neither did it look like it was winning any prizes - steady, the best you could say of it was that it was steady enough. We pulled up outside a decently sized, late Victorian terrace. I grabbed my bag and slammed home the door with the lock set. Gerry was away before me bounding up the short path to the door. I gave the house the once over and that was when I saw the hand, tiny, like a talon, clutching at the curtain and pulling it to a close.

     Hang on there, Gerry.

     What? Gerry was fumbling with his keys.

     Need some baccy.

     Oh.

     I'll just bob to the shops - won't be long.

     Right you are.

     Rain was still drumming hard. I walked away, soaked, reluctant to risk learning more and a chance blown.