A Sleep and A Forgetting. Gregory Hall
mouse in your previous existence.’
Marilyn had her mouth open, ready to protest about this travesty of her philosophy, but Catriona could see that there were several other members trying to catch her eye. The ball was rolling, and she didn’t want them to be side-tracked into an argument about Buddhism.
Joyce spoke. She was a dark, well-dressed woman in her forties, who was apparently the personal assistant of an extremely big cheese in the City.
‘Aren’t we getting rather ahead of ourselves here? Surely the first stanzas are about Wordsworth’s losing his poetic gift. He can’t see things as he used to as a child: “Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”’
‘Yeah. Old Wordsworth’s got this thing about his childhood, an’t he?’ said Kenny. ‘Always going on about how happy kids are. “Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!” I don’t think he grew up where I did, that’s all I can say. Any shouts of joy from me, my old man would have given me a clip on the ear, and told me to fucking shut it!’
There was a little uneasy laughter, and Joyce could be seen to make a face at the obscenity. She and Kenny had had a confrontation about what she called his gutter speech a few weeks before, and the row was still simmering.
‘So, does anyone else agree with Kenny? Does Wordsworth idealise childhood?’
Gradually, the whole group was persuaded to contribute, and once more Catriona was struck by the subtlety and perceptiveness of their responses. Unlike the normal run of students who were still too near being irresponsible children themselves, these people had taken many hard knocks and felt in their own lives the loss of faith, and the possibility of being reconciled to that loss which the poet was describing. They also, most of them, had children of their own. They had experienced that wrenching love first hand, they had seen their own children and grandchildren change from careless beings to ones bent under the ‘inevitable yoke’.
Then, as the two-hour session neared its end, Mary O’Shaugnessy, who had been watching Catriona with a calm, shrewd blue eye, addressed her directly. ‘And you yourself, Professor Turville? Where do you stand on the childhood issue? Did you as a child see things “apparelled in celestial light”? Or do you “grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind”?’
Throughout the seminar, Catriona had been steeling herself. Of all poems to have to teach at the present! She had considered whether to duck it, but that would have been unprofessional. The ‘Intimations Ode’ was a key text in the study of the poet. She had been particularly dreading the mention of this line, dreading the memories it would evoke. She had hoped that her scholarly detachment would carry her through.
She tried to speak, but her lip trembled so much the words would not come. She felt the tears starting at her eyes, and through her blurred vision saw nine faces fixed on hers in various expressions of concern and astonishment. She fumbled in her bag for a tissue, then took refuge behind it. She blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, a little touch of migraine.’ She glanced down at her watch. With relief she saw that the time was up. ‘Thank you, all of you, for your usual stimulating company.’ As she gave out the tasks for the next meeting, she was pleased to observe that she had regained control of herself.
She bent her head to her bag, intent on putting away her books and papers as they said their farewells and filed out. When she looked up, it was to see that the room was not empty. Alan Urquhart hovered by the door, nervously swinging the battered leather briefcase like a schoolboy, as though he couldn’t decide whether to go or to stay.
She was slipping on her coat when he made up his mind.
In contrast to the chaotic state of the rest of him, his speech could be, when he chose, as formal and precise as a dominie’s.
‘I am wondering if you are all right?’
‘Yes, of course. It was just a touch of migraine, as I said.’ She slung the bag on her shoulder, and smiled brightly. ‘It’s gone already.’
‘I wonder if you’d care to join me for a drink?’
She turned her direct gaze on his keenly observant blue eyes.
‘Thank you, but no.’
He held her scrutiny. ‘I’m quite harmless. Nothing to be afraid of.’
‘I’m not refusing out of timidity.’
‘Och, so it must be my own lack of appeal.’ He said this lightly enough, but she saw the weight of genuine disappointment as he shrugged his huge shoulders at the rebuff, turned, and shambled towards the door.
Normally, she had no compunctions about the curt rejection of would-be suitors, but on this occasion, to her surprise, she felt an unwonted pang of guilt at her brusqueness. ‘Wait, Alan. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It isn’t that I …’
He paused with his hand upon the handle, his hesitation a sign that hope sprang eternal. He turned towards her, his expression inviting her to continue.
‘I mean it isn’t anything to do with you personally. It’s just that I don’t …’
‘Drink with students? Is there some rule or other?’
She liked neither her own unaccustomed hesitancy, nor the fact that he had attempted to finish her sentence for her, a male social habit she found intensely irritating.
She replied in what was almost a snap, ‘No, of course there isn’t a rule.’
‘Except for yourself, maybe?’
Though she made no response, she could not prevent the flush that rose to her cheeks at the pointedness of this remark.
They descended together in the lift in silence. In the entrance lobby, he asked, ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’
‘No, thank you. I walk to the tube at Russell Square.’
‘It’s late. Would you like me to walk with you?’
‘No, I’ll be quite all right.’
He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘You’re sure? It’s no bother.’
‘I’m quite sure. I walk that way every night of the week.’ She smiled, intending condescension – this overweight, unathletic man could surely have nothing comparable to her own proficiency in various martial arts! – but she could see from his reaction that her expression had not achieved the chilliness at which she had aimed.
It had been raining and the pavement gleamed with an amber sheen under the street lamps. As she reached the end of Malet Street, on her left the great tower of the Senate House, which bore on its reinforced floors the weight of the university library, loomed black against the glow of the sky like a vast Egyptian pylon. For a moment she had a definite urge to look back at the figure of the Scotsman heading in the opposite direction, but she fiercely resisted the impulse and walked on.
Since her childhood, work had been her joy and her refuge. After clearing a mountain of paperwork relating to her departmental duties, instead of taking a break, she turned with relief to the rough notes she had made for her next article in The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies ‘“Strange fits of passion I have known”: Erotic themes in the poetry of Wordsworth.’
Her article argued that the poet’s entire oeuvre was deeply permeated by the erotic. Even in the most well-known, well-loved, often quoted poetry, there is a sexual element that has never been fully acknowledged. In ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, an apparently innocent tribute to wild natural beauty, frequently recited by primary school children, there are powerful erotic undercurrents.
It is usually assumed that the ultimate source of the poem is a visit to Ullswater in April 1802, recorded in her Journal by Dorothy Wordsworth. The daffodils which grew in a belt along the waterside are there vividly described ‘& seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake’.