Blackthorn
Pleach (verb) /pliːtʃ/: to bend and bind branches of a hedge or tree.
“A letter — a letter — what read you in a letter?”
King Lear’s Wife, Gordon Bottomley (1874 – 1948)Dear Cordelia.
No, that’s too formal.
Dearest Cordelia.
That’s worse.My Daughter. My little Jumbly Girl.
I don’t know how to start. Where to start.My love,
This is not the first time I have tried to write to you.
Edward Lear grunts as he kneels beneath the dark briars that pluck at his jacket. The earth rises to bite into his knees. He had tried a small fold of foam, an off-cut of camping mat but it was just another thing to move along as he worked. Better to entrust his knees to the ground and hope that not too many stones left their mark. A mark of time and body, low over the ground.
He works with a small hand scythe. Quick-sharp movements to catch last year’s growth. Bramble and nettle. Yellow stalks, others rotted to black. Long wreaths of cleavers bind to his blade and hand as he drags them free. He clears his sleeves, one at a time, of their clinging stalks, adding them to the pile for burning. He rakes the ground to bare soil. A robin follows, a wingbeat behind.
Close beside a leafy thicket:
On his nose there was a Cricket,
In his hat a Railway-Ticket,
(But his shoes were far too tight.)
Those were your mother’s first words to me. She told me they were lines from Edward Lear’s final poem, his own obituary. She asked if I thought that made them sad.
Edward, never Ted, even to the few that know him well enough to use it, moves a little further down the hedge. He works steadily. He leaves a chain of small piles behind him. There is little green amongst them. A hatch of brown and grey. Used up and made low by frost, a long winter, the weight of themselves. When he reaches the field corner, he will gather them together. They will burn fast, helped by the can of petrol on his passenger seat. A quick-hot flame, thick grey smoke swollen and hissing with boiled rain.
She introduced herself. A poet. I’d never met a poet, despite my namesake. I wasn’t sure what to say, as if I had to reply with poetry of my own.
I hated my name. My parents, your grandparents, always found it funny. Maybe they thought I’d live up to it. Every teacher I ever had loved to quote lines at me. Stupid little nonsense rhymes. Like I could never be anything but a silly joke to them.
Your mother was the only person I ever forgave for quoting him to me. It delighted her and I couldn’t do anything but forgive her.
Edward sits on his heels, straightening his back. He looks down at the scythe in his hand, the ash handle dark where it fits his right palm. The inner edge catches the flat-grey morning. The curved back shows a patina of dark steel, etched with an oxide scrawl. His hands are stained green; soil highlights the creases of his finger joints. His lifelines are bright against the dirt. Turning his free hand over, he extends his fingers out. The knuckles are thick, stiffened already after only a few hours. He flexes his hand and watches white scars smile back. His thumb runs over a callous on the pad of his forefinger. As a younger man, his hands emerged from the hedge scratched and bloodied each time. Unfamiliar tools sitting awkwardly in his hand. Blisters opening to bright, stinging pink in the web of his thumb with half a working day still ahead. Evenings spent picking at splinters, thorns beneath the skin.