Read Online Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Rushforth
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tick the time when it was allowed to tick-tock. Without his say-so, the hands of the clock would cease to move, the pages of the calendar would not be ripped away, and there would be an unbroken shaded silence in which nothing moved. Some strangers were named Mr. Robertson or Mr. Faulconbridge or “the man at number seventy-three”; some strangers were named Papa.
Iphigenia
had been the name of one of the earliest of the wooden sailing ships of the Occidental & Eastern Shipping Company, and the figurehead of the ship was in Grandpapa and Grandmama’s garden. There was what Grandpapa called his “quarterdeck” at the back of their house, and here — at the end of a long, narrowing wooden piazza — was the figurehead, with the ship’s wheel mounted in front of it. She would lie on the lawn beneath it, looking up at the calm, sad, downcast face surrounded by drifting clouds, imagining that she was floating in the air beneath the rooftop sculptures of the office, trying to induce a feeling of weightlessness, of vertigo, rather like the way in which she tried to lose her sense of direction by turning round in the darkness beneath her bedclothes. Sometimes she lay on top of the figurehead on the warm, smooth wood, in the afternoon summer sun, looking down through half-closed eyes at the grass beneath her, trying to see the waves beneath, trying to feel the undulation of the ship’s movements, herself moving away from the place where she was. She could hear the wind in the branches of the trees, the snapping of the flag on the flagpole. It was the sound of the sea nearby, beyond the bottom of the garden.
7
The bearded faces were blurred. The photograph of the bearded poets in
An American Anthology
was covered by a protective sheet of tissue paper, like the illustrations in her Bible, and The Bearded Ones peered through, a caravan of Old Testament prophets stranded in a sudden desert sandstorm.
(What
was
the collective noun for prophets? A clairvoyance? A prognostication?)
They hovered in the air above her, a mirage in the desert air, far from the oasis, clouds covering the sun. The air became cooler, chillier, and a cold current rippled through the room like wind across a cornfield, rustling the curtains.
Only Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman looked directly into the camera. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were all photographed in profile, giving them the appearance of suspects posed by a police photographer:
THIS POET IS WANTED!
Bryant and Holmes, like shortsighted duelists, stared into each other’s eyes almost nose to nose. They couldn’t possibly miss at this range. The remaining three poets — John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Sidney Lanier — favored the kind of expression employed by men faced by someone whom they did not wish to acknowledge, eyes focused evasively to one side, gazing intensely into the middle distance, but seeing nothing. It was the expression people were increasingly starting to assume when they were being photographed, pretending that the camera was not there, and had caught them unaware. Whitman — clearly no gentleman — was wearing a hat, and no necktie, but this was to be expected of a man who matily abbreviated his name to Walt, insisting upon familiarity. Billy Bryant? Olly Holmes? Sid Lanier? Not even the biggest of beards could possibly compensate for such summarily clipped forenames. It would compromise the integrity of the very poetry, threaten the meter, imperil the rhymes.
Seeing these beards fluffily flocked together, like an illustration for
Far from the Madding Crowd
— Gabriel Oak, you felt, was just out of sight, grasping his crook like a Good Shepherd (odd to link crooks with goodness) — you could understand why altocumulus clouds were sometimes described as sheep clouds. They crowded the sky with baa-baa bossiness, three bags full with self-importance. Black sheep brought storms.
Beards and three names
Iphigenia
had been the name of one of the earliest of the wooden sailing ships of the Occidental & Eastern Shipping Company, and the figurehead of the ship was in Grandpapa and Grandmama’s garden. There was what Grandpapa called his “quarterdeck” at the back of their house, and here — at the end of a long, narrowing wooden piazza — was the figurehead, with the ship’s wheel mounted in front of it. She would lie on the lawn beneath it, looking up at the calm, sad, downcast face surrounded by drifting clouds, imagining that she was floating in the air beneath the rooftop sculptures of the office, trying to induce a feeling of weightlessness, of vertigo, rather like the way in which she tried to lose her sense of direction by turning round in the darkness beneath her bedclothes. Sometimes she lay on top of the figurehead on the warm, smooth wood, in the afternoon summer sun, looking down through half-closed eyes at the grass beneath her, trying to see the waves beneath, trying to feel the undulation of the ship’s movements, herself moving away from the place where she was. She could hear the wind in the branches of the trees, the snapping of the flag on the flagpole. It was the sound of the sea nearby, beyond the bottom of the garden.
7
The bearded faces were blurred. The photograph of the bearded poets in
An American Anthology
was covered by a protective sheet of tissue paper, like the illustrations in her Bible, and The Bearded Ones peered through, a caravan of Old Testament prophets stranded in a sudden desert sandstorm.
(What
was
the collective noun for prophets? A clairvoyance? A prognostication?)
They hovered in the air above her, a mirage in the desert air, far from the oasis, clouds covering the sun. The air became cooler, chillier, and a cold current rippled through the room like wind across a cornfield, rustling the curtains.
Only Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman looked directly into the camera. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were all photographed in profile, giving them the appearance of suspects posed by a police photographer:
THIS POET IS WANTED!
Bryant and Holmes, like shortsighted duelists, stared into each other’s eyes almost nose to nose. They couldn’t possibly miss at this range. The remaining three poets — John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Sidney Lanier — favored the kind of expression employed by men faced by someone whom they did not wish to acknowledge, eyes focused evasively to one side, gazing intensely into the middle distance, but seeing nothing. It was the expression people were increasingly starting to assume when they were being photographed, pretending that the camera was not there, and had caught them unaware. Whitman — clearly no gentleman — was wearing a hat, and no necktie, but this was to be expected of a man who matily abbreviated his name to Walt, insisting upon familiarity. Billy Bryant? Olly Holmes? Sid Lanier? Not even the biggest of beards could possibly compensate for such summarily clipped forenames. It would compromise the integrity of the very poetry, threaten the meter, imperil the rhymes.
Seeing these beards fluffily flocked together, like an illustration for
Far from the Madding Crowd
— Gabriel Oak, you felt, was just out of sight, grasping his crook like a Good Shepherd (odd to link crooks with goodness) — you could understand why altocumulus clouds were sometimes described as sheep clouds. They crowded the sky with baa-baa bossiness, three bags full with self-importance. Black sheep brought storms.
Beards and three names
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