8.1: A dying fall

Season 8: The Wyrd of Unbelief


Lottie is sitting in the den in the woods, looking out at the rain: a fine light rain but enough to soak anyone out in it for long. As everyone knows, axolotls are allergic to water. It is thus not a day for football.

Travis arrives after a long Saturday morning committee meeting at the Potting Shed. As someone widely seen as ‘up and coming’ in Potting Shed administrative circles, he feels a kind of moral duty to give up half of his free time on Saturdays to such dull duties. But it isn’t clear to him what, if anything, he has achieved today. Perhaps that is why he says:

“Lottie! It’s a Saturday! You’re reading! You don’t have to read on a Saturday. No more lessons until Monday!” 

“I know, but I don’t know what else to do on a day like this. I know you don’t like him much but I miss having Fabian around. Alcock says he's gone away for ten days. Ten days! And this - even just a poem! - fits my gloomy mood.” 

“What is it?” 

“Oh it’s a Farren. An early one. Before, they say, he ‘found his voice’. She picks up the book again and perhaps more fluently than one might expect reads out:-

That’s torn it. You’re dead, now. Aren’t you?   
 
I thought we’d get to have another beer, 
(You were never slow to start another round), 
And risk a Bradford Kashmir vindaloo, 
In the shadow of the Odeon belvedere 
(since neither of us then was office bound). 
But that’s torn it. 
You’re dead, now. 
Aren’t you?  

We’d play some Echo and the Bunnymen,
Then dance in fountains on Centenery Square 
(To the darker songs of 23 Skidoo). 
And take the evening tram on Shipley Glen, 
Chanting drunken backwards riffs on our Lord’s Prayer. 
But that’s torn it. 
You’re dead, now. 
Aren’t you?

The scent of greatness clinging to your shirt
- A sign of sleeping wild beneath the sky - 
(No time for morning wardrobe switcheroo) 
Could never undermine or disconcert 
The poet army we would unify. 
But that’s torn it. 
You’re dead, now. 
Aren’t you? 

I thought we’d get a better chance to say 
The things we’d only hinted at before 
And, if we managed not to misconstrue 
Some blokey line from Ernest Hemingway, 
We might ignite a cultural Holy War. 
But that’s torn it. 
You’re dead, now. 
Aren’t you?

“It’s a bit odd. The way it rhymes. Or tries to. But, despite that, sad. Do you think I will have a friend like that? Who dies.” 

“That strain again. It had a dying fall,” pTravis half replies, absent-mindedly. “I’ve not read that in years. You seen ’Gillo?” 

“No. Not today. Not at breakfast. Not at supper.” 

“Yeah. No Cauliflower Conundrum!”

“No, I’m serious. I don’t think I’ve seen him anywhere in a couple of days. With Fabian away, he should be being Night Watcher. You don’t think he’s gone off again? Not like the Juggins business.” 

These stories still bear the name of Masongill’s murderous alter-ego ‘Juggins’ who had robbed the Potting Shed kitty to send a bomb to a mole killer who had massacred his whole village when he was a pup.

“I hope not. I don’t think so. He wasn’t being anything other than his usual gloomy self. Gloomy ‘of character’, as your tutor helpfully says.” 

Lottie throws down the book. “I hope not. Goodness. What a gloomy day. And it’s summer! Poems, huh! Words really don’t ever matter, do they. They can’t even stop summer rain.”

Both sit in the door of their den and watch the rain dripping off the leaves around them. A surprisingly strong but warm breeze seems to be picking up. Suddenly one of the few fur trees a little way off seems to lean to one side and slowly collapse wrenching up a wide but shallow pancake of roots.

“Did we just see that?” asks Lottie in surprise.

“I have never seen that happen before!”

“It seems somehow significant”. Lottie looks in suspension around the other trees but none of them look less than solid.