Consequences (21 page)

“I am not married,” says Molly.

The Bradleys go quite still. Gerald ceases to tamp his pipe and stares over Molly’s head, no longer genial. Marian smiles no more. At last she speaks: “Oh, my dear…” She looks away, then toward her husband. “How most unfortunate,” she murmurs.

“You were considered unfortunate,” says Molly. “Not a term I cared for. So that was that.”

The winter of discontent gave way to the spring and summer of A levels, cultural endeavor and Mrs. Thatcher. Ruth worried about Wordsworth, the Tudors and Stuarts, and the roll of puppy fat around her midriff; Molly fielded a touring opera company in Orkney and the Shetlands, and a craft exhibition in Manchester, and fine-tuned the arrangements for the poetry festival. In the background, a woman with an iron coiffeur and awesome insistence began her long dominion of the nation’s affairs.

Molly voted Labour, naturally. Always; regardless. So did everyone she knew. It seemed surprising that there could be Conservative electoral victories when you yourself had barely ever heard of anyone voting Tory, and even more so in that, when you thought about it, you realized that there must be millions of working-class people who voted Tory, which seemed somehow like shooting yourself in the foot. Why ever did they do it? And now, just when you should be rejoicing at the first woman Prime Minister, she came in the form of this dogmatic harridan with her handbags and her pussy-cat bows.

But if you looked beyond these shores, complaint seemed churlish. In the course of work, Molly had come across artists exiled from their homelands—people who had fled, or whose parents had fled, because circumstances were beyond tolerance, smoked out of Russia or Hungary or Czechoslovakia or wherever. Beside such histories, some local carping about the power of the trade unions or Mrs. Thatcher’s bossy persona became positively obscene. No secret policemen would be stalking the writers Molly dispatched around the country, there would be no midnight knock on the door for strident playwrights or political satirists. You could blaspheme Mrs. Thatcher around the globe, if you so wished, and there would be no tap on the shoulder when you arrived back at Heathrow. Those who live out their lives in a politically stable country, in peacetime, have not had history snapping at their heels.

Except that I have, thought Molly. My father. And who knows what is in store. But in the meantime, the only sensible and expedient thing was to get on with private life, while governments came and went, a cacophonous backdrop to the real business of existence.

The organization of the poetry festival had taxed her to the limits. The chosen venue was a market town and former spa, satellite to a university, which should serve up audiences both of the young and the culturally minded middle aged who were inclined to sample the unfamiliar and might even buy a book or two. There were historic inns on hand, and elegant eighteenth-century pump rooms in which the poetic events could be held. It had not been easy to drum up sponsorship. Molly had spent many hours cajoling skeptical supermarket managers and garage proprietors. It had been an altogether simpler matter to line up the poets.

This was to be a weekend in which a range of literary talents would be on display, a sample of today’s state of the art, which would include one distinguished name that even some of those who never read poetry might recognize, alongside a swath of others—known, obscure, fecund, costive, impenetrable, accessible, good, bad, indifferent. Molly was even handed, keen to give exposure to those who needed it as much as to those who could be relied upon to keep an audience nicely engaged for an hour, and who might even persuade a few doubters that they could from time to time get hold of a collection of poetry and enjoy it. Poets are as assorted as any other occupational group—indeed, probably rather more so than most. They come in many forms—combative, reticent, responsible family men; feisty single mothers, stylish, uncouth, occasionally inaudible. Never mind, this was literature, or at least some of it was, and the discerning public had a right to inspection of what the nation had to offer, right now. So Molly had studied her reference list, blackballed a few names (he who brought seven friends and family on another occasion and put them on expenses; she who forgot the date; they who got pissed out of their minds, trashed the White Hart, and lost her a major sponsor) and had selected a lineup that should be both eclectic and representative. Poets seldom said no, unless they were paranoically retiring, or of such eminence that neither exposure nor adulation were of any interest to them. Your standard poet—if there was such a thing—was only too happy with a free outing and the chance to socialize (or quarrel) with his or her peers. Forget the hackneyed image—soulful, solitary, unworldly—the twentieth-century poet was a social animal, often nicely disguised in some alternative occupation and emerging in true colors when it suited. This is what Molly had learned over time: never take them at face value, feed and water them well, make sure they’ve got their train ticket and are bringing one spouse or lover and one only.

The welcome party in the pump rooms on Friday evening: poets, sponsors, festival staff, and volunteers. These elements are not mixing very well; poet tends to cleave unto poet (they all know each other anyway), while the sponsors group together, trying to look at ease in this company, and the staff make much of the local volunteers, who are an essential component—they tout programs, provide transport, and, in some cases, hospitality. Molly is trying to stir all these people up. She tows over to the sponsors a poet whom she knows to be amiably gregarious, and serves him up to the manager of Barclays Bank and the owner of the high street wine bar. She selects an engaging young woman poet for the proprietor of the local garden center. She greets and thanks all of the volunteers. She checks over the poets; she has already had dealings with most of them, but there are a few strange faces. She moves from group to group, making sure to identify those she does not know.

“Great to have you here…”

“How
are
you?”

“Hello, Molly.”

“Hi, Molly.”

“I’m Sam Priest.” Large man. Beard. She liked his last collection, she remembers.

“Terrific you could come…”

A thin, nervy looking girl. “Dawn Bracewell? You’re on in the morning, aren’t you? I’m so looking forward to hearing you.”

They have all shown up. There are no unexpected appendages. The sponsors are thawing, putting back (sponsored) drinks and making inroads into the canapés and the literati. No volunteer has thrown in the towel. So far, so good.

He doesn’t do festivals that often. You drink too much, sell six books if you’re lucky, waste a weekend. He needs weekends—the only uninterrupted days of think time, writing time. So festival proposals are binned, usually. But this one is sited not far from where his mother lives, and could be tied in with a visit to her, and a good friend is going to be there—so why not, for once?

Now that he is here, he has misgivings. This clutch of colleagues looks suddenly oppressive, and he is being given hospitality by a couple whose home is so neat, scrubbed, prinked, and polished that he is afraid he will leave footprints in the deep pile carpets or disarrange the fragrant guest room. And he can’t scarper early because he has a second event at the far end of Sunday.

Have to sit it out now. Nothing for it but to have a drink and get stuck in. Hello…Hello…Good to see you. Hi, there. And here’s the Molly someone who has been blasting off letters and instructions.

“Terrific you could come…”

Molly what? He’s got all the bumf in his bag—must look at it again.

He feels an uplift, for some reason. Maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

Molly has been known to fall asleep at a poetry reading. Well, she has attended very many, and you always go to bed late, at festivals. She puts herself in the back row, in case.

There are readings and readings. There are poets who do not only read well but embed their reading, who talk around each poem, who show you how a poem arises, who enlighten and intrigue. There are the performance poets, who stomp and shout a lot. And there are also those who mutter, who declaim, who have done no preparation, who simply forge ahead, eyes grimly on the page. So she sits at the back, fingers crossed, and if the going is rough she concentrates on remaining alert to any problems with the mikes or the ventilation. Once an event is under way it is an unstoppable process, or should be, short of the collapse of the performer.

Today Dawn Bracewell reads. She is young and unconfident, you can see her hands shaking as she turns the page. At one point she loses her place, and Molly goes tense in empathetic anxiety. Phew!—she found it. Dawn gets through her half hour, sits down, to applause from the audience at this first event (embarrassingly thin—oh dear) and hands over to her companion on the platform, a veteran of the circuit who will have no problems.

The reading concludes. Everyone drifts out into the central foyer of the pump rooms, where refreshments are on offer. Molly does some troubleshooting: a complaint about acoustics in the hall, the bookseller does not have enough display space, a poet has toothache—does the town run to an emergency dental service? She is hither and thither—listening, instructing, phoning.

Someone is putting a cup of coffee into her hand. It is Sam Priest. Oh.

“Here…Restore the blood sugar level. You look slightly frazzled.”

“Thanks. Thanks, Sam.”

Oh…

He’s forgotten what an ordeal a reading can be. That poor girl who got her knickers in a twist—one was on edge for her. And sometimes you’re bored and other times you’re critical, and then you wonder what you sound like yourself. He’ll take this afternoon off, before his own session this evening, and look around the town.

Such a smile she has—saying thanks for that cup of coffee.

Three down, four to go. Events, that is. The audience have plumped up, as the day wore on. There is a very healthy turnout for the big man, who parachuted in for his own session and no other, and left immediately afterward. No sociable evening with hoi polloi for him.

Molly feels able to relax. The thing has its own momentum now, it is proceeding as it should, her careful preparatory spadework has paid off, and so far there are no serious glitches. The poets are behaving, if not like lambs, and you wouldn’t actually want that, at least like compliant racehorses, showing off their paces. She has picked up a number of appreciative comments from the punters.

At moments like this she experiences what is apparently called job satisfaction. She created this weekend, she brought together these people, opened up a dialogue, a discourse, enabled words to fly off the page and into people’s heads. Now there is just one more reading to go today.

There is something…reassuring…about a man with a beard.

In a back street of this rather self-satisfied town—sparkling Regency terraces, exquisitely groomed parks and gardens—he comes across a gem of an old-fashioned hardware shop, with a range of tools that you don’t often find. He buys a self-adjusting, self-grip wrench—he’s heard about these but has failed so far to get his hands on one—and a Black & Decker drill guide, top quality. He walks back to the pump rooms with this satisfying parcel tucked under his arm. There is nothing so pleasing as a good tool—the heft of it, the thought behind its design.

Now if only there were tools for making a poem. Something with which you shaved off a syllable, spliced a rhyme, filed down a stanza here, screwed in an end-stop there. He imagines the kit on his desk—small stuff, it would be, perfectly fitted to the hand, little elegant specialized pieces that you would lay out before you got down to work.

He feels all set up for his event now. And then there will be the usual convivial festival evening.

He wonders about the evening.

Very nearly, she had not invited him. It had been a toss-up between him and another name, when she was sorting out the program.

She does not sit at the back, this time. It seems suddenly rather…offhand. She puts herself at the end of the second row, where she can still hop up if anything goes awry.

Well, thank goodness she
did
ask him. He is good, he is very good, he embeds, he expands, he enlarges. And the poetry is muscular, intricate, it crackles with surprises. The one about servicing a motor bike is extraordinary—that would not spring to mind, as poetic subject matter. The love poem is unsettling; for some reason she wishes she had not heard that.

She listens and watches, feeling off duty, as though she were simply here out of choice and out of interest, like the rest of the audience. Two or three times he looks directly at her.

When it is over, she goes up, as she always does, and says the sort of things that she usually says, even when there is some glaring reason not to (the performance has been dire, the audience cool).

Sam Priest inclines his head, grins. “Thank you. Thanks.”

And then Molly finds herself completely tongue-tied. What is the matter? This does not happen to her. For God’s sake! And so, apparently, is he. They simply stand there, she and Sam Priest, staring at one another. Until at last she manages: “They’ve got the book-signing table set up in the foyer.”

“Ah,” says Sam Priest. “Right.”

Bugger it! Why had he not said: “Maybe we could have a drink together before dinner?” Before the buffet meal thing that is laid on for everyone later, when all and sundry will be milling around and there’ll be damned all chance to have a chat with her. Instead of which he had stood there like a bloody zombie, let the moment pass, and now here he is stuck behind this table while not very many people buy a book, and there she is disappearing through the door.

You do not need to do much hostess stuff, with poets. They are self-sufficient. They are mostly delighted to see one another (bar the odd feud that may surface), hive off into garrulous groups, and don’t need encouragement when it comes to the food and the drink. There are one or two people on whom an eye should be kept: Dawn Bracewell seems not to know many people, but one of the older women poets has taken her under her wing, and old Gareth Powell is famously taciturn and can spend an entire evening sitting alone, but even he seems to have melded with a group and is
talking.