Author: Jane Stansfeld

Justice – a prose / poem

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A few days ago there was a report in the Austin Chronicle about a woman who had died in a nursing home due to an embolism caused by enforced inertia. She had been in restraints for at least 48 hours. At first, when I read this I thought, “Ah ha, if it had been me I would have done whatever they wanted to escape the restraints.” Then I read on, the nursing staff reported that they had her in restraints because she kept pulling out her feeding tube. “Hmm,” I thought, “I would have done the same thing!” The good news is that the home is now forbidden to use feeding tubes, and, I hope, unnecessary restraints.

I have an ongoing horror at what ordinary people can do to each other under the guise of authority. I suggest that this is possible when individuals become part of a crowd and lose their uniqueness and essence to become repetitive cogs in an impersonal system.

The Chronicle narrative threw me back forty years to the UK in the early 1970s and a newspaper report in which the reporter told a story of a woman who had been in a mental asylum for fifty years. She had been committed because she was having a baby out of wedlock. In the report the authorities were attempting to put her back into society; but, after fifty years in an institution, she couldn’t cope. At the time I was so appalled by this story of a person who was denied her individuality and life by the “kindness” of a state institution that I wrote the following narrative prose / poem. I post it in the hope that it has relevance today.

Nineteen years-old, youthful, free,
A crystal drop in the midst of her family,
She lived, happy and content,
Among her many siblings.
Daily she tramped to work on a factory floor,
One in a milling multitude.
No-one knew her as she was,
No, not even her mother,
Who, working with her rough hands,
Hardly stopped to see her womanhood.
So, her individuality remained lost in the crowd.
Until, one day, he came. Just a simple man,
But, he saw her young breasts pressing against her linen,
Saw her long thin legs moving free under her skirts,
And, seeing these, he stepped closer to find her.
Eclipsing her world and transforming the many to two,
And love, coming fast, swept them both away,
Whirling them in a frenzy of emotion,
To loose, even themselves, in each other.
Two people closely united to create a third.
And, by that third she lost her happiness and freedom.
She wandered, homeless, rejected,
Wishing to be befriended by death,
She was only assisted by the State.
So, cruelly delivered of her child,
She was certified insane to be locked away.
Years passed by stealing her ardor and her youth,
They left a shell to be found fifty years later.
Not a romantic sleeping beauty,
She is now old, hardly alive,
Wishing to finish her sentence,
And, like a zombie, die depraved of life.
For her body is exhausted,
And inactivity has dulled her mind to emptiness.

Copyright © Jane Stansfeld, June 2013

Hippo – a poem

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This is my first attempt at a Shakespearian sonnet with its iambic pentameters. I found the rhyming scheme and the rhythm difficult as I seem to think in rhyming couplets and had to shake off this habit. I hope that you endorse the love theme as appropriate for a sonnet although I couldn’t go too cerebral.

Oh, when did my sweet love of thee begin?
Hippo dear, was it thy tiny eye and ear?
Surely it wasn’t thy wrinkled tough skin
Or the plunge thou takes when I draw near.
Is it envy of thy water-hole day?
Or ev’ntide, when I see thee lumber on shore,
Carefree, no enemies upon thee to prey
Then thou eats ‘til thou can eat no more
Oft times thy mouth gapes open at me
No loving kiss but yellow teeth inside
Then thy roar matches in ferocity
And I know that ‘tis best I go and hide.
Come now, why is my love not returned,
Even when methinks that it is earned?

Copyright © 6/6/2013 Jane Stansfeld

The voyage – a poem

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Strange, incomprehensible, relative, time,
Seems, as the sea, eternal.
Bringing together twofold impressions
Without proof of being.

Unseen image of a land,
Soon to become a reality.
And then the hiatus
The linking span is gone.

Of our voyage, we have no proof,
Dare our scattered senses lie?
With a tangible end,
Was the means an illusion?

It was a drop of eternity,
A ripple taken from Time’s flood,
Swelling, to shrink, unrecognizable,
Into oblivion.

© 6/5/13 Jane Stansfeld

The Muse – a short story

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Even though Brad had been failing at work before his official retirement, his entire office went to his funeral. He was too young to die, and to go in such an accident seemed a cruel twist of fate to one who had already endured much. Even as they arrived at the church each of them looked at the handicapped spaces with an additional twinge of remorse. They reminded so poignantly of this man who had had three unlucky episodes in his life.

For yes, Brad had a handicapped sticker on his car although he seldom parked in handicapped spaces rationalizing that he was ambulatory and needed exercise. He was right on both scores. However, no one begrudged him a close-in parking space for, surely, missing one hand needed some compensation. He had managed to overcome his handicap with remarkable stoicism and could drive, type, draw and complete his daily duties as quickly as people with two hands.

He lost his right hand in a freak accident when he was four years old. An inquisitive child, sitting on a butcher’s counter assisting his grandfather make sausages, he put his little right hand into the meat grinder along with the meat. Those were the days before elaborate prostheses and so Brad learned to cope with a stump on his right. He did well, passing through school with honors and then on to university to become an architect. He was successful in his profession and eventually fell in love with, and married, a colleague interior designer. At that point in his life things looked rosy.

His second blow of bad luck was his wife’s inability to conceive and their joint sadness. Brad faced his sorrow with nicotine and alcohol, which drove his wife to ask for a divorce. After the divorce he threw himself into a bachelor life, revolving around architecture, cigarettes, and alcohol. The three worked together like waves in the ocean. At times one eclipsed the others, at times they worked in unison. Unfortunately the waves were part of a spiraling eddy, and as they whirled around each other, they became increasingly intense until Brad, caught in their action, began to suffer.

He entered the ‘black” phase of his life. Each night he drank enough to dull his pain and took to his bed thinking about the futility of life. Sometimes he saw dark shadows looming over him. Sometimes the shadows were his own thoughts channeled into alternate ways of ending his misery. There were so many options: a high place, a gun, a gas oven, a bath and razor, starvation. At these times he admitted to himself that his present self-destructive path, laced with cigarettes and alcohol, was probably on the right track. Gradually the alcohol eclipsed architecture and Brad took what he euphemistically called an ‘early retirement’.

His lack of employment had many side effects. With less to live on he moved into a slummy apartment, but with decreased obligations he could concentrate more seriously on drinking himself into oblivion. His dark shadows were frequent nocturnal visitors whom he greeted with mixed emotion.

One night when he retired to bed sad and sodden, just as he finished his last cigarette of the day he heard a soft female voice call his name. He drowsily turned towards the voice and saw her shadow moving across the room. Her movement was so smooth that he wondered if she was floating. He took a deep breath and pondered who his beautiful visitor could be. She didn’t scowl, as his demons of earlier nights had menaced, she simply smiled at him. Then she was standing beside his bed and her cold hand touched his. He felt a wave of desire like an electric shock. He swung his feet to the ground and sat up. He stared into her face and noticed that her eyes were so dark that he couldn’t distinguish her pupils. He shifted his gaze to behold the rest of her face. The moonlight gave the room light and shadow; he saw her countenance to be pale and very beautiful while her dark hair was braided into an elaborate seeping style to expose her long, Modigliani, white neck.

She gently, very gently, drew him onto his feet. That was when the music started. The Blue Danube floated through the open window on soft night air and they were dancing. He was in perfect control; his right hand held her back and guided her movements, his left touched hers. Her flowing black dress, which hung from her shoulders, floated and swayed as they danced.

They danced on a highly polished wood floor in a room of mirrors. He kept catching glimpses of themselves; a flawless matched pair moving as one across the floor. Fred and Ginger could not have been more perfect. Their harmonious movements were synchronized with the music. They waltzed until he felt dizzy and his right hand on her back was beginning to throb with the heat of contact. Then she led him back to his bed and kissed him; a soft brush of her lips on his. Trembling, he lit a cigarette. She shook her head to indicate that, no, she didn’t smoke, and was gone.

The next morning he arose earlier than his norm and ate food. His encounter of the previous night haunted him; he could see her, feel her body, and his every movement was set to the Blue Danube. He went to the mall, still floating on his cloud of content. Uncharacteristically, he parked in the best handicapped spot. As he walked inside he stared at that nonexistent hand which had throbbed so much the previous night. He went to a men’s department and bought himself the most elegant black silk pajamas that he could find.

That evening he drank less and, instead of collapsing into bed, he bathed and dressed in his new pajamas before retiring. He lay in bed reading and smoking until drowsiness began to overtake him, then he turned off the light and smoked in the moonlight. No sooner had he extinguished his last cigarette than she appeared. She was wearing a short low-cut silk dress which swished as she moved. Again she touched him and he rose. Vito Disalvo’s “Tango in the Park” began to play and they tangoed.

They danced on a decorated mosaic floor in a tall rotunda. She matched his every motion, or was he matching hers? He swung her around with both hands as they looped, curled, and swayed to the music. His whole body tingled with pleasure at the excitement of their exotic dance. At each extraordinary step he heard applause from the balconies above. It reinforced his exquisite joy. Just when he thought that exhaustion would overtake him, she led him back to his bed and kissed him with the same brush of soft lips. Trembling, he lit a cigarette, again she shook her head indicating that she didn’t smoke, and was gone.

He greeted dawn with only one thought on how fast he could make the day pass; how quickly he could trick night into coming. He drowned his anticipation in alcohol but not so much that he couldn’t still prepare meticulously for bed. On this night he stumbled a little for he was drunk both with alcohol and anticipation. Just as on the previous nights, she came to him as he finished his cigarette. Even in the moonlight he could see that her dress was fiery red. She had one strap over her left shoulder and wore matching long red gloves. Her touch was soft, so very soft. As he rose he dropped his lighted cigarette on the bedding, which began to smolder. He didn’t notice for the music was a foxtrot, and he was already lulled into her aura.

They were on the beach, the warm sand was hard enough for dancing and a mist enveloped them. They were the couple in the Jack Vettriano’s painting ‘The Singing Butler”. All movement centered on them and oh, how they danced. His right hand guided her on her bare skin exposed by her backless dress; slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. The tempo gradually increased as they danced in unison. His ecstasy amplified until he blended into her essence and was gone.

The Bystander -a poem

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Leave him alone,
Do not touch or comfort him,
For he is a vacuum, devoid,
His loss sucked the spice from his life,
Releasing a torrent of feeling from his empty shell.
He does not weep, there are no tears.
He is neither hot nor cold.
He does not talk, he cannot hear you.
His eyes stare, he does not see.
He needs no sleep, no food, there is nothing to nourish.

In time he will have to sleep and eat,
Twofold cures, for they will open
The chasms of his being,
Teaching him emotions like a small child.
Then, he will cry and weep in his anguish,
Closing the void, that he can laugh and live.
But now, leave him alone,
Do not touch or comfort him,
For today, his loss is his companion
And his body a bystander.

Whisky – a short story

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George was a staid English gentleman and creature of enduring well-established routine. Every day at precisely at six-o-clock he made himself, and anyone with him, an evening cocktail, then after dinner he would serve a glass of premium Laphroaig Scotch whisky. His before dinner cocktail was a special concoction which he called a “Trinity”. Daily he lovingly mixed it to the same unchanging recipe. George was not an alcoholic and never over imbibed he was merely happy with his routine, and enjoyed his tried and true evening pick-me-ups which he often referred to as his medicine. He bought his liquor wholesale by mail and parsimoniously stored it in a converted air-raid shelter under his home.

It was behavior like this which gave his family and friends the impression that George was a man of unchangeable demeanor. Some even extended their belief in his permanence to thinking that he, frankly, didn’t care where he lived as long as it afforded elegance and permanence. The deduction about his living arrangements derived from the fact that he lived in the same house for forty years, and had watching it gently morph to accommodate the whims of his three wives. He had never imposed his will on their demands except to insist that they not move and that the garden and wine cellar remain his private domains unsullied by female presence. But suddenly, after his retirement and his third wife had divorced him, he surprised everyone and sold his solid residence to buy an historic converted school house adjacent to a church-yard. Even his dogs were surprised by his move. When asked why he chose to uproot at this stage in his life he explained that the change was to give him a new garden to design.

County Durham is a gently undulating place and the site of George’s new home was no exception. It was perched on a hill so that you entered at the main level from the front garden but exited at the rear one level above the back garden. The site enabled the inclusion of a lower level basement under the house. The only access to this lower level was from a driveway which ran parallel to house on its west side. As is so common in England the drive was also a public right-of-way and provided a short cut to an adjacent row of homes and to the street on the north side of the church yard. With little hesitation George made this undercroft his cellar and stored his liquor here in the unchanging climate of a basement cave.

George quickly settled into his new home and as soon as he had the interior arranged to his liking he began to work on the gardens. He dug flower beds and vegetable beds, excavated ponds, constructed a greenhouse, and built stone walls. As time went on the garden began to take on his personality and he enjoyed the results. He re-established his regime, made his evening Trinities and drank his after dinner Laphroaig. Life was good he thought. But then a minor inconvenience assailed his calm, when he noticed that his whiskey cellar seemed to be decreasing faster than he was drinking.

At first this ordered man thought that he had made a mistake in his records. He calmly rechecked his accounts and made a new inventory. He checked the lock to his store-room cellar. Everything was in order, he returned to his garden and plants. But about a fortnight later when he went down for another bottle of whisky he found his supply to again be short one bottle. The storeroom was otherwise untouched and had the same musty smell and damp air. He deduced that someone was helping themselves to his supply probably doing so as they passed by on the right-of-way. He called out a locksmith and changed the lock and went on with his life in the belief that his problem was solved.

But his problem was not solved and when he went down to pick up another bottle for himself he found his supply to again be short by one bottle. This brought him to two ordered conclusions. First, that his visitor was undeterred by locks and second, that he drank at about the same rate as he did.

It is interesting to note that George never, for a moment, thought that his thefts were perpetrated by a woman. He always saw him as a man, a middle-aged man such as himself, one who had a refined taste and enjoyed a good Scotch, one who was restrained and resourceful one who could pick a lock with ease. A man George could admire. He never considered the occult and never wondered whether this unknown person might have so much in common with him and that, perhaps, they might become friends, No, true to his ordered personality George’s overriding concern was to protect his liquor and to stop the attrition. He evaluated his options. A new heavier duty lock might solve the problem but he thought that it was obvious that his visitor had already proved himself undeterred by locks and so he discounted this option.

George decided to test a new theory that his visitor was not a whisky drinker but merely fenced the stolen bottles for a little extra cash. He innately disliked this theory since his Scotch as exclusive brand of Laphroaig from the island of Islay. This whisky has a distinctive smoky character combined with notes of iodine, seaweed and salt. The distinctive flavor is derived from peat which is ascribed to the water from which the whiskey is made and to the peating levels of the barley. It is an acquired taste and is, to the uninitiated, almost medicinal in flavor, but to the connoisseur a precious elixir. He went to the village off-license liquor store to check their supply of Scotch. He wandered down the aisles looking at the store’s display. He talked to the salesman at the counter where he learnt that they didn’t carry Laphroaig or, indeed, any Whiskies from Islay – never had. To save face George bought a couple of less expensive popular blended whiskies.

When George got home he placed the inexpensive whiskies on the shelf from which his attrition was occurring. He wasn’t sure if he wanted his visitor to settle for what he considered an inferior product but he needed to know. He was almost happy when he next went down for a bottle to see the two bottles still standing where he had put them but then he started for the nearest bottle of Laphroaig had disappeared. George’s thief was a Scotch connoisseur.

George went to the local police station and made a report. He suggested to the desk sergeant that an analysis of the people who used the right-of-way ought to assist in solving the mystery. The houses to the south were fairly affluent and those to the north less so. He suggested that the thief had to be someone who travelled the right-of-way on a regular basis, perhaps every day. The desk sergeant grunted and told George to stick to the facts which he meticulously transcribed into a report.

George went away disappointed and decided to do some of his own sleuthing. Over the next three weeks he reworked all his garden beds along the right-of-way and scrutinized everyone who passed by. They all smiled at him, some paused to gossip about the weather while others merely responded to his greeting with similar greetings. When the gardens were completed George was no further along in his quest and when he went down to replenish his upstairs supply he again found that one bottle had gone. So, he thought, the perpetrator is doing it at night when I am in bed or on the mornings that I do my charity work.

Finally George smiled in glee for he thought that he knew the perfect solution. He hurried to his dust-bin and retrieved his last empty Laphroaig bottle. He carefully washed it and fitted it with a funnel from his kitchen drawer. Then he placed the assembly on the floor next to the toilet. Over the next few days he gleefully watched the bottle fill with a liquid which looked like whisky. When it was full to his satisfaction he screwed on a cap and patched the top to resemble an unopened bottle.

He went down to his cellar and was happy to find that the thief had not yet returned. He placed his prepared bottle on the shelf closest to the door in the place from which the pervious bottles had disappeared. George had tremendous self-control and did not inspect his cellar for over a week, but when he did so he was delighted to find that the prepared bottle had disappeared. He called his children to share in his macabre celebration. His pleasure was so great that he afforded himself two drams of whisky that evening.

Bats – poem

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Twenty thousand pounds of insects in flight
This balmy evening, their final night.
Condemned mosquitoes dart and fly,
Tonight, is your night to die.
Your doom, the Mexican free-tail bats
Hungry to feed on you, and gnats.

Under Austin’s Congress Bridge they hang,
Preparing to catch you with open fang.
The hungry bats are two million strong,
As they, quiet, wait for a sonar gong.
Their suckling pups, they leave alone,
‘Til, parents, fed, come flying home.

The lazy sun dips to the west.
We humans, struggle for a view that’s best.
Dark waters lap on Town Lake’s shore.
We talk softly, nothing more.
We came to watch them fly away,
As they do this, and every summer day.

The cloud emerges like a whirlwind rising,
Darting, flitting, flapping, diving.
No traffic control or rules on the go,
They move fast, they are not slow.
We wonder at their extreme precision
And marvel that there’s no collision.

Tiny forms blend into night sky,
Departing, with ne’er a goodbye.
Away from the watchers into the night,
They make their way on this feeding flight.
We drive home full of awe
Marveling, at what we saw.

How the Squirrel got his tail – a short story

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This story is written in response to a challenge, from a friend, to write in the genre of another writer. Here I borrow Rudyard Kipling’s style as in “The Just So Stories”. I have read these stories many times (to my younger siblings, to my children and to my grand-children). I love Kipling’s sonorous repetitious style and hope that I come close enough for you to enjoy even if it is ostensively a children’s story.

This, oh Best Beloved is a story of the High and Far off times when the earth was young and the animals were new and learning how to live with one another. In the very middle of those times there were three creatures living on the banks of the clear Pedernales. They looked alike with most beautiful soft brown fur, tiny beady eyes and tails of no memorable quality. Don’t forget their tails of no memorable quality, oh Best Beloved. Their names were Rat, Rabbit and Squirrel; and they quarreled incessantly, without pause, day and night.

They quarreled on the banks of the clear Pedernales. They quarreled in the daytime. They quarreled at night. They quarreled over dinner, they quarreled when it rained, they quarreled when the sun shone, and they quarreled when nothing much was happening. Their incessant quarrel was so raucous that they disturbed the peace and equanimity of the region. The other inhabitants could get no sleep, and so they sent an urgent message to the Great Arbiter of fairness and truth to visit them to settle things once and for all.

When he received the message the Great Arbiter finished his business at hand and made haste to the banks of the clear Pedernales. When he landed he heard the cross voices of the incessantly quarrelsome three arguing without pause. The Great Arbiter set up court in a hollow under a pecan tree in a field of bluebonnets close to the banks of the clear Pedernales. He called Rat, Rabbit, and Squirrel before him and chided them for their incessant quarreling without pause day and night. He told them that quarreling is unproductive and destroys the natural harmony. They answered, all speaking at once, making such a raucous noise that the Great Arbiter twisted his turquoise ring of power and temporarily tied their tongues.

He called upon Rat to speak. Rat spoke in his squeaky voice.

“Oh, Great Arbiter of fairness and truth,” for that is how all creatures must address the Great Arbiter, “in the beginning you instructed me to live with the humans and to eat what they eat. But Squirrel explained to me that my fur is too light, and I cannot hide, and so I hunt in the fields. This upsets Rabbit and Squirrel and we quarrel.”

The Great Arbiter twisted his turquoise ring of power and spoke, “From henceforth your fur shall be black, and you shall skulk among human dwellings. As a reminder your tail, of no memorable quality, shall become long and thin. Let your new tail be a reminder to you to desist from quarreling for now and forever. As the Great Arbiter spoke, Rat’s fur darkened and his tail, of no memorable quality, grew longer and longer until he fled from the presence of the Great Arbiter and hid in a little hole under the Man’s house.

The Great Arbiter called upon Rabbit to speak. The Rabbit spoke in his soft voice.

“Oh, Great Arbiter of fairness and truth, in the beginning you instructed me to live in the fields and eat the produce of the fields; but Squirrel points out that there is much danger out there. I am continually frightened, and so I stay close to the humans, and this leads to quarrelling with Rat and Squirrel.”

The Great Arbiter twisted his turquoise ring of power and spoke, “From henceforth your ears shall be long to capture distant sounds, and your eyes large to see danger, and, as a reminder not to quarrel, your tail, of no memorable quality, shall become small, white, and fluffy. Let your new tail be a reminder to you to desist from quarreling for now and forever.” As the Great Arbiter spoke Rabbit’s ears and eyes grew larger and larger and his tail, of no memorable quality, turned into a fluffy white appendage at which point he fled from the presence of the Great Arbiter and hid in a hole under the roots of a nearby pecan tree.

The Great Arbiter called upon Squirrel to speak. Squirrel spoke in his clicking tones.

“Oh, Great Arbiter of fairness and truth, in the beginning you instructed me to live above the ground and to eat what I found in the trees. But then Man came along and gave me additional instruction when he named me Quarrel. I’ve done my best egging on Rat and Rabbit and contributing what I could.”

The Great Arbiter twisted his turquoise ring of power and spoke, “Oh, thou of little sense, your name is Squirrel, not Quarrel. From henceforth your eyes shall be large so that you do not see in Rat’s domain and your stomach shall be changed so that you cannot steal from Rabbit. You must remember that your name is Squirrel for now and forever. As the Great Arbiter spoke the Squirrel’s eyes grew larger and larger and he felt his stomach churning into its new configuration, but he did not flee from the presence of the Great Arbiter.

Squirrel spoke again, “Oh, Great Arbiter why didn’t you replace my tail, of no memorable quality, as you did with Rat and Rabbit?” Now, oh, Best Beloved, you know why you were not to forget the tails of no memorable quality.

The Great Arbiter spoke again, “I do not award foolishness.” But Squirrel was unabashed and persisted. “Oh, Great Arbiter, it was not my fault that Man mumbles. Replace my tail, of no memorable quality, so that I may redeem myself and undo the bad publicity that the name of Quarrel has given to me.” The Great Arbiter smiled upon Squirrel and twisted his turquoise ring of power. “So let it be; but, to remind you to be respectful, I give man permission to seek out your tail to make paintbrushes for his art for now and forever.

Squirrel looked down at his new tail and liked what he saw, but he still didn’t flee from the presence of the Great Arbiter. Instead he fluffed his new tail over his head and made himself as attractive as possible. “Oh, Great Arbiter of fairness and truth, if Man is permitted to steal my tail hair, and I am to live in trees give me the ability to descend face first, so that I can protect my tail.”

At this request the Great Arbiter slapped his sides, laughed and twisted his turquoise ring of power. “So let it be that you can descend trees face first to protect your tail; but always remember that your tail is your talisman for good public relations, and a reminder that your name is Squirrel, and quarreling is forbidden for now and forever.”

There are times, oh Best Beloved, when the Squirrel forgets his name and then he chatters in the trees stamping his feet and making a loud noise, but this is only when he is provoked and becomes forgetful. When he is reminded that his name is Squirrel, he fluffs his tail and takes up his public cuddly image which serves him well now and forever.

Time honored memories – a poem

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A couple of years ago Dan and I studied Eliot’s “The Four Quartets”. I emerged with a sense of wonder at his genius, even if normal persons, such as I, have a hard time comprehending his innuendo and references. He often focuses on time which inspired me to wait a while and then to put my thoughts on the same topic into a poem. I hope that it also gets you thinking.

Time present does not exist.
In the blink of a nano second,
It slips through the veil of now,
To be lost in the past.
In its passage it leaves
No tag, no taste, no touch,
No smell, no color, no light,
Nothing, except perchance, a memory.

The future we live,
And relive. Plan and seek,
It does not exist. It is
A figment of our expectation
To lurk forever undefined
It fills us with hopes, fears, excitement,
Anticipation, but no regrets for
Regrets are the stamp of the past

The past is select iotas of time.
To live, and relive. A few moments,
Kept in our temporal minds.
Not held for eternity,
Fleetingly resurfacing in our present,
Here lurk our regrets and sorrows
Mingled with joys and pleasures,
All lost, perhaps, when we die.

Some past chose us
Lee Harvey Oswald kills JFK
And the world acquires a memory
That individual moment when the shots rang
Yuri Gagarin, man in Space, whirls weightless,
Man’s “one small step” indelible on
World vision, Neil Armstrong takes his “giant leap”
Planet and moon one in time.

Other remnants of individual past
Horded, nourished, retrieved
Slip, invited, or not,
Into the mind’s present.
A marriage, a trip, a view,
A regrettable mistake,
Chocolate birthday cake
And Proust’s petit Madeleine.

Fifty years ago I selected
An obscure moment
To remember for eternity
Walking an ugly lane
I said “this moment is worthless
And yet, I choose to remember it”
Undistinguished, cherished
Thrust out of that present into the future,

And recall I still do:
The dirty ground, the ruts and stones,
The grey sky, the high hedges, the cold spring air,
My satchel, my isolation,
My knowledge that this moment,
Is a piece of the past,
My unimportant snippet of time,
Only, and always, mine.

The Wreck of the Forfarshire – a short story

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I missed Eric Alagan’s http://ericalagan.net/ challenge of the Lighthouse but when I read his “Lighthouse” postings the story of Grace Darling came to mind. The story is already immortalized by paintings, in particular one by Thomas Brooks in which she is shown with wind-swept hair at the oars of a tiny boat http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/grace-darling-18151842-57942 She is also dedicated in a poem penned by William Wordsworth http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww966.html These immortalizing dedications confirm the image and compel me to tell the tale to those of you who may be unfamiliar with it. I’ve kept it historically accurate while giving it a twist of my own. I hope that you enjoy it.

In 1838 the luxury Forfarshire, a two-year old passenger steamship, was making regular voyages along the east coast of the United Kingdom between Hull, Yorkshire and Dundee, Scotland. In good weather it was a pleasant, even luxurious trip, much preferable to the three hundred and thirty mile land journey by stage coach. On September 7th she was heading north when she was beset by a storm with strong winds and heavy swell which put pressure on an already weakened boiler. The boiler sprang a leak and the engines had to be turned off. This action left the ship adrift, without power, in lethal North Sea weather.

At this point Captain Humble decided to seek shelter at the Farne Island bird sanctuary. These are a group of rocky protrusions and small islands 1 ½ to 4 ¾ miles off the coast of Northumberland. Their treacherous rocks are a menace to shipping and so they are peppered with lighthouses but are otherwise an inhabited bird sanctuary. The outermost islands are Big Harcar and Longstone. The floundering ship saw the Longstone lighthouse, but, as it was unable to steer, hit rocky Big Harcar about a mile away from the lighthouse. The impact was so hard that the Forfarshire slowly split into two and sank. In almost ignominious haste, eight crew members and one passenger managed to escape in a lifeboat leaving the other fifty three on board to the fate of the storm. Nine of those left on deck managed to jump off the sinking ship onto the rock which they had hit. The rest of those onboard, including Captain Humble and his wife, went down with the ship.

In the early hours that morning William Darling, the Longstone lighthouse keeper was woken by his favorite daughter Grace. She shook his body violently and talked in excited tones raising her voice to be heard above the noise of the storm.

“Father, father, there is a ship on Big Harcar. I saw it in the lightning.”

“Eh, what?” he grunted as he emerged from sleep and looked into her anxious face. “Now, be calm my poppet, be calm.” He always used his pet endearment of “poppet” when he spoke to her even though, at twenty-two, she was a gown woman. He lovingly put his arm around her. He could see her agitation increasing as she brushed away tears and spoke, “It’s not a dream there is a wreck. It is awful out there – I know that people are dying. We must help. Please…..” She looked directly into his eyes.

William could never say no to Grace. He arose and followed her. She was a homely girl and as he followed he watched her form silhouetted by her candle. The flickering light combined with his love made her appear ethereal, almost ghostly. They climbed the lighthouse tower to her room and he looked through her telescope. Yes, when the lightning flashed you could see what looked like parts of a ship on the rock. He placated her in a soothing voice, “There is nothing we can do until dawn. We must wait until dawn.”

“But now father, now?” she questioned.

“Now?” he repeated her question as he thought. “Now all we can do is wait for dawn. We can’t do anything in the dark. You watch here and I shall go up to the lantern room to make sure that everything is operational.”

William climbed up the final flight. Even when the elements raged he felt secure in this lonely structure and loved his job as lighthouse keeper. In1826 he had been promoted from assistant on Brownsman Island, one of the inner Farne Islands, to this, his own lighthouse. He was happy to live here with his wife Thomasin, two youngest children, Grace and her younger brother and, of course, the birds.

He and Grace loved the birds, sometimes they would take a father-daughter day off and board their coble and go fishing. The coble is a twenty-one foot open fishing boat designed for four. It has a flat bottom and high bow. The traditional design was developed to cope with the stormy weather and choppy North Sea. Although ostensively fishing, they generally spent most of their day together bird watching and enjoying another’s presence. The tiny Islands house thousands of guillemots, puffins, eider ducks and some twenty-two regular bird types in the almost three hundred types which have been spotted over the years.

When dawn came at 7:00 am William and Grace could distinctly see moving human forms on Big Harcar. William quickly assessed that the weather was too threatening for a lifeboat to make it from Seahouses some five miles off. He instinctively knew that the lives of those persons on Harcar were at his mercy. The storm terrified him and the thought of braving it in a little coble made him sick with alarm. Grace was calm and appeared indifferent for their own safety.

“We must go. We must go now.” She said, as her voice rose in anxious concern.

William found the “we” ominous. His son was visiting on shore and his wife much too frail and so he knew that the ‘we’ was he and Grace. While he didn’t want to expose his daughter to such danger he was realistic enough to know that he couldn’t manage the coble alone. He knew his daughter well; knew that she would never forgive him if they didn’t attempt a rescue. Grace detected his innermost thoughts.

“I can row. I row well. I row mother over to visit my sister all the time. I am strong we must do this.”

William acquiesced and they packed the coble with blankets, said goodbye to Thomasin who, twelve years older than William at sixty-five was so frail and distort, and upset by the danger which they were about to face, that she fainted as they left. They rowed hard taking a circuitous route, making the one mile trip longer as they attempted to gain some shelter from the islands. When they arrived they found nine people and three dead bodies on Big Harcar. William jumped onto the rock to assess whom they should transport. There was no dissention among the shivering survivors who quickly determined that Mrs. Dawson, the only woman in their midst should be the first to board the coble. She held her two dead children. It took some persuading to get her to release their bodies. Soon William, Grace, Mrs. Dawson and four others, two of whom were injured, were on their way back to the lighthouse. Upon arrival William the two uninjured rescued crew members went back a second time to bring the remaining four survivors back to safety.

During a later lull in the storm a crew of seven fishermen, including William’s youngest son William Brooks Darling set out in a lifeboat from Seahouses and made it to the shipwreck to find dead bodies and debris. By then the weather had worsened further and so they also sought safety in the lighthouse. This made nineteen people in the lighthouse.

For the next three days the nineteen made do together. Grace gave her bed to the grieving Mrs. Dawson. William empathized with her grief – to lose one child was bad enough but to lose two was unthinkable. He discovered that they were a boy and girl of five and seven. As he watched her silent weeping he thought how grateful he was that Grace was safe. He privately asked himself how he could have allowed her to risk her life, unable to conceptualize how he would have reacted if he had lost her. The three days were hard for they had few clothes and what they did have were wet. William watched his darling daughter accept a woman’s role working, with mild assistance from her mother, to tend to the sick and attempt to feed the crowd.

After the storm abated and everyone left William expected their lives on Longstone to return to normal. Here he was sadly mistaken for, after a brief witch-hunt focusing on the abandoning of the ship by eight crew members in the only lifeboat launched, the press found a more compelling story in the heroic rescue by a young woman of twenty-two. The nation went wild with admiration for their Grace Darling as they visualized how she had willingly braved the swell, wind and tempestuous North Sea storm to affect the rescue of the Forfarshire survivors.

Overnight Grace Darling’s name was on every tongue. Initially William endorsed Grace’s fame: he even downplayed his role in the rescue. Queen Victoria, the nation’s young queen of nineteen, sent a gift of £50, equivalent to about a third of William’s annual salary. They were both awarded several medals, including an honorary silver medal by the Glasgow Humane Society, silver Medals for Gallantry from the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, and gold medals from the Royal Humane Society. Grace’s fame was such that everyone wanted to become involved as exemplified by The Duke of Northumberland creating a charitable “moderate annuity” for them.

The publicity and accolades might have been fine had Grace been different but William soon realized that she hated notoriety. He saw that being a celebrity made his quiet daughter sick and nervous. But by then he could do nothing to stem the tide, nothing to protect her. The Longstone lighthouse was no longer a retreat, twelve different artists made it there to paint her portrait. Wordsworth and many others wrote poems singing her praises. One poem called her the “Grace of Womanhood and Darling of Mankind.”

William watched her fill requests for locks of her hair until she barely had any left on her head. He read some of her replies – her words ringing in his head reflecting her modesty and common sense, affirming and reaffirming his love. “You requested me to let you know whether I felt pleasure to be out in a rough sea,” she wrote, “which I can assure you there is none…….I have had occasion to be in the boat with my Father for want of better help, but never at the saving of lives before, and I pray God may never be again.”

Sometimes Grace would beg William to restore the peace they had known before the Forfarshire. In response he would take her out in the coble and they would spend the day bird-watching. One of their favorite places was a spot on one of the islands where they could watch the puffins with their penguin –like demeanor and red mating beaks. Grace could sit for hours on the short sea grass and watch them bustling in and out of their burrows and diving into the ocean. Her other pleasure was to sit in the boat while it bobbed up and down in front of one of the craggy islands where the guillemots swarmed in their thousands. Here the bird colony became an organism in its own right and they would watch the birds nudging each other on and off the rocks. One got the impression that there were so many of them that when one landed another fell off to dive headlong into the foamy seas.

Despite their father daughter trips Grace’s decline continued. In April 1842 she rowed to Bamburgh to visit her sister, another of her great pleasures. Shortly after her return to Longstone she fell ill. She died of tuberculosis in her father’s arms on October 20th, 1842, four years after the wreck of the Forfarshire – and a few days short of her twenty-sixth birthday.

William, now fifty-seven, never recovered from Grace’s death. He knew Mrs. Dawson’s anguish – knew how empty life could become. He lived on with his sadness for another twenty-three years. Often he would take his regrets and anguish out in the coble and shout questions into the wind.

“Why didn’t I protect her better? Why didn’t I shield her from the publicity?”

“Why did the Forfarshire have to come? Couldn’t I have hidden Grace’s telescope and saved her?”

In his heart William knew that what he had done was right and so after his outbursts he would calm down. Then he would go and lie among the puffins or linger before the guillemots. In the solitude of the birds, he could feel her essence fondling his heart calmly assuaging his regrets to give him peace. It was a hermit’s or lighthouse keeper’s peace, the peace of solitude and communion with something greater than one man’s life.