“Great to have you here…”
“How are you?”
“Hello, Molly.”
“Hi, Molly.”
“I’m Sam Priest.” Large man. Beard. She liked his last collection, she remembers.
“Terrific you could come…”
A thin, nervy looking girl. “Dawn Bracewell? You’re on in the morning, aren’t you? I’m so looking forward to hearing you.”
They have all shown up. There are no unexpected appendages. The sponsors are thawing, putting back (sponsored) drinks and making inroads into the canapés and the literati. No volunteer has thrown in the towel. So far, so good.
He doesn’t do festivals that often. You drink too much, sell six books if you’re lucky, waste a weekend. He needs weekends—the only uninterrupted days of think time, writing time. So festival proposals are binned, usually. But this one is sited not far from where his mother lives, and could be tied in with a visit to her, and a good friend is going to be there—so why not, for once?
Now that he is here, he has misgivings. This clutch of colleagues looks suddenly oppressive, and he is being given hospitality by a couple whose home is so neat, scrubbed, prinked, and polished that he is afraid he will leave footprints in the deep pile carpets or disarrange the fragrant guest room. And he can’t scarper early because he has a second event at the far end of Sunday.
Have to sit it out now. Nothing for it but to have a drink and get stuck in. Hello…Hello…Good to see you. Hi, there. And here’s the Molly someone who has been blasting off letters and instructions.
“Terrific you could come…”
Molly what? He’s got all the bumf in his bag—must look at it again.
He feels an uplift, for some reason. Maybe it won’t be so bad after all.
Molly has been known to fall asleep at a poetry reading. Well, she has attended very many, and you always go to bed late, at festivals. She puts herself in the back row, in case.
There are readings and readings. There are poets who do not only read well but embed their reading, who talk around each poem, who show you how a poem arises, who enlighten and intrigue. There are the performance poets, who stomp and shout a lot. And there are also those who mutter, who declaim, who have done no preparation, who simply forge ahead, eyes grimly on the page. So she sits at the back, fingers crossed, and if the going is rough she concentrates on remaining alert to any problems with the mikes or the ventilation. Once an event is under way it is an unstoppable process, or should be, short of the collapse of the performer.
Today Dawn Bracewell reads. She is young and unconfident, you can see her hands shaking as she turns the page. At one point she loses her place, and Molly goes tense in empathetic anxiety. Phew!—she found it. Dawn gets through her half hour, sits down, to applause from the audience at this first event (embarrassingly thin—oh dear) and hands over to her companion on the platform, a veteran of the circuit who will have no problems.
The reading concludes. Everyone drifts out into the central foyer of the pump rooms, where refreshments are on offer. Molly does some troubleshooting: a complaint about acoustics in the hall, the bookseller does not have enough display space, a poet has toothache—does the town run to an emergency dental service? She is hither and thither—listening, instructing, phoning.
Someone is putting a cup of coffee into her hand. It is Sam Priest. Oh.
“Here…Restore the blood sugar level. You look slightly frazzled.”
“Thanks. Thanks, Sam.”
Oh…
He’s forgotten what an ordeal a reading can be. That poor girl who got her knickers in a twist—one was on edge for her. And sometimes you’re bored and other times you’re critical, and then you wonder what you sound like yourself. He’ll take this afternoon off, before his own session this evening, and look around the town.
Such a smile she has—saying thanks for that cup of coffee.
Three down, four to go. Events, that is. The audience have plumped up, as the day wore on. There is a very healthy turnout for the big man, who parachuted in for his own session and no other, and left immediately afterward. No sociable evening with hoi polloi for him.
Molly feels able to relax. The thing has its own momentum now, it is proceeding as it should, her careful preparatory spadework has paid off, and so far there are no serious glitches. The poets are behaving, if not like lambs, and you wouldn’t actually want that, at least like compliant racehorses, showing off their paces. She has picked up a number of appreciative comments from the punters.
At moments like this she experiences what is apparently called job satisfaction. She created this weekend, she brought together these people, opened up a dialogue, a discourse, enabled words to fly off the page and into people’s heads. Now there is just one more reading to go today.
There is something…reassuring…about a man with a beard.
In a back street of this rather self-satisfied town—sparkling Regency terraces, exquisitely groomed parks and gardens—he comes across a gem of an old-fashioned hardware shop, with a range of tools that you don’t often find. He buys a self-adjusting, self-grip wrench—he’s heard about these but has failed so far to get his hands on one—and a Black & Decker drill guide, top quality. He walks back to the pump rooms with this satisfying parcel tucked under his arm. There is nothing so pleasing as a good tool—the heft of it, the thought behind its design.
Now if only there were tools for making a poem. Something with which you shaved off a syllable, spliced a rhyme, filed down a stanza here, screwed in an end-stop there. He imagines the kit on his desk—small stuff, it would be, perfectly fitted to the hand, little elegant specialized pieces that you would lay out before you got down to work.
He feels all set up for his event now. And then there will be the usual convivial festival evening.
He wonders about the evening.
Very nearly, she had not invited him. It had been a toss-up between him and another name, when she was sorting out the program.
She does not sit at the back, this time. It seems suddenly rather…offhand. She puts herself at the end of the second row, where she can still hop up if anything goes awry.
Well, thank goodness she did ask him. He is good, he is very good, he embeds, he expands, he enlarges. And the poetry is muscular, intricate, it crackles with surprises. The one about servicing a motor bike is extraordinary—that would not spring to mind, as poetic subject matter. The love poem is unsettling; for some reason she wishes she had not heard that.
She listens and watches, feeling off duty, as though she were simply here out of choice and out of interest, like the rest of the audience. Two or three times he looks directly at her.
When it is over, she goes up, as she always does, and says the sort of things that she usually says, even when there is some glaring reason not to (the performance has been dire, the audience cool).
Sam Priest inclines his head, grins. “Thank you. Thanks.”
And then Molly finds herself completely tongue-tied. What is the matter? This does not happen to her. For God’s sake! And so, apparently, is he. They simply stand there, she and Sam Priest, staring at one another. Until at last she manages: “They’ve got the book-signing table set up in the foyer.”
“Ah,” says Sam Priest. “Right.”
Bugger it! Why had he not said: “Maybe we could have a drink together before dinner?” Before the buffet meal thing that is laid on for everyone later, when all and sundry will be milling around and there’ll be damned all chance to have a chat with her. Instead of which he had stood there like a bloody zombie, let the moment pass, and now here he is stuck behind this table while not very many people buy a book, and there she is disappearing through the door.
You do not need to do much hostess stuff, with poets. They are self-sufficient. They are mostly delighted to see one another (bar the odd feud that may surface), hive off into garrulous groups, and don’t need encouragement when it comes to the food and the drink. There are o
ne or two people on whom an eye should be kept: Dawn Bracewell seems not to know many people, but one of the older women poets has taken her under her wing, and old Gareth Powell is famously taciturn and can spend an entire evening sitting alone, but even he seems to have melded with a group and is talking.
Sam Priest is over there.
Molly is hailed by a familiar figure, drawn into a party in the corner. She has many acquaintances here, and one or two who are on the cusp of friendship. The room is crowded now—the staff and helpers are here, too, and some of the sponsors—the buffet is in full swing, it is noisy, hot, you could even call it festive.
She eats, she drinks a glass of wine. She is called away to sort out a problem over book supplies, and another to do with a poet who must leave earlier than scheduled and needs a lift to the station. When she comes back the food is cleared away, some people have drifted off, it is drinks at the bar time for those who wish to continue, and plenty will.
And now Sam Priest is alongside.
There is an alcove off the main bar; miraculously, it is empty, and here they sit.
“This is a good town,” says Sam. “It has a quality hardware shop. Look at these.” He unwraps the wrench and the drill guide.
Molly inspects the tools. “I’m afraid I’ve never got further than a screwdriver myself. But I understand about the motorcycle poem better now, which I liked a lot. You enjoy…tinkering.”
“Tinkering be blowed. I’m a mechanic.”
Molly stares.
“I’m a mechanic by trade. That’s how I earn a living.”
“Gosh,” says Molly.
“I do cars, bikes. Lawnmowers, as a favor. I’m at home three days, freelance, and I do two at the local garage.”
Molly is entranced by this originality. Forget school teaching, editing, the life of ease in some library.
“Since when? Always?”
“Since about age twenty-five. When I’d finished my Ph.D. on Marvell and knew that I wanted to be a poet and not an academic. And I’d always been handy with a spanner.”
There is a brief pause, as Molly digests all this. “I enjoyed the reading. Very much indeed.”
“You’ve already said that, Molly.”
“That was wearing festival organizer hat. Now I’m saying it as me.”
“Ah. Excellent. So I’m having a drink with you rather than with a festival organizer?”
“Well, yes. But then—am I having a drink with a poet or a mechanic?”
“Good point. At this moment, neither. Just a man glad to be off-duty. And in good company.”
“Me too,” says Molly.
They beam at one another. The alcove has become suddenly a fine and private place.
Sam Priest lives on the outskirts of a Devon market town. “I’ve been there,” says Molly. “Nice. We had a walking holiday on Dartmoor a few years ago.”
“Large family?” Sam’s tone is offhand; he takes a swig of wine, watching her.
“Just me and my daughter. I’m on my own. She was ten then.”
Sam brightens. “I’ve got a boy. At college. Lives mainly with his mother, but he spends time with me.”
They contemplate this symmetry for a moment. And then suddenly talk comes rushing—views, thoughts, opinions, circumstances, his taste for archaeology, her love of long walks, the son, the daughter, signals from the past that pepper what is said, that require pursuit. They exchange credentials: Molly’s parents, Lucas and Simon, the birth of Ruth, jobs, the flitting from one part of London to another; Sam’s youth in Manchester, son of a headmaster, his three brothers, the marriage that ended, the stint in a French village, the year in America, the writing, and the financing of the writing. In retrospect, the exchange would seem more like one of people who had lost sight of each other and needed to catch up than that of those who had never met before.
“Three brothers,” says Molly. “I can’t imagine that. I was just me. And Simon a long way after.”
“Mayhem. Daily carnage. My mother’s voice never fell below a shout.”
“Where are they now?”
“Dispersed. One teaching in Canada. A local government officer in Sheffield. A doctor in Derbyshire. Good solid citizens, you note. I was always the rogue element.”
“Not at all. ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’—tomorrow evening’s panel discussion—remember?”
Sam groans. “Oh, help—do I really have to do that?”
“You do,” says Molly sternly. “You’re down on the program.”
“I thought I wasn’t having a drink with a festival organizer?”
“Sorry, sorry…”
“I shall forgive you.” His hand covers hers, then is quickly removed. They have company. Someone looms in front of the alcove.
“There you are, Sam. I’ll join you, may I?”
Sam glares. Beat it. Scarper, would you? I am having a conversation with Ms. Faraday. He looks at his watch. “Not worth it. It’s gone ten and I’m pushing off in a minute.”
“Oh, come on—one more.”
“No way,” says Sam. “See you tomorrow.”
The intruder is routed.
“Well, good night,” says Molly.
“Don’t be daft.”
She laughs. “Is he a friend?”
“Not at that moment, he wasn’t.”
“I should really be seeing if I’m needed for anything.”
“You are. You’re needed here.”
Molly savors this. She savors the moment, this succession of moments, these hours. What is going on here? Why am I feeling so…happy?
“As a rule,” says Sam Priest, “I pass where poetry festivals are concerned.”
“I know. You turned me down once.”
“Did I? Thank God I saw the light this time. It’s not that I’m against two or three poets gathered together—it’s just that I grudge a weekend.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that.”
“I know. The first time we were interrupted.”
“Oh…” He grins; his hand comes out, and this time remains rather longer on hers. “As it happens, this is turning out to be the best weekend I’ve had in a long time.”
Molly is briefly silent. Then: “When were you happiest? Ever?”
He reflects. “Probably in a field in France, when I was about twenty-one, on a camping holiday with a girl I thought I was in love with.”
“Thought?”
“A flash in the pan, as it turned out. But it left one of those indelible moments. And you?”
“Hmn. I think probably when Ruth was born. Lying looking at her. There’s always another person involved, isn’t there?”
“Too true. The catalyst. But there can also be those transcendent experiences—solitary ones.”
“Religion?”
Sam is shocked. “Good grief—no. Nor getting stoned neither. I tried that a few times and found it demeaning rather than uplifting. Happiness is the real world—the physical world, often.”
“The splendor in the grass—that sort of thing?”
“That sort of thing. Sheer relish for what’s on offer. An animal sort of feeling. Kicking up the heels.”
Molly nods. “Sunshine. Stars. A flower. A color.”
“I hate to tell you,” says Sam. “But I can get it from a satisfactory repair job. Getting something to work that wasn’t.”
“Would that apply to a poem as well?”
“Oh, yes. A more abstract pleasure, though—lacking that gratifying tactile effect.”
“Which I’ve missed out on entirely,” says Molly. “A well-scrubbed floor is the nearest I’ve got.”
“And is this happiness or satisfaction? And what about ecstasy, which suggests the flight of reason? Hence my queasiness about the claims of religion.”
“Children can seem to know ecstasy.”
“Exactly, and are not rational. Grown-ups settle for happiness. Gracious, Molly, what have you
started, with that question? I’m going to find us another drink, before this discussion gets quite out of hand.”
The alcove, like the rest of the pump rooms, is sternly in period; it is striped from head to toe, its lights pretend to be candles, it is adorned with prints of Regency bucks and belles. It is a far from likely habitat for either Sam or Molly, but has become now a home, a precious retreat; both know that they will never forget it. Sam takes a while to return, and Molly sits there feeling most strangely bereft, deprived. When he arrives, both are aglow—it is a reunion.
“I got nobbled,” he says. “Had to be thoroughly rude in the end. I thought you’d give up on me and go.”
He puts the drinks on the table. “Whew…I was thinking about your father, while I was waiting for these. Where could I see his work?”
“Well,” says Molly “I’ve got some engravings in London. Lucas has more. The book illustrations…you find Heron Press editions and the other fine presses in antiquarian bookshops, sometimes, and they cost a bomb.”
“I knew a wood engraver once. Marvelous stuff. If I could have been an artist, that’s what I would have wanted to do. Using tools.”
“My mother kept my father’s. Lucas still has them.”
“I’m occasionally in London,” says Sam Priest. “Maybe at some point I could…”
Both glimpse some unthinkable future, and look away, lest this is tempting providence. Don’t rush it, thinks Sam, don’t bugger the thing up by going full pelt, you’re not an eighteen-year-old, for Christ’s sake.
Don’t feel like this, thinks Molly, you’ve spent a couple of hours with him, that’s all, don’t start fantasizing.
By eleven-thirty both have learned more, much more. Each begins to anticipate the other’s views, responses, reactions, a stranger is turning into someone else, a person partially known, tantalizingly known, about whom more yet must be exposed. Sam learns Molly’s twitch of the eyebrows when she is surprised, the way in which she may shoot off at a conversational tangent, that brown mole on her left cheek. Molly discovers his views on various other poets, his advocacy of vegetable growing and indeed of a particular kind of potato, his sudden explosive laugh, the fan of lines at the outer corner of each eye.