North Coast Recollections

No people on the golf-links, not a crack

Of well-swung driver from the fourteenth tee,

No sailing bounding ball across the turf

And lady’s slipper of the fairway. Black

Rises Bray Hill and, Stepper-wards, the sun

Sends Bray Hill’s phantom stretching to the church.

The lane, the links, the beach, the cliffs are bare

The neighbourhood is dressing for a dance

And lamps are being lit in bungalows.

    O! thymy time of evening: clover scent

And feathery tamarisk round the churchyard wall

And shrivelled sea-pinks and this foreshore pale

With silver sand and sharpened quartz and slate

And brittle twigs, bleached, salted and prepared

For kindling blue-flamed fires on winter nights.

    Here Petroc landed, here I stand to-day;

The same Atlantic surges roll for me

As rolled for Parson Hawker and for him,

And spent their gathering thunder on the rocks

Crashing with pebbly backwash, burst again

And strewed the nibbled fields along the cliffs.

    When low tides drain the estuary gold

Small intersecting breakers far away

Ripple about a bar of shifting sand

Where centuries ago were waving woods

Where centuries hence, there will be woods again.

    Within the bungalow of Mrs. Hanks

Her daughter Phoebe now French-chalks the floor.

Norman and Gordon in their dancing pumps

Slide up and down, but can’t make concrete smooth.

“My Sweet Hortense…”

Sings louder down the garden than the sea.

“A practice record, Phoebe. Mummykins,

Gordon and I will do the washing-up.”

“We picnic here; we scrounge and help ourselves,”

Says Mrs. Hanks, and visitors will smile

To see them all turn to it. Boys and girls

Weed in the sterile garden, mostly sand

And dead tomato-plants and chicken-runs.

To-day they cleaned the dulled Benares ware

(Dulled by the sea-mist), early made the beds,

And Phoebe twirled the icing round the cake

And Gordon tinkered with the gramophone

While into an immense enamel jug

Norman poured “Eiffel Tower” for lemonade.

    O! healthy bodies, bursting into ’teens

And bursting out of last year’s summer clothes,

Fluff barking and French windows banging to

Till the asbestos walling of the place

Shakes with the life it shelters, and with all

The preparations for this evening’s dance.

    Now drains the colour from the convolvulus,

The windows of Trenain are flashing fire,

Black sways the tamarisk against the West,

And bathing things are taken in from sills.

One child still zig-zags homewards up the lane,

Cold on bare feet he feels the dew-wet sand.

Behind him, from a walk along the cliff,

Come pater and the mater and the dogs.

    Four macrocarpa hide the tennis club.

Two children of a chartered actuary

(Beaworthy, Trouncer, Heppelwhite and Co.),

Harold and Bonzo Trouncer are engaged

In semi-finals for the tournament.

“Love thirty!” Pang! across the evening air

Twangs Harold’s racquet. Plung! the ball returns.

Experience at Budleigh Salterton

Keeps Bonzo steady at the net. “Well done!”

“Love forty!” Captain Mycroft, midst applause,

Pronounces for the Trouncers, to be sure

He can’t be certain Bonzo didn’t reach

A shade across the net, but Demon Sex,

That tulip figure in white cotton dress,

Bare legs, wide eyes and so tip-tilted nose

Quite overset him. Harold serves again

And Mrs. Pardon says it’s getting cold,

Miss Myatt shivers, Lady Lambourn thinks

These English evenings are a little damp

And dreams herself again in fair Shanghai.

“Game … AND! and thank you!”; so the pair from Rock

(A neighbouring and less exclusive place)

Defeated, climb into their Morris Ten.

“The final is to-morrow! Well, good night!”

    He lay in wait, he lay in wait, he did,

John Lambourn, curly-headed; dewy grass

Dampened his flannels, but he still remained.

The sunset drained the colours black and gold,

From his all-glorious First Eleven scarf.

But still he waited by the twilit hedge.

Only his eyes blazed blue with early love,

Blue blazing in the darkness of the lane,

Blue blazer, less incalculably blue,

Dark scarf, white flannels, supple body still,

First love, first light, first life. A heartbeat noise!

His heart or little feet? A snap of twigs

Dry, dead and brown the under branches part

And Bonzo scrambles by their secret way.

First love so deep, John Lambourn cannot speak,

So deep, he feels a tightening in his throat,

So tender, he could brush away the sand

Dried up in patches on her freckled legs,

Could hold her gently till the stars went down,

And if she cut herself would staunch the wound,

Yes, even with this First Eleven scarf,

And hold it there for hours.

So happy, and so deep he loves the world,

Could worship God and rocks and stones and trees,

Be nicer to his mother, kill himself

If that would make him pure enough for her.

And so at last he manages to say

“You going to the Hanks’s hop to-night?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Are you?” “I think I may—

“It’s pretty dud though,—only lemonade.”

    Sir Gawaint was a right and goodly knight

Nor ever wist he to uncurtis be.

So old, so lovely, and so very true!

Then Mrs. Wilder shut the Walter Crane

And tied the tapes and tucked her youngest in

What time without amidst the lavender

At late last ‘He’ played Primula and Prue

With new-found liveliness, for bed was soon.

And in the garage, serious seventeen

Harvey, the eldest, hammered on, content,

Fixing a mizzen to his model boat.

“Coo-ee! Coo-ee!” across the lavender,

Across the mist of pale gypsophila

And lolling purple poppies, Mumsie called,

A splendid sunset lit the rocking-horse

And Morris pattern of the nursery walls.

“Coo-ee!” the slate-hung, goodly-builded house

And sunset-sodden garden fell to quiet.

“Prue! Primsie! Mumsie wants you. Sleepi-byes!”

Prue jumped the marigolds and hid herself,

Her sister scampered to the Wendy Hut

And Harvey, glancing at his Ingersoll,

Thought “Damn! I must get ready for the dance.”

    So on this after-storm-lit evening

To Jim the raindrops in the tamarisk,

The fuchsia bells, the sodden matchbox lid

That checked a tiny torrent in the lane

Were magnified and shining clear with life.

Then pealing out across the estuary

The Padstow bells rang up for practice-night

An undersong to birds and dripping shrubs.

The full Atlantic at September spring

Flooded a final tide-mark up the sand,

And ocean sank to silence under bells,

And the next breaker was a lesser one

Then lesser still. Atlantic, bells and birds

Were layer on interchanging layers of sound.