‘She would call me sentimental.’
‘You are sentimental.’
They offer me a space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.
CROW
Try to consider all three, in one, before we move in closer. A is to B what C is to A plus B less C. Lovely. Look again, that’s right, sweep. Now left to right? Good. Now right to left. Good. Now move across them all for a One Two Three? Now absorb them all at once. Now again, One Two Three? And … absorb. OK, in we go:
On the left we have the dad. This image occupies the functional position of the here-goes, the ask, what I like to call the George-Dyer-on-the-shitter, the left-flank, the hoist, the education spot, the empty church, the torture step, the pain panel, the muscular.
In the middle, yours truly. A smack of black plumage and a stench of death. Ta-daa! This is the rotten core, the Grünewald, the nails in the hands, the needle in the arm, the trauma, the bomb, the thing after which we cannot ever write poems, the slammed door, the in-principio-erat-verbum. Very What-the-fuck. Very blood-sport. Very university historical.
But don’t stop looking. The triptych is about ways of never stopping. It is culture. On the right we have the boys. Two forms, but one shape, could be female, could be male, we can just about decipher four little legs and four little arms (the newborn calf of the right-hand panel!) and tiny little hopeful faces. And sense is suddenly made of the previous panels, this is pure mathematics, this is ancient logic. It is nature. This is what I call the lift-off, late style, the ten-year-journey-home, the arrow through the eye-hole, the fugue. Very sunset. Very bard. Very poignant.
BOYS
We all used to get a lot of trouble from Mum for flecking the mirror with toothpaste.
For a few years we flecked and spat and over-brushed and our mirror was a white-speckled mess and we all took guilty pleasure in it.
One day Dad cleaned the mirror and we all agreed it was excellent.
Various other things slipped. We pissed on the seat. We never shut drawers. We did these things to miss her, to keep wanting her.
DAD
Oil, when you look closer mud, when you look closer sand, when you sip it, silt becoming silk.
I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.
Eugh, said Crow, you sound like a fridge magnet.
BOYS
In the long grass I discover flattened paths, maybe my brother’s, so I whisper, ‘Bro, are you in here?’ and passing adults see us, three feet apart, but we are in cathedrals, infinite, vast.
Crow giggles. ‘I’m in here, can’t see me, I’m greeeen!’
DAD
I said to my best friend, She would be cross with me for staying the extra day for the end-of-term football party, because we’ll hit all the holiday traffic. My friend said, You have to stop thinking this way, involving her. There’s grief and there’s impractical obsession.
I was impractically obsessed with her before, I said. Are you seeing anyone? he said. To talk things through?
I am, I said.
Are they good?
Very good.
I almost laughed, at the thought of Crow in a study, Crow pecking out an invoice, Crow recommended by a GP, or available on the NHS. Crow pondering Winnicott, with a shake of the head, but grudgingly liking Klein.
Yes, I said to my best friend. You don’t need to worry, I am being helped.
BOYS
Around the time Mum died there was a hurricane and a lot of trees fell down. In the beech woods near our Gran’s house there were a great many half-fallen trees, resting diagonally on the ones left standing.
I climbed up, and up, until my weight made the fallen tree slip and I would come crashing down. Sometimes into soft cushioned cradles of greenery, sometimes into nests of sharp branches. My brother would yell DEAD MEAT!
I can’t remember if this game was my brother’s idea, or Crow’s.
Dad came to get us in the woods at dusk and said, ‘You’re bleeding. Fucking hell, your whole body is bleeding.’ I was numb from the cold and the scratches were tingling and Dad told my brother to have a serious think about his behaviour.
CROW
This one is true:
Once upon a time there was a demon who fed on grief. The delicious aroma of raw shock and unexpected loss came wafting from the doors and windows of a widower’s sad home.
Therefore the demon set about finding his way in.
One evening the babes were freshly washed and the husband was telling them tales when there was a knock on the door.
Rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Open up, open up, it’s me from 56. It’s … Keith. Keith Coleridge. I need to borrow some milk.’
But the sensible father knew there was no number 56 on the quiet little street, so he did not open the door.
The next night the demon tried again.
Rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Open up, open up, I’m from Parenthesis Press. It’s Paul. Paul … Graves. I heard the news. I’m truly gutted it’s taken me this long to come over. I’ve brought a pizza and some toys for the boys.’
But the attentive father knew there had been a Pete from Parenthesis and a Phil from Parenthesis, but never a Paul from Parenthesis, so he did not open the door.
The next night the demon ran at the door, flashing blue and crackling.
Rat-a-tat-tat. BANG. BANG. ‘Open up! Police! We know you’re in there, this is an emergency, you have five seconds to open the door or we will smash our way in.’
But the worldly grieving man knew a bit about the law and sensed a lie.
The demon went away and wondered what to do next. He was tabloid-despicable, so a powerful plan came to him.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Knock. Knock. Knock. ‘Boys? It’s me. It’s Mum. Darling? Are you there? Boys, open the door, it’s me. I’m back. Sweetheart? Boys? Let me in.’
And the babes flung their duvets back in abandon, swung their little legs over the edge of the bed and scampered down the stairs. The chambers of their baffled baby hearts filled with yearning and they tingled, they bounded down towards before, before, before all this. The father, drunk on the voice of his beloved, raced down after them. The sound of her voice was stinging, like a moon-dragged starvation surging into every hopeless raw vacant pore, undoing, exquisite undoing.
‘We are coming, Mum!’
Their friend and houseguest, who was a crow, stopped them at the door.
My loves, he said.
My dear, sorry loves. It isn’t her. Go back to bed and let me deal with this. It isn’t her.
The boys floated their crumpled crêpe-paper dad back up, one under each arm steering his weightlessness, and they laid him down to sleep. Then they sat at the window looking down and watching what happened and they liked it very much, for boys will be boys.
Crow went out, smiled, sniffed the air, nodded good evening and back-kicked the door shut behind him. Then Crow demonstrated to the demon what happens when a crow repels an intruder to the nest, if there are babies in that nest: