Poems 1960-2000 (25 page)

Great-great-great-uncle Francis Eggington

came back from the Russian War

(it was the kind of war you came back from,

if you were lucky: bad, but over).

He didn’t come to the front door –

the lice and filth were falling off him –

he slipped along the alley to the yard.

‘Who’s that out at the pump?’ they said

‘– a tall tramp stripping his rags off !’

The soap was where it usually was.

He scrubbed and splashed and scrubbed,

and combed his beard over the hole in his throat.

‘Give me some clothes,’ he said. ‘I’m back.’

‘God save us, Frank, it’s you!’ they said.

‘What happened? Were you at Scutari?

And what’s that hole inside your beard?’

‘Tea first,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you later.

And Willie’s children will tell their grandchildren;

I’ll be a thing called oral history.’

Failing their flesh and bones we have the gatepost.

Failing the bride in her ostrich-feathered hat,

the groom bracing his shoulders for the camera,

we have the garden wall, the path, and the gatepost: 

not the original gatepost, but positioned

in exactly the same relation to the house –

just as the windows have been modernised

but we can see their dimensions are the same 

as the ones behind the handsome brothers’ heads

under their wedding bowlers. The gatepost

stands to the left, where nine-year-old Nellie

ought to be standing, in her home-made dress, 

her boots and stockings and white hair-ribbon,

leaning her wistful head against Marion –

her next-best sister, who will have to do

now that Eva’s married and going away.

Father and Mother, corpulent on chairs,

young Harry wincing in his Fauntleroy collar,

James in his first hard hat, a size too large,

have faded away from bricks and wood and metal. 

Failing the sight of Mary, flowered and frilled,

the married sister, simpering on the arm

of Abraham with his curled moustache (the swine:

he’ll leave her, of course) we may inspect the drainpipe: 

not the authentic late-Victorian drainpipe

but just where that one was, convincing proof

(together with the gatepost and the windows)

that this is it, all right: the very house – 

unless it’s not; unless that was a stand-in,

one the photographer preferred that day

and lined them up in front of, because the sun

was shining on it; as it isn’t now.

Just because it was so long ago

doesn’t mean it ceases to be sad.

Nellie on the sea-front at Torquay

watching the fishing-boats (‘Dear Sis and Bro,

I am feeling very much better’) had

six months left to die of her TB. 

She and Marion caught it at the mill

from a girl who coughed and coughed across her loom.

Their father caught it; he and Marion died;

the others quaked and murmured; James fell ill.

So here was Nellie, with her rented room,

carefully walking down to watch the tide. 

When she’d first been diagnosed, she’d said

‘Please, could Eva nurse me, later on,

when it’s time, that is…if I get worse?’

Eva swallowed hard and shook her head

(and grieved for fifty years): she had her son

to consider. So their mother went as nurse. 

Nellie took her parrot to Torquay –

her pet (as she herself had been a pet,

Eva’s and her father’s); she could teach

words to it in the evenings after tea,

talk to it when the weather was too wet

or she too frail for sitting on the beach. 

Back in Manchester they had to wait,

looking out for letters every day,

or postcards for ‘Dear Sis’. The winter passed.

Eva and Sam made plans to emigrate.

(Not yet, though. Later.) April came, and May –

bringing something from Torquay at last: 

news. It was Tom’s Alice who glanced out,

and called to Eva; Eva called to Sam:

‘Look! Here’s Mother walking up the road

with Nellie’s parrot in its cage.’ No doubt

now of what had happened. On she came,

steadily carrying her sharp-clawed load.

The first spring of the new century

and there I was, fallen pregnant!

Scarcely out of winter, even –

scarcely 1800 at all –

with not a bud on the trees yet

when the new thing budded in me.

They said I ought to have known better:

after all, I was over thirty.

William was younger; and men, of course…

but he came round fair in the end.

We couldn’t sit the banns through,

giggled at for three Sundays –

not in Lichfield. He got a licence

and wedded me the next morning

in Armitage. July, it was

by then, and my loose gown bulging.

The babe was christened in Lichfield, though.

You knew he died? The wages of sin.

                          *

So this is where we began again:

Liverpool. Can you hear the seagulls?

A screeching city: seagulls and wagons,

drawbridges, floodgates, lifting-gear,

and warehouses huge as cathedrals.

We lived down by the Duke’s Dock,

one lodging after another.

The family grew as the city grew.

William sat on his high stool

inscribing figures in a ledger.

My care was the children, bless them.

I ferried most of them safely through

the perilous waters of infancy,

and saw them married. Then I died.

                            *

Well, of course you know that.

And you know what of : consumption,

a word you don’t use; an unwilled

legacy to go haunting down

one line of my long posterity

to Frank’s son, and his son’s son,

and fan out in a shuddering shadow

over the fourth generation.

And what I have to ask is:

was it the city’s fault, or mine?

You can’t answer me. All you hear

is a faint mewing among the seagulls.

The young cordwainer (yes, that’s right)

got married at the Old Church –

it’s Manchester Cathedral now.

That was the cheapest place to go. 

They married you in batches there –

a list of names, a buzz of responses,

and ‘You’re all married,’ said the clerk.

‘Pair up outside.’ (Like shoes, thought Moses.) 

After the ceremony, though,

he and Maria waited on.

They had an extra thing to do:

their daughter needed christening. 

The baby’s age is not recorded.

The bride was over twenty-one –

full age. The bridegroom (never mind

what he might have said) was seventeen. 

The young Queen was on the throne;

they’d have to be Victorians now.

Meanwhile, two more facts: they were

from Leeds. One of them had red hair.

He looked for it in the streets first,

and the sooty back alleys. It wasn’t there. 

He looked for it in the beer-house;

it dodged away as soon as he glimpsed it. 

It certainly wasn’t there at work,

raining down with the sawdust on to

his broad-brimmed hat as he stood sweating

in the pit under the snorting blade. 

He looked all over the house for it –

the kitchen the scullery the parlour

the bedroom he shared with two of his brothers –

and shrugged. Of course it wasn’t there. 

So he tied a noose around where it should have been,

and slipped his head into it, for one last look.

It went like this: I married at 22,

in 1870. My daughter was born

the following year – Laura, we called her.

(No reason for the name – we just liked it.)

In ’72 my brother hanged himself.

Laura died exactly a year later,

when I was pregnant with her brother Thomas

(named for my dead father). In ’74

three things happened: my baby Thomas died,

then my sister; then I gave birth to John,

my first child to survive. He was a hunchback.

(I don’t suppose you care for that expression;

well, call it what you like.) He lived to 20,

making the best of things, my poor brave lad. 

After him, I got the knack of producing

healthy children. Or perhaps it was the gin.

Yes, I took to the bottle. Wouldn’t you?

By the time it killed me I’d five living –

a little Band of Hope, a bright household

of teetotallers, my husband at their head.

I died of a stroke, officially; ‘of drink’

wasn’t spoken aloud for forty years.

These youngsters have my portrait proudly framed –

an old thing in a shawl, with a huge nose.

They also have a photograph – a maiden

with frightened eyes and a nose as trim as theirs.

Both are labelled ‘Amelia’. Which one

was I? I couldn’t have been both, they’re sure.

They set the boy to hairdressing –

you didn’t need to be strong, or have

a straight back like other people. 

It was the scissors he liked – their glitter

and snicker-snack; the arts, too,

of elegant shaping. Oh, and the razors. 

He served his time, and qualified young;

it’s on his death certificate:

‘Hairdresser (Master). Age 20.’ 

In the next column, ‘Spinal disease,

15 months. Abscess, 12 months.’

That sounds like cancer. It felt like blades 

burning, slicing – a whole year

to play the Little Mermaid, walking

on knife-edges, with hand-glass and comb.

Which redhead did I get my temper from?

I’ve made a short ancestral list

by hair-colour and moods. But, more to the point,

what are the odds on Alzheimer’s? 

Which ones went funny in their seventies?

Mary Ellen, perhaps, found in the coal-shed

hunting for her Ship Canal shares

after her fiery hair turned grey. 

My hair’s not red. I like flames, though.

When I get old and mad I’ll play with them –

run the flimsy veils through my fingers

like orange plastic film, like parachute-silk. 

My hands will scorch and wither, if I do.

I shall be safe and dead. It won’t matter.

It’s something to look forward to,

playing with fire. That, or deep water.

I met an ancestor in the lane.

She couldn’t stop: she was carrying water.

It slopped and bounced from the stoup against her;

the side of her skirt was dark with the stain,

oozing chillingly down to her shoe.

I stepped aside as she trudged past me,

frowning with effort, shivering slightly

(an icy drop splashed my foot too).

The dress that brushed against me was rough.

She didn’t smell the way I smell:

I tasted the grease and smoke in her hair.

Water that’s carried is never enough.

She’d a long haul back from the well. 

No, I didn’t see her. But she was there.

‘Hoy!’ A hand hooks me into a doorway:

‘Here!’ (No, that’s not it: too many aitches;

they’d have been short of those, if I recall…)

‘Oy, there!’ (Never mind the aitches, it’s his

breath now, gin and vinegar – I’m choking –

and fire on my neck; the hand grinding my shoulder.

I’m a head taller, nearly, but he’s strong.)

‘Look at me! I’m your ancestor.’ 

Eyes in a smudged face. Dark clothes. A hat…

‘Look at me!’ A stunted stump of a man.

Boots. No coat, although it’s cold. A jacket

crumpled at the elbows. (I’m shivering.)

What kind of hair? If I can get

my hands to move, I’ll push his hat off. There:

black, above a gleam of white skin (oh you poor

factory rat, you bastard you, my forebear!). 

‘Which one are you? Which ancestor?’ Won’t say.

Won’t talk now. Stands there, shaking me now and then,

staring. Dark-haired – but then so were they all

in the photographs: brown hair, red hair, grey,

all dark for the cameras; and unsmiling.

This one’s before photography,

still on the verge of things: a pre-Victorian,

pre-Temperance, pre-gentility; and angry.

He shows a snaggle of teeth (pre-dentistry);

means another thing now: ‘Give us a kiss!’

No. No, I can’t. ‘Why not? You’re family.’

That’s not a family expression on his face.

‘You’re a woman, aren’t you? One of ours?

A great-great-great-granddaughter?’ He looks

younger than me, thirtyish. How do you talk

to a young man who’s been dead a hundred years? 

‘Not unless you tell me who you are.’

‘A part of you,’ he cackles. ‘Never mind

which part.’ (Is it compulsory, I wonder,

to like one’s ancestors? I couldn’t stand

that laugh of his for long.) ‘You were so set

on digging us up. You thought it was romantic,

like all that poetry they talk about

(not me – I can’t read). Well, I’m what you dug. 

So: what’ll you give me for the favour, lass?

You wouldn’t be on this earth if it weren’t for me.’

That scorching gin-breath. ‘Let me find my purse.’

We stagger together, a step or two, and I’m free.

His hat’s on the cobbles. I rattle it full of money.

Not sovereigns, no: pound coins, worth less than a kiss –

base metal to him, proleptic wealth, no use

for more than a century to come. I’m sorry.