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VISIONS OF JOHANNA
Ron Phillips
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We are inventing a new and original world. Imagination is seizing power.
- from a poster on the main door
of the Sorbonne 13th May 1968
Freedom. It isn't once, to walk out
Under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers of light,
the fields of dark -
Freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
Remembering. Putting together, inch by inch
The starry worlds.
From all the lost collections.’
Adrienne Rich
For Memory
This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. ‘
TS Eliot
The Four Quartets
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CONTENTS
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PRELUDE (October 1969)
3
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POSTLUDE ( October 1969)
1 122
2 133
3 142
4 146
5 155
6 162
7 168
PRELUDE (OCTOBER 1969)
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He was crossing a field in a familiar place, the sloping ground
a rough mixture of raw earth and grass. Bright but not fierce, the sunshine
lent the feeling of late spring. Once he almost stumbled, and it was then
he realised Anna was by his side in a yellow dress that was long and intricately
patterned. Her feet were bare, her hair even darker than he remembered
it. Fearing she too might stumble, he wanted to take her hand, but she
did not appear to be aware of his presence, nor did it seem appropriate
to speak.
Then he saw them: the children, spread across the whole slope of the
field in great numbers; most running about, absorbed in all kinds of play;
but some standing still, as though within their own dream, or as if statues
placed by some invisible hand. What was surprising was that they did not
show any reaction to his and Anna's approach. Some stared at them curiously,
eyes alert and wary; others continued running about, but none moved away
or showed the slightest fear.
He was unsure when the shots actually began, only that they seemed
to be coming from the copse at the bottom of the field. At once he stopped
in his tracks. He noticed that Anna had stopped too, and that she was now
bending forward, with her hair hiding her face and her hands pressed tightly
to her ears. Then, as he went on standing where he was, and with the shots
continuing intermittently, he realised that Anna was moving down the hill.
She seemed to have no thought for her own safety. He wanted to shout her
to stop or lie down, but he still could not find his voice, nor did he
seem able to move. He noticed that Anna had gone over to where there had
previously been a large group of children. They had all scattered as far
as he was able to see, but then he realised that one had fallen to the
ground, and that Anna was about to stoop down and lift up the struggling
body. Again he tried to shout to her; once more no sound would come from
his lips.
The next image was of a dying child actually in Anna's arms. There
was a moment when he thought heard the child cry out, or perhaps the cry
came from Anna herself. Now it seemed that at last he was able to move.
He appeared to be approaching Anna, or rather it was as if he were floating
above her. As he looked down, he could see the child's face wrinkled in
pain: the eyes closed, the mouth a gaping hole; the blood beginning to
trickle through Anna’s fingers and to spread over her lap, a burgeoning
web of red across the bright yellow.
At the same moment, he was aware that the shots had begun again, except
that this time there were more. They were coming from every direction now:
continuous volleys of fire, as though from a nest of machineguns or a whole
platoon of riflemen. And then it seemed there was a pain in the back of
his head, and a spot that grew like a cancer across his brain; grew and
deepened until there was only a blackness that became the half-darkness
of his room.
*
Gazing down the broad steps of the Sir Samuel Anderson building towards
the bus queue he was about to join, Nick Goodchild came to an abrupt halt.
From that height, and with the easterly October wind in his face, it was
impossible to be sure. Only when he descended the steps to the crowded
pavement, and approached the queue itself, was he able to see clearly.
The line of people - mostly students and university staff, but others
from the banks, shops and cafes across the street - curved away from the
pavement in a thick straggling line. The part in which Nick found himself
actually ran over the bottom two steps. From there he could look across
to where Anna stood, dressed in a short brown suede coat and green scarf,
and in jeans now instead of the grey pleated skirts she always seemed to
be wearing in the library. She was cradling what looked like a carrier
bag of books, and gazing indifferently at the traffic grinding up from
the city.
Nick sighed, unable to comprehend the paralysis that had immediately
gripped him. Why was it so difficult for him to walk over to her? For certain
any positive move would have to come from him. There seemed not the slightest
chance that Anna would recognise him, let alone acknowledge his presence.
This was no more an opportunity than that other time in May. Like then
he could only stare awkwardly before lowering his head. As he did so, the
Anderson clock began to chime a quarter to five with what seemed an exquisite
slowness. Each chime led him to reflect further upon this unexpected breaking
of a dream of a few nights before, a dream in which he had watched Anna
as helplessly as he watched now.
Since the dream Nick had been unusually tense and alert, as though
he were waiting for something to happen, for a message to break through
from the darkness that always seemed to press so hard against the edges
of his life. The day like other days had been full of promising footfalls,
but turning round to them only made him feel intolerably foolish. Now he
felt foolish for a different reason. When the bus finally screeched to
its stopping place, it was a relief to see that both decks were already
full. The result was reassuringly predictable: Anna and a few others were
able to mount the platform; the urgent press of bodies behind them, including
his own, was held back by a zealous young conductor.
‘Sorry!’ he chirped, in a brisk, toneless voice.
‘Bollocks!’ exclaimed the long-haired student who had been rejected.
‘Tri-ollocks!’ yelled his equally hairy companion.
‘Boasting again, Trev!’ remarked the first student. ‘Come on,
let's split!’
With half-hearted shrugs of the shoulder, they and one or two others
immediately moved on up the pavement. As the bell rang, others approaching
the bus queue groaned and suddenly changed direction. The bus was still
only a few yards away. The conductor was watching the scene impassively.
‘A lot of nice bus conductors running the government isn’t my idea,’
some literary intellectual had smugly declared on television the previous
year. It was one of a number of programmes launched in the wake of the
Paris riots and the complementary unrest in various British universities.
But what if the conductors weren’t nice? Which way did the argument then
fall? – across socialism, or against the insouciance of literary intellectuals?
There had been a time when Nick would have eagerly debated such an issue.
Now he could not bring himself to care. As the bus moved out of sight around
the Mechanical Engineering block, he started to relax. There was nothing
to tantalise him now, or add to the disorder of his day. He could throw
his mind forward to the comforts that the next bus would take him to: the
shower, the hot meal, the warmth of his centrally heated study bedroom
back at Netherwood Hall. These, the concluding elements of his daily ritual,
were the necessary preparation for a long evening’s study that had already
been carefully planned.
To calm himself, Nick now ran his mind over the principal details.
First, he would make additional notes on King Lear from the four books
he had borrowed from the Anderson library the previous day. These would
supplement the jottings he had been making on and off throughout the afternoon
in the English department on the fifth floor of the Arts tower, all of
this a necessary preparation for the usual Friday afternoon tutorial with
Dr. Selwyn Holloway. In turn it would enable him to return the books in
the morning, and borrow four more on Disraeli, Mrs. Gaskell, Dickens and
Gissing. In this way, he could make detailed preparation at the weekend
for a coming essay on the Victorian social novel.
That done, he would commence a reading of the Shakespeare play itself.
He would cover the first two Acts: where Lear - after trusting to his elder
daughters' wordy protestations of love, and rejecting the loving silence
of the youngest - would be cast into the storm and darkness of the heath.
There would then be ample time in the morning, when he had no lectures,
to work his way through the play's bleak conclusions: Lear stumbling onto
the stage, his lost child now silent forever in his arms. Old Dr. Johnson
had found the scene so painful that he confessed he could hardly bear to
reread it when he came to edit the play. The remark had always puzzled
Nick. How could a man of Johnson's learning be so disturbed by what was
merely a representation of suffering?
But such issues were hardly likely to arise tomorrow. Nick felt he
could now allow his mind to wander. He was on schedule again, the recent
emotional intrusion safely behind him. He even began to think about a late
night visit to the chocolate machines by the kitchen in the central block.
This was his usual reward for an evening’s work completed to plan, and
another perk of living out at Netherwood. Then, his mind darted back to
the previous Thursday and a more pleasurable experience, each detail lingering
in his memory: the room, a familiar face strange in the half-darkness,
his skin shivering between eager fingers; then, a rambling narrative voiced
by someone he still held close. For an instant, until he reflected how
this day too had closed on a goodbye, Nick felt able to smile.
Then he glanced down the street again. This wound by various twists
and turns all the way to the city square. When he first arrived, he had
to trust to its vagaries, all the time keeping his eyes on the Portland
stone clocktower, commanding the skyline between the blackened spires of
two churches. The wind had begun to spring up again, and the ascending
traffic seemed heavier and noisier than ever. Below, splintering the darkening
sky, were the giant cranes attending upon a ring road that would soon bring
even more vehicles in and out of the centre. Beyond these, a desolate column
of tower blocks began to light up in the early dusk.
There were times when the city simply oppressed him. It seemed full
of changes that no one had chosen, beyond that is the anonymous planners.
But that too was a debate that would easily bring his mind back to Anna,
and a sunny day out on the Moor back in early June. The Moor was a park
that spread around the apex of the campus across a hump-backed piece of
land that overlooked the eastern side of the city. There they had met by
chance one day on one of the benches by the children’s playground. In the
teeth of the wind, he now half-conjured the scene: glimpsed Anna's pale
face, as she had tried to focus his attention on what was actually happening
all around him in the bright sunlight. Then, as though in tandem with that
sentiment, he looked across the street at the trail of grey figures, alternately
glimmering and vanishing between the slow procession of vehicles. But the
contrast was too extreme, and he shivered again. Smoke from a man in front
of him blew into his face. Two girls behind him were now to be heard discussing
a dance they had been to the previous Saturday evening.
‘A cattle market,’ one of them said.
‘Yes, but wasn't he dishy, the one with long hair?’
‘I've seen worse, but he never shut up about Vietnam - really
got on my nerves.’
‘Bet Vietnam wouldn't have been on his mind, if he'd got you
outside. They're all the fucking same.’
As he listened, Nick idly reflected how the offending word was in a
sense being used accurately for once, and this, together with the word
‘Vietnam’, immediately reminded him of a more distant conversation. That
had also taken place on the Moor, one night after a similar Union dance:
he and poor Jeff Harrison, each with a skinful of Tetley's worst, plus
shared disappointments with two such girls. The one that Nick had spent
the evening with he had afterwards walked home and then completely forgotten
about, as surely as she had forgotten about him. Jeff’s encounter: well,
the less said about that the better, although how he had laughed at the
time! Where was Jeff now? How often, over the past year, Nick had woken
in the night and wondered. But what finally was the point? It was better
to try and sneak a glimpse of the speakers. One seemed smallish and blonde,
the other taller, dark-haired and thin: but he did not recognise either.
As this enterprise petered into nothing, a gust of wind started up, as
if it had skimmed the terrace of houses opposite for no other reason than
that it could now swoop effortlessly down upon him. Shivering again, he
fastened the top buttons of his donkey jacket, and tightened his scarf.
But the wind felt like a nagging question that was suddenly too much
for Nick. Why, after all those months of silence and waiting, had he let
Anna go? His mind seemed about to spin down a familiar dark vortex. As
if to climb out again, he actually began to fashion Anna out of the drizzle
that the streetlights had transformed into a glittering mist. It was only
gradually that he was able to fully take in her presence, let alone catch
what she had to say. How she came to be back at the bus stop, standing
just ahead of him again, scarcely mattered. The only important thing was:
she was here.
‘I'm sorry I didn't write. I expect you must have wondered - ’
‘It doesn't matter now.’
‘Can we still go to that lake?’
‘To Ainsthorpe Dam? Yes, of course. We can go on Sunday. There
will be time, then.’
‘And now, where shall we go now?’
‘I don't know.’
He never had done. That was his trouble, wasn't it?
‘Nick, old mate!’
And Anna vanished, as Nick turned towards the evening’s second
intrusion. He could not know there was potentially a third.
‘Ken!’
‘In person! Well, this is amazing! I just saw someone in the
Anderson stack who put me in mind of you! How are you? It's been ages!’
Nearly a year. Nick had called one afternoon the previous November,
but he hadn’t stayed long. Ken and Mary were studying their Bibles in preparation
for a prayer meeting. Nothing had changed.
‘I'm fine!’
‘Excellent! We keep hearing rumours about your amazing academic exploits,
all lies I expect!’
Nick caught the familiar chortle.
‘Of course!’
‘Look, can't stop now, but you must come round! And don't leave
it too long; we'll be off to Kenya soon: Church Missionary Society project,
developing drought-resistant crops in one of the northern areas.’
‘Sounds exciting!’
‘Should be a hoot, providing we can dodge the cattle raiders!
No spears these days; it's all machineguns!’
‘Can’t wait to come and visit you! How's Mary?’
‘Of course, you won't know. She's expecting again.’
Ken's eyes gleamed through the rain on his round National Health
spectacles.
‘That's marvellous news!’
‘Rather terrifying actually. But I suppose we'll manage. Look,
must dash home with this lot; but don't forget you've promised to come
round, and make it soon!’
‘You're not vanishing just yet surely?’
Ken paused, as though there was much more he could say.
‘Well, the Lord willing, we just could be. Something’s just reared
its very ugly head, quite a palaver actually. So you'll have to come round
now! Otherwise, you’ll probably hear a garbled version by some other route.
Oh by the way, who was that big chap you went off to lodge with?’
‘Barry Smith - why?’
‘Well, he's the one I just caught sight of down in the stack.
Hadn't seen him for ages either! Must be a sign - have to dash!’
And Ken was gone, calling out as he did so: ‘it's going to be a girl
this time. I have it on high authority!’
For a moment, Nick watched him struggling through the thickening
rain in his plastic mac: an old briefcase in one hand, a carrier bag of
groceries in the other. Then he turned, and headed back up the steps again
to look for Barry, momentarily relieved to escape the rain and cold. He
saw no point in actually searching the library. Instead he hung round the
concourse outside, thinking this gave him the best chance of heading Barry
off. Given his size, it would be difficult to miss him. But the concourse
was almost empty now, and Nick’s enthusiasm for hanging around quickly
waned.
Why on earth should Barry have been in the stack, of all places? Why
should he be here at all? And where had he been for the past fifteen months?
Presumably he was making a fortune in the city, a job always said to be
waiting for him in his uncle's investment company, once his degree was
completed. Not that Barry needed money. His mother was understood to have
given him five thousand pounds on the day he graduated. All that for a
lousy third; life wasn't fair. What would he and Barry have to say to one
another now? The thought of how little that might be, plus the possibility
that Ken was mistaken, soon had Nick hurrying down the steps again.
This time a half-empty bus was pulling into the kerb. He reached a seat
upstairs just as the bus moved off. They were soon passing the Moor. He
glanced up at the metal swings and the surrounding benches, and his thoughts
swung inevitably back to Anna. When she had risen to go that day, she had
refused his invitation to accompany her back to the library. ‘I would rather
you didn’t! You should stay in the sun. We’ve so little time to do so really!’
So little time. As the words sounded once more in his head, Nick shut
his eyes. Since that parting, he had never ceased to think of Anna. He
had woken, eaten, drunk and slept her, included her in every inner conversation.
Only in Holland, where there had been other distractions, had there been
an interlude of a kind. But even here there were moments when her face
filled his mind to the exclusion of everything, and there could not have
been a day when he did not breathe her name. It could have been said that
Anna had replaced Jeff as the central unanswered question of his life,
though of course this was not quite the case. He still thought of Jeff.
The possibility of finding out what had happened to him might have been
the one good reason for seeing Barry. But then why couldn’t Jeff have got
in touch himself? - or was this all his own fault? Did Jeff feel that he
had been let down, that he did not understand about that girl Jo?
Was this the meaning of that other dream in the spring? There had been
footsteps on the landing outside his door, followed by a loud knocking.
When he opened the door, Jeff came striding into his room. ‘Well, have
you decided - do you know what you want, now?’ he demanded. Nick put out
a hand to try to placate him, but it was as though he were trying to touch
a mist, or a shadow that was floating along the wall. Then he woke, and
Jeff’s London narrative returned to his mind: a screaming crowd, police
everywhere; the girl he had never seen falling, falling ..
Opening his eyes again, Nick saw that the bus was pulling into the Hegglesworth
shopping centre a mile and a half out of the centre. Positioned as he was
on the street side, he found himself watching an old couple who had been
sitting near him, as they struggled across the zebra crossing with their
shopping bags. As he continued to gaze over the street, he saw the familiar
coat and scarf. For an instant, Anna was etched against the giant windows
of the new Safeways supermarket. Then, moving with her customary speed
along the teeming pavement, she vanished into the crowds again.
Passengers were boarding now. As Nick rushed down the stairs,
he had to elbow aside a number of disgruntled people, whose displeasure
was repeated by the conductor as he rang the bell at the bottom. Unheeding,
Nick leapt off the platform onto the pavement and began to cross the street
without really looking, forcing a van to break and loudly sound its horn
as he did so. By the time he reached the other side, Anna had disappeared.
Almost certainly, she had turned up the road which wound round the back
of the centre out towards the ‘Deeps’, a steep-sided valley that thrust
a tongue of green almost into the centre of the city.
Nick negotiated the corner. Yes, there she was: rounding the next bend.
He increased his speed yet again. Beyond the bend, he saw Anna ahead; she
was rapidly approaching yet another turn. Someone came towards him that
he half knew. He feared this might fatally slow him, but as if on cue they
crossed the road to a pub on the other side.
As Anna was about to vanish yet again, Nick started to run. Yet though
he must have rounded the corner only a few seconds after her, by the time
he did so she had disappeared. She must therefore have taken a right turn
into a road that actually backed onto the Deeps. He hurried to the corner.
It was a straight road lined with trees on either side. Behind the trees
was a row of large detached houses, each nestling in spacious gardens.
Apart from a few security lights, they seemed uniformly devoid of life.
Anna was nowhere to be seen. He walked down a little way and stared into
the windows of one or two of the houses. From one window, an elderly woman
- her neck swathed in a pearl necklace and shawl - stared in return. Then,
he decided this was pointless and came back.
For a few moments he stood still, looking down the road. Then he walked
on to where the houses could no longer protect him from the wind. It now
occurred to him that this was also a way Anna could have taken. A path
would have led her down into the valley, then up to the council estates
on the other side, but it was very badly lit. Looking into the well of
shadow, Nick could see nothing. If she was down there somewhere, he had
left it too late. Or was he simply afraid to go any further? Just as at
the bus stop, he felt a relief that was much deeper than any frustration
he might now be experiencing. For a whole minute he stood gazing across
at the lights. A car was moving steadily down the hill.
But Nick was shivering now. Turning from the shadows where Anna had
vanished, he walked quickly back along the dark road.
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