80 'Private Peaceful' quotations

1. I am so proud of him for that. I have the bravest brother in the world. (p24)
2. There wasn’t a wild flower or a butterfly she couldn’t name. (p26)
3. Charlie & I would make up this story about the Colonel & Grandma Wolf… (p33)
4. Then Charlie would be there beside me, and everything would be all right again. Charlie always made things all right again. (p34)
5. Both of them being older than me, Molly by two years, Charlie by three, they always ran faster than I did. I seem to have spent much of my life watching them racing ahead of me… […] When they got too far ahead I sometimes felt they wanted to be without me. (p43)
6. I remember the day Molly dared Charlie to take off all his clothes, and to my amazement he did. Then she did, and they ran shrieking and bare-bottomed into the water. (p44)
7. “They say we’ll always be together, the three of us, for ever and ever.” (p45)
8. Charlie and I never said our prayers at all any more, not since Sunday school, but we did now.[…] We had our fingers crossed too, just for good measure. (p46)
9. Tonight I want very much to believe there’s a heaven… […] that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again. (p47)
10. Charlie could have left me there. he could have made a run for it and got clean away, but Charlie’s not like that. He never has been. (p49)
11. The plaits were gone, and somehow that changed the whole look of her. She wasn’t a girl any more. She had a different beauty now, a beauty that at once stirred in me a new and deeper love. (p52)
12. Charlie & Molly left school and I was alone. (p53)
13. That was the first time in my life I was ever really jealous of Charlie. (p53)
14. I could see that she and Charlie lived in another world now. (p54)
15. Then one day down by the brook, I turned and saw them walking away from me through the water meadows holding hands. […] I knew at once that this was different. As I watched them I felt a sudden ache in my heart. […] a pang of loss, of deep grief. (p55)
16. I’ve even seen larks over no-man’s land. I always found hope in that. (p61)
17. “Just yes?” I asked, intrigued, puzzled and jealous all at the same time. (p67)
18. All through my last year at school I was their go-between postman. (p68)
19. I never showed her I minded, but I did. (p68)
20. I wanted to kiss her again, then, but I didn’t date. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough. (p70)
21. I’d put on a spurt and was almost as tall as him by now, but still not as fast, nor as strong. (p70)
22. Things were changing between us. Charlie didn’t treat me like a boy anymore, and I liked that, I liked that a lot. (p70)
23. They’d been meeting in secret and neither of them had told me. (p72)
24. I was so filled with anger and resentment towards him… (p73)
25. We didn’t want to hide it from you, Tommo, honest. But we didn’t want to hurt you either. You love her, don’t you? (p74)
26. It’s our baby, my baby, and Moll’s my girl. (p91)
27. In the next room slept the two people I most loved in all the world who, in finding each other, had deserted me. […] I wanted to hate them. But I couldn’t. (p92)
28. We never argued, not really; perhaps it was because neither of us wanted to hurt the other. We both knew enough hurt had been done already… (p93)
29. I thought […] how Molly would admire me, might even love me, if I joined up… (p97)
30. It hardly seems right, does it, me being here, enjoying life, while they’re over there. (p100)
31. I said I was 16 in a couple of weeks and as tall as he was, that all I had to do was shave and talk deeper and I could easily be taken for 17. (p101)
32. I was going to fight in the war with Charlie. Nothing and no one could stop me now. (p102)
33. I couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from him. we’d lived our lives always together, shared everything, even our love for Molly. Maybe I just want him to have this adventure without me. (p102)
34. I didn’t want any enemy soldier ever setting foot on our soil, on my place. I would do all I could to stop him and to protect the people I loved. (p102-3)
35. “Y’aint a coward, are you?”/ The truth was that I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t, and I needed to find out./I had to prove myself to myself. (p103)
36. Charlie wasn’t frightened of him, like the rest of us were. (p106)
37. Charlie didn’t have to be taught. On the rifle range he proved to be far and way the best shot in th company. When they gave him his red marksman’s badge I was so proud of him. (p108)
38. He was not a big man, but he had eyes of steel that bore into us, and a lashing snarl in his voice that terrified us. (p114)
39. Charlie just would not give Hanley the satisfaction of playing his game… (p115)
40. Charlie was swiping at the wasp, and the wasp wasn’t just stinging him, he was stinging all of us. Charlie was beginning to be thought of as a bit of […] a Jonah. (p115)
41. They all liked and respected Charlie too much (p115)
42. “You can’t fight him.”/”But that doesn’t mean I have to lie down and let him walk all over me.” (p116)
43. That was typical Charlie. I was trying to warn him, and he just turned the whole thing around and ended up warning me. (p116)
44. If ever the teasing got a bit out of hand, Charlie would give them a look and it would stop. He never nannied me, but everyone knew he’d stick by me no matter what. (p116)
45. Charlie had broken ranks and run at Hanley, screaming at him. he hadn’t actually hit him, but he had stood there nose to nose with Hanley telling him exactly what he thought of him. they said it was magnificent, that everyone cheered when he’d finished. But Charlie had been marched off to the guardroom under arrest. (p117-8)
46. Insubordination in time of war could be seen as mutiny and that mutiny was punishable by death, by the firing squad. (p118)
47. I tried to smile back, but no smile came, only tears. (p118)
48. “What a friend I have in Charlie.” (p118)
49. I should be able by now to fight off sleep. I’ve done it often enough (p118)
50. After this night is over, then you can drift away, they you can sleep for ever, for nothing will ever matter again. (p119)
51. It’s difficult to believe he and Sgt Horrible Hanley are in the same army, on the ame side. (p120)
52. I can see his smile in the dark and my fear is gone at once. (p125)
53. If he has fear he never shows it, and if that is courage then we’re beginning to catch it. (p127)
54. It’s Charlie who keeps us together. […] He;s become like a big brother to everyone. (p127)
55. I’m tensed for danger. I’m ready for it, but not frightened. (p129)
56. I’m praying and thinking of Molly. If I’m going to die I want her to be my last thought. (p131)
57. Charlie carrying Wilkie on his back the whole way… (p133)
58. He knows my thoughts. He sees my terror. (p139)
59. I stay and I do not run, only because of Charlie. (p139)
60. I feel a surge of triumph welling inside me, not because we have won, but because I have stood with the others. I have not run. (p140)
61. I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made. (p143)
62. All I could think was that we’d come to this war together […] and now he was deserting me. (p146)
63. I always imagined I’d be lost without Charlie at my side… (p151)
64. All this gave me less time to dwell on my own fears. I was far too busy pretending I was someone else. (p151)
65. Even my courage to be a coward had evaporated. (p161)
66. Molly […] had named little Tommo after me. I couldn't shame her. I couldn’t shame him. (p161)
67. I felt an ache inside me… (p163)
68. I had my guardian back, my brother and my best friend. (p164)
69. I know I am dying my own death, and I welcome it. (p167)
70. Private Peaceful will die, will be shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy at 6o’clock on the morning of 25th June 1916. (p168)
71. “You’ll tell them how it really was, won’t you, Tommo? It’s all I care about now.” (p177)
72. “I was the Charlie. […] A right Charlie.” (p178)
73. All foot wounds are suspicious (p178)
74. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, Tommo, but none of them ever upset me, except that one.” (p179)
75. “…give it to Little Tommo, so he’ll have something from me.” (p180)
76. “You’re not worthless, Charlie.” (p181)
77. With that volley a part of me has died with him. (p185)
78. All over the camp I see them standing to attention outside their tents. (p185)
79. Six of us who were in the dugout that day stand vigil over his grave until sundown. (p185)
80. I must survive. I have promises to keep. (p185)

June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air from Ray Bradbury’s collection, The Martian Chronicles (1950)

June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air
from Ray Bradbury’s collection, The Martian Chronicles (1950)

"Did you hear about it?"
"About what?"
"The niggers, the niggers!"
"What about 'em?"
"Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?"
"What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?"
"They can, they will, they are."
"Just a couple?"
"Every single one here in the South!"
"No."
"Yes!"
"I got to see that. I don't believe it. Where they going--
Africa?"
A silence.
"Mars."
"You mean the planet Mars?"
"That's right."
The men stood up in the hot shade of the hardware porch.
Someone quit lighting a pipe. Somebody else spat out into the hot dust of noon.
"They can't leave, they can't do that."
"They're doing it, anyways."
"Where'd you hear this?"
"It's everywhere, on the radio a minute ago, just come through."
Like a series of dusty statues, the men came to life.
Samuel Teece, the hardware proprietor, laughed uneasily.
"I’d wondered what happened to Silly. I sent him on my bike an hour ago. He ain't come back from Mrs. Bordman's yet. You think that black fool just pedaled off to Mars?"
The men snorted.
"All I say is, he better bring back my bike. I don't take stealing from no one, by God."
"Listen!"
The men collided irritably with each other, turning.
Far up the street the levee seemed to have broken. The black warm waters descended & engulfed the town. Between the blazing white banks of the town stores, among the tree silences, a black tide flowed. Like a kind of summer molasses, it poured turgidly forth upon the cinnamon-dusty road. It surged slow, slow, & it was men & women & horses and barking dogs, & it was little boys & girls. & from the mouths of the people partaking of this tide came the sound of a river. A summer-day river going somewhere, murmuring & irrevocable. & in that slow, steady channel of darkness that cut across the white glare of day were touches of alert white, the eyes, the ivory eyes staring ahead, glancing aside, as the river, the long & endless river, took itself from old channels into a new one. From various & uncountable tributaries, in creeks & brooks of color & motion, the parts of this river had joined, become one mother current, & flowed on. & brimming the swell were things carried by the river: grandfather clocks chiming, kitchen clocks ticking, caged hens screaming, babies wailing; & swimming among the thickened eddies were mules & cats, & sudden excursions of burst mattress springs floating by, insane hair stuffing sticking out, & boxes & crates & pictures of dark grandfathers in oak frames-- the river flowing it on while the men sat like nervous hounds on the hardware porch, too late to mend the levee, their hands empty.
Samuel Teece wouldn't believe it. "Why, hell, where'd they get the transportation? How they goin' to get to Mars?"
"Rockets," said Grandpa Quartermain.
"All the damn-fool things. Where'd they get rockets?"
"Saved their money & built them."
"I never heard about it."
"Seems these niggers kept it secret, worked on the rockets all themselves, don't know where--in Africa, maybe."
"Could they do that?" demanded Samuel Teece, pacing about the porch. "Ain't there a law?"
"It ain't as if they're declarin' war," said Grandpa quietly.
"Where do they get off, God damn it, workin' in secret, plottin'?" shouted Teece.
"Schedule is for all this town's niggers to gather out by Loon Lake. Rockets be there at one o'clock, pick 'em up, take 'em to Mars."
"Telephone the governor, call out the militia," cried Teece. "They should've given notice!"
"Here comes your woman, Teece."
The men turned again.
As they watched, down the hot road in the windless light first one white woman & then another arrived, all of them with stunned faces, all of them rustling like ancient papers.
Some of them were crying, some were stern. All came to find their husbands. They pushed through barroom swing doors, vanishing. They entered cool, quiet groceries. They went in at drug shops & garages. & one of them, Mrs. Clara Teece, came to stand in the dust by the hardware porch, blinking up at her stiff & angry husband as the black river flowed full behind her.
"It's Lucinda, Pa; you got to come home!"
"I'm not comin' home for no damn darkie!"
"She's leaving. What'll I do without her?"
"Fetch for yourself, maybe. I won't get down on my knees to stop her."
"But she's like a family member," Mrs. Teece moaned.
"Don't shout! I won't have you blubberin' in public this way about no goddamn--"
His wife's small sob stopped him. She dabbed at her eyes.
"I kept telling her, 'Lucinda,' I said, 'you stay on & I raise your pay, & you get two nights off a week, if you want,' but she just looked set! I never seen her so set, and I said, 'Don't you love me, Lucinda?' & she said yes, but she had to go because that's the way it was, is all. She cleaned the house & dusted it & put luncheon on the table & then she went to the parlor door and--and stood there with two bundles, one by each foot, & shook my hand & said, 'Good-by, Mrs. Teece.' & she went out the door. & there was her luncheon on the table, & all of us too upset to even eat it. It's still there now, I know; last time I looked it was getting cold."
Teece almost struck her. "God damn it, Mrs. Teece, you get the hell home. Standin' there makin' a sight of yourself!"
"But, Pa . . ."
He strode away into the hot dimness of the store. He came back out a few seconds later with a silver pistol in his hand.
His wife was gone.
The river flowed black between the buildings, with a rustle & a creak & a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing, with a great certainty to it; no laughter, no wildness, just a steady, decided, & ceaseless flow.
Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. "If one of 'em so much as laughs, by Christ, I'll kill 'em."
The men waited.
The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon.
"Looks like you goin' to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam," Grandpa chuckled.
"I'm not bad at shootin' white folks neither." Teece didn't look at Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away & shut up his mouth.
"Hold on there!" Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up & seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man. "You, Belter, come down off there!"
"Yes, sir." Belter slid down.
Teece looked him over. "Now, just what you think you're doin'?"
"Well, Mr. Teece . . ."
"I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song--what's the words? 'Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't that it?"
"Yes, sir." The Negro waited.
"You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?"
"Yes, sir."
"You tryin' to sneak out? By God, I'll horsewhip you!"
"All the excitement, & it slipped my mind, sir."
"It slipped his mind." Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch. "God damn, mister, you know what you're goin' to do?"
"No, sir."
"You're stayin' here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain't Samuel W. Teece." He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade.
Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing & flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels & horses & in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey. He began to shiver. "Let me go, Mr. Teece. I'll send your money from up there, I promise!"
"Listen, Belter." Teece grasped the man's suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now & again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God. "Belter, you know anything about what's up there?"
"What they tells me."
"What they tells him! Christ! Hear that? What they tells him!" He swung the man's weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face. "Belter, you fly up & up like a July Fourth rocket, & bang! There you are, cinders, spread all over space. Them crackpot scientists, they don't know nothin', they kill you all off!"
"I don't care."
"Glad to hear that. Because you know what's up on that planet Mars? There's monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms!
You seen them pictures on those future magazines you buy at the drugstore for a dime, ain't you? Well! Them monsters jump up & suck marrow from your bones!"
"I don't care, don't care at all, don't care." Belter watched the parade slide by, leaving him. Sweat lay on his dark brow. He seemed about to collapse.
"And it's cold up there; no air, you fall down, jerk like a fish, gaspin', dyin', stranglin', stranglin' & dyin'. You like that?"
"Lots of things I don't like, sir. Please, sir, let me go. I'm late."
"I'll let you go when I'm ready to let you go. We'll just talk here polite until I say you can leave, & you know it damn well. You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the hell home & work out that fifty bucks you owe me! Take you two months to do that!"
"But if I work it out, I'll miss the rocket, sir!"
"Ain't that a shame now?" Teece tried to look sad.
"I give you my horse, sir."
"Horse ain't legal tender. You don't move until I get my money." Teece laughed inside. He felt very warm & good.
A small crowd of dark people had gathered to hear all this. Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward.
"Mister?"
Teece flashed him a quick look. "Well?"
"How much this man owe you, mister?"
"None of your damn business!"
The old man looked at Belter. "How much, son?"
"Fifty dollars."
The old man put out his black hands at the people around him, "There's twenty-five of you. Each give two dollars; quick now, this no time for argument."
"Here, now!" cried Teece, stiffening up, tall, tall.
The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat & gave the hat to Belter. "Son," he said, "you ain't missin' no rocket."
Belter smiled into the hat. "No, sir, I guess I ain't!"
Teece shouted: "You give that money back to them!"
Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece's feet. "There's your money, sir," he said. "Thank you kindly." Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight & hearing.
"Son of a bitch," whispered Teece, staring blind at the sun. "Son of a bitch."
"Pick up the money, Samuel," said someone from the porch.
It was happening all along the way. Little white boys, barefoot, dashed up with the news. "Them that has helps them that hasn't! & that way they all get free! Seen a rich man give a poor man two hundred bucks to pay off some'un! Seen some'un else give some'un else ten bucks, five bucks, sixteen, lots of that, all over, everybody!"
The white men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind & sand & heat.
The rage was in Samuel Teece. He climbed up on the porch & glared at the passing swarms. He waved his gun. & after a while when he had to do something, he began to shout at anyone, any Negro who looked up at him. "Bang! There's another rocket out in space!" he shouted so all could hear. "Bang! By God!" The dark heads didn't flicker or pretend to hear, but their white eyes slid swiftly over & back. "Crash! All them rockets fallin'! Screamin', dyin'! Bang! God Almighty, I'm glad I'm right here on old terra firma. As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra! Ha, ha!"
Horses clopped along, shuffling up dust. Wagons bumbled on ruined springs.
"Bang!" His voice was lonely in the heat, trying to terrify the dust & the blazing sun sky. "Wham! Niggers all over space! Jerked outa rockets like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God! Space fulla meteors. You know that? Sure! Thick as buckshot; powie! Shoot down them tin-can rockets like so many ducks, so many clay pipes! Ole sardine cans full of black cod! Bangin' like a stringa ladyfingers, bang, bang, bang! Ten thousand dead here, ten thousand there. Floatin' in space, around & around earth, ever & ever, cold & way out, Lord! You hear that, you there!"
Silence. The river was broad & continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the washboards, the silk bolts & curtain rods on down to some distant black sea.
High tide passed. It was two o'clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up, the town silent, the dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the tall hot trees.
Silence.
The men on the porch listened.
Hearing nothing, they extended their thoughts and their imaginations out & into the surrounding meadows. In the early morning the land had been filled with its usual concoctions of sound. Here & there, with stubborn persistence to custom, there had been voices singing, the honey laughter under the mimosa branches, the pickaninnies rushing in clear water laughter at the creek, movements & bendings in the fields, jokes & shouts of amusement from the shingle shacks covered with fresh green vine.
Now it was as if a great wind had washed the land clean of sounds. There was nothing. Skeleton doors hung open on leather hinges. Rubber-tire swings hung in the silent air, uninhibited. The washing rocks at the river were empty, & the watermelon patches, if any, were left alone to heat their hidden liquors in the sun. Spiders started building new webs in abandoned huts; dust started to sift in from unpatched roofs in golden spicules. Here & there a fire, forgotten in the last rush, lingered & in a sudden access of strength fed upon the dry bones of some littered shack. The sound of a gentle feeding burn went up through the silenced air.
The men sat on the hardware porch, not blinking or swallowing.
"I can't figure why they left now. With things lookin' up. I mean, every day they got more rights. What they want, anyway? Here's the poll tax gone, & more & more states passin' anti-lynchin' bills, & all kinds of equal rights. What more they want? They make almost as good money as a white man, but there they go."
Far down the empty street a bicycle came.
"I'll be goddamned. Teece, here comes your Silly now."
The bicycle pulled up before the porch, a seventeen-year-old colored boy on it, all arms & feet and long legs & round watermelon head. He looked up at Samuel Teece & smiled.
"So you got a guilty conscience & came back," said Teece.
"No, sir, I just brought the bicycle."
"What's wrong, couldn't get it on the rocket?"
"That wasn't it, sir."
"Don't tell me what it was! Get off, you're not goin' to steal my property!" He gave the boy a push. The bicycle fell.
"Get inside & start cleaning the brass."
"Beg pardon?" The boy's eyes widened.
"You heard what I said. There's guns need unpacking there, & a crate of nails just come from Natchez--"
"Mr. Teece."
"And a box of hammers need fixin'--"
"Mr. Teece, sir?"
"You still standin' there!" Teece glared.
"Mr. Teece, you don't mind I take the day off," he said apologetically.
"And tomorrow & day after tomorrow & the day after the day after that," said Teece.
"I'm afraid so, sir."
"You should be afraid, boy. Come here." He marched the boy across the porch & drew a paper out of a desk. "Remember this?"
"Sir?"
"It's your workin' paper. You signed it, there's your X right there, ain't it? Answer me."
"I didn't sign that, Mr. Teece." The boy trembled. "Anyone can make an X."
"Listen to this, Silly. Contract: 'I will work for Mr. Samuel Teece two years, starting July 15, 2001, & if intending to leave will give four weeks' notice & continue working until my position is filled.' There." Teece slapped the paper, his eyes glittering. "You cause trouble, we'll take it to court."
"I can't do that," wailed the boy, tears starting to roll down his face, "If I don't go today, I don't go."
"I know just how you feel, Silly; yes, sir, I sympathize with you, boy. But we'll treat you good & give you good food, boy. Now you just get inside & start working & forget all about that nonsense, eh, Silly? Sure." Teece grinned & patted the boy's shoulder.
The boy turned & looked at the old men sitting on the porch. He could hardly see now for his tears. "Maybe--maybe one of these gentlemen here . . ." The men looked up in the hot, uneasy shadows, looking first at the boy & then at Teece.
"You meanin' to say you think a white man should take your place, boy?" asked Teece coldly.
Grandpa Quartermain took his red hands off his knees. He looked out at the horizon thoughtfully & said, "Teece, what about me?"
"What?"
"I'll take Silly's job."
The porch was silent.
Teece balanced himself in the air. "Grandpa," he said warningly.
"Let the boy go. I'll clean the brass."
"Would you, would you, really?" Silly ran over to Grandpa, laughing, tears on his cheeks, unbelieving.
"Sure."
"Grandpa," said Teece, "keep your damn trap outa this."
"Give the kid a break, Teece."
Teece walked over & seized the boy's arm. "He's mine. I'm lockin' him in the back room until tonight."
"Don't, Mr. Teece!"
The boy began to sob now. His crying filled the air of the porch. His eyes were tight. Far down the street an old tin Ford was choking along, approaching, a last load of colored people in it. "Here comes my family, Mr. Teece, oh please, please, oh God, please!"
"Teece," said one of the other men on the porch, getting up, "let him go."
Another man rose also. "That goes for me too."
"And me," said another.
"What's the use?" The men all talked now. "Cut it out, Teece."
"Let him go."
Teece felt for his gun in his pocket. He saw the men's faces. He took his hand away & left the gun in his pocket & said, "So that's how it is?"
"That's how it is," someone said.
Teece let the boy go. "All right. Get out." He jerked his hand back in the store. "But I hope you don't think you're gonna leave any trash behind to clutter my store."
"No, sir!"
"You clean everything outa your shed in back; burn it."
Silly shook his head. "I'll take it with."
"They won't let you put it on that damn rocket."
"I'll take it with," insisted the boy softly.
He rushed back through the hardware store. There were sounds of sweeping & cleaning out, & a moment later he appeared, his hands full of tops & marbles & old dusty kites & junk collected through the years. Just then the old tin Ford drove up & Silly climbed in & the door slammed.
Teece stood on the porch with a bitter smile. "What you goin' to do up there?"
"Startin' new," said Silly. "Gonna have my own hardware."
"God damn it, you been learnin' my trade so you could run off & use it!"
"No, sir, I never thought one day this'd happen, sir, but it did. I can't help it if I learned, Mr. Teece."
"I suppose you got names for your rockets?"
They looked at their one clock on the dashboard of the car.
"Yes, sir."
"Like Elijah & the Chariot, The Big Wheel & The Little Wheel, Faith, Hope, & Charity, eh?"
"We got names for the ships, Mr. Teece."
"God the Son & the Holy Ghost, I wouldn't wonder? Say, boy, you got one named the First Baptist Church?"
"We got to leave now, Mr. Teece."
Teece laughed. "You got one named Swing Low, & another named Sweet Chariot?"
The car started up. "Good-by, Mr. Teece."
"You got one named Roll Dem Bones?"
"Good-by, mister!"
"And another called Over Jordan! Ha! Well, tote that rocket, boy, lift that rocket, boy, go on, get blown up, see if I care!"
The car churned off into the dust. The boy rose & cupped his hands to his mouth & shouted one last time at Teece: "Mr. Teece, Mr. Teece, what you goin' to do nights from now on? What you goin' to do nights, Mr. Teece?"
Silence. The car faded down the road. It was gone. "What in hell did he mean?" mused Teece. "What am I goin' to do nights?"
He watched the dust settle, & it suddenly came to him.
He remembered nights when men drove to his house, their knees sticking up sharp & their shotguns sticking up sharper, like a carful of cranes under the night trees of summer, their eyes mean. Honking the horn & him slamming his door, a gun in his hand, laughing to himself, his heart racing like a ten-year-old's, driving off down the summer-night road, a ring of hemp rope coiled on the car floor, fresh shell boxes making every man's coat look bunchy. How many nights over the years, how many nights of the wind rushing in the car, flopping their hair over their mean eyes, roaring, as they picked a tree, a good strong tree, & rapped on a shanty door!
"So that's what the son of a bitch meant?" Teece leaped out into the sunlight. "Come back, you bastard! What am I goin' to do nights? Why, that lousy, insolent son of a . . ."
It was a good question. He sickened & was empty. Yes. What will we do nights? he thought. Now they're gone, what? He was absolutely empty & numb. He pulled the pistol from his pocket, checked its load.
"What you goin' to do, Sam?" someone asked.
"Kill that son of a bitch."
Grandpa said, "Don't get yourself heated."
But Samuel Teece was gone around behind the store. A moment later he drove out the drive in his open-top car.
"Anyone comin' with me?"
"I'd like a drive," said Grandpa, & got up.
"Anyone else?"
Nobody replied.
Grandpa got in & slammed the door. Samuel Teece gutted the car out in a great whorl of dust. They didn't speak as they rushed down the road under the bright sky. The heat from the dry meadows was shimmering.
They stopped at a crossroad. "Which way'd they go, Grandpa?"
Grandpa squinted. "Straight on ahead, I figure."
They went on. Under the summer trees their car made a lonely sound. The road was empty, & as they drove along they began to notice something. Teece slowed the car & bent out, his yellow eyes fierce.
"God damn it, Grandpa, you see what them bastards did?"
"What?" asked Grandpa, & looked.
Where they had been carefully set down & left, in neat bundles every few feet along the empty country road, were old roller skates, a bandanna full of knicknacks, some old shoes, a cartwheel, stacks of pants & coats & ancient hats, bits of oriental crystal that had once tinkled in the wind, tin cans of pink geraniums, dishes of waxed fruit, cartons of Confederate money, washtubs, scrubboards, wash lines, soap, somebody's tricycle, someone else's hedge shears, a toy wagon, a jack-in-the-box, a stained-glass window from the Negro Baptist Church, a whole set of brake rims, inner tubes, mattresses, couches, rocking chairs, jars of cold cream, hand mirrors. None of it flung down, no, but deposited gently & with feeling, with decorum, upon the dusty edges of the road, as if a whole city had walked here with hands full, at which time a great bronze trumpet had sounded, the articles had been relinquished to the quiet dust, & one & all, the inhabitants of the earth had fled straight up into the blue heavens.
"Wouldn't burn them, they said," cried Teece angrily.
"No, wouldn't burn them like I said, but had to take them along & leave them where they could see them for the last time, on the road, all together & whole. Them niggers think they're smart."
He veered the car wildly, mile after mile, down the road, tumbling, smashing, breaking, scattering bundles of paper, jewel boxes, mirrors, chairs. "There, by damn, and there!"
The front tire gave a whistling cry. The car spilled crazily off the road into a ditch, flinging Teece against the glass.
"Son of a bitch!" He dusted himself off & stood out of the car, almost crying with rage.
He looked at the silent, empty road. "We'll never catch them now, never, never." As far as he could see there was nothing but bundles & stacks & more bundles neatly placed like little abandoned shrines in the late day, in the warm-blowing wind.
Teece & Grandpa came walking tiredly back to the hardware store an hour later. The men were still sitting there, listening, & watching the sky. Just as Teece sat down & eased his tight shoes off someone cried, "Look!"
"I'll be damned if I will," said Teece.
But the others looked. & they saw the golden bobbins rising in the sky, far away. Leaving flame behind, they vanished. In the cotton fields the wind blew idly among the snow dusters. In still farther meadows the watermelons lay, unfingerprinted, striped like tortoise cats lying in the sun.
The men on the porch sat down, looked at each other, looked at the yellow rope piled neat on the store shelves, glanced at the gun shells glinting shiny brass in their cartons, saw the silver pistols & long black metal shotguns hung high & quiet in the shadows. Somebody put a straw in his mouth, Someone else drew a figure in the dust.
Finally Samuel Teece held his empty shoe up in triumph, turned it over, stared at it, & said, "Did you notice? Right up to the very last, by God, he said 'Mister'!"

Carol Ann Duffy - BBC R4 Front Row 30th Sept 2011

A delightful interview. I loved hearing the poems (read aloud by ???) and I loved hearing Duffy reflect on the process of writing her new collection.

Left me inspired and optimistic.

Thank you Duffy!
Thank you Mark Lawson!

HIS OWN NUMBER - William Croft Dickinson

HIS OWN NUMBER - William Croft Dickinson

'WHAT do you gain by putting a man into space?' asked Johnson, somewhat aggressively. 'Instruments are far more efficient."
'But,' protested Hamilton, our Professor of Mathematical Physics, 'an astronaut can make use of instruments which don't respond to remote control. Also, he can bring the right instru-ments into work at exactly the right time in flight.'
'Maybe so,' returned Johnson. 'But what if he gets excited? The advantage of the instrument is that it never gets excited. It has no emotions. Its response is purely automatic."
'Can you be sure of that?" asked Munro, from his chair by the fire. And, by the way he spoke, we could sense that there was something behind his question.
'If it is in perfect order, why not?" persisted Johnson.
'I don't know,' Munro replied, slowly. 'But I can tell you a tele of an electronic computer that was in perfect order and yet three times gave the same answer to an unfortunate technician."
'Something like a wrist-watch which is affected by the pulse-beat of the wearer?" suggested Hayles.
'Something more than that," said Munro. 'A great deal more. But what that "something" was, I simply don't know. Or can an instrument have "second sight", or respond to forces that are beyond our reckoning? I wish I knew the answer to that. How-ever, I'll tell you my tele, and then each of you can try to ex-plain it to his own satisfaction."
As you probably know, when I first came here I came to a Re-search Fellowship in the Department of Mathematics. And, as it happened, one of the problems upon which I was engaged necessitated the use of an electronic computer. There were several, in the Department, but the one which I normally used was quite a simple instrument: little more than an advanced calculator. I could 'programme' a number of calculations, feed them into it, and, in less than a minute, out would come the answer which it would have taken me perhaps a month to work out by myself. Just that, and no more. And I wish I could say it was always : 'Just that, and no more.' For here comes my tale.
One afternoon, being somewhat rushed - for I had been invited to a sherry party in the Senate Room - I asked one of the tech-nicians if he'd feed my calculations into the computer, and leave the result on my desk. By pure chance the man I asked to do the job for me was called Murdoch Finlayson: a Highlander from somewhere up in Wester Ross. He was a good fellow in every way, and as honest and conscientious as they make them. I say "by pure chance'; but perhaps it was all foreordained that I should pick on Finlayson. Certainly it seemed so, in the end. But, at the time, all I wanted to do was to get away to a sherry party; Finlayson happened to be near at hand; and I knew that I could trust him.
I thought, when I asked him to do the job, and when I indi-cated the computer I wanted him to use, that he looked strangely hesitant, and even backed away a bit. I remember wondering if he had been wanting to leave early, and here was I keeping him tied to his work. But, just when I was about to say that there was no real hurry, and that I'd attend to it myself in the morning, he seemed to pull himself together, reached out for my calculations, and, with an odd look in his eyes, murmured something that sounded like 'the third time'.
I was a little puzzled by his reaction to what I thought was a simple request, and even more puzzled by that murmured re-mark about 'the third time'; but, being in a hurry, gave the mat-ter no second thought and dashed off.
My sherry party lasted somewhat longer than I had expected and, when I returned to the Department, I found it deserted. Everyone had gone home. I walked over to my desk, and then stood there, dumbfounded. Instead of the somewhat complex formula I had expected, I saw one of the computer's sheets bearing a simple number. A simple line of six digits. 1 won't give you the exact number on that sheet, but it was something like 585244 and underneath the number was a short note: It's come for the third time.
I recognized Finlayson's handwriting. But what did he mean by that cryptic statement? First of all, he had murmured something about 'the third time'; and now he had left a message saying: 'It's come for the third time.' And what was that simple line of digits, anyway? If it was supposed to be the answer to my series of calculations, it was no answer at all.
At first I felt slightly angry. What was Finlayson playing at? Then a vague feeling of uneasiness supervened. Finlayson was too sound and solid to be playing tricks with me. I remembered his hesitancy, and a new thought struck me: had it perhaps been fear? What could that number mean? As a line of digits, a six-figure number, I could see nothing unusual about it. It was a simple number, and nothing more. Then, for a time, I played with it. I cubed it; but I was no wiser. I added up the digits and cubed the total; I multiplied by three and tried again; and so forth and so on till I admitted that I was simply wasting my time. I could make nothing of it.
Unfortunately I didn't know where Finlayson lived, so per-force I had to contain my curiosity until the next morning. Also I had to contain that vague feeling of uneasiness which still per-sisted. But the next morning, as soon as I had entered the De-partment, I sought him out.
This is an extraordinary result, Finlayson,' I said, holding out the computer sheet which he had left on my desk.
'Aye, sir.'
'But surely the computer must have gone completely haywire.'
The computer's all right, sir. But yon's the result it gave me, and I'm no liking it at all.'

'The computer can't be right,' I persisted. 'And your note seems to say that this is the third time you've received this result from it. Do you really mean that on three separate occasions, whatever the calculations you have put into this computer, it has each time returned this same number - 585244?'
'It has that, sir. And it's unchancy. I'm no liking a machine that gives me yon same number three times. I'm thinking that maybe it's my own number. And now I'm afeared o' it. I'm for handing in my papers and leaving, sir. I'll away to my brother's to help with the sheep. Tis safer feeding a flock of ewes than tending a machine that aye gives you a queer number.'
‘Nonsense,' I retorted. 'There's something wrong with the computer, or with the way in which you set it and fed in the cal-culations.'
'Maybe aye and maybe no, sir. But maybe I've been given my own number, and I'm no liking it at all. I'm wanting to leave.'
I realized that I was up against some form of Highland super-stition. Finlayson had been given a simple number three times, and that was enough for him. Maybe it was 'his own number' -whatever that might mean. I, realized, too, that he had made up his mind to go, and that nothing I could say would dissuade him. Sheep were safer than electronic computers.
'All right,' I said to him, 'I'll speak to the Dean. And if it is any comfort to you, I won't ask you to operate that computer again.'
He thanked me for what he called my 'consideration', and went back to his work. I, in turn, went straight to the Dean.
"What an extraordinary business,' said the Dean, when I had recounted the circumstances to him. I wouldn't have believed it of Finlayson. I would have said he was far too intelligent to let anything like that upset him. There's surely something wrong with that computer. It's a very old instrument Let's have a look at it.'
And, naturally, ‘having a look at it' included feeding in the cal_culations, which I had previously given to Finlayson. The com-puter quickly gave us the result. And it was a result far different from Finlayson's simple number, 585244. Although it would have taken me days to check it, the result was a complex formula like the one I had expected.
The Dean muttered something to himself and then turned to me. "We'll try it again. I have some calculations of my own to which I know die answer.'
He went to his room, came back with his calculations and fed them into the machine. A few seconds later, out came the com-puter's sheet bearing the answer.
‘Perfectly correct,' said the Dean, crisply. Finlayson must have been imagining things. Or else, for some unknown reason, he has three times fed a wrong programme into the computer. Even then, he couldn't get an answer like 585244."
'I don't know,' I replied, slowly. 'He's too good a technician to make mistakes. And carelessness is no explanation. He's con-vinced he has received that six-figure number on the last three occasions on which he has used this machine. I'm beginning to think he did - though don't ask me why. But he's also con-vinced that there's some premonition in it. "His own number" has turned up three times. And "the third time" is a kind of final summons. Superstition if you like, but I'm beginning to feel for him. I think we should let him go.'
"Very well,' returned the Dean with a sigh of resignation. 'Have it your own way. I'll tell him he can leave at the end of the week. But you know as well as I do how difficult it is to get good tech-nicians.'
We sought out Finlayson and the Dean told him that if he was determined to go he could be released at the end of the week. The man's eyes lit up at the news, and his relief was obvious.
‘I’ll away to my brother's,' he said, delightedly. 'He'll be glad of my help, and I'll be glad to be helping him. Not that I've been unhappy in my work here, sir. I would not be saying that. But I'm kind of feared to be staying. And if ye had not said I could go, I doubt I would have been going all the same. Though it would not be like me to be doing a thing like that.'
'Where does your brother live?' the Dean asked, quickly chang-ing the conversation.
'In Glen Ogle, sir, on the road from Lochearnhead to Killin.'
'A beautiful stretch of country,' I put in. 'Do you know, I’ll drive you there .on Saturday morning if you like. It will be a lovely run. Where shall I pick you up?'
He accepted my offer with alacrity, and gave me the address of his lodgings.
I did not tell him of the two tests of the computer which the Dean and I had carried out.
The Saturday morning was fine and clear. I called for him at the address he had given me, and found him waiting, with his possessions packed into a large grip.
Once we had passed through Stirling and had reached the foot-hills of the Highlands, the beauty of the country seized hold of me. Finlayson's desire to join his brother amid these browns and purples, golds, blues and greens, seemed the most sensible thing in all the world. The sun made the hills a glory; Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich raised their heads in the distance; and, as we left Callander, the long-continuing Falls of Leny cascaded over their rocks by the side of the road. Finlayson's thrice-recurring num-ber was surely a blessing and not a curse.
We had run through Lochearnhead and had entered Glen Ogle when, just as I was about to ask Finlayson for the whereabouts of his brother's farm, the car suddenly slowed down and stopped. I knew the tank was practically full, for I had just put in eight gallons at Callander. My first thought was carburettor-trouble, or possibly a blocked feed. I loosened the bonnet-catch, got out, raised the bonnet, and went through all the usual checks. But, to my annoyance, I could find nothing wrong. The tank was full; feed, pump and carburettor were all functioning properly. I gave myself a few minor shocks as I tested the electrical circuits. Nothing wrong there. Coil, battery, distributor, plugs, were all in order. I reached over to the fascia board and pressed the self-starter. The starter-motor whirred noisily in the stillness, but the engine did not respond. Once more I tested every connexion and every part. Again I pressed the self-starter, and again with no effect. Thoroughly exasperated, I turned to Finlayson who had joined me in this exhaustive check and who was as puzzled as I was.
"Well, and what do we do now?' I asked.
‘I’ll walk the two-three miles to my brother's,' he said. "He has the tractor, and can tow us to the farm. Then maybe we can find out what has gone wrong.'
‘Excellent!' I agreed. 'Off you go.'

I sat down on the grass and I watched him striding away until he disappeared round a bend in the road. A little later I got up, closed the bonnet of the car, and took a road map from one of the door-pockets. Perhaps there was an alternative route for my way back.
I had barely opened the map and laid it out on top of the bon-net when a car came tearing round the bend ahead. As soon as the driver saw me, he pulled up with a screech of his brakes and jumped out.
'For God's sake come back with me,' he cried. 'I've killed a man, just up the road. He walked right into me.'
For a moment the shock of his words stunned me, and I stood irresolute.
'Quick!' he continued. 'We'll take your car. It will save the time of reversing mine.'
Without further ado, he jumped into the driver's seat of my car, pressed the self-starter and impatiently signalled to me to get in beside him.
So Finlayson was dead. Somehow I knew it was Finlayson. Dead in Glen Ogle where sheep were safer than machines. He had walked from my useless car to meet his death round the bend in the road.
My useless car! With a sudden tremor of every nerve I realized that the engine was turning over as smoothly as it had ever done.
Had the whole world turned upside down?
Mechanically I got in and sat down beside the man. He drove a short distance round the bend and then slowly came to a halt. I saw at once that my fears were only too true. Finlayson was dead. The man had lifted him on to the grass that verged the road. I got out and bent over him. There was nothing I could do.
'I saw him walking on his own side of the road,' I heard the man saying to me. 'And I was on my own side too. But he couldn't have seen me or heard me. Just when I should have passed him, he suddenly crossed over. My God! He crossed right in front of me! Do you think he was deaf? Or perhaps he was thinking of something. Absent-minded. How else could he walk right into me?'
The man was talking on and on. Later, I realized he had to talk. It was the only relief for him. But I was not listening. Finlayson lay there, broken, still. Seeking life, he had found death. His 'number' had 'come up' three times. It was 'un-chancy'. To hell with his number! What had that to do with this?
At the subsequent inquiry, the driver of the car was completely exonerated. In a moment of absent-mindedness Finlayson had stepped across the road right into the path of the oncoming car. The finding was clear and definite. Yet for me, I could not forget that the unhappy man had felt some premonition of mischance. He had decided to cheat mischance and seek safety amid the hills. And mischance and death had met him there. Yet what possible connexion could there be between 'his number', 585244, and his death?
At first I thought that Finlayson had possibly seen "his num-ber' on a telegraph pole, or perhaps on a pylon, and, startled, had crossed the road to look at it more clearly. I made a special journey to Lochearnhead, parked my car there, and examined every bit of the road from the place where my car had 'broken down' to the place where Finlayson had been killed. But I could find nothing to substantiate my theory. '
And why had my car so mysteriously broken down and then so mysteriously started again? Could it be that the fates had de-creed the time and place of the death of Murdoch Finlayson and had used the puny machines of man's invention for their decree's fulfilment? An electronic computer that could be made to give the one number, and an internal combustion engine that could be brought to a halt. And why that number? Why that number?
That one question so dominated my mind that it ruined my work by day and my rest by night. And then, perhaps a fort-night after Finlayson's death, I was given an answer; yet it was an answer that still left everything unexplained.
I had gone over to the Staff House for lunch, and had joined a table where, too late, I found an animated discussion in progress to the effect that members of the Faculty of Arts were too ignorant of elementary science, and members of the Faculty of Science too ignorant of the arts. I was in no mood to join in the discussion, though politeness demanded that occasionally I should put in my word. The table gradually emptied until only Grassland, the Professor of Geography, and I were left.
'Neither Science nor Arts can answer some of our questions,' I said to him, bitterly.
'I know,' he replied. 'It must have been a terrible shock for you. I suppose we shall never know why that computer returned the one number to Finlayson three times. That is, if it did. And what was the number, by the way? I never heard."
'A simple line of six digits - 585244.'
'Sounds just like a normal national grid reference,' Crossland commented.
'A normal national grid reference?' I queried.
'Yes. Surely you know our national grid system for map-references. Or,' he continued with a smile, 'is this a case of the scientist knowing too little of the work in the Faculty of Arts?'
"You've scored a point there,' I replied. 'I'm afraid I'm com-pletely ignorant of this grid system of yours.'
'Probably you've been using motoring-maps too much,' he conceded. 'But the grid is quite simple. If you look at any sheet of the Ordnance Survey you will see that it is divided into kilometre squares by grid lines, numbered from o to 99, running west to east, and o to 99, running south to north. Then, within each kilometre square, a closer definition is obtained by measuring in tenths between the grid lines. Thus a particular spot, say a farm-steading or a spinney, can be pin-pointed on the map, within its numbered square, by a grid-reference which runs to six figures : three, west to east; and three, south to north. A six-figure num-ber, which is known as the "normal national grid reference".'
For a minute or so I digested this in silence.
'Can we go over to your map-room?' I asked.
'Surely,' he said, a little surprised. 'And see on a map how it works?'
‘Yes.'
We went over to Crossland's department.
'Any particular map?' he asked.
"Yes. A map of Western Perthshire.'
Grassland produced the Ordnance Survey Sheet. I looked at it almost with reluctance.
Taking out a pencil, I pointed to the place on the map where, as near as I could judge, Finlayson had met his death. 'What would be the grid reference for that particular spot?' I asked, and wondered at the strangeness of my voice.
Grassland picked up a transparent slide and bent over the map. I heard him take in his breath. He straightened himself, and when he turned to look at me his eyes were troubled and questioning.

‘Yes,' concluded Munro. 'I needn't tell you what the grid reference was. But can anyone tell me why Finlayson was given that number three times on an electronic computer? Or why my car "broke down", so that he could walk of his own accord to that very spot?'

From Dark Encounters by William Croft Dickinson (Harvill Press, London).

Cf. The Signalman by Charles Dickens

The Application Form – Moy McCrory

This may well be the best short story I've every read.
I read it just after finishing university and could really identify with parental reticent re. official form filling.

The Application Form – Moy McCrory

'It’s arrived, it's arrived! Wake up you lazy...!'
Nell pounded her sleeping son, reaching across him as he lay in bed to draw the thin curtains & a let more of the bright morning sun flood into his untidy room. A pair of red eyes that were still heavy with sleep stared out from under the blankets hating her.
As they gradually focused, their attention was directed not at her but at the brown envelop being waved in front of them. Snappily Brendan took it from her & put it down on the' table. He threw back the covers & got slowly to his feet, looking unsteady and vaguely stupid in his striped pyjamas.
'Well go on! Open it!’
'Oh God...in a minute.’ he answered dully, stumbling out of the room towards the lavatory. 'Christ!' he blasphemed as he drew the catch.
Nell’s face piqued. She had annoyed him with her enthusiasm & now she felt as she had acted improperly as she waited lamely for him to come back. He felt rotten, but his mother should have learnt that he was always irritable in the morning, she should have known better than to expect anything from him, he always woke up badly.
Back in his room he attempted a grin, but it was morn of a grimace than anything else. His mouth tasted stale & he wished that she would go instead of standing awkwardly by the side of the bed, reminding him with her dejected figure that he had taken the edge off her happiness.
The letter was a formality, for when Brendan’s results had arrived they had known that he would be going to Queen's. And there it was, the official confirmation of his place. All that day Nell walked about in a daze. Her son, going to University! No one in her family had ever done that before. She phoned her sisters and, wanting to tell yet more people, during an unnecessary trip to the shops to drop into the conversation with her best English telephone voice:
'of course Brendan’s going to the University this Autumn you know,' drawing out the words to make the sentence last as long as possible. 'The' university, because Nell thought there was only one.
'What’s he going to do there?' Mrs Carmichael asked with a look of disgust.
She had either misheard or believed that university was a type of Borstal.
Nell thought for a moment. What would he do? More schoolwork? She had never thought to ask him & she did not have the vaguest idea how the university functioned. She felt rather foolish as she mumbled that he would 'learn Things'. It suddenly sounded rather pointless.
'But like what?' Mrs Carmichael asked. 'I mean...what sort of 'things'? Hasn’t he learnt enough already':''
Nell could see that she was not going be hobbled so easily. Sod her, she cursed inwardly. Why did some people always have to be so damned bloody clever?
"Oh, they learn all sorts of things nowadays. You know, you know...’ She was struggling & the other woman knew it.
'No I don't. I can’t imagine' why anyone has to stay on at school all the time they do now. I was out working when I was fourteen & I learnt all they had to teach me by then. My studying was over. What they’re filling their heads up with now I can't guess. Sitting at desks like big kids when they should be out earning money. '
'Oh, but they don’t look at it like that. They just go on learning. You can never get reading education it seems. When you’ve learned one thing there’s always something else' waiting to be studied. '
'Like what?''
God but she was being awkward this morning. Nell could have kicked her but didn't want to give her the satisfaction. Revising her list. 'Woodwork, philosophy, architecture'. Russian...'
'Russian! What’s the bleeding good in learning that unless he's going to spy. '
Some of the other neighbours started to laugh.
'Is it like a school then this University?'' one of them asked.
‘I don’t really know,’ Nell admitted in a voice, which was only a little flatter than usual. 'I expect it is. He’ll have to read a lot I suppose.
''Well I think its wonderful, just wonderful.’ Mr Maguire said nodding with approval. 'And I think we can all be grateful that a tiny' young man like Brendan is prepared to sacrifice his life to help others. '
Nell stared at him queerly.
“Tell me,' he said turning to her. 'When he comes out does he go straight into the priesthood, or do they send him away to the missions for further training? I mean, is he fully qualified, or does he have to do a bit of practical work first?’
''Och Maguire, You’ve got it wrong again,' Mrs Carmichael had growled. 'He’s going to university, not a bloody seminary. '
'Well, well,' Mr Maguire said, not one to be easily dismayed, 'I always said he’d turn out well.
''But what will you do when he vanishes?' Old Mrs Daly asked.
"That’s a point...’ said Mrs Carmichael turning to Nell. 'what will he do love, you know. when he’s finished?
''He’ll get a good job.
'Nell never doubted that this education Brendan was about to receive would fail to unlock the door to a successful live ever after. But the neighbours looked uneasily at each other.
'How long does it take then?'"
Three years, or more' if hr decides to go on even further.’
They drew in their breath.’ God, but that’s a long time. Better get his name down for the Post Office.

Eileen was genuinely pleased for her brother when she heard the news. She felt saddened too, because it meant that he would be leaving home, & she would miss him. 'They had always been good friends, always been close. She was also a bit scared by the prospect because she knew what it would mean. Brendan would not live with them again as part of the family. He would only ever return as a visitor, from the moment he left to embark on his university career. he would no longer be tied by his father's dominance & stubborn authority. He would be free of it, & Eileen knew that that fact alone would change Brendan. He would not be the brother she needed in adversity.
Still, she found consolation thinking that it would only be a matter of two years before she could expect to do the same. If it was possible. Her father had already attempted to bring her out of school when she finished her 'O' levels, but he had not carried out his threat. She was going back that September to the sixth form. But she knew that he was not above changing his mind & so the prospect hung over her like a dark cloud. But she had worked out a solution, if it became necessary. She would leave home at 18 anyway. There was nothing he could do about that. She would pack a bag and get out. He could not stop her. But she was worried by the next two years without Brendan to back her up. She felt indebted to her brother, because, just having someone older than her meant that she had extra time to work things out. She was legacee to Brendan's problems.
When Brendan began to question their faith at the age of sixteen, Eileen was there to experience those doubts with him. By the time she reached that age herself she had already had two years to sort out the same problems. It was as if being two years younger enabled her to develop a better understanding when she reached that same age. It was, she was sure, the only single advantage that she had over him. She was always the more decisive of the two, clearer in her ideas than he was. All their relatives coincided all it, that she seemed to understand things. She did. She understood that to her parents Brendan was really the only one that mattered. her understanding did not spare her any pain, but increased it.
When Brendan spoke her parents listened, especially her mother. Sometimes it almost drove her mad to see her mother being weighed down by Brendan’s adolescent authority. But she could not blame her brother for that. It saddened her to think that he might go through life believing in this power vested from God that all men possessed. He might end up like their father.
'I give the orders in this house!' their father would yell & his wife, standing behind her husband would nod meekly & agree, only right & fitting.
Eileen had spotted the warning signs, for Brendan was beginning to show that annoying arrogance he had first displayed at fourteen when Eileen had hated him. He came home from the Irish Christian Brothers' School one day saying, 'What have women ever done? Our physics teacher said women were just the tools of men & that it is our Christian duly not to take advantage of their natural inferiority, because he has made it like that for a purpose. Tools,' he repeated staring dreamily out o’the window.
Eileen had felt destroyed. She cried in bed not wanting to be merely a tool. It was so unfair. she could not even to an altar boy. And now again at eighteen he was lording it over his mother. treating her as though she was an idiot. Eileen hated seeing him behave like that. It drove her crazy.
'Make us a cup of tea,' he’d say & Nell would shoot out into the kitchen or, worse still. look up at Eileen & say 'well?' nodding towards the kitchen, because her son had made a request & it was right that the daughter should comply. She knew that if she had sat in a chair giving orders she would be told to get it herself', & called every name imaginable. If' it came from Brendan it was authority, but if it came from her it was just cheek. Eileen never budged.
Nell could have clouted her. She understood what was wrong with the girl lately. Didn't she see that she was worked to death? She had just come in & put the shopping down on the table & had to rush out to make tea. But Eileen never thought of offering, not that one, she’d just sit there & ignore everyone. Then she would get up & make herself a cup of tea, without thinking about anyone else. Bloody selfish that’s what she was. The last few days in particular she had been getting on Nell’s nerves. Sitting there without saying anything, leaving the room whenever she came in. Jealous. that’s what it was. She was jealous of Brendan because Brendan was clever.
As she thought of her son a flush of happiness spread across her face. She sorted in the bag for the chocolate biscuits she’d bought especially. She’d take him one with his tray. She had never understood him. She was temperamental, always had been. even as a baby she had done the most crying. She had not been as lovable as Brendan. Nell imagined him as he had been, chuckling away, playing with a rattle & felt a gag in her throat thinking how quickly her son had grown up. here he was about to go to university. She remembered his first day at school. He had held her hand nervously going up the road. But he had not given any trouble, sitting in behind a desk and starting to play with some coloured counters that he had found. He hadn't even seen her leave, so absorbed he was. She had come home & cried. It was funny to think of that.
But Eileen now, she wasn't at all like Brendan, not easy. Last night for instance, he had merely remarked that there was no sugar in his tea & she had hit the roof. Told him to get up & get it himself and called him all sorts of names.
She had to intervene.
'For God's sake stop arguing!' she had shouted. She hated rows between the kids.
She had enough to put up with from her husband without tho. se two following suit.
Get the sugar bowl, Eileen,' she told the girl & what did she do? She let loose a torrent of abuse at poor Brendan’s head and half the sugar lumps! They all went all over the floor. It was a good job their father wasn't there, he’d have killed them. She had a temper that one. God, life certainly was never boring with her around! Nell found herself grinning despite herself. Really it was something she had long wanted to do herself, chuck something at her husband. But it would have to be something a bit more weighty if it was to make any impression on his Thick skull, she thought - the kettle, or the coal bucket. But poor Brendan, it was quite comical really. She went back into the living room smiling.
'This came with the afternoon post,' Brendan said fishing a green application form out of his trouser pocket. 'It’s for the grant. I’ve already been down to the education offices & checked, I should qualify for the maximum. '
'Just as bloody well you do,' Nell said sipping her tea, 'because we couldn't afford to keep you. "
'No. Indeed. That is why I, that is, your son, will get a maximum grant...'
Brendan explained with deliberate slowness as if talking to someone with difficulty understanding.
Eileen glared at him. 'Just cut out the comedy, smart lad. '
'Oh, God, not you again!’ Nell said turning to her daughter. 'What’s wrong with you now?'
'He knows,' she said sullenly sinking back into her chair.
Brendan continued as if nothing had happened.
'The thing is, father has to fill out some bits, but ifs straightforward enough.
The sooner he does it, the sooner I’ll know for sure what I have to live on next year. '
His mother nodded. She did not ask to see the forms. Why should she? To the water, gas & electricity boards she did not exist. Her name never appeared on any official documents. Whenever brown manilla envelopes with little windows cut out in them came through the door she ignored them, for she had learnt that they were not her concern. It was only her husband who was requested to fill in forms, that was just the way it was & she no longer even had curiosity to see them.
'Show them to your father when he gets home tonight. With a bit of luck you could have them ready & back in the office by tomorrow. '
‘I’ve already filled in the bits I can: dates of birth, other dependant children & all that. So all he has to do is the part about income. '
It was straightforward enough, even rather simple. There should not have been any problems.
‘I’m not filling that bloody thing in, & that's final. His father's voice was harsh.
He was beginning to yell. ths face was obstinate, the chin stubborn & the mouth set. Brendan expected him to stamp his foot.
He knew that look on his father's face too well. Whenever he had to stick his tongue! into his chook as he was doing now it was a sure sign that he was in his fixed position. Putting his tongue in his cheek was a device he used to stop himself spluttering, which was undignified. It was always accompanied by speeded-up breathing, & a flush of irritation as he became more irrational & heated. Brendan knew that there was no point arguing with his father when he had reached that stage, but he thought he might be able to explain the consequences of his father's reaction & in this way alter the course of threatened events.
'But if you don't fill it in, I can't get a grant, & if I can't get a grant I can't go to university,' he explained tiredly. It was a wariness borne of knowledge of his father’s intractable nature.
'For God's sake,' Nell said, 'why can't you just fill the thing in. What harm is there?'
'Harm! he screamed, 'Harm! You expect me to tell everyone what I earn! Some tuppenny-happenny office clerk knowing how much I bring home every week? I’m not filling that in & that's an end to it. You’re entitled to a grant. They’ll have to give it to you. '
'Not unless you fill in the form. They won't take my word for it. Any one could go down there & say that their parents can't support them. They need to know how much you earn in order to make an accurate assessment; unless you arc suggesting that you would rather pay for mp, that is, that you are able to.’ Brendan’s voice was mocking.
‘Go to hell!' his father shouted, striking out blindly with his fist & winding his son in the belly. He had started panting. the look he gave his son was of hate. He despised the young buck, daring to suggest that he didn't earn enough. Let him try to earn his own living. Let’s see who does the best at it.
Go & work in bloody Ford's,' he spat.
Brendan sank back, tears beginning to well up. Don't cry in front of him. Don't let him see that you’re upset. Weak, a weakling, mummy's boy. Insults smarted in his head. So that was it, his father's plan for him. Work in Ford's. Don’t dare dream of getting away from that. It was good enough for him so it must be good enough for the son...
'Bullies and cowards,' his mother always told him whenever he got into trouble at school. 'Stand up to them & they go away. '
But this time it was not so simple. Brendan was powerless while his Father triumphed in the display of his control over the boy's life.
he remembered the first time that he' had stood up to his father’s temper. It was just a little over a year ago. Eileen was not quite fifteen. She was skinny & her hair was still in plaits then. He did not mind his father knocking him about but he could not bear to see him hitting Eileen. It wasn't fair. Even if repetition meant that it had become commonplace & to some extent the girl was used to it, it still didn't seem right to Brendan. he remembered the look of horror & surprise on her face when he had stood between her & their Father. Behind him his Father was still striking out with blows. It took him a while to register that it was no longer his daughter but Brendan’s back that the' fists were striking.
"The little slut! The little bitch! Lady bloody muck!'
All Brendan had wanted to do was cover his sister’s ears so that she would not hear any more insults. That was all he really intended. But once between them, he had swung round & landed a punch squarely in his father’s mouth. He couldn't remember who had been the most surprised. But it was the quickest solution to stop him shouting. "Thank God their Mother had not been there. Nothing was ever said about it after. Their Father pretended that it had not happened. But Brendan saw how he was less quick to hit Eileen after that.
he looked over now & saw his sister. She looked terrifying. She was white, completely white, the colour had drained out of her while she had listened to her father telling Brendan that he was still the one who gave the orders. Her father’s temper stirred the hatred in the girl. Right then she hated him with every inch of her wiry frame. She wanted to throw herself at him, beat him to blood pulp with her own small fists. Beat & beat until the life went out of him. She despised him for dredging up such violence from her when it should have lain deep & forgotten. Eileen was terrified by her emotions. She knew that at times like this she had anger enough to kill & she retched, disgusted with herself.
Nell was crying. Why did they always have to be arguing? Why couldn't they be like other families? All she wanted was some peace. A quiet life. Hadn't she worked hard all her life & got nothing easy? Hadn't she earned some rest? & this morning she had been so proud, proud enough for the whole street. She had felt as if she would burst until she told everyone her news. And now her husband had destroyed that feeling.
The pen lay on the table, the green application form next to it. All he had to do was to pick it up & sign it. If it was up to her, she would sign it. What possible difference could it make? She remembered the means test as a child. The men in grey overcoats standing in their kitchen. Looking at everything, assessing, making values, telling her mother what she ought to sell. Nell couldn't understand what right they had to come into their home, but she was only a child then. How was it possible? These strangers came & put a price on everything. Her mother’s head had hung down, sobbing.
'You've still got a table they told her roughly.
They went authoritatively into rooms opening cupboards, investigating.
'What are they looking for Mam?' she asked.
'Hush. Nothing, nothing. fm a woman on my own. I’ve no man now,' was all her mother ever said.
'Sell those ornaments,' they commanded. There was no room for attachments, or sentiment. They were poor now.
'Those rings on your finger, are they gold?'
'Please, please, Dear God,' Nell prayed, 'grant my son the chance I never had, Mother Mary I beg of you.’ She looked at the pen, it lay resolutely on the table.
Eileen was trying to catch her mother's attention. She waved her arms noiselessly from the kitchen door.
'What in God's name is wrong with that girl,' she thought. Fancy choosing now or all times to make them all tea! But over the hiss of the boiling kettle noise whispered conspiratorially:
'Why don't you fill it in - tomorrow, when he's at work?' She nodded in her father's direction. On the other side of the wall the image of her husband burned in Nell’s eyes.
'Oh God no, I can't,' she whispered.
'Why not?' the daughter persisted. I’ll forge his signature! Its simple - they won't bother to check & he need never know. '
'Its not that!' Oh, if only things could be so simple, she thought, suddenly feeling old & tired. 'Its not that at all. But I don't know...'
She hesitated, dreading her daughter's clear gaze.
'I mean...I don't know what he earns, he's never told me.’
Eileen's mouth opened as if to say something, then closed again. The girl looked stunned.
'Well, a man's got to have his little bit of self-respect,' Nell carried on, but it sounded hollow. She felt irritated. The girl was young yet, she would learn. She would come to see how things had to be a certain way, how things were done.
'Well, you know,' she continued, 'its always been like that.’
Eileen wasn't listening. She was sobbing gently over the tray. Nell was surprised. She felt a sudden overwhelming surge of love for her daughter. Her own eyes began to prick with tears, seeing her own child, the one who was always ready to fight back, to hold her own, now hanging limply, the life gone out of her.
Nell picked up the tray & marched aggressively into the living room. But her courage left her as soon as she saw him. The cups rattled. She put the tray down & it rang like a bell against the polished surface of the table. There was no other sound. Keeping her hand steady she poured him a cup. He took it from her without a word and began to slurp. Christ, he irritated her sometimes! She looked around. Both Brendan and Eileen had disappeared. She felt nervous. She poured herself a cup of tea and raised it shakily to her lips, but she had no taste for it & let it sink back onto the tray before' she too left the room.
Something had to bi' done. Nell couldn't sleep that night - or the next. There was no point arguing with him. The more he was pushed, the more he resisted. She knew him too well. what may have been over-reaction now became solid policy. If he were to give in now, he would look weak, irresolute. So while Brendan had pleaded, desperately, he had furthered no cause other than his father’s obstinacy.
That morning he had asked his father if he would consider disowning him legally. He had found out that he wouldn't need the signature if he was 'disinherited'. The word had made Brendan laugh. What did he stand to inherit beyond his father's name? His father's example?
He had sworn at Brendan, called him a bastard anyhow. I’ve got no son! You're no son for me!' He had stormed out of the room after striking haphazardly at Brendan's head.
They were at stalemate: he refused to talk and, of course, he would not disown his son publicly. Nell could have told Brendan as much. What a scandal! So while he walked around pretending to have no son, playing a game of silence with him, ignoring him & looking past him & enjoying his own stubbornness, his ploy of 'let's see who cracks first!, he would not put his argument on solid ground. It was private. he wasn't going to have some clever-dick lawyer meddling in his business!
Nell lay in the dark listening to him breathing. God how he slept - with a clear conscience. She was tortured. She so desperately wanted her son to go to University. It was so near her grasp to be so cruelly wrenched away - & by her husband! There was no sense, no logic, in what was happening. What should have been a wonderful occasion had been changed to one of misery. Tears ran down her face. Why was he doing this to her? He was blighting his own son's life, nipping the bud before it flowered. When Brendan should have been given every chance to get on in life, she thought, how could he make his way in the world if his own father blocked him? To Nell it was a matter of utmost urgency. One day Brendan would have to support a family. Surely he would stand a better chance if he was educated. Why couldn't her husband see that!
'Jesus, send me guidance,' she implored.
At the first light she rose & blessed herself with holy water from the wall font. ‘In the name of the Father & of the Son & of the Holy Ghost, Amen,' she recited mechanically.
She might have been the ghost, she thought ruefully as she caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror - the unheard, unseen, performing the sign of the cross. Why couldn't she sign the form? Why did it have to be their father? Father! Father.
Bloody father she cursed, but an idea began to form. While she knew that she was powerless to make him listen, she did know that there was somebody else, somebody whom she would only have to threaten him with.
The following Saturday she came home with her shopping basket & laid it squarely on the kitchen table in front of him.
The price of butters gone up. And cat food! Look at this,' she said piling tins up in a pyramid & pointing to the price labels. We'll have to shoot the cat next!
The ginger tom looked up at her, then put its head between its paws and continued to sleep. The newspaper rustled slightly. From behind it her husband mumbled something.
“I called in on Father Gallghan...’ she continued brightly, hoping her anxiety would not show, 'to ask for advice. '
Had her voice suddenly grown louder? She must try to keep it even.
“I thought that he might be able to help us. About Brendan. '
'What?' He laid his paper to one side & stared at her.
“Well’ she said trying not to flinch. “I just thought that he might know a way of getting round those forms. You know...I moan...maybe he could sign them for us and vouch that we can't afford to keep Brendan at University. They would have to accept the word of a priest, wouldn't they?'
His mouth dropped open.
“I only explained to him how difficult it was...I mean, it is, isn't it?'
She tried to sound as if she was in agreement.
'I don't know what you earn, so I can't fill it in. '
'You told the priest that!'
“Well of course. I had to explain the situation. I must say, he did seem rather surprised. He kept saying that he had always found you to be reasonable before. Funny that isn’t it?" She hoped she sounded guileless. “I mean, you said yourself that they had no right to ask you such things. I explained that you were refusing on the grounds of privacy..." but she looked acutely embarrassed... '- it's nothing to be ashamed of, you said so yourself.’
“I'm ashamed all right!' he yelled. "I'm ashamed of my bloody wife! That she could be so damned stupid!’
Nell winced as if she had been struck. This was what she was most scared of. She had to remain cool & not shout back, for if she lost her temper she might tell him the truth - that she was too ashamed to speak to anyone' about it. She could not have endured the pity from her neighbours, pity for being married to such an oaf. She kept him secret for her own self-respect.
'Anyway, Father Gallghan said that he would come round to have a quick word with you...he'll probably sign the forms then.’ She tried to sound as if she really believed it.
'You stupid cow! By Christ. 'I'll kill you!' His face was pink.
'whatever is wrong?'
'Do you always go blabbing to the bloody priest, letting him know all our business? What are you. a total moron?'
Nell looked at him straight. 'I always tell the priest...everything. '
He had never struck her. He thought she ought to be grateful. He was a model husband because he did not beat his wife. The kids...well, that was discipline. God, he didn't want to see the priest now!
'Get me those forms!' he ordered. he would sign the things & have done with it. 'And you can tell the priest it was a false alarm!''
He'd fix it. Tell him his silly wife had made a mistake - 'Ha, ha, you know Father, ha, ha, women...’ that would do it.
Upstairs Eileen was jumping & hugging her brother who held the green form ready to go into an envelope. His future was spared.
'Come & live with me when you're 18,' he said. "Then you will be a legal entity. Dad won't be able to mess you around. '
Brendan knew that she would have a harder time of it. He put his arms round her wanting to offer support. She felt steel-framed & angular. Ue felt her hesitate a moment, as if she would push him away. His sister needed no one. he had always been a little in awe of her resolve. She had an ability to go out & get things done on her own. She did not need the approval of others that he so desperately sought. Now he needed her. He wanted to know that he could help her & that she would not reject him. Eileen did not blame her brother. 'You'll face this in two years. only mam won't support you like she has me you know. '
She knew. She had learnt it long ago. She softened & they both cried onto each other's shoulders as they had when they were small & used to fight & stop to make friends, each sobbing with fear that the other would not want to.
Downstairs their mother was giving thanks in front of the statue of Our Lady.
'In the name of the Father & of the Son,' she began without the slightest trace of irony.

‘Balance Sheet’ (Hymn to the New Omagh Road): (1971) by John Montague

‘Balance Sheet’ (Hymn to the New Omagh Road): (1971) by John Montague

Loss
Item: The shearing away of an old barn
criss-cross of beams where pigeons moan
high small window where the swallow built
white-washed dry-stone walls.

Item: The suppression of stone lined paths
Old potato-boiler full of crocuses
Overhanging lilac or laburnum
Sweet pea climbing the fence.

Item: The filling-in of chance streams
uncovered wells, all unchannelled sources
of water that might weaken foundations
bubbling over with macadam.

Item: The disappearance of all signs
of wild life, wren’s or robin’s nest,
a rabbit nibbling a coltsfoot leaf,
a stray squirrel or water rat.

Item: The uprooting of wayside hedges
With their accomplices, devil’s bit and pee the bed,
Prim rose and dog rose, an unlawful
Assembly of thistles

Item: The removal of all hillocks
and humps, superstition styled fairy forts
and long barrows, now legally to be regarded
as obstacles masking a driver’s view.

Gain
Item: 10 men from the district being for a period of time
fully employed, their 10 wives could buy groceries
and clothes to send 30 children content to school for a
few months, and raise local merchants’ hearts by paying their bills.

Item: A man driving from Belfast to Londonderry can
arrive a quarter of an hour earlier, a lorry load of
goods ditto, thus making Ulster more competitive
in the international market.

Item: A local travelling from the prefabricated suburbs of
by-passed villages can manage an average of 50
rather than 40 m.p.h. on his way to see relatives in
Omagh hospital or lunatic asylum.

Item: The dead of Garvaghey graveyard (including my
Grandfather) can have an unobstructed view – the trees
having been sheared away for a carpark – of the living
passing at great speed, sometimes quick enough to come straight in…

Let it be clear
That I do not grudge my grandfather
This long delayed pleasure!
I like the idea of him
Rising from the rotting boards of the coffin
With his J. P’s white beard
And penalizing drivers
For travelling faster
Than jaunting cars

Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003)

Purple Hibiscus takes place in the author's native Nigeria, during the politically unstable years of post-colonialism. The novel is told from the perspective of 15-year-old Kambili, who lives with her overbearing, ultra-religious Catholic father, Eugene, her older brother Jaja, & her mother, Beatrice.

The problem is that it is so reminiscent of the ‘tyrannical father’ novels by Rosa Guy, Joan Riley, Toni Morrison & Alice Walker

Still, I've not yet got to the end and so Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie may well have done something original with this 'genre'.

Darkside (2007) Tom Becker

Tom ‘Becker’ Beckerlegge (b. 1982) is a British children's author.
He studied history at Jesus College, Oxford.
His first novel, Darkside, was published in 2007.
Since that time Becker has published at least four other Darkside novels.

I read 'Darkside' because I had to. I'm scheduled to work woth the book as a classreader for Year 8 (12/13 year old) students.

I did not like the book. It is utterly derivative. Not a single speck of originality.
The wereman is a take on Wolverine from the X-Men. Jonathan Starling is a take on Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's Lyra. The whole concept of the Darkside is a take on the 'worlds' created by Rowling and Phillip Pullman (Northern Lights series).

The book was clearly written with an eye to a spin-off series/film.
It's not even very well written - in terms of language.

I do hope that this is not the future of books for young adults.

Anil's Ghost (2000) by Michael Ondaatje

Well, I finally completed the reading of this book.

I can't say I enjoyed it but I'm glad I read it.

A number of images and characters will haunt me from time to time. It was very evocative. So many things remained unstated or at least understated.

Overall I think it needed clearer editing to be less of a frustrating read and more accessible. But I guess the medium is the message. The frustration of everyday life in a war-torn country. The inaccessibility of love...

Spilled Salt by Barbara Neely

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2003 novel by the FEMALE writer Lionel Shriver concerning a fictional school massacre. It is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed. Although told in the first person as a series of letters from Eva to her husband, the novel's structure also strongly resembles that of a thriller. The novel, Shriver's seventh, won the 2005 Orange Prize.

I've not yet read the novel but heard it reviewed on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read today.

As I listened to the discussion I thought, 'But that's Spilled Salt by Barbara Neely!' or 'The Outside Dog' by Alan Bennett. I can't wait to read Shriver's book to see if she's actually added anything to the way Neely and Bennett handled such similar themes.

DICKENS CHARACTERS - a poem by Robert Morgan

DICKENS CHARACTERS

They are restless. Their blood flows with anger
And compulsion. Their stern eyes are dark
With confusion. Their growing bones cry out
Against the boundaries of desks and walls.
They tolerate my voice vibrating with education,
But they find no fault with me,
Only what I do for a living.
And what I do must be done according to the law.
They want to join me on the old road
Of knowledge, but they will only stare at shadows,
Lose themselves among the strange turnings,
And hesitate too long at bare places
Trodden by toughs and killers.
Their imaginations are distorted by violence,
Pre-natal interference, cold homes, and by failure
Created by our system which pigeonholes brains
Into grades A, B, and C. I squeeze harder,
Trying to reach their personalities and beyond
To the corners of imaginations still bright
With silver thoughts and joys of discovery.
I pause. The silences are places where we can meet,
Or retreat, or hear an inner voice,
Or pray for a second chance with success...

'Listen boys… The workhouse was a place
Where Oliver was born, there were such places
All over England not so long ago...
It was a place to go when you were destitute.
Jackson in the front desk leans forward.
He has free dinners, a prostitute sister,
A neurotic mother and his father is a stranger.
I read a passage on the workhouse boys
And show pictures from my old copy.
They leave their desks and examine the pictures.
Questions are asked and answered and we linger
Over the pictures and wonder. The playtime bells
Ring in the corridors and they leave slowly,
Taking with them vague thoughts of England's
Workhouses and a boy without parents.
Jackson stays behind with the book.
He knows Oliver Twist far better than I.

Robert Morgan

Disgrace (2008) film

Disgrace is a film set in South Africa, adapted by Anna Maria Monticelli from J. M. Coetzee's 1999 novel, Disgrace. The film was directed by Steve Jacobs and starred John Malkovich & Jessica Haines.

It was absorbing but all the way through I kept thinking of The Human Stain and The Life of David Gale.

Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah BBC R4 Book Club

Good to hear Zephaniah interviewed re. his novel.
I loved 'Listen to Your Parents' which I heard as a play on R4. One of the most powerful things I've ever heard.

Glad to hear that Sissay and Zephaniah are such friends.
Would like to see Sissay's stage version of 'Refugee Boy'.

Local History: in Bromsgrove

The Meakins were the last to live on Hurst St/Inge St, Bham in the 1960s, when the properties were condemned for domestic use – after all they didn’t have bathrooms. Others used the properties as places of business and workshops, but lived elsewhere.
Reading about Bill Perks, the child of nailers in Bromsgrave, who had 6 children, though there was only one bedroom, made me think of back to backs. However, in Bromsgrove the Perks family parents had a garden in which they kept three pigs, and poultry. See pg 56 & 88 of ‘The Bygone Bromsgrove Picture Book by Alan & Sheila Richards (1983) published by The Bromsgrove Society.

Birmingham Back-to-Backs, Hurst St/Inge St

Black British History: Birmingham Back-to-Backs, Hurst St/Inge St: "I spent the day in Bham yesterday and enjoyed the free exhibition available at the Birmingham Back-to-Backs. It included many interactive in..."

The Meakins were the last to live on Hurst St/Inge St, Bham in the 1960s, when the properties were condemned for domestic use – after all they didn’t have bathrooms. Others used the properties as places of business and workshops, but lived elsewhere.
Reading about Bill Perks, the child of nailers in Bromsgrave, who had 6 children, though there was only one bedroom, made me think of back to backs. However, in Bromsgrove the Perks family parents had a garden in which they kept three pigs, and poultry. See pg 56 & 88 of ‘The Bygone Bromsgrove Picture Book by Alan & Sheila Richards (1983) published by The Bromsgrove Society.

Black History: in Bromsgrove

Black British History: Black History: in Bromsgrove: "Pleasantly surprised to find that there a Black History Group in Bromsgrove! No local history museum, or record office, exists in the attrac..."

The Meakins were the last to live on Hurst St/Inge St, Bham in the 1960s, when the properties were condemned for domestic use – after all they didn’t have bathrooms. Others used the properties as places of business and workshops, but lived elsewhere.
Reading about Bill Perks, the child of nailers in Bromsgrave, who had 6 children, though there was only one bedroom, made me think of back to backs. However, in Bromsgrove the Perks family parents had a garden in which they kept three pigs, and poultry. See pg 56 & 88 of ‘The Bygone Bromsgrove Picture Book by Alan & Sheila Richards (1983) published by The Bromsgrove Society.

The Promise (2010)

The Promise (2010) a 4 part TV drama about the origins of modern Israel and the British Mandate for Palestine. It was written and directed by Peter Kosminsky, with music by Debbie Wiseman. It premiered on 6 February 2011 on Channel 4. It deals with a young woman going to Israel in the present day, using her visit to investigate her soldier grandfather's part in the post-war phase of the British Mandate of Palestine.

Cast: Claire Foy as Erin Matthews; Christian Cooke as Sergeant Leonard Matthews; Itay Tiran as Paul Meyer; Katharina Schüttler as Clara Rosenbaum; Haaz Sleiman as Omar Habash; Ali Suliman as Abu-Hassan Mohammed; Perdita Weeks as Eliza Meyer; Ben Miles as Max Meyer; Smadar Wolfman as Leah Meyer and Holly Aird as Chris Matthews

The most amazing thing is how much I'd taken for granted about the situation. This drama is a real eye opener!

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Drama based on Horace McCoy's novel exploring the desperation of couples competing in one of Hollywood's dance marathons in the Depression years. Everyone's reason for participating is simple - three meals a day and a chance to win the 1,500 dollar prize. The marathon becomes a microcosm of life with its myriad subplots and characters' lives intertwining. Gig Young won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Credits
Gloria - Jane Fonda
Robert - Michael Sarrazin
Alice - Susannah York
Rocky - Gig Young
Sailor - Red Buttons
Ruby - Bonnie Bedelia
Rollo - Michael Conrad
James - Bruce Dern
Turkey - Al Lewis
Joel - Robert Fields
Director - Sydney Pollack
Producer - Irwin Winkler
Producer - Robert Chartoff
Writer - James Poe
Writer - Robert E Thompson

I most have watched this so early on in life that I'd no awareness of Susannah York's presence. Must have been before I'd watched 'The Killing of Sister Georgie'

Drama on 3: Charles & Mary Lamb

Not sure on how factually accurate the drama (by Carlo Gebler, BBC R3 Sunday 16th Jan 2011) was but it was seriously engrossing. I really felt for Charles but especially for Mary. We had similar experiences at the hands of our mothers and maternal grandmothers!
Luckily I had the opportunity to leave home and put some distance between us.