An old, stout, confused woman, with jumbled memories, stands on the waterfront.
She mourns a boy she spent an April night with so long ago. A drunken proposal, after a tea-dance on the pier and illicit nips of brandy. Swaying in the wind on the edge of Bawley Bay like skinny reeds. In that place where General Gordon smiled, Pocahontas cried, and Lady Franklin once waved at two wooden ships that sailed off into the ice.
He’d called her “My pretty flutterby…like a fritillary!”. He was the only one who ever had.
“Oh you daft boy… but I’m no painted lady… more a plain cabbage white”, she’d teased. “Anyway we must love like mayflies now.”
Or something like that. For wishes and covenants were as slippery as fishes back then, and there was no time to waste. He flew off next day and, like so many, he never came back to her.
An old man with a burn-scarred face stands on a small patch of crumbling tarmac… to the south…on the high ground near Riverview. He stamps on those last remains of a once rumbling runway, with jumbled thoughts. All has changed, except that easterly chill. “We take off upwind to fly and we sail off upwind to die” he mused. “It’s always against us.”
He looks down towards the river with rushes of faded memories like hers. One reel is still so clear and sharp. That waitress he danced with in ’42, who took him back to The Royal Clarendon Hotel. You don’t forget your first… her smell… her skin… the hair down there. A prince that night alright.
She’d always assumed he’d died … so many did. He’d actually bailed out blazing over France and spent the rest of the war as a POW. …came back weary and glad at first, then skinny, ugly and bitter.
He spotted her just once… a few years after he returned … from a distance… one spring in the ’50’s, walking with husband and children… on the old Medway canal towpath that came to be called Peanut Road.
He’d turned away unseen. Would she have recognised him? Probably not.
Such things happen in wartime…and in its aftermath.
We eavesdrop near the shore. Each flash a starlight pinprick. Every occultation a gap between heartbeats. Those little blinking houses ; So far away, And so far apart. Talking by signing, And calling out in sound too. For they cannot see.
Talking by singing Their vocabulary is small I can name each light with a song Or write one song for all Two words ‘Off’ and ‘On’ So it should be a short and simple task Our song But we do not find it so.
Will the moon sail up and will the moon shine And tell me dark secrets and if I tell her mine? What a stupid request Because the moon is quite deaf.
Will the moon sail up and will the moon shine? She took of some clothes So I threw off all mine Which was patently dumb Because the moon is quite blind.
Were we were destined to be second best, Paranoid and in a mess? Good love some times ends like this.
Will the moon sail up and will the moon shine Or cover our bodies in angry quicklime? She has so many lovers and so little time For us.
Was it you and me or the stars Which made us curse each other’s names?
You and me. Wherever we end up Whoever we love just know there is one who still thinks well of us.
You ask Will the moon sail up and will the moon shine? Will the moon sail up and will the moon shine Sweetness?
Time after time After time After time.
Another two hander. Originally a song but I think it sort of works here. It’s actually meant to be optimistic!Art by Dawn Illing
Why ‘End’? End as in die? Does a poem end? It can if no one hears it Or loves it Or thinks about it Or talks about it Or it gets buried by time Or jealousy Or malice I do not wish an end to your poems End
To tease a man who writes ‘End’ as a termination to all his poems
At the time of this interview, Feaven Chae (‘Heavenly Spicy Tea’) was nearly 14. She had been at our school for six months and her English had developed remarkably since her arrival in Bexleyheath in the back of a lorry in October. She wasn’t in any of my classes, but I was asked to interview her for the school radio show during a month when PSHE lessons focussed on slavery, refugees and human trafficking.
I was told Feaven was talkative but reticent, that I was unlikely to get much out of her because she just wanted to be an “ordinary Thamesmead girl” …as if such a creature exists! As soon as that microphone was on I couldn’t stop her! This skinny, delicate looking girl with her newfound love of K-Pop, had a core of steel and a story she wanted to tell.
Our radio station is run by year 8 and, given some of the content, it was decided not to broadcast the interview; so it got forgotten on a hard drive. Here is an attempt at a transcript of the first part.
You might imagine the mood during the interview would have been rather down and depressing, but there were a lot of smiles and laughter…and just occasionally tears. Feaven is a happy, outwardly carefree girl, she has come through what I hope will be the worst part of her life, has loads of friends…and knows how to make them! She’ll do well.
I felt a bit out of my depth…particularly when she was so unexpectedly honest and open about the very nasty things she witnessed and experienced. Other than being a moderately good listener, I was simply not qualified. I’ve edited as little as possible; only adding a bit of punctuation, and a removing couple of disturbing or personal details at her request. I have also changed her name… unnecessarily so, for the bright girl said she had changed it a few times already.
Why did you have to leave Eritrea?
‘Cos I didn’t have any good quality of life… and it was like difficult to live in Eritrea. I have got my sister bigger than me and she is naughty. She didn’t used to go her school and it must have been she missing her lessons. So my mum went to my sister’s school and then they were talking to her teacher. When they were at the school the police came up to my house to take my sister but my sister wasn’t at home… just me and my siblings was at home, and I was the oldest from my siblings.
So the police take me into the police station and then I was stay there for five days, and then my mum came to the police station and she took me from the police station …by a secret about how she did that. I can’t tell you the secret …I promise her…and I hided.
Tell me about your journey to England.
First from Eritrea I escaped to Sudan and then I have been there for a couple of weeks and there were a lot of people. We hadn’t had enough food and water You had to look after ourselves ‘cos no one cannot look after us like our family. And then from Sudan we travelled to Libya and then we were there… like travelling up by Sahara Desert. It was very difficult like we hadn’t had enough food and we hadn’t had water.
There were a lot of young children like 5,6,7 year-old and then it was got very bad. Like there were other people that they tried to look after us, but they couldn’t ‘cos the people who were checking us to deliver, like the drivers they were like racism. If we don’t pay them they were call to our family or other people who can pay money to them. We had to pay. Almost about like $3,000 for each person. You cannot offer-price for it. For some people there… like children… it is too hard for them to pay $3,000.
It is very amount of money, but if they cannot pay to them they will kill us. Most people have been killed ‘cos they hadn’t had enough money to pay to travel to another country. You can’t be a traveller with them if you don’t or if you cannot pay the money. If you cannot pay, or if you cannot call to your family for the money, they were shooting in front of us. That’s the most dangerous bit of our journeys.
Like it was very difficult. You cannot show any person that you care if they shooted another children. You have to hide your tears. If they see you are crying, they just kill you whether you pay or not. They just shoot you with the other people they have shooted. You have to hide all your cares, and you have to wear like you be like their religion. If they find out you praying like Tewahedo way…they just kill you by knife at night..or they just shoot you in front of the other people travellers.”
So how did you get from Libya across to Europe?
I got to Libya and then I got to travel on bus around to a city. They took us into this place and then we had we had to stay there for couple of months as well , ‘cos there were a lot of people in front of us without any food, without any water. Like most of the girls had to… I don’t know it’s hard to describe it …dirty things.
There were a lot of people lying in there, and then from Libya we had to take a small boat. They said we had to stay in boat for a couple of hours.. but it was a whole day to stay in the boat… ‘cos the boat wasn’t good enough to take us to Italy. After we began our journey the engine broke down. We have to stay like, yeah, we were just drifting in the sea. We were scared. Most people think ‘Oh we are going to die’ , or something like that. A lot of panicking ‘cos the boat cannot travel. They told us to “do not move!”, ‘cos if we moved to the side the boat we just turn over and fill up with sea, and we had to stay there for a day and then the big ship come up to us and then they took us into the big ship. And then we had to travel like two days in the big ship, yeah to Italy.
When we are over to Italy the Italy police and …what’s they calls…all the immigration… took us into one place but not all of us. They separated us to different areas and then told to go with different people. I didn’t get to be with my previous people. I go into a different group. I went there and then we don’t know any languages to speak to other people. We found Eritrean people and then we give them our number to call our family people in England.
So you were in Italy by then. And what was the next stage on your journey to Britain?
We give our family phone number to the person, and then he call to our family. He asked them to give money to his friend… or give it to his family member in somewhere, I don’t know where, and then my family had to give money to his family member ‘cos he told him he will take a responsibility for us.
He told us he will put us in safe place and he will take us to different group. We couldn’t communicate with other people that’s why we trust only him. We have to put trust only him and he took us to Calais… and he tried to put us in different cars. And you know, like some cars they just took you to other places and then they just put you down there… and you have to walk up to the area where the big lorries come.
It was hard. Like if you haven’t got enough money to get our food, it’s not our language… even we don’t know any languages from any person. That’s why we cannot ask for anything to help us other than an Eritrean person. ‘cos we cannot communicate with other people, therefore we have to rely on them. But some Eritrean people there they only pretend to be our helper.
He put us in different cars but we haven’t had time to get into Britain then. Unfortunately we tried time again.
It was cold and for food I had to … Wait can I? I can’t….
A pause while Feaven briefly cries …and I sit there feeling useless… offering her a secret plain chocolate Hobnob. Her bright eyes didn’t miss a thing. I told her that my biscuits would be locked away in a different drawer later. If only adults had the resilience of children.
Image: from the ‘art tent’ in Calais with thanks Suzanne Partridge.
Ten No. 6 A packet of chips The sound of The Beat playing ‘Stand down Margaret’ Two on a Fizzy doing fifty! Going down the hill And we’re all lit up On a Castrol night With the two stroke thunder and the gravel rash Grease under your nails That will never come out
SPEEDWAY! Took you speedway every time SPEEDWAY! Tuesday evenings Friday nights
Oh lover I’m still down at the track It’s dark down here and I’m burning up Got my head in a bucket Chewing on a wasp Mad for the crash of your face in my face Down at the track down by the river We got close like skin on gravel And the taste of your mouth That will never wash out
SPEEDWAY ! Kings of the shale the time of our lives! Round and around to the left on a bike SPEEDWAY!
Scunthorpe ScorpionsPoole PiratesExeter FalconsWorkington CometsCanterbury CrusadersHull VikingsOxford CheetahsPlymouth GladiatorsBerwick BanditsIpswich WitchesGlasgow TigersRedcar Bears … and for Pete Lawrence…. Coventry Bees!
He hides in trees Taunting Like the ghost of an ancient hungry baby With his foul cry “NooNoo Noo NooNoo” You close your eyes Then he’ll rise With the sun. Grey and bloated Porcine Too early “NooNoo Noo NooNoo” They say a pig can’t fly They lie Be sure To fear his greedy Gap toothed beaky maw. Rise and stagger Looking out No sign Then back to bed But still he throws his voice about “NooNoo Noo NooNoo” His galloping claws are closing in Columba palumbus “NooNoo Noo NooNoo” Columba palumbus “NooNoo Noo NooNoo”
This became a song with different sensibilities, but I think I prefer these old fragments now. 1981. Friday night at the Irish Centre in Murray St. A friend, Ray Hewitt, had borrowed my guitar to tour with Dermot OBrien’s band so we got in free. I got sucker punched in the jaw by the minicab driver on the way there and I probably deserved it. That’s another story though.
O’Brien had just started up Barney Rushe’s ‘Nancy Spain’…which, as everybody knows, is the prettiest song ever written. And a screaming brawl starts up between two women who, up until then looked like mates. One claimed it was a song her father wrote that was stolen; the other that she was Barney Rushe’s daughter. Of course neither thing was true but a crowd gathered anyway.
“What hips were you pushed from They must have been fuckin wide ones!”
“And you’re from what place… A box on the docks? Go back there yer smelly”
“It’s my Dads song I’m telling you. You know zero !”
“I know the stink of your skin to be sure To be sure If your Dad wrote “Nancy Spain… Well then… He could have been …ANYONE! You must be a very proud…fat bitch in that ra-ra skirt.”
Kicks and claws Hair pulled out in bunches Pints of not so sharp Harp all over the floor While Dermot O’Brien bellows hard His fine fingers picking up an accordion storm Of all the mirror ball stars That ever shone
“We should have gone to the Forum” shouts Tommy Kane “It’s Shaun And The Sounds tonight!” “I can get us in”
We linger for just a little while And sway to Noreen Bawn
Shaun And The Sounds were the house band at The Forum. They were up there with the very best of the showbands. Camden started to become a receding shadow to me after 1985. A belated R.I.P for Tommy Kane.
