I thought I heard the ocean roar

I thought I heard the ocean roar

I liked my Uncle Jack the best

he used to come to tea

he used to tell me stories

he wore a beard and smelled of Havanas

he liked a tot of Captain’s rum

he liked to laugh,

my Uncle Jack

and

I laughed with him…

…Jack was an adventurer they said, he would never come to much, whatever that meant…

…they would sit there round the big table , a few less every year and have a conversation when there was really nothing more that was left to talk about…

…they’d said it all before…

…it was like a merry-go-round..

and

…today it was the turn of Uncle Jack while he was with me and Jessie served their soup…

…… they had been a grand family once, a house with commanding views of the sea, a fortress against the storms off the ocean but all winter the chill never left your bones,  as the icy winds and rain lashed horizontally against crown glass…

…and…

…when it was as hot as it was this year cook made cold cherry soup that uncle Jack loved with an extra tot of Kirsch…

… Jack…the philanderer, the good for nothing, Casanova, ne’r do good, who  drank and smoked and chased the ladies…a charmer…he was NOT…Aunt said,  and she knew about these things…I could hear them through the floor…Aunt was an authority on the subject…she mixed with the right people,  like-minded, as she put it, where people were discussed, Art and the opera, the string quartet that came to play in the grand hall but never money…Rembrandt’s birthday reason for a toast as he would have bee 470 years old today…

…money was simply always there and everyone just helped themselves to what they had a need to do…they avoided carrying the stuff just like the Royals  but like it or not you often needed to carry a purse these days mainly for the  for tipping …some of them used to go shooting,  others went on fishing trips, mountain hikes and travels on the ocean blue…Aunt herself liked German Spas where she would feast on wild boar and venison, languish in goopy moor baths to be hosed down with needle sharp darts of cold water till her skin turned prickly red all over and she shivered with delight…for the circulation it was, she said,…for the improvement of  her sad, worn  spirit as she put it….vital for her and all the family when she had so much to contend with, what with Uncle Jack and all the children who loved him so dearly…

…he was everyone’s Uncle Jack but he was mostly mine…

…my Uncle Jack comes every day to tell me stories and the tales that no one else knew… He spun me yarns and grunted as he settled himself  into the old chair with wings frayed here and there now at the edges from the leaning……he ran his right hand through his beard and in the left cradled golden liquid that sparkled in a cut glass tumbler.

…now then, he would say, where were have we got to…and he paused for a moment…catching up with memories seemed hard for him sometimes…oh yes, he said…John, that’s right, John Masefield…my old friend at sea you know…we served on HMS Conway together, I saw the beard bobbing, he rocked slightly back and forth  and his chest expanded with pride…magnificent she was, 125 foot gun deck, full rigged,  queen of the ocean and a privilege to serve on her…he’d seen a nocturnal rainbow once lit by the full moon, the eye of a giant squid looking at him, mermaids and angels that came down through thick walls of fog to guide them and steer them clear of the rocks…floating moonbeams and sirens singing on the wind…the silent flight of an albatross as it hung in the air above the rigging for awhile until it veered off on a mission of its own into the wind to far horizons…

…the iron lung was pumping hard, the noise was huge and regular, breathing, reassuring, swishing air I could not breathe for myself…

I could see the sea from the window through the Georgian squares that were lower than I was in my prison. Crown glass distorted the ocean somewhat and the sky and through the swishing I thought that I could hear the ocean roar…

…a good man, my uncle Jack said, as he snipped off the end of the cigar and lit a match, took a large sip of the golden liquid, …oh yes, my friend Masefield …he lit the cigar and between puffs to get it going he said, poetry, he wrote poems you know… and he began to recite to me and touched my cheek to wipe away a tear…I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…

…I watched the smoky swirls in the sunlight and my mind drifted as he spoke and remembered…

…and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,

and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over...

...he slumped forward, his glass shattered and he did not stir...
...the cigar slipped from his fingers...

and

...through the swishing sound I heard their laughter  from below me in the dining room…they would come up in time…

I liked my uncle Jack the best

he used to come to tea

he used to come and tell me stories…

15.07.13