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

     This morning I cut short the time in front of my canvas, my so-called creative efforts. I seem to have a need to dwell on this for a moment.

     I have developed a very definite aversion to the word creative. I believe it has become one of the most misused words, next to the word love perhaps. As a matter of fact I’ve been preoccupied with a number of thoughts on the subject for quite some time and worked up a lot of irritating feelings in the process which I have still not explored exhaustively.

     Being creative, to my mind, has now become a kind of label issued by our so-called permissive society. Its allocation gives the wearer’s life justification and purpose.

     Once my painting activity is pronounced a ‘creative effort’ I, too, may feel justified in spending my time over it.

     I seem to have reached a point where I’ve started to reject all justification for any of my activities. I rebel against this constant prescription for purpose. It never made sense, though hardly anyone dared to admit it. But apart from my clearly rebellious feelings on the subject, I’m still quite uncertain how far I shall really be able to act on my ideas.

     I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Bob not long before his departure for America. He’d found it difficult to understand why I’d wanted to give up my work at the hospital just when I was so much less needed at home. Was this perhaps an expression of a special yearning for creativity now that I was nearing the change of life, he wondered.

     ‘It’s hardly a new yearning’, I told him. ‘And if I don’t act on it now, when then?’

     He assured me that he had no intention of discouraging me, but that he was puzzled what it could be that I wanted to express so much. Didn’t I have a reasonably clear idea about it?

     ‘I have reasonably clear feelings and a need to relate myself to life in some different way now’, I said.

     ‘Relate yourself to life in some different way’, he repeated, with ill-concealed hostility, it seemed to me. ‘Whatever is that supposed to mean? One works, one enjoys one’s leisure. There’s love of course. Perhaps I’m no longer quite enough for you, am I?’

     ‘That’s not the point and you know it, Bob. Your life is quite complete in its way. Your work offers you sufficient challenge — and there’s the occasional adventure thrown in’.

     He looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘Is that a reproach?’

     ‘Not at all. Just a statement. You deal with twisted and broken bones, I intend to concentrate on feelings and fantasies’.

     ‘I thought that’s the psychiatrist’s or psychotherapist’s job’.

     ‘I think it’s everybody’s job. And the artist could save the psychiatrist a lot of work’.

     ‘Sounds quite impressive’. He nodded, for a moment almost thoughtfully, and it was hard to tell whether he was serious or sarcastic. Then he looked at his watch and jumped up. ‘I must go to my twisted and broken bones. Let’s talk about this some other time at greater length. You must be careful not to get too isolated though, you know. It’s not a way of life that would suit me’.

     ‘I said: ‘You’re lucky to be so involved in your work, Bob, and so successful. We’re all terribly proud of you’.

     ‘Well, it’s hard work, but I think I enjoy it. And you’ve always looked after me so splendidly. It helped, you know’. He patted my face.

     I remember feeling intensely irritated and that I tried hard not to show it which, I hope, I managed adequately. A few hours later Ron, a young man, a former school mate of Isa’s, dropped in to return a book. Before long we seemed to have reached the same theme, though from somewhat different premises. I’d made him a cup of coffee and asked him to tell me how he was getting on at his course at the technical college, eventually qualifying him to take up social work. He put a third spoon of sugar into his coffee and, stirring it vigorously almost aggressively, looked up and said: ‘To tell you the truth, all this bla bla about helping other people, I’m getting quite sick of it. I wish someone could tell me what it’s all about, this so-called life of ours. You seem to have found another answer for yourself, giving up your job and having the roof of your house converted into a studio’.

     ‘I suppose I can now afford to look for other answers. For a while anyway. Or for other questions’.

     He shook his head. ‘But what are you trying to do?’

     ‘Working out some sort of a formula in each of my paintings, a certain balance, with some luck. For myself — and for others, too, who may see and understand my work. That’s all one can hope to do, integrate one’s fantasies, wishes and fears, and reach a tolerable condition of relative harmony’.

     ‘What a lot of words. You can’t feed people on that, or house them, or cure them’.

     ‘I’m not dealing with food or housing. With regard to curing people . . . . . well, it all depends what they’re suffering from. I’m dealing with fantasies and feelings — and painting techniques of course and aesthetics, if you like. After all, we live in an age of specialisation, you know’.

     Yes, these are my ideas, this is what I’m trying to do. It sounds almost straight forward and, whether I want it or not, even has built-in purpose and justification. In theory at any rate. In practice it’s generally less straight forward. Often the effort required to carry out my ideas seems almost more than I can manage. Frustration, fear and anger become more than I can bear. But it’s worse when things around me start fading into colourlessness. This happens relatively rarely these days and hardly ever lasts very long if I find the courage to express in some way or other whatever comes into my mind . . . . .

     Harrow-on-the-Hill is no more than about 15 minutes walk from my home. I took a short cut through the underpath at Northwick Park Station, across the field behind the Technical College to Watford Way, then along the footpath over the football field, to Football Lane, on the other side of the motorway. Outside the Music School a group of public school school boys in their absurd garments complete with straw hats. Although I encounter them quite regularly I still can’t get used to the idea that, nowadays, boys are still expected to wear these ridiculous uniforms, and do in fact accept them even quite gracefully, it seems. Tradition must be a great thing, I should by now have learned to respect it. But it certainly doesn’t go with my rebellious mood. A boy made to measure, to fit a well-tried and approved system. Poor boy.

     And yet I’ve come here this morning especially as part of an attempt to retrieve nothing more than a family symbol. To find a girl who misappropriated it. Why? Because I’m curious to find out more about this girl. But why this curiosity? What could there be to find out? Maybe I shall discover this, too, in my search.

     Mrs. Brentford’s name I traced easily in an old local telephone directory which I still had at home. She lived at number 58 West Street. Julia M. Brentford. Julia Maples must have been named after her.

     Like most of the cottages in West Street, number 58 was built of yellow London brick, about 150 years ago. It is terraced, with a tiny elevated garden front and back. Many of the cottages have extensions built on, generally used for kitchen and bathroom. Some have been completely modernised and are worth a lot of money. Number 58, I discovered from the next-door neighbour, is now occupied by a policeman and his wife. There was a pile of building sand and sacks of cement outside, so it seems they are also busy modernising. Unfortunately the neighbour had moved in only recently and therefore did not know anything about the late Mrs. Brentford, and I learned that the policeman and his wife are rarely in during the day.

     I was more successful at the pub around the corner where I had a cheese roll and a beer for my lunch. The publican remembered the Brentford family and the Maples family too, and in considerable detail. But little that happens on the Hill remains a secret for long. I’m well aware of this.

     Before I’d finished my cheese roll I knew that old Mrs. Brentford’s first husband, Julia’s grandfather, had been one of the masters at the Harrow School and the family had occupied a large house higher up on the Hill. (The best area!) But she wasn’t Mrs. Brentford then, I was informed, she was Mrs. Brook-Hayse. Julia had been left in the care of the Brook-Hayse grandparents when her mother decided to leave her father, Mr. Clem Maples, and follow a no-good artist fellow to America. At that time Julia was about five or six years old and was visiting the local school. A few years later, when her grandfather died, she was sent to a boarding school in the country and, afterwards, to a school abroad. Apparently there was no lack of money as Julia’s father, a South American diamond merchant, provided for her generously. He was killed about three or four years ago in a plane disaster. Mr. Brentford, Julia’s grandmother’s second husband, was a retired civil servant and had been a friend of the family for many years. He married Mrs. Brook-Hayse soon after he was widowed. The cottage at number 58 was originally his. Their marriage lasted a couple of years only, when he died of lung cancer, having been a heavy smoker all his life.

     All this was served to me practically with my beer. When I started asking a few questions about the late Mrs. Brentford’s granddaughter however, the landlord grew more and more silent. I had the impression he didn’t want to say much about her in his wife’s presence. As soon as she’d left the room for the kitchen, I succeeded in making him talk again freely. But first I had to invent some story explaining my interest in the girl. It was quite a cock and bull story in which, as it so often happens, I gradually began to believe myself. She had been a model for an artist, a colleague of mine, Irene Smithers, (I thought it was safer to invent a woman, though I’ve no idea why I thought up this particular name. Well, names generally help to make stories more convincing). Lady Smithers (a title certainly helps, I found), I mean, Lady Smithers-Jones (double-barrelled names are much better anyway) was working on a government commissioned mural for one of the new universities and Julia had unfortunately let her down in the middle, It was very awkward for my friend, who was not in very good health, and I was trying to trace Julia for her, having been told that she used to live in this area at one time.

     ‘Did she take anything with her?’ The landlord asked, giving me a curious look’.

     ‘N . . . . no. I don’t think so. Why d’you ask?’

     ‘I was just wondering. No, I’ve no idea where she could be. She might have gone anywhere. To her mother in the States for instance . . . . .’

     ‘Oh dear, I hope not’.

     He laughed coarsely. ‘Surely, there’s more fish in the sea. What did she model, a witch? Anyway, I haven’t seen her for ages. Wouldn’t recognise her if I saw her. Wouldn’t want to either’.

     ‘You don’t think much of her then?’

     ‘She isn’t worth thinking about’.

     ‘You knew her as a child, you said?’

     ‘I knew her since she was a baby. And I knew her precious mother too, since she was a school girl. Never thought much of her either’.

     ‘But the old people were all right?’

     ‘The old people were all right, most certainly they were all right. Real decent folks’.

     ‘And when Mrs. Brentford died, the second Mrs. Brentford, did you go to her funeral?’

     He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why d’you want to know that?’

     ‘I was just wondering. I imagine Julia must have been there too. It wasn’t all that long ago, was it?’

     ‘Eighteen months’.

     ‘Was the girl very upset?’

     ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t profess to understand these young ones, not anymore’.

     ‘Was there anything strange about Julia’s behaviour at the time, then?’

     ‘Was there anything strange? I should say so! Don’t you read the papers? You said you live locally, didn’t you?’

     ‘That’s quite right. But I might have been out of the country just then. My husband is a doctor and he often goes on lecture tours abroad and I generally go with him’.

     As I’d expected the mention of my doctor husband immediately increased the man’s confidence. ‘Your husband is a doctor’, he repeated nodding.

     ‘Dr. Wood, an orthopaedic surgeon’. It was a relief to speak the simple truth for a change.

     ‘But you’re not a doctor yourself?’

     ‘No, I’m an occupational therapist’.

     He wrinkled his forehead.

     ‘You know, helping patients in hospital to pass away the time with handicrafts and that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, Lady Smithers, the artist I mentioned, had been one of my husband’s patients. She fractured her hip in a most extraordinary way, due to a fall from a ladder, and had to spend a very long time in my husband’s unit . . . . .’

     ‘You don’t say’.

     I wasn’t sure whether he still believed me or not, but decided to continue with my tale. ‘Well, we became friends and have kept in touch ever since. Then when I heard about her trouble, that her model let her down so badly, I thought I would see if I couldn’t trace her. After all, people don’t just disappear, do they?’ The story now seemed to me so feasible that I began to believe it myself.

     There was a strange look in the landlord’s eye which I couldn’t make out. ‘I see’, he said thoughtfully. ‘I see’.

     ‘Tell me’, I said as casually as possible, ‘just as a matter of interest, was the funeral local?’ I thought that there might be a chance to get him talking a bit more and I was right.

     ‘In Bridgewater Road, the cemetery by the golf course. They’re all buried there, the Brentfords and the Brook-Hayses’.

     ‘I know the place. And it was in the papers, you said. Of course Mrs. Brentford was a local resident and had been closely associated with the school, I suppose’.

     ‘That’s right. But that wasn’t the only reason’.

     I looked at him puzzled.

     ‘It was all Miss Julia’s doing. She should have been locked up, that girl, and no mistake. Bringing a pack of dogs to a burial’.

     ‘You’re joking’.

     ‘Not at all. Nothing is impossible when it comes to Miss Julia Maples, I tell you’.

     ‘But what happened? I believe Julia had a dog . . . . .’

     He laughed. ‘She had two dogs. And her grandmother had two dogs as well. That makes four dogs. I could never quite understand why old Mrs. Brentford kept them, especially in her state of health. But there it was. And then there was a litter of four little ones. Eight dogs in all’.

     ‘You don’t mean to say she brought them all to the funeral?’

     ‘That’s right. Concealed in an invalid carriage, pretending to be a disabled driver.’

     ‘Impossible’.

     ‘It was impossible all right. I would never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. There were quite a number of people there, mostly from around here of course, and a few whom I’d never seen before. We were assembling in the little chapel for the usual service, and there was no sign of Julia. As a matter of fact I felt quite relieved not to see her. I said to the wife: “Our Julia has probably something better to do today”. And I remember the wife saying: “Perhaps she doesn’t believe in funerals”. Anyway, when we came out to follow the coffin, there she was in that little motorised invalid car. All in black. We thought, poor girl, she must have had an accident, though no one knew anything about it. She followed the coffin under her own steam as it were, and we made room for her in the front as she was one of the main mourners. I thought I could hear some strange noises then, but you know what it is at funerals, people cry and moan, at least one or two generally do. Mrs. Brentford had many friends and I’d seen some of them wiping their eyes during the service. When we arrived at the open graveside, however, there was little doubt that the whining was coming from the invalid car. The clergyman continued the service, ignoring it, of course. What else could he do? Until the moment came for the coffin to be lowered. Well, I don’t know to this day whether this was the way she’d planned it, or whether she just couldn’t control the dogs any longer. Anyway, the door of the car opened and out poured eight dogs on eight leashes, dragging behind our Julia who staggered after them brandishing a whip. Everyone was petrified of course. I remember a sudden dull thud from the coffin having been lowered and released faster than usual. Then the yapping of the dogs, and Julia, hardly able to hold them back, with her whip raised, as though threatening everyone present’.

     ‘Incredible’.

     ‘Well, somehow she managed to calm the dogs, though I can’t imagine how. They just surrounded her crying, almost like children. Terrible it was. And she, dressed in her grandmother’s black coat and hat, as pale as death, took off her hat, or rather her grandma’s hat, and threw it into the open grave as though it was a wreath of flowers. Then she kneeled down, kissed the earth, scraping together a handful of it, and scattered it over the coffin. Or over the hat, I suppose. I didn’t really see where it went’.

     I shook my head. ‘And then?’

     ‘The clergyman gave a sign to the funeral attendants to get on with the job and they did. He was marvellous, the Reverend Finnemore, as though it was all an everyday occurrence as far as he was concerned’.

     ‘And Julia?’

     ‘She and the dogs went back into the invalid car within seconds and were gone. Reverend Finnemore tried to speak to her, but he didn’t get a chance. A little later I saw him speak to the reporter of the Observer. “People do get affected when they lose someone very close to them”, I heard him explain. “You can never quite foresee their reactions”.’

     ‘There’s some truth in that’.

     ‘There’s some truth in everything, you could say’.

     I looked at him puzzled. ‘Indeed’.

     ‘Anyway, that was Mrs. Brentford’s funeral’.

     ‘And did you see Julia afterwards?’

     ‘Not if I could help it. She was living in West Street for quite a few months, until the house was sold eventually. They’re still talking about the mess she left behind. Just ask the people who bought it, a young copper and his wife’.

     ‘And what happened to all those dogs?’

     ‘As a matter of fact, the wife took one of the puppies, but it died of distemper. She was heartbroken’.

     ‘I thought they immunise them these days’.

     ‘They do, and Miss Julia Maples swore blind that she’d had the beast immunised. Of course we were fools to believe her. To crown it all, she put the blame on us when she heard about it. She even sent us the RSPCA. Really upset the wife, she did’.

     ‘And the other dogs?’

     ‘I’ve no idea, and what’s more, I couldn’t care less what happened to her or to the dogs. One of my regulars said she took them to a friend who has a farm in the country. I don’t suppose he could have remained her friend for long though’.

     ‘She never came back to Harrow?’

     ‘Well, apparently someone did see her once or twice near the church, with some bearded character. She certainly didn’t set foot in here. The wife would have scratched her eyes out. And Julia knows that all right and no mistake’.

     ‘I suppose she doesn’t have to work for a living, or does she?’

     ‘I should have thought her dad left her plenty. And she must have got quite a few thousand from her gran’ too, being the only grandchild’.

     ‘That won’t make it easier to find her’.

     ‘Well, if you ask me, I think you can thank your lucky stars if you don’t find her. Tell your friend to find herself another model. There was nothing very special about her looks, was there? I wouldn’t call her pretty, far from it. And the way she let herself go, I wouldn’t want to touch her with the end of a barge pole’.

     On my way back I once more passed the house at number 58 and knocked at the door. A young woman in jeans and an old sweater opened. I could see that she was in the middle of painting a cupboard and there was a baby crying in the background. I asked for Miss Maples, pretending that I was under the impression that she was still living there. But the young woman knew no one by that name. Only when I explained that she was the late owner’s granddaughter was she able to give me some information. Apparently, someone resembling Julia had been seen by the neighbours one evening, shortly before they’d moved in, taking away several rose bushes and a young peach tree from the back garden. Her husband had been very angry about it, and the agent finally managed to get some compensation for him from the vendor. After they first came to live in the house they’d had a lot of trouble with two dogs howling at night outside their back door. In the end, her husband had got the RSPCA to collect them, as they couldn’t trace the owners. Neighbours had told them they’d belonged to the old lady.

     I gave the young woman my card, explaining that I was particularly anxious to contact Miss Maples on behalf of a friend, and that I would be extremely grateful for any help she or her husband could possibly give me. Further conversation was cut short by the increasing yells of the baby.

     So far my inquiries this morning.