More Patina than Gleam E-Book

Jane Aldous

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

This series of poems, based in post war Edinburgh, tell the story of Linda, fleeing with her 11 year old daughter from England and an abusive relationship. In hiding as a lady's companion in one of the city's suburbs, mother and daughter settle into their new life in Elsie's rackety house, and encounter a variety of characters who will change their lives forever. More Patina than Gleam celebrates outsiders getting by in hard times – the day to day grind of cleaning a house, periods, prejudice, ageing, sexuality and falling in and out of love. The poems are not autobiographical, but Jane Aldous, whose own mother used to say that she could have run away with Jane when she was a baby, has gently torn scraps from her own life to add to the collage.

Leseprobe

Contents

Leaving (Linda)

Arrival

Children Are From a Strange Country (Ange)

Two Lads

Saved for a Lost Lad

Ezekiel’s Picture (Linda)

Gleam (Linda)

Observatory Road

Two Fingers (Linda)

Tolerable Times (Elsie)

Weeding (Linda)

Vernon

At Blackford Pond (Linda)

Randall (Linda)

Pure Gold

Guilty Dirty Secrets

Looking at Frida Kahlo (Linda)

Make and Mend

Hill of Hunters and Stargazers

In the Southside (Ange)

Frank

Cosmic Gasometer

Blood and Cleopatra (Ange)

Arthur’s Bar

Short Shrift

Just Deserts (Linda)

Treasures of her Heart

Watershed

Ange’s Day (Ange)

Elsie’s Day (Elsie)

Hard Times (Linda)

Bed and Board

Picnic

Topiary

Fish and Clippies

Affairs of the Heart

Unearthly Children (Ange)

Confession

What I Really Want to Know (Ange)

Guid Passage (Linda)

Kerby (Ange)

Bath Salts and a Naked Flame

Hanukkah (Elsie)

Fitba’

Overhearing the Future (Linda)

Propa Scottish

Sapphos of the Storm

She Loves You

Needs Must

Fidra Bay (Linda)

Watching the Child (Elsie)

Winter Birds (Ange)

Festive Times (Linda)

Family Times (Ange)

Small Screen Sin (Ange)

First Footings

Home to Hippies

Bed Rest (Elsie)

Dust Off the Boxes

Ghost Riddance (Linda)

In the Grassmarket (Ange)

Quilts and Put-you-ups

Shoot and Peel

The Guest

Plotting (Linda)

Last Chance Saloon

Something and Nothing

Through Children’s Eyes (Ange)

Enough (Linda)

Another Life

Leaving

I had to go    couldn’t wait for things

to change     for the mithering    threatening

voice to stop    twisting my mind    I was

worn down by all the taunting    one winter

morning     the girl and I left the house

closed the door    walked out of our life

threw the key away    crossed the bridge

towards the train     as if we were shopping

we turned our faces     pace never slackening

    till we disappeared into the steam and

smog     till we were travelling North    what

I didn’t reckon on though     how my mind

kept harking back    how much I cried

     from now on it’s the two of us

Arrival

No one paid attention to the woman and child

not dressed for snow    standing on the hill-top

path    watching the lights of ships on the Forth

    listening to the calls of ravens and crows

they could have passed for locals     but as the

woman gazed out to sea     she prayed for anonymity

    she wondered why there was a gasometer up

here     buttoned up her coat      tightened her headscarf

    drew the child closer     no one guessed how far

they’d come    exchanging smog for smoky lums

    tonight they’d be in strange beds in a large

genteel house with its own secrets    big windows

and dark trees     tomorrow she’d become a lady’s

companion with an unfathomable future

Children Are From a Strange Country

She could have turned us away

told us she’d changed her mind

instead she opened the door

led us down a bare-wood corridor

with faded rugs

into a room with an oval table

and offered us hot-pot

children are from a strange country

I always think she said

my mother smiled I went red

I never mentioned this again

but was left wondering

if I’d ever make it to her country

and if so when

Two Lads

Until a torpedo hit their ship in the Bay

of Naples    ripped a hole in the hull

caused panic on board     lifeboats to be

lowered    two lads     Ezekiel and Sydney

    had barely spoken    they rowed for their

lives    away from the sinking ship    pitched

and rolled     in another life they’d have been

on a day trip     only there were bombers

overhead    they watched their ship sliding

silently under the waves    after the war they

kept in touch with occasional postcards    until

Sydney Smith    ‘Stick’    Edinburgh tobacconist

twice divorced    got a call one day from Ezekiel

Datlow    picture restorer from London

Saved for a Lost Lad

Demobbed     his home bombed      Ezekiel

felt lost    he found a berth on a beat-up freighter

to Spain    sent a letter    then nothing    Elsie

raged    after that they gave up expecting news

    there were occasional postcards and phone calls

from old friends who’d come across him in a studio

in Spain    a market in Crete    a bar in Portugal

    she knew he was alive     she kept everything

to remind him who he was    his family    any papers

he might have missed     it was difficult to stop

    one day she heard Ezekiel’s voice down the line

he was fine    now restoring paintings in Bethnal

Green    would she like to join him in a little scheme

    a friend of his lived in Edinburgh    why not?

Ezekiel’s picture

I’d been a lady’s companion for a while

when a parcel arrived from Ezekiel Datlow & Sons

Picture Restorers     Bethnal Green     London

Miss D couldn’t contain her joy    she asked me

to watch as she cut the string    unwrapped layers

of newsprint to reveal    the oddest painting

by someone called Kahlo    she held it this way

and that    carried it through the house    thinking

about the light    deciding where to hang it

after a while I left her to it    gathered up the paper