Keepsakes

 

Chairs and chaise-longues arranged for sitting in,

with teasels in their hollows; china cups

on gate-leg tables, with tortoiseshell snuff boxes,

Bakelite telephones and Toby jugs,

some chipped with web-cracked noses; dull mirrors that warp

the roomful as I pass them, or fatten my legs;

a photo of a soldier from the War,

oak-framed, mouthing something, buttons white

with sun-fading and Brasso, marked as 'Scuffed';

the constellation of brass companion sets

taking up a corner at the back;

the bawdy cards and hunting prints and pastels

marked 'LINCOLN MINSTER', and flocks of shimmering Spitfires

whirring up through bold faux-Whistler skies

in stark formations, on to Victory

in masses of blues and whites and tangerines.

 

More pictures than wall, more bric-a-brac than floor.

A century and some of neglect, of cleared-out houses,

of looked-after-then-left. Old trades and whims

offered up in clusters round a hall,

away from wet and rot, not allowed to be junk,

whatever once they meant. Vague familial 

discarded worlds that died and hide in us.

And that is what my mother comes here for.

So now we're back in Horncastle again,

for a day under buzzing strip-lights in cold rooms

and frogmarching a cabinet to the car,

a Victorian planter, Edwardian wine tables,

for her to look at sometimes, bring out for guests;

long hours of agreeing things are nice,

half-bored, slow-stepping round tat.

But cherishing it, a little bit, perhaps.

 

Family Business

 

The boatman stares through million-pock-marked waters,

tapping a cigarette, shying from the rain

in mac and wellies, beneath a London plane

that rustles and drips. He turns and tells his daughter

to bolt the hut. Tonight the summer's over.

He heaves the skiff to the boatshed, ties the lines

and double-locks the door. She fits a sign:

CLOSED FOR SEESON. They load a battered Land-Rover

with cash-tin, radio, stools, as fast as they can,

for it's raining harder. Lightning blanks the dark,

and then they're away, the wiper thwacking its arc.

She glances at this ordinary man

then shuts her eyes: she's damp and tired and bored.

He drives more gently. Neither says a word.

  

53.093336°N  latitude / 0.253420°W  longitude: 07/2010 capture: street view


I remember, I remember
                  

How my childhood fleeted by, -

The mirth of its December

   And the warmth of its July 

Winthrop Mackworth Praed, 'I Remember, I Remember'

 

A lodge-house to an estate, once: the front wall

still ends with one redundant brick gatepost,

its rustic latch clicking only to wind,

and the clean bulk of its limestone cap

shorn of clogs of English ivy, carious and precarious.

 

There used to be a long metal water butt

out of bounds, snug to a wall, pungent

with moss and webs, its content a black

lilting mirror when I'd raise the lid

that was wooden and rotten and gave slightly.

 

And there was a low-slung roof on a breezeblock annexe

with a fat windowsill and convenient external piping

that occasionally broke and had to be mended;

and a cigar-box of old green pennies and shards of pot

from the garden, out of sight in a cracked soffit.

 

But the side gate remains, a wrought iron cross-hatch

mass-produced in a distant foundry, showing

bends for the feet that are no longer mine,

that kicked off and made it a shrill, dull swing;

and the fence is the matt-green my grandmother painted,

but tarnished now, and in places peeling.




Visiting Grandpa

He gave her a photo of great-grandma Alice

and a small box of medals he'd won in the War.

She tried on his glasses and giggled, and listened

to the clicks of his pacemaker, cheek to his chest,

and wound up his watch, and shook-shook his tablets,

but he didn't say what they were for.

 

When he died of the cancer she wasn't to see him,

her mum said. You can't show a child of four

what the body might do to itself. So one evening

she learned about heaven, how people looked down

and smiled. And she tried not to cry, and she hid

the medals her grandpa once wore.