Son et Lumière

paper, petals, rags (1902)
in which my Great Great Aunt Carrie gets married

Confetti, rose petals, and a long dress
pooling around her feet.

Alfie was five when his Aunt Carrie got married,
in Wooburn, Buckinghamshire, May 1902.
The records on my screen show it – a new node
on a tree of families in a forest of families.

She was working at the paper mill:
a paper hand – her position recorded
by hand in the census records
(a spidery script, copied from paper to
microfiche to my screen) – a rag picker,
sorting old cloths and clothes
to be pulped and bleached

to make sheets of paper
as white and smooth
as the sheets on her bed
in the cottage by the green

china (1902)
in which Alfie misses his aunt

Through Aunt Carrie’s open bedroom door
Little Alfie sees the blankets on her bed
folded back:
the sound and light of the green
fill her bare room through the open window,

and there are two white china dogs
(‘You can look but don’t touch, Alfie’)
on the cleared shelf.

No more games of hide and seek.
She’s gone, with George.
Between him and his grandparents
The space is quiet.
Just Alf, the dog pair,
and a pot of buttons.

ivory and tin (1900)
in which Carrie walks on a path of buttons

stepping out onto
the path of old buttons
that leads from the mill
to the gate; doesn’t want
to be late for her date
with Jack at the fair

beneath Carrie’s boots,
the buttons crunch and clink
– pierced discs of wood, leather,
china, tin, and glass.

At last, away from the thick factory air,
the river offers up afternoon sunlight.
And she might just let Jack kiss her
at the fair; not fair to make him wait too long.

A song rises to her lips
as she feels today’s buttons
in her pockets – the best

from today’s rags:
six cut as roses from ivory,
and a flat tin one that Alfie will like,
with a ship on it.

Discarding the chipped and plain,
the paper mill girls are the best
dressed in town, when

it comes to buttons:
fastenings cut loose,
undone for ever,
and the paper girls choose
from the abundance.

grass (1902)
in which the fair appears

Like a dance, the fair is an annual event,
on Wooburn Green;
the trees stand round and watch.

paper (1902)
in which we see Carrie with a friend

Carrie at the paper mill, hair tied back,
laughing with Catherine as they work.
Catherine, Cass ~ Carrie, Caroline
the paper girls: paper hands,
light, like girls cut from folded paper
they swing their way through the fair
arm in arm.

flags, mirrors, mud (1902)
in which Carrie sees a white horse

‘No harm in looking,’ says Catherine,
eyeing the acrobats and batting her eyes.
The fair is flags and mirrors,
light, colourful noise, and muddy motion; ~
in the bright blur of the merry-go-round
Carrie sees a stark white horse –
wooden mouth fixed open –
and thinks of Alfie.

ink (1902)
in which Carrie reflects on marriage and friendship

Tied to the tree, in 1902,
she takes her husband’s name,
and is fixed to the records.

There are no forms for friendship,
no signatures and witnesses needed:
at Carrie’s side
Cass flies at the fair,
and at work her eyes dance
as they make the pulp
to make the paper
that ink will mark.

polish (1915)
in which George sits for a photo

newspaper, pipe
and pocketwatch,
neatly parted hair
combed moustache
buttoned waistcoat
shone shoes
poised and assured
of your place in the modern
man’s world, you
sit for the photo.

The drape behind you,
is soft folds with hints
of Grecian splendour
and Elysian pleasures:

A sensual backdrop to
your tightly groomed presence
on a geometric bench.

You can’t break.
You keep your breath still
and your voice low.
You keep dangers at bay,
keep the white dogs
out of your house.

The village brewery
was a step on the ladder:
the cellar dankness, the steam,
the rolling barrels and beery air
barely entered your office,
where you shut the door
with a click.

Click, click: your shone shoes
tap the London pavements
from your step-up London office
home to Clerkenwell and Caroline.

marry ~ have children
but the tall thin house in Clerkenwell
stays quiet and fruitless
as the clock on the mantelpiece beats

while down in the suburbs
Alfie’s father, market gardener William,
grows apples and tomatoes and a new wife and family
(more nieces and nephews for Caroline)
and the white dogs are welcome.

A clipped life for George Gibbs.
Trimmed, shaved and scarless.
Bristles and terror avoided,
and joy thin behind his invisible cracks.

china (1900)
in which Carrie remembers Jack winning a prize

Twin spaniels, sitting,
heads turned –
one left, one right.

A bit tight, Jack was,
on beer, that night,
but his aim was sure
and the hoop slid down
over the shoulder of
the prize. Right over.
‘“Rover” you own now
and “Rex”’, said Jack,
as he passed me the pair.

china (1915)
in which Carrie regrets the absence of the china dogs
Barkless, their cold fur flowed
in strokeable waves.
It still does,
though Jack is long gone.

Their faces matched each other,
and they were proud.

The places they could go!
On the parlour mantelpiece
or on the window sill
or in the glass-fronted cabinet: but:
‘Cheap fairings!’ says George, and
‘I will not have those dogs in my house.’

Mouse. What’s he afraid of?

fruit (1903)
in which my grandmother is born

a new daughter:
her cheeks and eyelids
have the arc of the apples on
the September trees;
the first name that
William and Margaret choose
for their second child – William’s third –
is Dorothy; then William
sows another name with it:

a middle name: his sister’s name:
Caroline: a code for Dorothy to carry
down the line and forward: Carrie
who stood as a mother for Alfie,
his son, his own firstborn child.
He tucks the name in gently.

milk (May 3rd 1898)

in which Carrie’s nephew is born
Alfie arrived and Emma died
in the same bed of blood
in Hanwell, 1898.

William Samuel stood
on the sticky floor
in west London –
holding Alfred William
a boy cradling a boy
(boyfather and boybaby) –
lone parent – thinking:
Here is my son but this isn’t
how I thought it would be
and he was afraid
and he could only think
of his parents and sister, and
home for the boy
as the cottage
by the green.

wool (1915)
in which a soldier grows

the brass buttons gleam
on the khaki green uniform
of Rifleman R/34513
Alfred William Searles (age 17)

Boys!
Come along
You’re wanted

in woollen trousers and tunic,
cap with stiffened peak, puttees
and hobnail boots.

gravel (1916)
in which Alf settles in

The roads around the training camp crunch
underfoot like the paths at Soho Mill;
I remember the colour of those paths –
the whole and broken buttons with their stories:
you always wonder who’d worn them and where.

Here at Wimbledon Common,
the paths are plain gravel, neat and orderly.
The grass is flattened by feet

Like when the fair came, at home.
Fat sandbags hang from frames
in the bayoneting ground.
They swing a little and don’t fight back.
There’s a shooting range
and all sorts of terrain for combat practice:
grassy hills, forests, mock trenches.

We’re in wooden huts and the lads are all nice.
We have boards and blankets with a
straw mattress and a pillow for our beds.
It’s a grand place here, though the food might
be better than what we are having.
I have a fine girl up here so I’m very happy.
I don’t mind the soldiering so much
in fact I like it now.

water (1914)
in which aunt and nephew work together

Alfie’s got a job at the mill
and I see him now and then,
hefting bales of dry rags
and bales of heavy wet rags,
and loading bales of finished paper
onto carts and barges
with his strong arms;
he’s a real young man now

glass (1916)
in which William grows more fruit

in the suburban orchard the apples swell,
and under the panes the tomatoes redden
and ready themselves for picking:
William watches the water pool and run
around the dry soil before sinking in;
the sun – concentrated through
wooden-framed glass –
warms the bosky leaves

cotton (1916)
in which Alf prepares for France

Alf checks his kit,
from rifle to field dressing,
right down to the small housewife
in his haversack: a white cotton pouch
with ties, holding needle, thread,
thimble, darning wool
and spare brass buttons.

light (2015)
in which I see something

I’m struggling to unpick
Alf’s handwriting in the
faint photocopied letters
my aunt has sent:
I’m trying to decode a line about a section
Alf’s joined at the army camp on
Wimbledon Common; I just can’t get it. ~

Online, I look for a military name
that might match the rough word-shape
on the page; and suddenly
there’s brightness
as signalling blooms from
letters into meaning:
I’m going in for signalling.
We do a bit of flag wagging in the afternoon
and we go on lamp reading exercises three times a week.

So Alf becomes a signalman,
sending messages down the line
with the blue and white flags of semaphore
in the day, and at night
with patterns of light from Lucas Lamps;
communicating across the dark London
common, practising to get fluent for France
in languages of angles and light.

mud (1916)
in which nothing is normal anymore

Christmas in six days and thirteen till next year:
you can count the days but other things are harder to judge, like ~
where the mud starts and where it ends and how quickly it slides
and when there’s hope for a chum and when there’s none and what the time is;

mist hangs over the mud on days like this, only sometimes it’s more like a glow
pausing awhile over the flesh before departing this seasonless landscape;
leafless is normal at this time of year, but here the trees are twigless too,
and branchless, and barkless

roots (1881)
in which we learn about planting trees

‘I planted the trees round Wooburn Green,’
William remembers, and tells his children (Alfred, Marjorie, Dorothy, Muriel and Billy, who will pass the story on to their children, who will pass it on to me),
‘when I was a lad, about ten, must have been in ’81, with my father, James – wonderful gardener, green-fingered, taught me most of what I know;’
tells them how sapling-by-sapling they dug a hole for the rootball,
leaving a small pedestal in the middle of the hole for the roots to sit around,
then filled the hole with soil and stamped it down, and watered it.
The trees are still there: you can walk round the green on Google Earth
and see them with your own eyes.

glass (1916)
in which Alf’s Division uses light

lens to lens:
(they can’t lay landlines
for the field telephone now,
for fear of the shelling)
so by day they use the heliograph
– their sun writer – and send light in
dots and dashes from mirror to telescope
to be decoded by their company,
and by night they write with lamps

mahogany, oak, walnut, stout (1951)
in which my dad visits Great Aunt Carrie

‘It was full of dark heavy furniture,’
my dad recalls, remembering
the tall, thin house in Clerkenwell.
‘Very Victorian. Once a year,
when I was a boy, Mum and Dad
and I would make the trip
up to town, on the train
and the tram, to see her.
It was quite a thing, the
Annual Visit to Great Aunt Carrie,
who seemed very old to me.
She attributed her longevity
to a glass of stout instead of tea
for elevenses each day.’

(And Carrie still had thirty
years to live, while Alf
had come and gone.)

light (December 20th 1916)
in which Alf remembers

Scooped up, swung and dropped again. Remember the
swingboats? The hoop-la? The china dogs? Flashes
of white make blue light behind his eyes. Alf
remembers the button path and the
trodden grass when the fair came
and the trees on the green
his fine girl,
rags, the field dressing and
the small cotton housewife for the
spare buttons that will never replace the ones
ripped from his uniform by the blast. He holds tight to
paper bales and beer barrels and rides the river to all
the apples and cherries in his father’s orchards, the softness
of Aunt Carrie, and the mother he never knew. Flags. Lamps.
Light still flying out from the broken mirror in his palm, forwards.

paper, card, grass (2015)
in which I see some facts

A photocopied label from my aunt’s loft:
No. R/34153
Rfm A. W Searles
2nd Kings Royal Rifle Corps
AIF Burial Ground, Grasslands
3 miles S.S.W. of Bapaume.

Its creases, corners, and neat ring
reinforcement sticker are as smooth
as the inked text in looped handwriting.

china (2015)
in which names move as sounds and lights

Caroline. I gave it to my firstborn as a middle name,
as my grandma was given it it, and as was I –
a code for her to carry forward.

I knew it had come down the family line
(with a pair of china dogs and a tale)
from my Great Great Aunt Carrie; that was all.

I wondered why the name had travelled so far,
why William had honoured it, passing it on.
Was it something about those dogs?

(They’d rankled George: evidence of a past lover
with a good aim. My dad has them now. Unchipped
and unseparated, their faces give nothing away.)

I looked – and found a quieter story: of a lost uncle,
of a grateful brother, of a sister who mothered a boy
who shifted on the family tree before he fell.

My secondborn’s middle name is my sister’s –
another aunt-code to carry forward, with all
of love, light and family packed in it.

metal, brick (1922)
in which some things change and others don’t

in art nouveau lettering, a plaque on a brick wall
at Soho Industrial Estate, Wooburn Green,
honours the employees of Soho Mill
– A W Searles (that’s Alf) among them –
who gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1918;
light falls on the raised script:
Their name liveth for ever more

ink (1916)
in which my Great Uncle closes

Well, dear Marjorie,
I must close as it is parade time.
I remain, your loving brother

Alf xxxxxxxxx