Fairfax
House
I haven't
yet been back
as I
told my diary I would the day after
my
trip twenty-three years ago
on a
Friday morning in September.
I paid
the entrance fee with a cheque,
borrowed
a calculator to work out
my
remaining balance, to write it
on the
stub. There was a tour
that
day - only a few of us
so we
were allowed to walk up
the
great staircase. I had lunch
at the
Bar Convent, not in
the
red saloon where a woman asked
'What
about the ladies?' when
the
guide explained how a gent
full
of booze would relieve himself
behind
a screen. I don't remember
his
reply, nor what I did in the afternoon,
only
that I saw West Side Story
that
night at the Grand Opera House.
I
bought nothing from the gift shop,
though
since then I've gone in there
many
times, once got a birthday card
for my
aunt of a purple emperor butterfly.
Unexpected
Things
I
never thought I'd get the job
with
the Mothers' Union, and I didn’t.
I interviewed
well but failed the test.
Nor
did I think I'd see my old
piano
teacher at King's Cross
as I
paid £1.20 for a tube ticket.
She
must have been on the same train
going
down. The last thing I expected
to
happen walking back from
Mary
Summer House to the Underground
was
that as I passed an office door
a lady
I'd been at college with in Wales
would
step out. I'd forgotten her name
and
she mine, but naturally we talked.
It
turned out she came from Yorkshire too.
I
hadn’t expected to meet her again,
and
never have done since.
But
what I least imagined then
was
that except for Heathrow Airport
it
would be more than twenty years
before
I would be back.
Your
Seven Years in Dulverton
I can
see why you moved
from
Rochdale to Dartmouth,
but
why from there to Dulverton
after
a quarter of a century?
In
Somerset for one thing,
and
inland. Why not Porlock,
Lynton
or Lynmouth?
The
sound of seagulls perhaps.
Dad
and I didn’t look for your house
the
day we walked there from Bampton.
It
can’t have been far from the border.
We
didn’t have the name or address
of
where you’d spent seven years
before
going back to Devon
where
we little knew we were to see you
next
day at Willow Dene.
Had we
known that I’d have bought you
a box
of Milk Tray too,
instead
of just one for your daughter
who’d
arranged it, as she announced
over
lunch at Meadowsweet.
Middleham
Till
today it was a place to pass through
en
route for Richmond or Aysgarth.
Now we
miss the castle and car park,
slowing
down for horses. Reaching moorland
never
seen we turn round in a layby
with a
memorial to Dante in a dry stone wall -
the
racehorse not the poet. The castle’s closed
for
Christmas but we find a walk for another time,
gaze
in the window of Ann’s Antiques, also shut.
More
horses trot down the hill,
their
riders say hello. The General Stores
don’t
look a patch on Campbell’s of Leyburn,
so on
we head there for some cheese,
to
Hewson’s for cards, in time to see
a
steam train pull in as we drive away.
I will
come back on the bus one day.
Housing
Maintenance, Repairs Section
My
first office - an attic
in
Duncombe Place with a view
from a
dormer window
down
Blake Street towards Betty's.
At
fifteen I wanted that fortnight
not to
end. Coffee whenever
I
chose, the shops at lunchtime,
drives
to suburbs I didn't know
existed,
a walk to a hidden garden
in the
city centre. And once
tea
and biscuits in an old couple's
ground
floor flat. Like Christmas
or the
holidays, it ended,
but
the attic's still there, above
what's
now an antique centre.
The
view will still be there too,
hardly
changed in twenty-seven years,
but not the same people to see it.
Peter J Donnelly
lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in
English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales
Lampeter. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies, was
a joint runner up in the Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition in 2020 and came
second in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021. His first full
length collection Solving the Puzzle was published in 2023 by Alien
Buddha Press, as was his chapbook The Second of August.
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