preparing my weekly seminar for my regular creative writing classes that were scheduled that afternoon. My chosen theme was ‘the best first line of a novel’. I had the radio tuned to a local music station, having tired of the inspiration of my usual jazz that morning. Some soporific singer whose name was new to me was explaining her personal connection to her muse. The dead poet she mentioned was someone whose writings I knew well and whose poetry I had actually taught on a course at Harvard years earlier. Her version of his lines sent a cringe down my spine.
‘Really, you have to be joking,’ I muttered aloud,
singing the body electric
.
*
I poured myself a cup of tea from the tray that my partner Dottie had brought me earlier and then stood and peered through the window again. Outside on the pavement, I could see a small crowd gathering. I heard the front door open and saw Dottie run out onto the pavement towards the accident scene. There was a man I didn’t know already kneeling over one of the two bodies. I assumed the guy on the ground was the driver of the scooter as he was still wearing a helmet. Dottie and this man were joined by another woman, whose face I did know. This woman went immediately to the side of the second motorcyclist who moments earlier had been catapulted from the back of the scooter by the massive car and who wasn’t wearing a helmet. She was one of our neighbours. Her face was one of those pretty faces, which ought to have a name in my memory bank but that I struggled at that time to connect to a name. Her head was close to the young man’s face and her hair fell over him like a veil.
‘
Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, mercy I ask’d; mercy I found
’ I whispered under my breath.
I wondered whether I should phone for an ambulance or join Dottie but I could see that there were already several more bystanders at the scene, any of whom could have already made that call. Maybe I should have gone out to help as well but I generally do not like to get involved in those kinds of situations and possess no medical skills; Dottie would have known much better exactly what to do. The woman on the radio was still insisting that ‘
Whitman was my daddy’
. Just too much, I thought, some people have no class. Indecisive, I considered again if I should go out and help but thought better of it;
no
, there were already too many people there, I’d just be in the way. In any case I did not have much time left to finish my tutorial. On reflection, I wonder if I was being pragmatic or just plain callous.
*
On the desk, I noticed the folded newspaper I’d brought back with me the night before from my trip up to town. I’d picked it up off an empty train seat, where it had lain, discarded by one of the many faceless passengers on the rail journey back from Marylebone. The front page had tickled my interest. I studied again the photograph of a thirty-something woman staring out from the page, above her the headline
Thirteen Years of Solitude
. Was this the
Evening Standard
’s attempt at magical realism but 87 years short-changed? I chuckled at the conceit, at the coincidence of authorship with my original choice of text for the afternoon tutorials. Term was over of course, but I liked to keep my brain ticking over during the summer months with a series of private seminars that I ran for local writers and those who did not write. It was a book club of sorts for the deeply committed, for those who loved literature. The events unfolding before me on the street and the words rolling from my pen on to the paper appeared to be linked, through coincidence or intent, in a fatalistic dance.
*
Coincidence, if you’ll permit the indulgence, is God appearing at each step that humankind takes
, I jotted down on the paper.
In anticipation of such coincidences, my parents conceived of my existence more than fifty years ago on a dirty weekend in Tenby. There is an earthiness to that South Wales origination
‘Really, you have to be joking,’ I muttered aloud,
singing the body electric
.
*
I poured myself a cup of tea from the tray that my partner Dottie had brought me earlier and then stood and peered through the window again. Outside on the pavement, I could see a small crowd gathering. I heard the front door open and saw Dottie run out onto the pavement towards the accident scene. There was a man I didn’t know already kneeling over one of the two bodies. I assumed the guy on the ground was the driver of the scooter as he was still wearing a helmet. Dottie and this man were joined by another woman, whose face I did know. This woman went immediately to the side of the second motorcyclist who moments earlier had been catapulted from the back of the scooter by the massive car and who wasn’t wearing a helmet. She was one of our neighbours. Her face was one of those pretty faces, which ought to have a name in my memory bank but that I struggled at that time to connect to a name. Her head was close to the young man’s face and her hair fell over him like a veil.
‘
Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, mercy I ask’d; mercy I found
’ I whispered under my breath.
I wondered whether I should phone for an ambulance or join Dottie but I could see that there were already several more bystanders at the scene, any of whom could have already made that call. Maybe I should have gone out to help as well but I generally do not like to get involved in those kinds of situations and possess no medical skills; Dottie would have known much better exactly what to do. The woman on the radio was still insisting that ‘
Whitman was my daddy’
. Just too much, I thought, some people have no class. Indecisive, I considered again if I should go out and help but thought better of it;
no
, there were already too many people there, I’d just be in the way. In any case I did not have much time left to finish my tutorial. On reflection, I wonder if I was being pragmatic or just plain callous.
*
On the desk, I noticed the folded newspaper I’d brought back with me the night before from my trip up to town. I’d picked it up off an empty train seat, where it had lain, discarded by one of the many faceless passengers on the rail journey back from Marylebone. The front page had tickled my interest. I studied again the photograph of a thirty-something woman staring out from the page, above her the headline
Thirteen Years of Solitude
. Was this the
Evening Standard
’s attempt at magical realism but 87 years short-changed? I chuckled at the conceit, at the coincidence of authorship with my original choice of text for the afternoon tutorials. Term was over of course, but I liked to keep my brain ticking over during the summer months with a series of private seminars that I ran for local writers and those who did not write. It was a book club of sorts for the deeply committed, for those who loved literature. The events unfolding before me on the street and the words rolling from my pen on to the paper appeared to be linked, through coincidence or intent, in a fatalistic dance.
*
Coincidence, if you’ll permit the indulgence, is God appearing at each step that humankind takes
, I jotted down on the paper.
In anticipation of such coincidences, my parents conceived of my existence more than fifty years ago on a dirty weekend in Tenby. There is an earthiness to that South Wales origination
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