Torsade Literary Space The Folly: sixth arc
Danger rises. The spirit seekers, self-possessed (this always preferable) when dealing with the dead, are rattled by the assassin Falco. Those who hired him have failed to estimate him to his own valuation. And Falco, veteran of WWI’s atrocities, knows it, that he cannot alter this — that what the living are meant to have is dead within him, though among the living he walks. He will, by stacking bodies, make the great men who begin wars hear him. So he intends.
Our heroes hope for a different outcome.
Newtons
Who Owns This House
Castello dei Banditti
Until the Last’s Returning
The Epistles
Llewellyn at Home
Mince No Words
A Body Surfaces
And the Other
Silent As the Grave
A Failure of Intelligence
Dark Humour
Newtons
(one)
A handful of possible
A handful of…reasonable
A handful…well…
Of fair, say…
Ways you could explain
Had done for the Newtons
Baffled round the dire smell, hinting, not insisting…
Possible, reasonable, fair…why, then, likelihood?
(But just perhaps…and coming down to it…) a sort of cotton-wool
Like if it was in a poem, it might be
Said…neither mister nor missus ever been
But cautious-minded folk, quiet-living…married very young
At war’s end, Adamson, buying up property went
And left her Lem his man-in-charge
Nell Newton to herself don’t mind
The saying of a plain thing…Lem’s uncle is an awful tartar
Lem’s uncle goes and puts the rents up
Says it’s hard times, says let them try
They bloody well won’t, doing better
But they might…
Just this past spring, and just to show…
If Adamson, beside himself, should force the door
(…show no want of willingness to do a Newton’s part)
There was, across the way, that suicide
And wasn’t it Lem ran to fetch the corner bobby?
The sight of it, on the flocking, on the damask…
And wasn’t it Nell sat with old Mrs. Combles…?
And wasn’t it Adamson himself
Said, a month ago, ‘See to those mousetraps, Nelly! What a fug!
Tell me you can’t keep a lodger in that room upstairs…!’
She’d felt giddy, mice
Mice, Lem, she’d said to him, suppose it only is?
Later, they’d allowed it might be sausage
And sauerkraut and such…who knew?
With them foreign types?
Yes…there’d been another trouble
Krug’s window could be seen to crawl with flies
Who Owns This House
(two)
This room, its walls are painted yellow
They call it that, the Yellow Room
The corner cabinet…no plane of it
Quite fits, the hinges pull
My dear, you smile, but I feel the cabinet matters
And he will not have sold it
It wishes to remain
Who owns this house?
I think he is aged thirty, hardly more
He has come to a place in the mountains, flat, flat to despair
Rough stones, as bad for cattle as for the plough
And spare infertile earth
Poor, never visitors enough
To sell to
But his own home is poor
If he sleeps…his name must be Devon or Desmond…
In the room downstairs
He finds he can sleep
But the closet…
The privy, yes…Americans say so
He dreads to visit in the night
No night has been spent in the Yellow Room
Unused but in a time of typhus
One, and then another, three
Carried to the bedstead, borne away
A wasted hand flings free
To limpet on, with panicked strength
Still to the ill-at-ease attendant
Plucking and prying and making rearwards
These words, this pleading, a fevered vision
But the mourning, mourning face
Do I wait for you
Do you wait for me
The invalid hears and straining from the pillow sees
A figure white-clad coffined below the glass
Do I wait for you, O Love, O Death
Do you wait for me
Castello dei Banditi
(three)
Companions among Toscana’s dead
Dead of centuries whose tombs
Are plundered of their gold, but of their masonry
too, sledged by quarriers shaping chamber walls
Cornerstones re-founding Christian halls
Those seats of state where patriarchs and queens
Departed granted favour yet, or sought-for pardon
Mothers, fathers, benign to sorrowing offspring
Voices raised whose hailings, to the Contessa di Barucchi
Come in a brightening her eyes have been bequeathed
the gift to see
She can, she has, seen yellow walls in black and white
She puts aside the photograph
‘That,’ her visitor says, ‘is quite astonishing, Desmond, I mean…
‘Fellow’s name. Spot on.’
She ignores this hesitant apologetic tone
‘Because I take an interest in your young man, I forgive you’
‘Forgive…what have I done?’ Suddenly ill at ease
She has sussed him out, or her spirits have
Well…why suppose? Rather, why doubt
This legendary woman
Has close and potent counsel of strong energies
Figures of storied courts from times predating Rome
‘And so…I shall write and say, to our client—’
‘You will take my dictation, write to him what I tell you.’
Austere. She forgives but she does not…and that of course
is because he continues lying. Truly, he can’t say why…
Truly
‘Signora Contessa, I’ve toyed with these mysteries. I confess I have
not properly credited, revered…yes, revered, I think I ought to say, the…
the antiquity. The Folly is not so holy a place as the Castello dei Banditi.
I come, they have told you, your companions,
or you suspect as much, to beg a refuge for…perhaps
For a newly banished one. Or two…
Two, I should say, though I don’t know what Fiona will do.’
Until the Last’s Returning
(four)
He waits along the quay, mood agity, wandered well away
From sheltered benches where a better class
Than Dougal counts himself…city sorts, on holiday
Able to have loose ends and weekends to their lives
Booked today not forever, but for the harbour tour
Bide their shaded skin below the awning until the last’s returning
Evil is on his mind, an utter oddity
And yet he is willing to allow philosophy
Of every stripe and taste, few things more expanding to the mind
Than being jilted by a ghost
And it’s true, isn’t it?
Fiona…? He would like to ask
Wennie seems well, an ordinary lad
‘Your father, son, and your mother…’
Dougal crouching, blinking, too late stricken by the thought
He has never given such a speech
‘Oh, Dad. He’s dead, I know. But Mother…’
The child pats the mustard seed pendant
The only thing Fiona has so far managed, the bestowing of it
‘Well, aye, you must think of her that way, as being with you always’
Fiona, do we think of it, somewhere, in agonies
This minute I step round, and make back towards you
A footfall’s lapse, and someone perishes
This minute I check my watch
And tell myself, she’s fine, she’s safe
The boy is fine, he’s safe
Conflagrations and quakes are at this minute taking place
Ligurian waters lap, they wink and nod
The killer Falco hasn’t cause to hunt abroad
Only our friends at home
Are stalked
The Epistles
(five)
The Contessa writes to the chapters of the Fellowship
Prophecies her companions unveil in a language familiar
To followers of readings and summonings, to seekers
Who divine a card’s turning, hear the undercurrent’s drumming
Malice and menace…she hopes that her warnings are timely
For the Clock cycles ever, and each sound uttered
By human voice, each juddering of continents
When tides and magmas rise, each engine of wind that shrieks
Into cyclones of fire consuming war-torn cities
Floats on its ethereal wave, a repeating chime, until some raft
Of outsized matter impedes the way, and a thousand thousand
Souls’ cries are to the attuned made audible
She transcribes them
Her eyes see, as she spins her globe, and her book of maps she pages
the celluloid sheen yellow over, like a lamp superheating its shade
My friends of Seattle
Your numbers are seven and nine, be concerned for falling accidents
Green and gold the colours that correspond, hidden decay your enemy
Your unlucky sign is the pyramid
My friends of Marseille
To Etruria was known your ancient name
Your numbers are 5 and 4, be concerned for clay
Aqua and orange the colours that correspond, heavy rains your enemy
Your unlucky sign is the egg
My friends of Catania
Your numbers are three and one, be concerned for the knife
Pink and bone are the colours that correspond, pride your enemy
Your unlucky sign is the falling star
My friends of Somerset
The blood of sacrifice yet stains your earth
Old things dwell there
Your numbers are two and two, be concerned for the falcon
The blue of indigo, and indigo again, are the colours that correspond
Persuasion your enemy
Your unlucky sign is the axe head
Llewellyn at Home
(six)
Colonel Llewellyn keeps visitors to Chequerstone, his private home
In refrigeration, in an odd three-cornered chamber, the host in surmise…
(today, however, he is guest, and arguably self-invited)
But, for troubling a busy man, thus to take what he gets—
He has time. Ages of things, their adaptations, his avocation
Landscapes change…why suppose
The first to raise what might have been a hut…more burrow
roofed in turfen shingles, would keep stock
Ancient marshlands be employed at all, for pasturing, and…
(inconsequential thought) there is a rumour of mock-sheep
fleeces wrapped on armatures, dotted on hillsides
(foxholes under, men with glasses staring out to sea…)
But this cold little room, with its fog-coloured light
Ingeniously linking a closed open porch, to the Tudor front
The repressive ugliness of utility, bouts of wealth and continuity
Speak rootedly, in truculence. The dead here are pleased to remain
And not liking Llewellyn…not having met him, but—
Instinct’s counsel counts for much. The host smiles, taking care…
as though the Meissen ballerina
on the mantelpiece had charmed his eye
…to rise and cross to her contemplation
He smiles again, casts ethereal communication
outbound, in the style of an estate agent, directions
from the Folly to Chequerstone
‘…eminently suitable to your needs…’
Honeymooners cottage, it may be
Says Llewellyn, ‘Just behind you is a shelf of books.
It always entertains me, the way that visitors will mooch about
gazing through windows or fingering one’s bric-à-brac,
but are reluctant to seize upon a thing to read.’
‘How do you do, sir,’ the host says, replacing the figurine
Mince No Words
(seven)
Business is to be got to…Trout, though he’d offered pretext
Possesses so little of personal quality
While a monocled eye, unsuffering of fools, peers so expectant
The host shrugs away his first, introductory amblings
Though ahead he forages as much as forges…
‘You know, of course, that we are a Spiritualist circle
at the Folly, that Mrs. Tattersby…ahem…however’
It had looked to him as though Llewellyn thought to speak
‘Mrs. Tattersby, I say, is curiously a connexion of Atherleigh
She has gone abroad…’
A silence
‘Follow me to my library.’
An upstairs room well-heated, a view of the sea
Two armchairs in conversation placed to catch salt draughts
from the balcony. ‘Now we’ll mince no words,’ the colonel says
‘You mention Atherleigh. For a reason. I’ll have it.’
Curiously, the host rebukes himself
The very spot I put the fatal foot
No help. Truth the recommended thing, and none to tell
Falco’s name delivered them from the dead man Krug.
‘I should waste your time making pretence—
Llewellyn’s eye says, late for that
‘Fiona is a private woman, but these events
Are…were…have been, rather spectacular…
She finds the boy Leslie given into her care
I believe, in fact, they call him Wennie…from his second name…’
‘They may call him as they like, no doubt. Hardly to do with me.
Sir, you have said nothing to the point.
I suspect you are less the simpleton than you make out.’
Why yes. Why no. Never mind.
The point is a gamble, a desperate toss
Or not. Dare it…dare it…
What will they do, clap you in the stocks?
‘I don’t know the fellow’s Christian name…’
A Body Surfaces
(seven)
Adamson discovers that a lifetime of choler
Well-trodden ways from whiffs of cheek and bother
To the full-blown stack of outrage
Sackings, threats of action
Can’t well prepare one for enormity akin
To a magazine’s explosion
‘No one at home! No one at home!
How can you mean it?’
Mrs. Combles follows, grumbling
Try doing a good turn…
Of course she doesn’t mean it, if the facts of the case
Are to be laid at her blameless door
What use to say they’ve scarpered, Lem and Nell
That done, the only lodger done the same
As always sitting days in her front parlour
She sees things
She no longer has a mind to tell
Adamson climbs the stairs, and the smell
Of neglected duty churns his stomach less
Unknown to him, or in all the world unsuspected…
Best way of putting it, is Lem’s by ladder
Prying of the window up and fixing it, wide
Near crossing his eyes to keep from seeing in
Krug, where for these weeks he’s been, lies airing
Another moment though, when amazed it should be so
Adamson turns the knob, finding the room unlocked
A blackened face with matter in its sockets
Seems to convey (in dream or echo)
that least expected
Thank you
And the Other
(eight)
A cyclist, and the lady whom
with the long game of a fellow christened Miles
He woos, though steadfast in pretence
Of interest, mutual, in a European kite
Thought, most rarely, according to the guides
To have blown across the Channel
On prevailing winds
(And those they manufacture over there, in this year of 1934
suggest a bird uprisen on a popular tide
feathered in dark threat, with a savagery of talon)
Again they pass the culvert and again their ease
Of conversation on themes reliable for mixing passion
with a comforting lack of awakening, romantic
Falters, fades, and dies
‘There is that,’ says Maura, to her hobbyist chum
The bundle, the two climbing down, impelled by urge
Still all unwilling, to touch, or draw the cover clear…
Has shrunk. Through a summer and now an autumn’s week
the shape by inches has unfleshed itself, if one dared so
To speak…
Almost the bundle has acquired a skeletal shape
Miles and Maura, much like Lem and Nell
fear they’ve left a duty unperformed
Awkward, if it were some bright-eyed boater
Had noted this become-routine behaviour
‘Hallo!’
They find themselves splashed up to
by an angler. As it happens, he is Sir Rory Tebbs,
local magistrate. He squints and ducks his head
in curious fashion, and heartily he says:
‘Your young eyes, no doubt, can make it out
if that…object…is only rubbish…
I’d passed it by a time or two, I do confess.’
‘Why,’ Miles observes, ‘Miss Williams and I
being so caught up with our birds…
I must admit, myself, I’d scarcely noticed…that.
Do you suppose, sir, it would do,
for one of us to take a look…?’
Silent As the Grave
(nine)
Llewellyn affords to himself some feeling of offence
Brought on by the pressures of exigency, his given consent
And of necessity, in the person of Mission Director
a title found in files, coded by initials MD
buried in the secretest of offices under the blandest street
of Whitehall
these, by this, bomb-proofed, but in event of disaster, TBB
Never, any of it, amongst associates spoken aloud
At sunset, at the Brigands’ Rock
Which boasts a hollow near the top
Said to fit the boots of Captain Jack
A Bristol pirate and highwayman
(and not the many others of that name)
The colleagues meet
The vantage is indeed supreme
No traveller along the road can pass unseen
This whole affair of Atherleigh
has left the few who know the truth
Outplayed.
They watch the Germans carefully
Their chap, who’d winkled all the story
of Agnes, had befriended Krug…just enough
For a chat each day, stopping after his Zeitung
‘Cove’s really nothing. They don’t know either where the woman
has gone. And that little item Atherleigh was meant to pass on…’
A pffft, expressed with hand and lips…
‘Krug’ (chuckle) ‘has himself so much anxiety, poor lad.
He’ll be recalled. It can’t be helped.’
Your full-assimilated London Kraut, no doubt
is worst, and another, now, they’ll have to run to earth
All this speaks not to the confounding, blasphemous cheek
with which Llewellyn must endure
A Failure of Intelligence
(ten)
You’re new
We have gone wrong in this affair, and it is not entirely
a fault of inexperience, however
it does appear you’ve tipped into error. I should like
to call attention to this failing
An operative must cultivate his own informants
He is expected to. He will have types of things…
You will. That you wish to know about the subject.
You are in charge and are the meter of reward
No, I don’t mean the measure
I mean it’s you pays out…or doesn’t, you know.
As to certain foibles you are trained to keep a weather eye
The deadly sins
pride, greed, envy
no joke in our sort of business
yet readily you slide into the trap
Your man begins to order you about
You meet him in the usual way, but you forget
He mentions ‘something good’ just come upon
your career feels in the doldrums, nothing’s on
Or hell on every other front is breaking loose
while your own stand sits empty of custom
easy to fear you’ll be withdrawn and sent
to the north of Scotland
‘If I may…’
The colonel greets interruption…rather not interruption,
as he’d fallen silent—but what he’d very much like to call
Insubordination. With a silence frostier, prolonged
towards encouraging self-reflection, which he doubts will come
They are all Oxford chaps in this new branch
No army private would have dared
To speak of all words, those three
In answer to a superior officer
Dark Humour
(eleven)
But, if I may, the chap…who calls himself Peters
(He notes Llewellyn find in this no subtle Hunnish wit.
Peters in manner terribly Hansel, a-dropping of his breadcrumbs…
Another glance…no. The new man has been guilty of imitating Peters
at his club. He knows very well what is not done. He fears very much
Llewellyn has cottoned on…)
‘Truly. A fairly harmless case
of self-importance. He has left England because he can.
No, sir…I have thought to trace his movements.’
‘Worked at it, have you?’
‘Er…’
‘Let the matter occupy your time?’
The police had got in first, mostly keeping crowds off
Foul play, under some object of uniform…
…breadth…and one must well suppose, weight…
Ribs crushed to suffocation…
Falco, a man who signs his work in this way
Krug having acquired an attachment to the linens
part-mummified (‘not going anywhere’—not so funny now, is it?)
Not an exit left unguarded
Upper windows, though
This of course what the Germans who had done it
(By what means? By what means?)
Aimed at. To make clowns of Scotland Yard.
Why the stains and bits of Krug
The ankle and the foot of Krug
Were placed to suggest a corpse could rise
Make judgments of its own, elude the force
Make off, before the mortuary van arrived
At the cost of an arm (below the elbow)
Used to smash the window glass
See Folly page for full series
Allied Forces