Again the house at the end of a bus-route, again the fish and chip shop lunches, working together in that front room, Tony saying I could gather a whole range of material if I just listened to the gossips who stood, sometimes for an hour or more, outside the front window and who could be heard perfectly clearly. Working more specifically, this time, on and around my first novel, discussing, improving, refining, deleting. Perhaps I exaggerate, through the pain of his absence, now, his interest in the book was not so great that he spent days with me, though hours, certainly, reading and correcting. I could not really have asked for more in view of the pressures of his own research, but his contribution was very important to the book, his criticisms were nearly always constructive, and after he had read it I was more confident in what I had done, that it had passed the scrutiny of someone whose opinion I respected, whose judgment was based on academic standards which, even more than my own, were given some sort of objective, or at least collective-subjective, value. And I must have been near to a final draft at that point, was not at the end, but had been showing it to him in sections of a couple of chapters at a time. And I must have been towards the end, on this visit, though not at the end, that came later.
One lunchtime at least we went into the city, this city, for lunch, perhaps Tony had had to go into the university library for something, I do remember visiting the library once with him, he was proud of having four times the permitted number of books out at any one time, though perhaps it was a facility granted him as a postgrad, it may not have been on this occasion to the library, but certainly this was my first visit to a huge covered market, mainly food, bright lamps, oil, were they, not acetylene, no, surely they must have been electric? And I did get him into a pub, Tony, was thirsty myself, and we played darts in this pub near the covered market—yet that must have been in a public bar, and at about the same time, on the same visit I remember being in a saloon bar and there came in the art student friend of June's, who had made me laugh so much when I was recovering from being ill on a previous visit: and this time he was with a client, in a very different mood, not trying to make the client laugh, very much depending on the other man for his mood, I could see, the client must have been an important one. Tony told me, when he had nodded to him casually, and we were out of their hearing, that he had joined a group of design consultants and they were doing very well, and had evolved a very effective scheme by which each of the partners took one year off in four or five, still on salary, in turn, in order to travel the world and keep up with what was going on in other places, in other fields, and so on and so forth. And so on and so forth, that was a phrase Tony used too much, for suggesting continua of thought or information or knowledge, in conversation, And so on and so forth, to end almost every sentence, on one occasion, I remember, it annoyed me, the repetition, and I only just forbore from telling him about it, then, at one of those times I had to shut my mind off. And the Army surplus shops we walked round that lunch-hour, yes, and June joined us on that occasion. June was pregnant then, they had decided to have a child, he had taken a job at a teacher training college at Lincoln for the next year, starting in two or three months, and everything was going for them. But Tony told me one morning there in the house how he was very worried about June, how on one occasion she fainted, or her heart stopped, and he thought he'd lost her, he said, those were his words, but she had recovered quickly enough, and there had been no repetition, though he feared there might be. That I remember most clearly, sitting at the table in the kitchen and being told of the incident, the chair across from mine being pointed out as the one where it happened to her, and we were having one of our little snacks, rests from working, mid-morning coffee and biscuits and bread and cheese, I suppose, something insubstantial like that. And at another point Tony saying: I'm interested in this baby too, you know. This at some unintended slight of June, or disregard of her in some way, I don't know, in some remark he made he must accidentally have shown what she mistook for lack of interest in the baby. What keeps recurring in connection with this incident is a Penguin of was it David Garnett's Aspects of Love: it was the title I coveted. They had been to Yugoslavia since I had last seen them, he had been lecturing at a summer school, had enjoyed it very much, the food, wine, slivovitz, of which they had brought a large bottle back, medicinal-looking bottle, but good, they gave me some while I was there on this and other visits, they saved it, did they save it? And records they brought back, Yugoslavian folksong, very interesting, later I was to tape-record them at my parents' home, the middle-eastern, Turkish influence very noticeable, and the record sleeves, I remember, one with a long line of dancers with the last one's free hand waving a handkerchief, which June told me they always did, it was traditional, part of the past, of the way of doing things. But American influence everywhere. Bathing in the afternoons, drinking in the evenings, working only during the mornings was they said their life in Yugoslavia that summer, how the mind works, remembers these things, not others.
This visit it must have been we made the journey to Newstead Abbey, yes, we went by bus, they did not have their car at that time, no, and walking the mile or more up the long rhododendron-lined drive, towards the house, the Abbey, that Byron so loved, and sold, the house butted up against the single standing west front of the Abbey, so arrogantly intimate with it, EE, though late, I thought, as I remember, transitional. June went and sat beside the upper lake, pregnant, taking a book, having been here several times before. Tony and I paid to walk round the dead house, not lived in, saw Byron's skull-cup, or did we, had it been piously re-interred, a duelling sword, yes, his bedroom, so ordinary now, like a film set, uncomfortable, un-lived in, obviously. The dead things the great dead leave behind them as well as the living things. But in the gardens, grounds, the poem to Boatswain cut on a monument was still living, and inside the house, of course, the relevant part of that tree, dead now but curiously alive, that Byron cut his and Augusta's names into, that two-trunked sapling springing from the same roots. Pools, ponds rather, down further, descending in a series, as I remember, well-kept, Council I believe, and stocked with roach and perch, at least, we saw them in the shallows, Tony and I, feeding in shoals, or doing something or other, mooning around, in shoals, near the surface, as big in size as a pound, I seem to remember judging, being excited by them, as an angler, though it was obvious that no anglers were allowed to prey on these shoals, they were so brazen, tame almost, unafraid. And geese, of special sorts, as I remember, other waterfowl, and peacocks? Were there peacocks? They would have fitted, peacocks, but I do not think that I can remember there being any. A Japanese garden on the lower level, no, that is somewhere else, yes, Sheffield Park, not Newstead, the lakes are somewhat similar in pattern, the way they descend. Or is there? I cannot remember, perhaps there are Japanese gardens at both, the small scale, lilyponds, fish, gently running water, dwarf shrubs, are they called? And our attitude towards Byron, one of the poets Tony and I both admired very much, but towards his dead relics affected unconcern, made jokes about them, as circumstance afforded, as I remember, cannot recollect any of them now, but there was an easy atmosphere, Tony could at least joke about academicism, what a pity that I only heard after his death that exact definition of academicism as Yesterday's answers to today's problems! I think he would have enjoyed it, not openly laughed at it, perhaps, he not often did laugh outright, with me, at any rate, as I remember, but he might then have pointed out the absurdity of all generalizations, and that my own work owed much to study of the past.
And perhaps it was on this visit that one evening I went off alone into this city, Tony had gone to give a WEA lecture somewhere, probably, June did not want to go for a drink, and so I went alone. They recommended Yates's, happily, and I came back with a poem, with the idea for a poem, and a few lines of it, too, which I worked into a poem later, at home, in London, and sent to them. In Yates's.
By diesel railcar I went across to Lincoln to see a flat they were thinking of taking. The mind is confused, was it this visit, or another, the mind has telescoped time here, runs events near to one another in place, near to one another in time. Walking the heights, the steep stony narrow streets to Lincoln Cathedral, not so much interested in its very EE, the west front decoration carried unusually across the full width of the towers, in the event, in my going alone, as in the grassy ring enclosed by a partly-ruined tower in the castle across from the west front, which had later served as a prison, trees, shady, well-trampled soil as well as grass, with small gravestones marked only with a number, was it, or initials: hanged men, I could not determine whether they were murderers, deserters, traitors, or unlucky, just unlucky, unfortunates.
Their flat, putative flat, over shops in the High Street, or the main road, which was broken in the middle by a level crossing, dividing the main street it looked to me into the better off parts and the less well off, yes, that level crossing, above it towards the castle and the cathedral were the older parts, the richer parts, it was noticeable, whereas below the crossing the development was cheaper, cinemas, bingo, and garages, shops with accommodation above, which was what Tony and June were looking at, the accommodation above, anyway, a cycle shop I think it was. But a large, a pleasant flat, plenty of room for them both and his books and the coming baby. A long room for a kitchen at the back, their own entrance, one flight of wooden steps up, and a low-level WC unit with bath and sink in a matching pastel shade of blue, I think. Though I deplored its colour, I congratulated them on this suite, a real symbol of their having arrived, of their not having to live as students any more, on a student's income, and I was very happy for them. He was to lecture in English at some training college while finishing his PhD, he would still have time for finishing his research, the thesis on Boswell.