Part 8 (2/2)

By the time Sunday afternoon had arrived, I had seen relatively little of Miss de la Mare. She seemed to have been so captivated with the work Sidney was undertaking that she had remained with him for all of Sat.u.r.day afternoon and Sunday morning. For the last session of the poetry course, however, she re-appeared. The teachers were discussing a selection of verse by known and unknown poets and some of the course members had agreed to read out poems they had written themselves. I decided to chance my arm and read my poem, ”Red Bloom of Winter'. I conveniently failed to mention that it was my own work. When I had finished declaiming to the group there was a rapt silence.

Then one rather pensive-looking woman spoke. ”Beautiful,” she sighed. ”Beautiful. It's such a very tender poem. I just loved the delicate sound formation and the strong sense of the mystic'

”Did you really?” I cooed.

”I think the poet captures the sense of desolation really well,” added another. ”She's obviously immensely depressed, perhaps on the very brink of taking her own life?”

”Who is?” I ventured.

”The woman in the poem. All the words and images stress her rejection and feeling of emptiness and futility. The mood is one of coldness and frigidity. The relations.h.i.+p has turned sour. It's so very sad.”

”What relations.h.i.+p?” I ventured again.

”Why, the woman's relations.h.i.+p with her partner. She is represented by the red flower,” explained the teacher. ”That is the central symbol of the verse. The man is the hard, cold earth which is freezing the very life out of her. She is the woman of warmth and life, the Earth mother.”

Another teacher entered the discussion. ”Perhaps the flower is more a symbol of the hatred and deep-seated jealousy of the woman who has been betrayed.”

”Betrayed?” I asked.

”There's a great deal of violent imagery in the poem, references to ”blood” and ”death” and the ”frozen stem as rigid as a corpse”.”

”It could be more to do with her death,” said the pensive-looking teacher.

”But there isn't a woman in the poem,” I said.

”The poet has obviously suffered,” she continued. ”I think she's quite disturbed.”

”Is the poem about saving the planet?” asked a small man with large gla.s.ses. ”Doesn't the dying flower represent the destruction of the environment? All that is bright and beautiful is being choked to death.”

”Or is the poem about life itself?” sighed the woman who had spoken first.

”Or could it just be about a flower?” I hazarded.

”But who would want to write a poem about a flower?” asked the rather intense-looking woman.

Later in the staff room, after all the teachers had made their farewells and thanked me for a stimulating course, I sat with Miss de la Mare. Sidney bobbed in to say goodbye. He looked like the cat which had got the cream. He had whispered to me earlier in the hall that he had got on well with Miss de la Mare who had been highly complimentary about what she had observed.

”He's quite a character, Mr. Clamp,” said the HMI. ”An immensely creative man and very innovative and, like many introverts, a man of few words.”

”A man of few words!” I gasped. ”An introvert?”

”Oh yes, I found him a most una.s.suming and quietly spoken man but very talented. I did so enjoy my time with him and the art teachers and I have a mind to ask him to contribute to a national course on ”The Arts in School”, which I am directing next summer in Oxford. He might of course be a little shy about speaking to a large group. Do you think he would be interested?”

no ”I'm sure he would,” I replied. Sidney had made another conquest.

”You may care to come along too,” continued Miss de la Mare. ”I found those parts of the poetry course I attended most interesting. I thought your choice of that final poem quite inspired.”

”Thank you,” I replied.

”You obviously chose the poem about the flower to get the discussion going about the very nature of poetry writing.”

Did I? I thought to myself.

”And it certainly got them to think and to argue,” continued Miss de la Mare, 'but you can see what a lot of work you have to do.”

”I do?”

”Why, yes. It really wasn't as good as all the teachers thought, was it? In fact, the poem was rather overwritten, rather cliched, don't you think? So many people imagine that a poem must have some hidden meaning, some symbolism, something profound to say. It is quite possible for someone to write a simple little poem, however trite it might be, about a flower. I have always been of the opinion that poems can be about anything and that anything you wish it to be can become a poem. You see, the reader brings so much of herself to the poem, very often seeing something in the verse that the poet never intended. I feel sure the poet here never imagined that her poem about a flower would be regarded as a description of life itself ”No, I suppose not,” I said, feeling somewhat deflated.

”Did one of the sixth-formers you have come across write it?” she asked.

I shook my head. ”No, it's by a modern poet.”

”I once visited a large primary school in the middle of a dreadfully depressing inner city area,” Miss de la Mare told me, smiling at the memory. ”The work of the children consisted largely of arid exercises on the noun, the verb and in the adjective but when questioned the children had not the first idea what the parts of speech were. Page after page was filled with dreary exercise after dreary exercise. There was the occasional story, the odd comprehension but not a sign of a poem. And then I found this nervous little boy in the corner of the cla.s.sroom. When I asked if I could examine his book he looked at me with such large sad eyes and he said very quietly, ”No.” I tried to coax him but he was adamant, saying that his work was not worth looking at. He couldn't spell, his writing was untidy and he never got good marks for his work. I eventually persuaded him to let me see his writing. The book was indeed very poor and, like all the rest, crammed with unmarked exercises. There was the occasional comment from his teacher in bright red ink for him to re-write or to take greater care.

”Then, at the very back of the book I came upon a piece of writing in small crabbed print. I asked him ifhe had written it. He nodded. I asked him ifhe had received any help with it. He shook his head. Well, it was quite a small masterpiece. He had written, and I remember the words so well: Yesterday yesterday yesterday Sorrow sorrow sorrow Today today today Hope hope hope Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow Love love love ' ”What a wonderful little poem,” I told him.

”He thought for a while, stared up at me with those large, sad eyes and announced: ”They're mi spelling corrections, Connie collared me on my way out later that afternoon. ”It's dead!” she exclaimed. ”What is?”

”My flaming alopecia, that's what! It wilted and then died. I knew I shouldn't have watered it.”

”I shouldn't think it made much difference, Connie,” I rea.s.sured her.

”I've never had a flaming alopecia before,” she said sadly.

I learnt from Sidney the next day that he, as I had suspected, had been behind the ruse. He had arrived at the Staff Development Centre on the Friday night to set up for his course. Backwards and forwards, under Connie's eagle eye, he had emptied his car of materials and artefacts for his ”Art for Christmas' weekend. Branches of yew, fronds of holly, ropes of ivy, bunches of mistletoe, stuffed robins and last of all two large poinsettia plants had been carried into the Centre. As he had tried to negotiate the vicar's motor bike, which had been parked precariously near the entrance, Sidney had snapped off the stem of one of the plants. Rather than leave the cl.u.s.ter of red leaves on the floor for Connie to complain about, he had stuck them into the tub and thought no more of it. When later Connie had drawn attention to it, he had informed her that it was a rare flaming alopecia plant.

”I think it was very unkind of you,” I remarked, 'and I've a good mind to tell Connie.”

”Don't do that, old chap,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands behind his head. ”Connie is so wonderfully naive, so splendidly gullible, so amazingly ingenuous, that it would be cruel to enlighten her. I do not approve of anything, you know, Gervase, which tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic flower, touch it, and the bloom is gone for ever.”

”I've read Oscar Wilde as well, Sidney,” I said. ”And it wasn't a delicate exotic flower, it was fruit. ”Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit,” says Lady Bracknell. It's in The Importance of Being Earnest.”

”Well, I said it first!” exclaimed Sidney with mock surprise. ”This Lady Bracknell must have heard me say it on one of my courses. Anyway, ”flower” is far more appropriate, in the circ.u.mstances, don't you think?”

”And what will happen,” I asked him, 'when Connie discovers that alopecia is a scalp condition and not a variety of rare winter-flowering plant?”

”She will probably not speak to me for a long, long time,” smiled Sidney, stretching back even more expansively in his chair. ”Which suits me fine because it will keep her out of my hair. I say, that's rather clever, isn't it? Alopecia? Hair?”

I shook my head. ”You're incorrigible, Sidney.”

”I'm really going to make an effort with Christmas this year,” announced Julie, a week before the schools closed for the holidays.

”And why is that?” asked David, looking up from his papers and peering over his gold-rimmed, half-moon spectacles.

”Because last year,” replied Julie, taking the opportunity to have a break from distributing the early morning mail, 'was so indescribably awful that I'm really going to try not to let it get to me this year. I'm going to go with the flow, just let it all wash over me. Do you know that last year I was glad to get back to work. I spent ages and ages looking for presents which in the end didn't suit. I wrote hundreds of cards to people I haven't seen for ages and am not likely to ever see again and then, at the very last minute, somebody sent me a card who I hadn't sent one to and I had to rush to catch the last post to send them one. Well, this year I'm not sending any cards and I'm giving all my nephews and nieces money and I've asked everybody else what they want. It's a much better idea, I think.”

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