THERE WAS NEVER ANY KNOWING WITH SEPTIMUS ARKWRIGHT.

He was one of those who lived in a house without windows,
and although he wore thick-rimmed glasses, they only served

to reflect mist and coal-smoke that clung to his herringbone
overcoat, with its turned-up collar against August snow

or that type of rain that is the making of rainbows, and
in its other life causes night-lights to dance in northern skies,

and ecstacy in Pennine witches. If Arkwright was aware
of all this, he never let it affect the reasoning he wrapped

round his thin shoulders, until the day he discovered his wife
was not unfaithful with the milkman, but was doing a lot

of favours for a priest. And he didn't turn paler with rage,
but went straight to his friend who sold spurned books

in the market to buy a volume of Blake, and to a bucket shop
for a flight to Nepal. He's still there among mountains

and poppies, and he left his coat and spectacles in a room
without windows, with a bunch of white lilies for his wife.

THE WORST FEARS OF FISHFACE WAGSTAFF ARE ABATED.

He didn't see Septimus Arkwright at first, partly
because he was at the other end of the bar, but more

for the reason that Arkwright, in his long herringbone coat,
resembled a false marble column, and was only identified

by a very slight motion. When Fishface finally separated
the coat from the column, he didn't stride across the room

to embrace and paw his friend, but dug his nose deeper
into his pint of very real ale, and tried to dream up

the colours of the winner of the Derby. And all this,
of course, was long before Septimus Arkwright took off

for Nepal, and was never seen in the Moulting Pigeon again.
But fate had it in for Fishface when war broke out

between two super soap salesmen, after an argument about Pliny
the Elder, and Wagstaff became a refugee in Wagstaff's

demilitarised zone. But today the sun shone in Lum Street,
all Wagstaff's fears proved rootless, for Septimus never

mentioned the fiver and Piggott won.

WAGSTAFF'S PASSION

'Suspicion and insinuation are the water of life in Lum Street, gossip its bread, and the trafficking of salacious scandal a greasy spectre and anathema to appropriate conclusions, and a constant source of social disorder. But the fiercest wars, fought from doorstep to doorstep, corner to corner, and even reaching beyond all natural frontiers, into Neat Street and Butlin's Close, are over the nature of the lights that shine in garrets and basements in those hours when the clatter of beer cans dies away, and even the cats call a truce.'
(Arthur Clutterbeck. Grimesmere Press.)

The stair creaked, the locks were opened, and he entered
the treasury. In the light of a candle, he carefully lifted
three glass-topped trays, and placed them on the table,

and only then
flooded the room with light.

And all the children of Albion sang.
And the heavens were opened and the forests bowed.

They were laid out in rows, wing to wing,
fritillary to fritillary, and all light
had come to their aid, to their stillness.
They were no deader
than a sun, no livelier
than a cold moon, and he
pulled up a chair, minutes
seeped out of their cracks,
and all the bitter juices
were drawn from his throat.

When he left the room
down the well of the stairs,
he paused to listen
to the beating of wings,
and he smiled
his secret.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE FOR MAVIS SHRIKE.

For fifteen identical years Coriolanus Brewster hung about
the sweet shop and tobacconist's Mavis Shrike had inherited
from her uncle, 'Calypso' Jones, who was divided by the third
to last tram to run down Lum Street. He wooed her gently

with overripe mangoes and sad lettuces he earned from Ali
Asram, for bagging potatoes and unloading the remaindered
hearse that Ali used to fetch oranges and tomatoes from Ossett.
But Cory never had the strength to speak of his love, even

though he'd played Rugby League for Batley and Featherstone;
had fought Tizer Grimshaw for two quid at Dewsbury Fair. And
Mavis, though she smiled when he brought her rhubarb and figs,
was never bold enough to ask him how he liked his tea.

In her bedroom, hung with pietas and an outsized poster
of Johnny Weismuller, she would rub her breasts when she saw
Coriolanus sweating as he pushed his wheelbarrow up the street,
barechested even on frosty mornings. They were married

in the church of Jude the Apostate, by Wesley 'Grits' Mackay
before opening time on a Saturday, only five weeks after
Coriolanus had plucked his bride from a fire in her shop,
allegedly started by tinkers. But there were rumours.

NOSTRADAMUS CLARKE WAS BARRED FROM EVERY PUB

within a bookie's runner's round, except the Pigeon
where the snug became his lair. His corner seat

was rarely cold from when Alf Hazelrigg slid out
all seven bolts to open up, until the end of time.

How he afforded all the stout, and when he ate, or if
he was circumcised were not the kind of questions asked

in Lum Street, except behind the thickest doors. He had
that kind of look, that kind of eye, by some accounts

an awesome knack with potter's clay, and read the entrails
of unfortunate pigs and sheep by moonlight in the abattoir

where Clifton Spratt was watchman. Furthermore his mother
kept a one-eyed cat and several warts beneath her chins.

But it was said, and rightly so, he knew a thing or two
about the pedigrees of dogs and only lightly beat his Flo.

IDRIS BEN YUSEF

had flaming hair, lugubrious eyes, and played the basset-horn
on winter nights among the chippings of his joiner's shop;

believing the sawn properties of oak and walnut seize notes,
then throw them back smelling of sap and resonant as pine.

His feet brushed through curled shavings like a broken comb;
he smoked a water-pipe, dreamed of white-washed walls, hoopoes,

grey stallions, women at the well; blew out his heart, trilled
scales that hammered on the deal and shook the spiders couchant

on their webs. Some summer nights he and his clarinet were seen
and heard on Blackhope Moor, along Crow Edge to Falcondale.

CHRYSALIS JONES WASHED DOWN STEPS

at number ten ' the 'castle' ' between Bert Boddy's
betting shop and Amy Coldthwaite's Her'n Fringe.
Lamented Jones had been a brickie, knocked off
the roof to house his pigeon loft, built battlements
around and kept a catapult to hand for cats.

After the funeral, the widow Jones thought proper
to keep on his flock, and bought two jackdaws
from a half-travelling man, in memory, emblem
of her respect for all Lamented's years among
the restless broods; his peering at the sky
with feverish eyes, and praying home his birds.

Two weeks from the very day from the interment,
Chrysalis was sold a pair of golden orioles
by Nostradamus Clarke, and wasn't too far gone
in black, before the Samson twins sussed out
a hidden passion, not yet flowered, brought her
two finches, a robin and a mistlethrush

they'd trapped in the bushes by Cod Beck. Lamented's
brother, Handy Taff, soon found himself three quarters
employed in the construction, from this and that,
of tenements to house magpies and tits, as Chrysalis
was battened on by anything that walked and had
a knack with gins and lime. Three kestrels,

seven ducks, a one-eyed macaw, came as a job lot
from Rudolph Falk; the Samsom twins chipped in again
with coots and waterhens from Mafeking Park,
until Lamented's castle roof was feathered
like an Ascot hat. Each autumn the unwary
southbound flocks were made to pay their toll,

the smaller parts of Lum Street scavenged for mice
and rats to pacify the owls and crows, and all
the widow's mites and florins went on provender.
Each spring the air was full of song, fluttering
of wings and piercing calls, soft cooing, and the sky
above wheeling with flights of amorous birds.

SAM LOWE AND BILLY BRIGHT WERE DROWNED

out by the Salvation Army band while
busking on the corner of Cork Lane;
wreaked their revenge on God
by defecating on holy ground
and pissing against church and
chapel doors, until good Father
Flynn stuck out his crook,
booked them for his discos
in the crypt. They took to reverence
like fleas to dogs or priests to wine,
confessed like thrushes in the dawn,
showed christian charity to all
except the members of the Sally Ann.

LUCRECE HEPMONDIKE WHO KEPT

the Welkom Kaff, was noted for her style of hair
that changed more often than traffic lights, and held
the record in Lum Street for breaking hearts of those
with an eye for apple tart and custard, hot scones

and buttered toast and beans, cream buns. She'd been
a dancer in a troupe and even stripped before the Queen
of Denmark in Neat Street was shut by order of the bench.
She played each suitor like a xylophone, rang all

the changes, plucked them like a harp, until their strings
were stretched to such extremes they lost their voices,
and could only croak their orders in her erotic ear.
She never let them off the hook; they sat around the Kaff

so many zombies in a catacomb.


CUTHBERT AND ARIADNE WEEKES WERE BARREN BUT

two boys in Butlin's Close had just his ears;
a girl in Neat Street just her hair. Her tongue

was livelier than a beached sprat on a trawler's deck,
his lips so close he warbled through his nose. He hunched

his shoulders when she spat her malice like a fireman's
hose. But every Mother's Day he bought her flowers,

his shirts were double ironed; when they went to Filey
for a week they rode the magic roundabouts, the dipper

hand in hand, and nestled on the pier. On bingo nights
in Weaver's Hall she called her card and his, in case

his mouth was frozen when their ship came in.

JEANIE MACPHERSON SHOULD HAVE SMELLED

like fish, considering, but behind her like a comet's trail she left
a bouquet blown about the street; and in the Moulting Pigeon it was

said they whiffed her essences before she reached the welcome mat.
Most days she worked to her elbows in scales and guts and tails;

slicing the pale flesh of cod and skate, pink salmon, mackerel, rainbow
trout. She floated in a marble sea among red snappers, anchovies and eels,

smoked herring and the like. Her legs, though much admired, seemed
out of place amidst a multitude of fins. A figure cut to draw the eye,

hair the colour of barley wine, a maraschino cherry mouth, skin soft
as yoghourt, lardy thighs; though some sniffed at her choice of scents.

THE DAY THAT OLLIE PETERSON SAW GOD BEHIND

his allotment shed in Fowler's Bottom, became a wonder
to all those who raised thin carrots, leeks and slugs.
But Father Flynn wasn't amused, raised sombre eyes
in question when he passed the holy spot. Ollie no longer

turned the sod, fondled pea pods and swedes, and grew
two inches at the very least. He talked in a higher pitch
and walked a slower step, nodded like an earl to 'Grits'
Mackay, and on the hallowed day itself poured the last drops

of Navy Rum onto Tom Grimeshaw's onion patch. He swore
that God had beetroot hair, beard wrapped round his shoulders
as a scarf, flat cap, and told him confidentially he was gob-
smacked at all this weeding out of what he'd meant should grow

on this here spot. That was the day that Ollie downed his hoe,
locked up his shed, but didn't leave his lot; now spends
long hours in vigilance among his nettles, worts and docks.

ELIZA AND HAMLET BUCKLEJOHN WERE RARELY SEEN

in daylight hours; not very noticeable at night.
Their room over the dead bakery, become O'Reilly's

Video Store, was curtained with white sheets so
thin that with a bulb of only 40 watts they lived

their public lives as silhouettes. They kept the pale
secrets of their lives as close as teddy bears,

and drifted the dark streets, two purring cats. He had
a pony tail and she a bun, and both as thin as cabbage

soup, so that their faces shone with feverish eyes.
At night they danced in a spare room, two marionettes,

black on white.

THE THUNDER OF GOD'S VOICE WOKE

Franklin Armathwaite each Sunday from unholy dreams
of Jenny Pitt, through the fierce mouth of Abraham

Pocklington, a preacher in the Church of Hope, who had
a detailed knowledge of his master's will and all

the complex goings-on in Heaven and, most particularly,
the other spot. But Franklin never held a grudge for long;

the voices warned him when to rise, put on his only suit
and socks, bow tie, and step out for a happy hour.

BARNADO STOAT, A CORNET IN THE TUNGSTEN MILL

& Hawthorn Foundry Band, and potman in the Pigeon,
slipped behind the bar at every chance to feed
the tape deck with marches, fifes and drums enough
to raise a sergeant-major from the dead. He'd wink

at Lucius Snape, who soloed on the flute, stood in
for Arnold Batley, piccolo, whenever he'd his turns.
Barnado had a banshee laugh that frightened widows
from their weeds, and Amos the ragman's donkey

on its rounds to such effect his master fitted out
the ass's ears with plugs, hobbled it well up the street
when calling for his mild and stout. May Day the band
turned out in strength and threadbare uniforms to sweep

the cobwebs from the street, and taunt the Blue Boys
from Duck lane, until they left to blow their bubbles
in another place. Next morning the startled paperboys,
the waking birds, were greeted with the Skater's Waltz.

THE WASTELAND BESIDE COD BECK ABOVE

the run-off from the abattoir, on summer nights
was loud with thumping, grunts and gasps, and half
the first born of Lum Street were got among
the bushes and wrecked cars, despite more rubber
than a year's production on a Malay plantation.
There Amy Prout was fertilised by Herbert Dance,
and Phyllis Bundle well and truly laid by Elvis
Cockermouth. Even the quietest girls it seems went
wild among the empty cans and nettle beds, and Lum
Street could be said to owe heart, soul and breath
to those brief humpings on the abandoned plot.

A POSTCARD OF WHITE MOUNTAINS

did the rounds with Alvin Potts, the postman, revealing
it to everyone before it came to rest with writs
and final notices on Fishface Wagstaff's mat.

A yak, a pretty dark-eyed girl, some doves, a Buddhist
monastery stigmatised with a rough cross, to mark the spot
where Arkwright laid his head and dreamed his confidential

and erotic paragraphs. 'They keep a lot of bees, the Summer's
hot. The Spring gets warmer, but the Autumn frosts. The girls
are friendly but some monks are not. Last month it snowed

and snowed and iced, so that I fell and broke , my opium pipe.
Last week it hailed. Today it's raining like a parson's mouth.
Wish you were here. Keep smiling. Yours, Sep Ark.'

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