Seeing Stars (8 page)

The turnout was woundingly low: two elderly ladies, three

day trippers who’d missed the coach to Malham Cove, and

some goofy-looking student with a notepad and pen in his

hand. Our guide for the day was wearing a safari outfit,

including khaki shorts and a bullwhip tucked in his belt.

“My name’s Bob and thank you for coming,” said Bob,

reading from his notes. “And it’s not just for convenience

that we rendezvous beneath the eaves of this churchyard

building. For it was here, acting as a pallbearer at his great-

grandfather’s funeral, that Armitage felt the weight of the

coffin biting into his shoulder, and whose pain and

subsequent tears were mistaken for grief by other

mourners, an experience recounted in his first ever

published poem, ‘The Black Lie.’ ” The goofy student said,

“That explains the uncertainty of tone in that poem, the

sense of loss which is actually an expression of guilt.”

“Exactly,” said Bob. One of the day trippers raised his

hand and said, “Can you tell me how long this is going to

take? We thought we might try to catch the ferret

juggling at midday.” “Not long,” said Bob, “it’s not like

we’re talking Samuel Laycock here, right?” Adopting what

I hoped was a Russian accent I cleared my throat and said,

“Are you sure about the lych gate story? Armitage could

only have been a toddler when that funeral took place.”

Bob said, “Look, pal, don’t start splitting hairs today, all

right? I’m only standing in for my wife. When it comes

to Simon Armitage she really knows her onions, but her

brother’s gone down with the shingles—big scabs right

around his middle like a boxer’s belt—so she’s playing

Florence Nightingale in Market Harborough while

muggings here is left holding the baby. So don’t shoot

the messenger. I was supposed to be supervising the

Bouncy Castle. Anyway, where do you come from?”

“Moscow,” I said, then added, “Actually a small town

about twenty miles to the east,” intending to give the

falsehood a kind of detailed veracity. Bob said, “OK, folks,

if Leonid Brezhnev here hasn’t got any more questions,

let’s move on.”

We walked up to the stagnant canal, where, according to

Bob, my pet Yorkshire terrier had drowned while retrieving

a tennis ball. Bob said, “Armitage never got over that dog,

and the whole sorry incident is recorded in his sonnet

‘Man’s Best Friend.’ Who knows, maybe he should have

gone in himself instead of sending that poor mutt to its

death.” “Presumably that explains some of the emotional

retardation in his later work,” said the goofy student, whose

front teeth were getting longer by the minute. “Exactly,”

said Bob. We waited for one of the day trippers, who’d

wandered off along the towpath to read a noticeboard

about horse-drawn barges in the nineteenth century, then

the tour continued. With Bob spouting his stuff at every

lamppost, we walked to a dilapidated cowshed where I was

gored by a bull when I was nine, supposedly, then to the

escarpment where I’d seen my father bring down a fieldfare

with a single stone. Then to Bunny Wood where I’d found

Gossip John hanging by the neck, then to a meadow where

I’d fallen asleep and woken up with a grass snake curled on

my chest, then behind the undertaker’s parlour, where, Bob

confidently announced, I’d lost my virginity to a girl called

Keith. The two ladies tittered behind their hands. We

wandered in a big circle for a couple of hours before

arriving in the park, and congregated around the bronze,

life-size statue of Simon Armitage. “Of course it caused a

huge stink at the time,” said Bob, lighting a cigarette and

tossing the spent match into the bandstand. “It looks like

something to be proud of,” I said, from behind my beard.

Bob rounded on me: “Oh really? Well maybe that’s how it

looks from the Kremlin, but as it happens a lot of people in

this village said the money should have gone to the

Children’s Hospice instead. Those kids with their big eyes

and shaved heads—breaks your heart. But don’t ask me,

I’m only a taxpayer.” Goofy said, “And once Armitage had

packed his bags for Los Angeles he never came back.”

“Exactly so, son, exactly so,” said Bob. Then with the tip

of his cigarette he pointed towards the white splodge on

Armitage’s scalp and the white streaks on his metal face

and said, “But at least the seagulls like it.” And everyone

laughed. Bob said, “All right, people, that just about wraps

it up.” “But what about the house, the Simon Armitage

Homestead Experience?” I wanted to know. Bob sighed,

impatiently. “OK, Boris, take the keys and post them back

through the letterbox when you’re done. It’s the one at the

top of the hill with the broken windows. There’s a

compulsory donation of five pounds and be sure to wear

the plastic overshoes. And don’t touch a thing—it’s just as

he left it.” I said, “You mean with the tin of mustard

powder on the kitchen table, and a line of his father’s

ironed shirts hanging from the picture rail, the fancy ones

that he wore on stage. And a folded newspaper propped on

the arm of the chair, the cryptic crossword laddered with

blue ink. And his mother’s reading glasses, one arm folded

the other outstretched, next to the silver pen?” Bob said,

“You tell me, you’re the expert, Mr. First Monkey in Space.

Now, if you don’t mind, I want to see Martin Amis opening

the Duck Race, and we’re running late.”

Lippincott takes a photograph with his eye.

Wittmann paints in the crust of salt with a

finger of spit. Yoshioka wheels the last

piano onto the fire. Owens throws stones at

a rock. The afternoon turns over in its sleep,

then sleeps.

Kirszenstein trades her kingfisher skull for

a tinned peach. Jerome traps air in a screw-

top jar. Bambuck plants the last of his teeth.

Johnson dresses his gangrenous wound with

a carrier bag. Bolt pulls up the ladder,

secures the hatch.

Acknowledgments and thanks are due to the editors and organisers of the following publications and projects:
Salt Magazine
,
Blackbox Manifold, The Literateur
,
The Rialto
,
Grist
,
PN Review
,
Poetry London
,
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
(“The Twilight Readings”),
Fiddlehead
(Canada), BBC Radio 4 “Writing the City,”
Cent
,
Tatler
,
To Hell
,
Poetry Review
,
The Colour of Sound—Anthony Frost Exhibition
(Beaux Arts),
Love Poet
,
Carpenter—Michael Longley at Seventy
(Enitharmon),
Loops
,
TriQuarterly, The New Yorker, AGNI.

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire in 1963. In 1992 he was winner of one of the first Forward Prizes, and a year later was the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He works as a freelance writer, broadcaster, and playwright, and has written extensively for radio and television. Previous titles include
Kid, Book of Matches, The Dead Sea Poems, CloudCuckooLand, Killing Time, The Universal Home Doctor, Homer’s Odyssey,
and
Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid.
His acclaimed translation of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
was published in 2007. He has taught at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.

ALSO BY SIMON ARMITAGE

POETRY
Zoom!
Xanadu
Kid
Book of Matches
The Dead Sea Poems
Moon Country (with Glyn Maxwell)
CloudCuckooLand
Killing Time
Selected Poems
Travelling Songs
The Universal Home Doctor
Homer’s Odyssey
Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

DRAMA
Mister Heracles (after Euripides)
Jerusalem
Eclipse

PROSE
All Points North
Little Green Man
The White Stuff
Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock Star Fantasist