A very old poem and a kernel for the novel. The smell of the strawberry jam, the decay, the wildness..
The jam thick with whole strawberries
hadn’t seemed so wonderful to me at the time.
Only now, sitting in my room with morning toast do I feel the loss,
as I remember them sliding out of the jar on to the newly buttered toast.
My eyes would be wide with the breakfast spread,
hidden all night under the rust-coloured cloth,
which was whipped off come morning,
to pour fresh tea into teacups that had been upturned through the night.
To stand the loaf on its end and slice the top off as though it were a ham.
The house was falling down, they said,
was bulldozed, in the end, for level bricks and double-glazing.
Even the garden is now straight and neatly pruned,
and the plot looks smaller, much smaller when empty.
But I still see the tall grass and apple trees,
I feel the scratch of the rusty barrel under my feet
as I roll it across the lawn,
I see the sheds; collapsed around the piles of junk inside them.
There was a face that we chalked on the wall with my uncle.
We would imagine it was our headmaster and hurl apples at it,
watching them smash against his chalk cheek
and dribble down his brick neck.
In the years after John’s death it faded,
and each passing summer we would retrace it,
to try to etch it in to permanence,
until one year we couldn’t find its outline
and didn’t know where to start.
We, so young, so unknowing had probably forgotten or moved on faster –
because we had energy, and less memories.
And eventually it was normal for him to not be there anymore.
But not for his mother, or my father.
He had no children to carry on his laugh,
his genes,
his foolishness.
Elisabeth Pike
elisabeth pike 