I
Before MCMXIV

Here on the southern slope of Highgate Hill

Red squirrels leap the hornbeams. Still I see

Twigs and serrated leaves against the sky.

The sunny silence was of Middlesex.

Once a Delaunay-Belleville crawling up

West Hill in bottom gear made such a noise

As drew me from my dream-world out to watch

That early motor-car attempt the steep.

But mostly it was footsteps, rustling leaves,

And blackbirds fluting over miles of Heath.

    Then Millfield Lane looked like a Constable

And all the grassy hillocks spoke of Keats.

Mysterious gravel drives to hidden wealth

Wound between laurels—mighty Caenwood Towers

And Grand Duke Michael’s house and Holly Lodge.

    But what of us in our small villa row

Who gazed into the Burdett-Coutts estate?

I knew we were a lower, lesser world

Than that remote one of the carriage-folk

Who left their cedars and brown garden walls

In care of servants. I could also tell

That we were slightly richer than my friends,

The family next door: we owned a brougham

And they would envy us our holidays.

In fact it was the mother there who first

Made me aware of insecurity

When war was near: “Your name is German, John”—

But I had always thought that it was Dutch …

That tee-jay-ee, that fatal tee-jay-ee

Which I have watched the hesitating pens

Of Government clerks and cloakroom porters funk.

I asked my mother. “No,” she said, “it’s Dutch;

Thank God you’re English on your mother’s side.”

O happy, happy Browns and Robinsons!

    Safe were those evenings of the pre-war world

When firelight shone on green linoleum;

I heard the church bells hollowing out the sky,

Deep beyond deep, like never-ending stars,

And turned to Archibald, my safe old bear,

Whose woollen eyes looked sad or glad at me,

Whose ample forehead I could wet with tears,

Whose half-moon ears received my confidence,

Who made me laugh, who never let me down.

I used to wait for hours to see him move,

Convinced that he could breathe. One dreadful day

They hid him from me as a punishment:

Sometimes the desolation of that loss

Comes back to me and I must go upstairs

To see him in the sawdust, so to speak,

Safe and returned to his idolator.

    Safe, in a world of trains and buttered toast

Where things inanimate could feel and think,

Deeply I loved thee, 31 West Hill!

At that hill’s foot did London then begin,

With yellow horse-trams clopping past the planes

To grey-brick nonconformist Chetwynd Road

And on to Kentish Town and barking dogs

And costers’ carts and crowded grocers’ shops

And Daniels’ store, the local Selfridge’s,

The Bon Marché, the Electric Palace, slums

That thrilled me with their smells of poverty—

Till, safe once more, we gained the leafy slope

And buttered toast and 31 West Hill.

Here from my eyrie, as the sun went down,

I heard the old North London puff and shunt,

Glad that I did not live in Gospel Oak.

    “A diamond,” “A heart,” “No trumps,” “Two spades”—

Happy and tense they played at Auction Bridge:

Two tables in the drawing-room for friends

From terra-cotta flats on Muswell Hill

And nearer Brookfield Mansions: cigarettes

And ‘Votes for Women’ ashtrays, mauve and green.

I watched the players, happy to be quiet

Till someone nice was dummy who would talk—

A talk soon drowned … “If you’d finessed my heart

And played your diamond…” “If I’d had the lead

I might have done.” “Well, length is strength, you know.”

“Not when your partner’s sitting on the ace.”

Did they, I wonder, leave us in a huff

After those hot post-mortems? All I knew

Were silks and bits of faintly scented fur

On ladies vaguely designated ‘aunts’

Who came on second Thursdays to At Homes.

    The sunlit weeks between were full of maids:

Sarah, with orange wig and horsy teeth,

Was so bad-tempered that she scarcely spoke;

Maud was my hateful nurse who smelt of soap

And forced me to eat chewy bits of fish,

Thrusting me back to babyhood with threats

Of nappies, dummies and the feeding bottle.

She rubbed my face in messes I had made

And was the first to tell me about Hell,

Admitting she was going there herself.

Sometimes, thank God, they left me all alone

In our small patch of garden in the front,

With clinker rockery and London Pride

And barren lawn and lumps of yellow clay

As mouldable as smelly Plasticine.

I used to turn the heavy stones to watch

The shiny red and waiting centipede

Which darted out of sight; the woodlouse slow

And flat; the other greyish-bluey kind

Which rolled into a ball till I was gone

Out of the gate to venture down the hill.

    “You’re late for dinner, John.” I feel again

That awful feeling, fear confused with thrill,

As I would be unbuttoned, bent across

Her starchy apron, screaming “Don’t—Maud—don’t!”

Till dissolution, bed and kindly fur

Of agèd, uncomplaining Archibald.