Read Online The Dylan Thomas Murders by David N. Thomas - Free Book Online

for an impatient octogenarian who may pop her clogs at any time.”
    â€œBut why now, after all these years?”
    â€œYou’re the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Besides...” Rosalind paused and looked across at me “...the conversations with Martin have stirred up too many memories. I need to put a few ghosts firmly in their place.”
    Rosalind’s reply was plausible but I wasn’t convinced. I felt that we were being used for some purpose that was being kept from us. Perhaps this was an unworthy thought, but I felt uneasy and certainly not as pleased as Rachel clearly was.
    â€œHere’s one I thought you would be particularly interested in,” continued Rosalind. “From Dylan’s first American trip.”
    Rachel took the letter, read it with obvious enjoyment, and passed it to me.

Hotel Earle Washington Square
New York
16th May 1950

Oh Rosalind,

I can’t begin to tell you how tired I am, & sick like an old dog with mange, sick of this country, sick of trains, sick of planes and Spillanes, sick of poems, sick of not hearing from you, sick in my shoes when I hear my voice in the audit-orium (sic), because my lines are an abacus, and Brinnin counts the money. Did you get the last cheque from Detroit, an awful city where they make motor cars? Did Waldo get the postcard from Seattle? I loved San Francisco! I ran guiltless from the readings to a pub on the water-front called Leprecohens, run by a Jew from Dublin, & read Yeats to fish-oiled sailors who told me stories about Al Catraz. The sea is awash with sardine fleets, and the hills with whizzing cable cars. There is so much to eat, & more to see, in a wonderful clear sunlight, all hills and bridges, slipping down to a bold, blue, coldblew boat-bobbing sea.
    I’ve seen lobsters bigger than cats, & crabs the size of space ships. Cockles are clams & soups are chowders, and women wear pads in their shoulders. I’ve sucked Baby Ruths and squeezed Tootsie Rolls but I miss Daddie’s sexy brown bottles. But the American dream is a nightmare except that the people are not sleeping and will never have the relief of waking up. I have seen men without shoes, beggars without bowls, and Indians with not a bow and arrow between them. It’s a moonless, deathfounded night in the back streets, where the eternal poor are spat upon and robbed. Yet I have travelled gloriously: I’ve met Eisenhower, kissed Ella, played cards with the Duke & heard a scratchy recording of Victoria Spivey, which made my flesh creep and my hair uncurl. I have been to Harlem and back, & wondered why I’ve never seen Tiger Bay.
    Have I mentioned Merle before? Her cousin is a paediatrician, & runs a clinic that could help Waldo. I’m having cocktails with him tomorrow. I will ask Brinnin to put some of my money into an American bank because hospitals here run out of patience if their patients run out of sense. I was stopped in the Bronx last night by a boy no older than Waldo. ‘Gimme a dollar,’ he said, ‘or I scream you to shitsville.’ I told him I was an English poet. ‘What’s so special ‘bout poetry,’ he rasped, ‘just another way of making you poor, right?’ I blessed the quality of American education, gave him my autograph and walked on. What a strange word autograph is! The rest of the world is content with a signature.
    Merle took me to her Quaker Meeting last Sunday, & I’ve not been the same since. (Did you know that Caitlin’s mother was a lesbian Quaker? Or was she a Quaker lesbian?) We sat down together in a little circle of comfy armchairs, no priests or creed or mumbo-jumbo, & not a cross or crucifix in sight. The silence seemed eternal. Then an old lady started to talk about peace and the coming war. More silence which I drank and drowned in all at once. Then a very intense Negro stood up and spoke for a few minutes about the fate of the Palestinians.