Silver

BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR
The Lamberts: George, Constance and Kit
Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life
Keats: A Biography
In the Blood: A Memoir of My Childhood

CRITICISM
The Poetry of Edward Thomas
Philip Larkin
Ways of Life: Places, Painters and Poets

EDITED WORKS
Selected Poems: William Barnes
Selected Poems: Thomas Hardy
John Keats: Poems Selected by Andrew Motion
Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry
First World War Poems

FICTION
Wainewright the Poisoner
The Invention of Dr Cake

POETRY
The Pleasure Steamers
Independence
Secret Narratives
Dangerous Play: Poems 1974–1984
Natural Causes
Love in a Life
The Price of Everything
Salt Water
Selected Poems 1976–1997
Public Property
The Cinder Path

In those days I did my father’s bidding. I would leave my bed at six o’clock every morning, tiptoe past his door so as not to disturb his slumber, then set to work as quietly as possible among the foul tankards, glasses, plates, knives, gobs of tobacco, broken pipe-stems and other signs of interrupted pleasure that awaited me in the taproom below. Only after an hour or so – when everything had been made straight and the air was fresh again – could my father be trusted to appear, cursing me for having made such an intolerable racket.

‘Good Lord, boy’ was his reliable greeting. ‘Must you dole out headaches to the entire
county
?’ He did not look in my direction as he asked this, but slouched from the doorway to a freshly wiped table, and collapsed there with both hands pressed to his temples.
What followed was also always the same: I must look sharp and fetch him a reviving shot of grog, then cook some rashers of bacon and present them to him with a good thick slice of brown bread.

My father gulped his rum without so much as blinking, and chewed his meal in silence. I see him now as clearly as I did then – almost forty years distant. The flushed face, the tuft of sandy hair, the red-rimmed eyes – and melancholy engulfing him as palpably as smoke surrounds a fire. At the time I thought he must be annoyed by the world in general and me in particular. Now I suppose he was chiefly frustrated with himself. His life had begun with adventure and excitement, but was ending in the banality of repetition. His consolation – which might even have been a positive pleasure – was to finish his breakfast by issuing me with instructions he thought might keep me as unhappy as he felt himself.

On the day my story begins, which is early in the month of July in the year 1802, my orders were to find the nest of wasps he thought must be in our vicinity, then destroy it so our customers would not suffer any more annoyance from them. When this was done, I must return to the taproom, prepare food and drink for the day ahead, and make myself ready to serve. I did not in fact object to the first of these tasks, since it gave me the chance to keep my own company, which was my preference at that time of my life. I need not say how I regarded the prospect of further chores in the taproom.

Because it was not my habit to entertain my father by allowing him to see what did and did not please me, I set about my business in silence. This meant nodding to show I understood what was required, then turning to one of the several barrels that stood nearby, pouring a drop of best beer into a tankard, and taking this tankard outside to the bench that ran along the front of our home, where it faced the river. Here I sat down and waited for our enemies to find me.

It was a fine morning, with mist already burning off the banks and creeks, and the whole panorama of our neighbourhood looking very delightful. Beyond the river, which at this point downstream from Greenwich was at least thirty yards wide, olive-coloured marshland faded into lilac where it reached the horizon. On the Thames itself, the work of the day was just beginning. Large merchant ships starting their journeys across the globe, stout little coal barges, ferries collecting men for work, humble skiffs and wherries were all gliding as smoothly as beetles along the outgoing tide. Although I had seen just such a procession every day of my life at home, I still found it a marvellous sight. Equally welcome was the thought that none of the sailors on these vessels, nor the fishermen tramping along the towpath, nor the bargees with their jingling horses, would acknowledge my existence with more than a simple greeting, or interrupt my concentration on my task – which, as I say, was merely to wait.

When the sun and breeze, combining with a drowsy scent from the emerging mudbanks, had almost wafted me back to sleep again, I had my wish. A large and inquisitive wasp (or
jasper
, as we called them along the estuary) hovered cautiously above my tankard, then clung to the lip, then dropped into its depths with a shy circling movement until it was almost touching the nectar I had provided. At this point I clapped my hand over the mouth of the tankard and swirled its contents vigorously, to create a sort of tidal wave.

When I had kept everything turbulent for a moment or two, like a tyrant terrifying one of his subjects, I removed my hand and carefully tipped the liquid onto the surface of the bench beside me. The jasper was by now half-drowned and half-drunk, its legs incapable of movement and its wings making the feeblest shudders. This was the incapacity I wanted, because it allowed me to delve into my pocket and find the length of bright red cotton I had brought
with me, then to tie it around the waist of my prisoner. I did this very gently, so that I did not by accident turn myself into an executioner.