Stormy Petrel

I must begin with a coincidence which I would not dare to recount if this were a work of fiction. Coincidences happen daily in ‘real life’ which would be condemned in a mere story, so writers tend to avoid them. But they happen. Daily, they happen. And on this particular day they – or rather it – happened twice.

I was working in my room, when a knock at the door heralded the entry of four second-year students. Usually I welcome them. They are my job. As English tutor at Haworth College in Cambridge I deal with them every day. But on this sunny afternoon in May, as it happened, I would not have welcomed any intruder, even the gyp with a Recorded Delivery letter announcing a big win on Ernie. I was writing a poem.

They say that after the age of thirty, or marriage, whichever comes first, one can write no more poetry. It is true that after the age of thirty certain poets seem to be incapable of writing much that is worth reading; there are notable exceptions, but they only serve to prove the rule. Actually, I believe that the marriage rule applies only to women, which says something for what marriage is supposed to do for them, but on that sunny Tuesday afternoon neither of the disqualifying conditions applied to me. I was twenty-seven, unmarried, heart-whole for the time being, and totally immersed in my work.

Which is why I should have welcomed the students who wanted to talk to me about the poetry of George Darley, which a misguided colleague of mine had included in a series of lectures on the early nineteenth century, and in so doing had worried the more discerning of my students, who were failing to see any merit there. But I had been visited that morning by what was usually at this state of the term a rare inspiration, and was writing a poem of my own. More important than George Darley? At any rate better, which would not be difficult. As a struggling poet in the late twentieth century, I often thought that some early poets achieved publication very easily. But I did not say so to my students. Let them now praise famous men. They do it so rarely that it is good for them.

I said ‘Come in,’ sat them down, listened and then talked and finally got rid of them and went back to my poem. It had gone. The first stanza lay there on my desk, but the idea, the vision had fled like the dream dispelled by Coleridge’s ill-starred person from Porlock. I re-read what I had written, wrestled with the fading vision for a few sweating minutes, then gave up, swore, crumpled the page up, pitched it into the empty fireplace, and said, aloud: ‘What I really need is a good old-fashioned ivory tower.’

I pushed my chair back, then crossed to the open window and looked out. The lime trees were glorious in their young green, and, in default of the immemorial elms, the doves were moaning away in them like mad. Birds were singing their heads off everywhere, and from the clematis beside the window came the scent of honey and the murmur of innumerable bees. Tennyson; now there, I thought, was one of the really honourable exceptions to the rule, never failing, never fading even in old age, while I, at twenty-seven, could not even finish a lyric that had seemed, only a short while ago, to be moving inevitably towards the final tonic chord.

Well, so I was not Tennyson. I was probably, come to that, not even George Darley. I laughed at myself, felt better, and settled down on the window-seat in the sun to enjoy what was left of the afternoon. The Times, half-read and then abandoned, lay on the seat beside me. As I picked it up to throw it aside a line of small print caught my eye: ‘Ivory tower for long or short let. Isolated cottage on small Hebridean island off the coast of Mull. Ideal for writer or artist in search of peace. Most relatively mod cons.’ And a box number.

One of my students had come back, and was hesitating in the open doorway. It was Megan Lloyd, who was the daughter of a Welsh farm worker from somewhere in Dyfed, and who had earned her place in College with a brilliant scholarship. Short, rather thickset, with dark curling hair, dark eyes, and freckles, she looked as if she would be most at home with dogs and horses, or with bared arms scrubbing a dairy down, and perhaps she was, but she was also very intelligent, highly imaginative, and easily my best student. Some day, with average luck, she would be a good writer. I remembered that I had promised to see her about some poems she had written and had nervously asked me to read. She looked nervous still, but half amused with it, as she added: ‘Surely, The Times? It’s not supposed to get things wrong, is it?’

‘Oh, Megan, come in. Sorry, was I talking to myself? It’s nothing, I was off on a track of my own for a moment. Yes, I’ve got your file here, and yes, I’ve read them.’ I went back to my desk, picked the folder up, and gestured her to a chair. She looked back at me with no expression at all in her face, but her eyes were twice as big as usual, and I could see the tension in every muscle. I knew how she felt. Every time your work is read, you die several deaths for every word, and poetry is like being flayed alive.

So I went straight to it. ‘I liked them. Some of them very much. And of course some not so much . . .’ I talked on about the poems, while she slowly relaxed and began to look happy, and even, in the end, cheerfully argumentative, which, with Megan, was par for the course. At length I closed the folder.

‘Well, there you are, as far as I’m able to judge. Whether some of the more, shall I say, advanced judgments of the day will concur is something I can’t guess at, but if you want to try and publish, go ahead and good luck to you. Whatever happens, you must go on writing. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

I handed her the folder. ‘I won’t say anything more here and now. I’ve written fairly detailed notes about some of them. I think it would be better – and we would both find it easier – if you looked at those in your own time? And of course if there’s anything you don’t understand, or want to argue about, please feel free. All right?’

She glanced down at the empty hearth, where the crumpled page had fallen and partly unfurled. It would be obvious even from where she sat that the sheet contained lines of an unfinished poem, disfigured with scoring and the scribbles of frustration.

She repeated, with a fair imitation of my voice, but with a smile that robbed the echo of any sting of impertinence: ‘“Whatever happens, you must go on writing.”’ Then suddenly, earnestly: ‘I can’t read it from here, but I’m sure you shouldn’t throw it away. Give it another go, won’t you, Dr Fenemore? I loved that last one of yours in the Journal. Please.’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ Suddenly embarrassed, she gathered her things together and started to get to her feet. ‘None of my business, but I couldn’t help seeing. Sorry.’

‘I was trying, you see. A Hebridean island – it does sound like a place where one could work in peace, and they have actually called it an “ivory tower”. There, I’ve ringed it.’

‘Well, isn’t that something? Ann Tracy and I are going to Mull this summer. Two weeks. She’s fixing it up, I’ve never been, but her people used to spend holidays up there, and she says it can be fabulous, weather and midges permitting. What a coincidence! It sounds just the thing – like fate, really, after what you were saying. You will answer it, won’t you?’

Crispin is a doctor, a partner in a four-man practice in Petersfield in Hampshire. He is six years older than I am, married, with two children away at school. He would have preferred, I knew, to keep them at home, but Ruth, his wife, had overruled him in that, as she did in quite a few other matters. Not that Crispin was a weak man, but he was a very busy one, and had to be content to leave the management of their joint lives largely to his highly capable wife. They were tolerably happy together, as marriages seem to go, a happiness achieved partly by agreeing to differ.

One thing they different about was holidays. Ruth loved travel, cities, shops, theatres, beach resorts. Crispin, when on leave from his demanding routine, craved for peace and open spaces. He, like me, loved Scotland, and made for it whenever he got the chance. There he walked and fished and took photographs which later, when he found time, he processed himself in a friend’s darkroom. Over the years he had acquired real skill in his hobby, and had exhibited some of his studies of Scottish scenery and wildlife; his real passion was bird photography, and through the years he had amassed a remarkable collection of pictures. Some of these had been published in periodicals like Country Life and the wildlife journals, but the best had never been shown. I knew he had a private hope that some day he might make a book with them. When our vacations coincided, we often holidayed together, content in our respective solitudes.

So when he rang up that evening to tell me he was taking a fortnight’s leave towards the end of June and what about a trip north as soon as term ended, I did feel as if the fates themselves had taken a hand.

‘I’d been planning that very thing.’ I told him about the advertisement, and he was enthusiastic. I let him talk on about harriers and divers and skuas and all the rare and marvellous birds that would no doubt be waiting around to be photographed, and then put in the usual cautious query: ‘And Ruth?’

‘Actually, no, not this time.’ The usual casual answer. ‘She doesn’t like the Highlands, you know that, and she’s got rather a lot on just at present. She’s planning to take a holiday abroad later on, after John and Julie go back to school. But if you can get this place . . . It could be really good. Most of the young birds will still be at the nest, and if the weather lets up, we might get across to the Treshnish Isles as well. Look, Rose, why not? It sounds great. Why don’t you go right ahead and get the details, and then we’ll be in touch again?’