ALMA MATER
When Queen Elizabeth died I remembered
that my uncle Tom died the same month
as her father, King George. Both were veterans
of the First World War – one of the Battle
of Ypres, one of the Battle of Jutland.
Both private and prince were heavy smokers
till near the end – roll ups, Benson & Hedges.
Tom was gassed at Ypres. After the war
he became a pastry chef until
the Depression. Later, during the next
World War and subsequently, he made
packing cases in an aircraft factory.
Children take for granted the adults
around them. Later we avoid unpicking
memories – so it had not occurred to me
until now that Tom appeared to have no friends,
no interests, or possessions, or
to wonder why. And, of course,
there is no one alive left to ask.
After his death, I was moved into his small,
impersonal bedroom above the hall –
in our 1920s rented, pebble-dashed,
three bedroom semi with a privet hedge.
When Tom was alive six of us lived there.
The five who remained were me, my mother,
her older sisters, and my grandmother;
an only child, two widows, and two spinsters;
four formative women, who are still vivid in my heart.
But Uncle Tom evades me. Perhaps
he had shut down his life some time before.
I lived there from age five to sixteen.
Though death and loss and regret were near
neighbours, and my granny and her daughters
talked mostly about the past – making me
both risk-averse and ambitious – it was not
a cheerless place. It was a house with books;
an upright piano, which I learned to play,
and for which I had a ready audience;
and a number of pictures – including
a print of Somerscales’ ‘Off Valparaiso’
on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.
So we all passed it at least twice a day.
Tom would have looked at it, presumably,
though perhaps he was always too fatigued
in his fifties then from physical work
with lungs damaged in youth by the mustard gas.
Whether I actually did or not, memory
tells me I would stop and study the print.
Someone must have told me Valparaiso
is a port on South America’s west coast,
and the ship featured in the picture
must have been heading for the harbour,
since a pilot boat is waiting for it,
which the ship acknowledges but refuses.
The three masted barque, from beyond Cape Horn
and the Southern Ocean, into the azure
Pacific seas, is steering almost
towards us, the wind in its sails – an image
of grace and purpose, of power, and of risk.
Alan Horne
December 31, 2022Thank you for this, David. It caused me to think of my own grandfather, who was wounded at Jutland and, like your uncle, survived without really recovering. I didn’t know that Bertie was in the battle too, although I imagine my grandfather did: he was a great patriot, and a smoker too, although he would have smoked Senior Service, of course, when he could afford them. Prior to his injury (a shrapnel spLinter in his head) I believe he had quite an adventurous life as a signaller in the Merchant and Royal Navies, and may well have been to Valparaiso. In his later years he was a doorman at the Adelphi in Liverpool, a job which, while not a reserved occupation, was probably made available to him because of his injury. He deserves a poem, but it would have to be pretty good to equal yours, which is a great poem of the family scene.
Jeff Teasdale
January 1, 2023Again, very evocative of personal experience David…. on two levels for me; my maternal grandfather’s house of seventy years ago (Ted Hynes, plumber, 128 Wilbraham Road, Fallowfield – how do I remember the number?), and living with him his sister Mabel, and his tiny white-haired mother-in-law, always in a bright blue dress, who was known to me as ‘Nanny’. His wife, my grandmother, had died during the war, in a Prestbury nursing home not a mile from where I now live in Macclesfield. My links with them all was going with my mother with their plated-up dinners, quite a long walk from our own house. My mother would knock a few tunes out on the upright, and we’d walk home. The New Year’s Eve family parties in that house (my mother had five brothers) were something to behold. And thanks to your poem, a memory has thus been triggered about which I will write. Like you and your uncle, I wish I had listened to Ted’s stories (he later came to live with us) more intently…. They reside in my head as fragments of long narratives about WW1 and Manchester in the 1920s.
And on triggering memories, watching Jools Holland last night, Andy Fairweather-Low (about whom I had forgotten) of Amen Corner (about which I had forgotten) sang ‘If paradise is half as nice as heaven that you take me to, who needs paradise? I’d rather have you…..’ (about which I had also forgotten) took me right back, in a flash (and after a large scotch), to a dance floor at a mate’s wedding in February 1969, with my then girlfriend, when ‘our gang’ cleared the floor with all our girls with that song when the ‘DJ’ played it (several times). It was at number 1 I think.
Poetry of another kind. I have been singing it to myself to her memory all day….. She died last year, still a good friend after 50 years, too late to have been reminded of it. Funny and emotional old business, this creativity!
Anne Wynne
January 4, 2023I really enjoyed the narrative of this poem and the sense of loss and curiosity about this shadowy man – Uncle Tom who has no friends or interests. Other people’s stories are always so fascinating. The idea of both the child and Uncle Tom looking at the same picture is very powerful and touching. I also love the four strong women in this poem surrounding this little boy with love and a ready made ‘audience’. It is a charming poem full of warmth and detail about a world long gone.
Kate Harrison
January 10, 2023The questions we don’t know to ask, don’t think to ask or perhaps don’t like to ask. In the unravelling of these lives, sometimes long after they are over, there is always an “If only I could ask” that would solve a puzzle.