The Cat in the Treble Clef Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Louis De Bernières

  Dedication

  Title Page

  The Only Road There Was

  Swimming with Robin in Bodrum, 2007

  The Substitution

  For Sophie, Aged Nearly Six

  Drinking Alone in Summer

  Jackdaws and Rooks

  Blackthorn Blossom

  Every Other Weekend

  Empty Vessel

  The Inspiration

  A Box of Old Photographs

  Frater Meus Occisus Est

  What My Mother Means

  My Mother, When We Could Not Sleep

  My Mother Dying

  My Mother’s Rings

  Her Father

  In October, to My Father

  From My Great Grandmother’s Diary

  My Young Self

  Frog

  Anteroom

  In Denton Churchyard (2)

  In Hambledon Churchyard, The Grave of Lucy Parker

  Anita Pallenberg is Newly Dead

  The Former Beauty

  Inside Their Loose Clothes

  Days of Love and Revolution

  We Who Were Born to Live Forever

  The Great Radical

  Not in Coffee Spoons

  The Jack Russell

  The Legacy

  In Whom I Do Not Believe

  The Wake

  Lazarus

  Message to Satan

  Klio of Rhodes

  Letter to Afrodite Philomeda

  Kerkira

  Havens

  Buddha on Princes Street

  Belfast, at the End of the Troubles

  Innocent Men on Bishop’s Quay

  Manchester, on a Day of Extreme Heat in the 1970s

  Sevillanas

  Turkish Couple With a Lionitis Child in Fethiye

  On Ipanema Beach

  In Kathmandu

  Last Year

  I’m Going Back into the Garden

  In the Woods near Sweetwater

  In My Own House

  An Incompatibility

  She Laid Siege

  She was Playing Schubert

  Blackbirds and Robins

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  A beautiful collection of poems from bestselling author Louis de Bernières.

  From the very start of his writing career Louis de Bernières has loved poetry. Here the author of the much-loved Captain Corelli’s Mandolin returns to this first love with his third collection.

  The Cat in the Treble Clef focuses on family and the connections we make, and break, with other people. There are moving poems to and about his family: his great grandmother, his mother and father and his children. There are poems about places near and far, about the passing of time, music and about love in its various forms. In this collection, de Bernières shares his passion with his readers, in a beautifully illustrated gift edition.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Louis de Bernières is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are The Dust That Falls From Dreams, Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter, a collection of stories, Notwithstanding, and two collections of poetry, Imagining Alexandria and Of Love and Desire.

  Also by Louis de Bernières

  POETRY

  Of Love and Desire

  Imagining Alexandria

  A Walberswick Goodnight Story

  FICTION

  So Much Life Left Over

  Blue Dog

  The Dust that Falls from Dreams

  Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village

  A Partisan’s Daughter

  Birds Without Wings

  Red Dog

  Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World

  Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

  The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman

  Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

  The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts

  NON-FICTION

  The Book of Job: An Introduction

  For Victoria

  THE ONLY ROAD THERE WAS

  It was you and me. Your mother had left,

  And wouldn’t allow us to take the girl,

  As if you can own a child, as if it were nothing

  To be a father, be a brother, loving a daughter,

  Loving a sister.

  And you were four years old, perplexed, confused,

  An innocent boy on the boat from Doolin Pier.

  It was you and me, struck down by disaster;

  The passage made you sick.

  Out on the island we hired a trap.

  There was only one road, to right or left,

  The pony was expert, the driver redundant.

  We rattled off, up the only road there was.

  We stopped on a hilltop, wandered away

  In fields squared out by sag-bulged drystone walls.

  The wind soughed, the grass whispered, the sea sparkled,

  The boats in the distance as small as toys,

  The Atlantic sun benign on a couch of clouds.

  Amongst the burrows and stones

  You found hundreds of shells of beautiful snails,

  Golden yellow or striped in white and brown;

  You gathered them up, this fabulous treasure,

  And crammed them deep in our pockets,

  While back on the lane the man with the pony waited

  To take us back down to the sea, on the only road there was.

  You ate fish fingers, I ate lobster,

  You drank orange, I drank wine,

  Father and son, side by side in the only place to eat.

  Then down on the beach you gathered shells,

  Threw stones in the sea till the tide changed,

  And the Rose of Aran returned.

  I was sorting through your outgrown clothes

  And found your shells in a tiny coat, and it all came back;

  Buying a claddagh in Galway town,

  Fashioned in silver, to leave to you in my will;

  Buying a fiddle you knew how to play

  The moment it came from the box;

  Chasing the seagulls, eating sarnies in cafés;

  Riding for miles in Connemara,

  Down on the beaches, you on the cob, me on the hunter.

  And every night I’d carry you up and put you to bed

  Without your sister beside you. I’d sit at the foot,

  And tell you stories of how you went up in the clouds,

  And went to the moon with Sophie, and looked at the cats,

  Because that’s where they go when they die.

  I have some snaps the driver took

  Of you and me, collecting shells, on Inishmore,

  A few miles up the only road there was.

  SWIMMING WITH ROBIN IN BODRUM, 2007

  A whole week in the water, with you attached to my neck,

  Two years old, too scared to let go.

  The sea was too big, the sun too close,

  And even for Yasmin you wouldn’t swim,

  But cried and clung to her long brown arms.

  Oglum, oglum, my son, my son.

  Monastic ruins on grey rock,

  Splashes of scarlet on every hill;

  You pointed them out, said, ‘Turkish flag!’

  The women filled you with chocolate

  That travelled all over your cheeks.

  With small bare hands

  You crammed your mouth with rice.

  Oglum, oglum, my son, my son.

&nbs
p; The press reported your blond hair,

  Your sky-blue eyes, your apple cheeks,

  And told the Turks who hadn’t seen you yet,

  That you were by far the most beautiful boy

  Of all the boys in the world.

  Oglum, oglum, my son, my son.

  After all these years, they remember you still,

  Your floppy hat pulled down on your head;

  A whole short week in the water, holding hard to my neck,

  Too scared to let go,

  The sea too big, the sun too close.

  Oglum, oglum, my son, my son.

  We taught you Turkish words:

  Akdeniz, patlican, balik, su,

  Merhaba Fevzi Bey,

  Merhaba Avram Bey,

  Merhaba Ulker,

  Merhaba Livaneli.

  Since then you’ve learned to swim alone,

  And it’s evident now that all my life with you

  Is one steep, painful path of letting go,

  Of letting you live without me,

  Of teaching you how to leave me,

  The one misfortune I cannot want,

  That will do the most to grieve me.

  Oglum, oglum, my son, my son.

  For one week the most beautiful boy

  In the world, attached to my neck in Bodrum.

  Note: Oglum is pronounced ‘oloom’.

  THE SUBSTITUTION

  For Sophie, August 2008

  The worst summer for years;

  It has rained daily, there’s

  Mould on the cheek of the apple,

  No grape on the vine,

  No damson, no plum on the trees.

  The roses have blackened,

  Chickweed and horseflies thrive.

  But you arrived, my tiny girl,

  And pitched your patchwork tent in life,

  Child of winter, daughter of snow;

  And here, in the dark days of August,

  Just six months old, in the tedious rain,

  In the twilights at noon, now see what you’ve done!

  The light of your laughter, the light of your face,

  Replace the lost light of the sun.

  FOR SOPHIE, AGED NEARLY SIX

  She does the splits in three excruciating ways;

  She cartwheels from a standing start;

  She loves her brother, punches and kicks him,

  And then she draws him pictures for his pleasure.

  She stamps her feet and screams;

  Wears nothing but pink; climbs trees

  In princess costume, tiara and cloak,

  With nothing but skin on her feet.

  She puts on music, dances and tumbles

  In front of mirrors, pirouettes, prances;

  She leaps from the top of the stairs, cries out,

  Delighted, laughing, lands in my arms.

  She circles my legs, attempts to lift me;

  She wins at races, leaving her elders behind.

  She wakes in the morning, rounds her eyes,

  Says, ‘Daddy, Daddy, I dreamed I was flying.’

  DRINKING ALONE IN SUMMER

  Out on the terrace in August,

  I fill my glass from the jug

  And try to examine the stars;

  But wine has increased their number,

  They won’t stand still for the count.

  I drink their health, and I

  Drink to the health of the moon.

  Here’s to the moth at the lamp,

  Here’s to the fox on the prowl,

  And here’s to the bats and owls

  Who can’t sup wine for themselves.

  Never mind, my brothers,

  I have a plan: I’ll drink your share.

  How good to you I am.

  And here’s to the Queen

  And Pavarotti’s ghost,

  Segovia’s too,

  And many other things

  I love but can’t recall.

  I notice my shadow, multiplied by lamps,

  And see, after all, I’m hardly alone

  There must be six of us at least.

  My shadows and I, we raise our glass and drink.

  Here’s to us, what splendid friends we are.

  Let’s dance, be careful, let’s not spill wine,

  It shouldn’t be wasted on stones.

  It’s not much good, this Grecian dance,

  We’ve banged our knee on the bench,

  We failed to hold each other up.

  Let’s sing instead.

  I’d play guitar, but how’s that done

  When one hand wields a jug?

  Let’s bawl out something French.

  Here’s to the parched-up flowers and lawn,

  Here’s to the prospect of rain.

  A soupçon more? I bow and ask myself,

  Most courteously and kind.

  Just one more glass perhaps.

  Let’s stand, good shadows!

  I’d make a speech, but I’m shamefully

  Short of words. I’ll just propose a toast.

  Here’s health to my empty rooms,

  The children who used to be here.

  JACKDAWS AND ROOKS

  We came to the end of the lane, the children and I,

  In a gale that tested the trees, doubled them over,

  Dotted the sky with the flutter of leaves,

  Tiny rags of former life that skittered and whirled,

  Torn away from the ash and the oak,

  Their first ascent in the long flight

  That leads at length to earth.

  We skirted a branch that lay on the road,

  We came to the end, we saw them then.

  I stopped the car. We laughed with

  Delight. The valley was gleaming,

  The river wound through a channel of light

  In the darkening green of the marsh.

  And all above, from end to end, exploiting the lift,

  The sky was crammed with a wheeling and turning,

  A hurling and flinging, a tumbling and soaring

  Of hundreds of thousands of jackdaws and rooks,

  Riding the currents, ascending and swerving.

  Out in the gale for the wind’s gift.

  Rejoicing in jackdaws and rooks rejoicing,

  My daughter climbed over, my son made room,

  Whilst I was reminded, learned again:

  Go out in the gale; stretch out your wings;

  Seize the day; fly in the tempest for fun.

  Waveney Valley, November 2013, on the way to Sophie’s ballet class

  BLACKTHORN BLOSSOM

  It was blackthorn blossom drifting, blowing across the lane,

  This springtime snow that blots against the mud,

  This springtime snow that paints our coats

  And settles on these stones.

  My little gleeful son jumps in puddles, splashes,

  Asks questions, sings his songs, demands to be carried,

  Looks forward to biscuits, asks about flowers and bones.

  And where is my daughter, and where is her mother,

  As bluebells flower, the primrose, the kingcup,

  As springtime snow, blackthorn blossom drifting,

  Covers the new nettles, settles on these stones?

  EVERY OTHER WEEKEND

  We recognise each other. We are unmistakeable;

  The ones who were deserted,

  Robbed, betrayed, broken in the soul,

  The ones who made a mess,

  Got messed around;

  We stand forlornly, hunched by the slides,

  Pushing the swings too high.

  Much too jolly by half,

  We bravely join in, casting our pebbles out in the sea.

  We observe each other and nod,

  Exchange our stories in playgrounds and parks.

  We have knives through our hearts, our guts torn out

  And burned in front of our eyes.

  We buy them ice cream,
/>   We hug them too hard, sniff at their hair, kiss their skin, tickle their feet.

  We hand them back on Sunday night, and then

  Go homeless to silent rooms,

  The cowed, defeated, disenfranchised, disjusticed men.

  EMPTY VESSEL

  My soul is an empty vessel; with what shall I fill it?

  With women? With music? With love?

  With imperishable art?

  I am weary of all these things, and they are weary of me.

  I remember when God walked in, stayed for a while, departed,

  Left no card, no number, no forwarding address.

  I wonder where He went, so pointedly closing the door,

  Making quite sure of the click of the latch,

  His feet on the gravel, the meticulous click,

  The counter-click of the gate. I don’t blame Him,

  It was me that sent Him away,

  It was me that grew faithless,

  It was me that told Him to leave.

  My soul is an empty vessel; with what shall I fill it?

  With music? With women? With pride?

  And then they come, my son, my daughter.

  I hear their scrape at the door;

  I leap from my chair, gather them in,

  Tend to their games, their pains, their strange obsessions,

  Their insatiable need to be carried and kissed.

  The rooms of the house grow bright,

  The grass of the lawn wakes up,

  The apple tree braces its boughs.

  This being so, my heart being full,

  To hell with my empty soul.

  THE INSPIRATION

  An aspiring composer, he is often inspired by dreams,

  And accordingly leaves a pad and pen

  Beside the clock at night, on the table next to his bed.

  He dreams one night of music, honey to the ears,

  Ineffable, sublime, exquisite, music of the spheres,

  Quintessence of beauty. It is 3 a.m.

  He shakes himself awake, takes up the pad and pen,

  And writes his lovely music down.

  He goes to the bathroom, returns to bed,

  Returns to the bosom of sleep.

  Morning strikes and he rolls from the bed,

  Looks down and rubs his chin,

  Thinks, ‘How did I come up with that?’

  For there they are, the whiskers, the ears and eyes.

  The staves are bare, but the treble clef is

  Deftly redrawn as a cat.

  A BOX OF OLD PHOTOGRAPHS