HARRISON : LON G DISTANC E / 253 3 You're supposed toand you can't tell be the bright boy at description them what the fuck to put! I've got to find the right words on my own. isI've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling, mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling but I can't squeeze more love into their stone. 1981
Long Distance
I
Your bed's got two wrong sides. Your life's all grouse.' grumble I let your phone-call take its dismal course:
Ah can't stand it no more, this empty house!
Carrots choke us wi'out your mam's white sauce!
5 Them sweets you brought me, you can have 'em back. Ah'm diabetic now. Got all the facts.
(The diabetes comes hard on the track of two coronaries and cataracts.)
Ah've alius liked things sweet! But now ah push
10 food down mi throat! Ah'd sooner do wi'out. And t'only reason now for beer's to flush (so t'dietician said) mi kidneys out.
When I come round, they'll be laid out, the sweets, Lifesavers, my father's New World treats, 15 still in the big brown bag, and only bought rushing through JFK1 as a last thought.
II
Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass.
5 You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone. He'd put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief 10 though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
!. A New York airport.
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25 10 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, 15 in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number I still call.
1981
Turns
I thought it made me look more 'working class' (as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!) I did a turn in it before the glass. My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
5 (She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)
All the pension queue1 came out to stare. Dad was sprawled beside the postbox (still VR),2 his cap turned inside up beside his head,
io smudged H A H in purple Indian ink and Brylcreem slicks3 displayed so folk might think he wanted charity for dropping dead.
He never begged. For nowt!4 Death's reticence crowns his life's, and me, I'm opening my trap is to busk5 the class that broke him for the pence that splash like brackish tears into our cap.
1981
Marked with D.1
When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven not unlike those he fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
s light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, 'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.' I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame but only literally, which makes me sorry,
1. Line of retired people waiting for their pension (social security) payments. 2. Sidewalk mailbox dating from the reign of Queen Victoria and carrying the initials of her name and Latin title: Victoria Regina. 3. Play on Brylcreem Sticks, a hairstyling wax. 4. Nothing (northern dialect). 5. Take around the hat; i.e., solicit money for street entertainment (from members of the middle class, in this case). 1. Cf. the anonymous nursery rhyme 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man / Bake me a cake as fast as you can / Pat it and prick it, and mark it with B, / Put it in the oven for baby and me.'
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NGUGT: DECOLONISING THE MIND / 2535
sorry for his sake there's no Heave n to reach.
10 I get it all from Earth my daily bread
but he hungered for release from mortal speech
that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.
Th e baker's ma n that no-one will see rise
