How did it come to be -
The item we are?
Did my ear pick out your voice,
Floating free and flutey?
Did I mark you out from the chorus?
Truly I learned more than maths That day,
Sitting, like Hercules, among you girls,
Listening to the banter,
as you Plotted graphs of rising heat.
Female interest peaked before my entrance,
"There's a new boy coming today."
"Great! I hope he's nice."
Then the sound of my voice.
Anticipation sagged
No dulcet baritone.
But a nasal Glasgow reed,
"Like a rubber duck," they said.
But I was deaf to that,
My ears only for the classroom chat,
The feigned attention girls gave
To the subject then in hand.
One name I caught,
Or it caught me,
"Redpath,"
A promise here, perhaps,
Of sweetheart strolls through rosy bowers,
The primrose path that beckoned ardent youth.
A tale of two cities, ours was:
Glasgow, facing west,
Viewing America through the silver screen.
A post war entrepot
Of ships and railway termini,
Of grimy tenements and "single ends";
A place to dream in,
Dreams of heaven
As a GI bride,
Or a Hollywood star.
At six you were already on the stage,
Framed in the lobby - your praescenium arch.
the "curtain" -
Coats draped on hangers -
Swished apart
And there you stood, a tiny starlet,
The Empire's sweetheart and
The gallery's goddess,
Worshipped by your Doting fans,
Dragged from their after dinner naps
To see and applaud your one foot tap,
And those big brown eyes.
The other city in the east,
Cold and windy Edinburgh,
A city of toffs with nowhere left to go
In a capital without a crown.
Provincial lawyers, surgeons, practitioners of professorial arts,
Oh - and ministers, of course.
They loomed large,
In their outpost of culture.
Despising the Glaswegian,
A Caliban, to be pinched and penned,
You and I,
Glesga keelies, who might just be transformed
into young ladies or charming princes,
Fit for court.
And so they strove to turn us out, as copies
From a Victorian mould.
Why did we resist the shaping power?
Let's face it, I wanted you -
Determined I would have you.
It wasn't heroism -
That perhaps came later.
No ghostly rebel from the Clydeside past
Inspired my will to know.
Truth is, I was already self-willed,
Mentally resisting my mother,
So domineering, so insecure.
They dreaded the God of love, those Glasgow mothers.
When they were young, Cupid was a randy lad
Lying in wait to pierce them as they
"ran aboot the dancin'".
"Can I see you home?"
Was code for what he really wanted.
And she wanted it too,
Sitting in the back row,
The silver screen "that far away you could hardly see the picture,
Only it didn't matter."
So he "put the halter round her neck,"
My father,
and she buried her secret shame,
Telling herself she didn't care who asked,
"Did she have to?"
When they announced their expectant, unexpected wedding:
Her "bad start" was my continuation.
"I don't want him to grow up like that" she said,
When I preferred playing with girls to boys,
Happier to be the token father at house,
Than the worst footballer in the street,
With two left feet.
Night after night, she dreaded desire,
Her own, imperiously conquering,
And willingly surrendering.
And seeing me play already
In the mating game,
She tried to crush my latent fancies,
Beating and mangling them into infantile disorders,
When I made "rude" drawings"
Or dallied
With a six-year Jezabel.
And as time drew near for sowing wild oats,
She never spoke of love, desire,
Where babies came from -
Nor condoms either -
But frowned me off "That kind of thing."
Yet I gazed and gazed at the silver screen,
Those bodies clasped in the closing clinch,
And longed to know what rapture was.
As eyesight slowly faded,
I listened hungrily,
To the young men bragging,
In the hothouse atmosphere of Elder ward,
(You can't believe it was called that?)
So I was consoled for loss of sight,
Freed by fate, it seemed,
For co-educational experience in
The 'romantic town".
Only to find myself in a panopticon.
Long before they penned me there,
You were rattling the cage with your daredevil ways:
Jumping off the piano,
Skipping on both feet,
Racing about the lawns and paths.
It wasn't quite what they expected you to be.
"Self willed," they said,
"spoiled by getting far too much attention
After that dreadful accident.
With your bandaged eyes, you should have been
A monument to pathos,
Tender as a stricken dove;
Not a phoenix needing her wings clipped.
"You weren't even shy when you came to the school!"
Even Your pals said that.
Forged of Glasgow metal,
You clung to your own truth,
Refused to write the kind of verses that they praised,
Simpering with Christmas and with fairies.
Not for you
That gossamer stuff.
In your heart you loved the rover's rhymes,
Wandering lonely as a cloud,
Or leaping over the waiting saddle,
Behind young Lochinvar.
(Dangerous romancer, that Walter Scott, poet of outlaws and pirates.)
And when it came your turn to sow wild oats,
You measured the boys as your father measured metal.
One was too rough, another too dull,
A third would bend and break.
There was just no answer to a maiden's prayer:
Fool's gold deceives the eye,
And glittering Voices charm the innocent ear.
So you assayed yourself at higher worth,
Resolved to wait and listen,
To catch love's music in a truer strain,
And just appreciation of your worth.
Gradually, your ear tuned into me,
You heard the song that sounded through the Glasgow reed.
How did David stand before Goliath
- Six cubits and a span,
- Armoured in iron and burnished brass,
- Impregnable and pointed,
- Flashing, like a mascot in the sun?
When he heard the war cry roar
How could he calmly say,
"Let no man's heart fail because of him"?
I knew Goliath once, the head of school,
Unseen by me, but fierce of voice -
Or rather, many voices,
Each with power to bend or break.
Some work well done evoked an unctious tone,
Such as a falconer might bestow
Upon the hawk,
Whose soaring flight is tethered to his will.
At other times he bellowed like a bull,
Muzzle lifted up to roar
Throughout the school.
Minions dropped their tasks - or took them up,
Lessons stopped and teachers froze,
Classroom chatter checked and died.
Or again, each morning,
As we stood in regimented rows, -
Bigger boys against the wall,
Behind the tables where we took our daily bread,
Little boys in front,
Facing a row of little girls,
With older ones beheind -
Hands clap for silence,
Heavy feet,
Pounded over flagstone floor,
Between our ordered ranks -
Turning to address his court,
The King declares,
In black and baleful voice:
"The hymn today is Onward Christian Soldiers .
We like this one,
Attack it like aHeavenly host.
When the organ triumph dies away,
He reads a prayer
Entreating God to purify our hearts.
Did that calm gnawing fear?
Did I fail to read the tone that day?
Black scowl, lack lustre?
Or did something raise his tigerish grin,
Some school success in music or in sport,
And throw me off my guard?
At any rate,
The summons smote me like a spear:
"Fred Reid outside my office."
So I came forth
And stood to wait my trial.
To left and right the boys and girls stream
From out the hall, to face their morning tasks,
Agog to ask,
"What does the Major want him for?"
But I hear nothing, standing there.
Facing the "grand stairs",
I shrink before my fate,
Trapped, like Cherubino.
Disdaining me, He bustles round,
Issueing the orders of the day - -
The janitor
To send a boy to Jenners,
To fetch a packet for his wife -
Or bending over Matron,
Fluttering in her starch
Rehearsing petty tales
Of ddormitoary pranks, and sick room scares.
And now to judgment.
The heavy feet stride past,
And then a curt command,
Tossed back across the shoulder,
"Come in, Reid".
I follow at his heel.
Back to the fire,
Six cubits and a span
He towers.
I've known his fighting weight,
The arm yoked round my shoulder,
Walking me up and down the lawn,
Pressing me with wisdom.
But not today.
The chosen weapon now is withering scorn:
"From time to time,
"I hear unpleasant gossip,
"Concerning pupils in this school."
(He talks of gossip
(As if it were a moth,
(Just flitting out, and not a pigeon post.)
"Last night I heard
"A most disgusting thing of you,
"In the Blackford Park with Etta Redpath,
"Osculating and embracing,
"fully in the public view."
(My God! What kind of man says
("Osculating for "kissing"?
(No surprise really though -
(I've heard this high-fallutin tone before:
("A youth may be seduced by a maiden," you know,
("Just as easily as a maiden by a youth."
(And
("Fondling Is like a chain reaction,
("Once started, it can't be stopped -
"Short of explosion.
That was his loftier style -
(The wisdom of the chair.
Another time he plumb the depths,
To the manner of the barrack roomm:
("You may think it's like taking the train,
("From Glasgow to Edinburgh,
("You can always get off at Haymarket -
("But you can't. Once you get on
("You must go all the way to Waverley.")
Today,
Neither Dutch uncle nor prisoner's friend,
Pontius Pilate is his part,
Baffled by my silence,
Washing his hands, withdrawing cover.
No talk now of my bright future -
"Professional career,
"Physiotherapy perhaps."
Rather, a pointed reference to my eighteenth year,
The last prescribed by law
For special education.
Exclusion, unmentioned,
Hangs like a sword, From the ceiling high above.
What needs this fierce display?
One moment of reflection
One tiny spark of thought,
Must light the darkness of his mind.
The thing he fears, for me or him,
Just never happened
No "accident" befell.
Fact was,
We never passed Haymarket.
When we lay beneath the tangled bank
Of springing shrubs, which screend our favourite hideaway.
Birds wantoned overhead
Among the boughs,
Which clothed our Edin innocence.
You were my beloved and I
The arrow fitted to the bow
That never fired.
As for the Philistine,
I came to set at naught
His hollow threat.
The demons of his soul had had their day.
How could a man who spoke of "osculating"
Justify excluding me
In language plain and truthful
To men who paid the piper?
So I revelled in the piper's lays,
Of "sweetest hours that e'er I spent,
"Amang the rigs o' Barley?"
And thus we fought our secret fight,
My will to love
Against his "Thou shalt not".
He hated rebels,
Shop stewards who rang the bell for strikes;
Black freedom fighters;
He hated them.
I was that threat,
Or at least the symbol of that threat.
"You're sons' a Communist," he said.
"He won't get anywhere -
"I'll see he doesn't."
And so he stood to bar the way,
The armoured giant.
The champion of the hoste.
No sling had I,
No stone to aim.
And yet defiance came to fill my soul,
Lfired in romance,
By music and the SILVER SCREEN.
Patriarchal might had had its day,
So Hollywood avowed.
And my pursuit of happiness
Was mirrored in the King and I,
That taught to me my battle song.
Whenever I felt afraid,
I held my head erect,
And whistled a happy tune.
Was that the song in David's heart?