Poet and Landlord redux
“A’right lass?”
She smiled, and as usual was entranced by the green eyes in a strong, rugged face that shouldn’t have been handsome but was – devastatingly so. It always felt like coming home when the landlord got over his initial reserve and started calling her ‘lass’ again. She knew then she’d been accepted back into village life, albeit as an honorary resident.
“I’m fine, and you?” she said.
“I’m grand, it’s the other buggers need watching!”
They both grinned, laughing softly at the familiar joke, the rapport of welcome now firmly established once more.
“Usual?”
She nodded and sank down onto one of the antique wooden chairs, kept not because of value and rarity, but because they’d always been locally made stick-back chairs in the bar. Looking around, she was pleased to see that little had changed since their last visit some months ago. The major renovations had taken place a few years back when the present landlord bought the pub. There had been a few dark mutterings about the likelihood of ‘fairy-lights and chrome juke-boxes’ being installed, but he’d confounded dire expectations and restored a sort of traditional purity that bordered on ascetic – pale neutrals and authentically renovated ‘original’ fittings . He’d done away with the chintz curtains and ripped out the old, dark panelling previously installed by a former owner. It hadn’t been real, rather a bit of fake-genteel made out of oak-stained chip-board by someone going for the ‘country charm circa 1959’ look on the cheap.
She remembered it from long ago when she visited with her mother as a child. They’d sit in the Snug, her mother, aunt and grandmother, while her grandfather drank with the men in the bar. She could almost taste the flat, sweet lemonade served with a straw and her packet of cheese and onion crisps – then considered a great advance over the blue-twist of salt that you sprinkled over the packet yourself. Children were tolerated in the ‘family room’ if they sat quietly. The women would catch up with gossip as they nursed half-pints of stout, mouthing words they didn’t want her to hear. After a while, they’d almost forget her and she could slip out to go and watch the long, glittering fall of water that made rainbows in the air on summer evenings. The rocky pool she was forbidden to approach – not that she obeyed, she just made sure she wasn’t caught. In winter, they’d be the fire to watch instead, and hoarded pine-cones to throw into the flames when no one was looking…
Her memories were disturbed by the arrival of the local Rugby team, tumbling in through the door after an early evening’s practise down the valley. Boisterously cheerful after winning a friendly - ‘eh, we stuffed the buggers, didn’t we lads?’ – and eager for beer and singing. They burst into the small room, a noisy flood of testosterone-fuelled muscle and joviality. The landlord had just brought her drink to the bar. She stood to pay.
“On yer own this evening?”
“Yes, my knees hurt today, but they walked late and he’s having a soak in the bath. They’ll be here later.”
“Maybe the snug…? Could get a bit rambunctious in there.”
A chorus or two casting cheerfully filthy aspersions against the opposing pub’s team had already started. She smiled wryly and nodded.
“You go through and I’ll pass yer drink through the hatch. Only the Poet in there – he’s harmless enough.”
Her leaving was greeted with a few friendly but ribald remarks aimed more at each other than at her; she was grateful for the landlord’s thoughtfulness.
The snug was pleasantly lighter than she remembered from years ago, the walls painted a pale neutral, but still the same small round, oak tables and banquette seating, though it was now upholstered in fabric rather than the heavy, sticky, faux leather she remembered of old. Seated in one corner near the fire, a sandy-blond head bent low as its owner scribbled in a note-book. He looked up, a tumble of long hair falling over his forehead and eyes, automatically brushed back by a long-fingered pale hand with broken finger-nails. The fire-light flickered for a moment on high cheek-bones and a sculpted chin, delicately cleft, enough to take any accusation of femininity from his beautiful features
‘Wow… must be the Poet’, she thought. Indeed you could have picked him out as ‘the Poet’ anywhere. His clothes were rumpled and a bit grubby, his shoes were crusted with long-dried mud, but it was his eyes… those dreamy, slightly unfocussed eyes that saw nothing and everything in a single glance. He smiled shyly, nodded her existence and ducked his head; the gilded brown hair tumbling forward again as he went back to his writing. On the table in front of him was a bowl of cooling soup, a few remaining crumbs of bread and a barely tasted glass of beer.
The landlord was at the open hatch, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing at the poet’s bent head with such an open hunger you could only call it yearning. ‘So that was the way of it…’ She’d heard one or two rumours about the landlord, but there had never been anything obvious in his demeanour, though the obvious lack of a woman in such an attractive man’s life generally meant one of three things, a really bad experience that had left him emotionally scarred and vulnerable, a very kinky sex-life that demanded discrete forays to major cities… or he was gay. She remembered her aunt had spoken of fights, ‘wild oats’ and several local girls being left as heart-broken as only an adolescent can be, before this young local tearaway had vanished to the city for a few years. He’d reappeared occasionally with male friends that had caused her aunt to roll her eyes when in conversation with her mother as she recounted the gossip about their extravagant appearance, but then it had been the days of glam-rock and punk, when eye-liner and big-hair meant very little as to sexual orientation – at least not in a city environment. She’d been surprised to read the once slightly notorious name over the door of the local pub, but to all intents and purposes he seemed to have confounded expectations that he’d end up behind bars and settled down, albeit without a wife.
As she went to collect her glass, his face snapped from wistful longing into the politely welcoming smile befitting a publican with a good reputation to his name.
“Anything to eat?”
She glanced at the poet’s table, and the landlord willingly followed her eyes.
“The soup looks good…”
“Oh aye… mek it meself. I’ll bring a bowl through in a jiffy.”
He hurried off. She took her drink to the opposite corner of the room, a place she could observe both the hatch and the poet, and she didn’t fail to notice that after the landlord said he’d bring the soup round himself, the poet’s hand had tightened on his pen and he’d paused mid-word without looking up.
Two and two might be making five here, but she had an inkling of something going on, or probably NOT going on – this being Yorkshire and all that. True to his word, it wasn’t long before the landlord himself appeared with a tray for her – good, hearty vegetable soup, chunks of fresh bread, yellow butter – but his eye-line drifted to the poet in the corner before he met hers.
“There you go. Hubby want some later will he?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s plenty. Anythin’ yer want, just say. I’ll tell him you’re in here when he comes.”
She nods and sees his gaze slide across to the poet, who at that moment reaches for his beer with a fractionally trembling hand and downs a good swig. They momentarily meet eye to eye before they both look away, anywhere but where they each want to look. After a tiny silence the landlord speaks to the poet with studied cheeriness.
“Let yer soup go cold again – shall I heat it up?”
He reaches for the bowl as the poet defensively puts his hand out over the soup and mumbles.
“No, no bother, it’s fine cold.”
Their hands touch briefly and spring apart as if they’d burned each other. The soup-bowl sways and slops a little of its contents over the table. They both apologise, but the landlord successfully re-claims the cold soup.
“Won’t take a minute…”
He’s eager to take it away only so he can come back again – that is obvious, however much he thinks he’s just being a good ‘mine host’.
She watches the poet stare at the landlord’s retreating back… or is it his arse? The hunger she saw in the landlord’s face is mirrored there – plus the mournful sadness of one who believes that any hope is in vain. She almost catches her breath herself, he looks so enchantingly forlorn; then he remembers he has company. He shrugs and gives her a devastatingly charming half-smile the more lethal because it is clearly innocent of its dangerously combustible potential.
“I forget to eat when I’m working.”
His hand wafts vaguely over his note-book. When he shrugs she can see how thin his shoulders are under his jacket, that isn’t really warm enough for frosty Yorkshire Novembers. His face is a touch pinked by more than just a warm fire as he lowers long lashes over grey-blue eyes.
She nods and busies herself with breaking bread and spreading butter for something to focus on to reassure the poet she’s not looking at him – she is of course. He has the fine sculpted bone-structure that makes for real beauty, and although his accent says American, his face says Scandinavian. In fact, it’s almost embarrassing, but she can’t keep her eyes off him, even though she takes care not to let him notice – so she hopes. His skin was that bit too stretched over the bone, his chin a little stubbly, dark shadows lurked under those wonderfully expressive eyes. Either he wasn’t very good at taking care of himself or he was sleeping rough …but he couldn’t be, could he? Not in this weather?
The landlord bustled back with a now-steaming bowl of soup and more fresh bread. The poet looked up quickly and his face flashed a grateful look of love and longing a devoted Labrador would have been proud of, before he ducked his head and recomposed his face into politely studied thanks. He took the proffered tray with a mumble and set it down on the table, sweeping his notes aside. The landlord stooped to take off the bowl and plate and fresh spoon and knife. He was lingering, wanting to say something, she could see that, but not finding anything fit for the moment.
Pint tankards clashed on the bar-top and raucous laughing voices demanded service. The landlord straighted up, frowned and called out.
“A’right, a’right, ‘old yer hossis!”
The poet looked up into the landlord’s face, turned away from him now and focussing on the noisy revellers.
“It’s ok. I’m fine,” he said very softly.
The landlord glanced down, nodded, smiled, a pink tongue-tip flicked over his lips, but again he failed to find the right words to say. He pressed his lips together, smiled briefly and walked away. She’d watched them covertly over spooning her own soup, which was indeed very good. She ducked her head to her spoon. If there was ever a scene of unrequited love she’d just witnessed it… ‘Silly fuckers, couldn’t they see they each wanted the other desperately?’ She thought.
She and her husband came up to the village fairly regularly, snatching a few days away from the city as often as they could, even though ‘often’ was never enough. She revelled in the peaceful rugged calm of the Dales; loving to watch the seasons change in a way that London streets never really showed. Everything here was more extreme in that respect; the agricultural wheel turned through the seasons with vivid differences one from the other. Things changed from week to week here, as opposed to city life’s broader sweeps where summer was different from winter, but the rest was lost as to detail.
It was Thursday, early November, frosty but fine. They’d be leaving Sunday evening or maybe Monday morning if the weather broke, which left them available for Saturday night at the Institute. Village events were important to them; it gave a sense of belonging to the community even if the attachment was tenuous these days. Her family had come from these parts and although her grandparents and the aunt who’d lost her lover in the war and stayed single to live at home and eventually look after them, were all dead, she liked to feel there was still a connection, however distant. She rented the inherited family cottage on annual leases, feeling it wasn’t right to keep a second home when the locals struggled to find one. Instead she and her husband rented one of the beautifully converted barns at the far end of the village. Holiday lets supplemented the farmer’s wife’s income and gave her the independence to buy wildly inappropriate footwear that was her very public passion. Mrs Keighley was famous for her shoes, worn with pride at village functions; she was the Imelda Marcos of the Dales when it came to fancy footwear.
Saturday night’s event was a poetry reading, and from the name on the flier she saw she was right about the poet, definitely Scandinavian by the sound of it. They walked to the Institute with Mrs Keighley, she tottered down the village street in her remarkably elegant Jimmy Choos that must have cost near enough a full season’s profits from the holiday lets. She and her husband smiled at each other secretly. ‘Good job it’s only us who realise how much she’s spending on those shoes; her husband would have a stroke if he knew what they really cost.’ She thought.
Mrs Keighley proclaimed all her purchases to be ebay bargains, but as a city-girl, she found this assertion highly doubtful. When a Daleswoman sported the very latest ‘must-haves’ she knew some of her city acquaintances drooled over as impossible acquisitions due to waiting lists… well, you don’t just come across those on ebay! The lady herself was on catering duty tonight and she tripped off with a staccato tap of heels to carry trays of glasses from kitchen to table for the after-reading convivials. Mrs Gideon, the organiser, talked quietly with the poet, who nodded acknowledgement to her as she took her seat near the wall with a nervous half smile that could easily have mown down a regiment. The pack of school-girls kept at bay by Mrs Gideon issued a collective sigh as the smile fanned over them, and giggled at each other behind their hands.
The place was full, with only one or two seats at the very back left free. The poet kept glancing almost fearfully at the door, but then giving a poetry reading in a Dales village institute was probably cause for minor apprehension. The poet was on stage and being introduced by Mrs Gideon when she noticed the landlord slip in at the last moment and bag the final chair by the door. He looked a bit flustered and self-conscious, as if it was more appropriate for him to know the verses of Eskimo Nell then those of Wordsworth or Neruda. He was so busy settling himself down and burying his nose in the programme that he didn’t see the poet spot his arrival. But she did – the man on stage froze rigid for a millisecond, before straightening his shoulders, lifting his chin – then Mrs Gideon had finished and the reading began.
She found herself glancing from one to the other as the evening progressed; amused that each managed to look at the other when the other was looking somewhere else. She felt like she was watching someone endeavouring to light the blue touch-paper while blindfolded. The fireworks would come eventually; it was just a case of ‘when’. The poet’s delivery was a little strange, to begin with his voice sounded monotonous, but gradually you warmed to the gentle lilt and the words and their resonance came through. Some was third-person personal about damaged relationships between family as well as lovers, some was liberal political, but much was written about places, about here, in the Dales, and the poet’s gut reaction to this unique place.
You make me smile.
It gives me pleasure to gaze at you
Even if you don’t know I’m here.
Under the sun, you arch voluptuously
Against the caressing sky
Grey-green under watching cerulean.
Welcoming strangers who only see
A pleasant, rugged aspect that charms the eye.
Under storms, you’re watchfully motionless,
Shifting in and out of vision,
Veiled grey behind silver, elusive,
Ready to break the foolhardy travellers
Who don’t respect you.
Shorn naked…
The landlord jolted forward in his chair as if he’d been poked with a cattle-prod, before sinking back guiltily. His neighbour nodded sympathetically… ‘the committee really aught to see about some new chairs…’ But she could see it wasn’t just a numb-bum that was suddenly uppermost in the landlord’s mind.
“… sheep wander your flanks…”
The landlord checked out his neighbour’s reactions to his convulsive start, but their attention was focussed on the poet.
“…I could be a sheep,
Explore your folds with a tender mouth…”
The landlord’s mouth dropped open before he swallowed hard.
“…those secret places, shadowed, tempting, entrapping.
Sometimes your darkness unnerves me”
The poet had finally locked eyes with the landlord, and she wonders why no one else seems conscious of the emotional electricity fizzing in the air between them.
“I stand…
…feeling your naked form under my bare-feet.
Exploring rounded sun-warmed, sheep-cropped turf,
Springy and firm beneath my two hands.
I want to press my face into you, taste you,
Breathe in the heady musk of your earthiness
I can never claim you,
But you have claimed me.”
There’s a pause before the audience claps and the noise breaks the invisible tension, the line of wyrd-fire between their eyes. She sees them look away, dragged back to reality – him to simpering school-girls, the landlord to a confusion of thoughts that race briefly across his face before a professional publican’s smile is plastered on, a disguise for what’s going on behind it.
She watches them, fascinated, amused, frustrated. After the question and answer session, dominated by the desperately naïve young girls, eager to impress with queries about ‘erotic landscapes’ but with absolutely no chance of turning the poet’s handsome head that has so clearly been devastated by the blond Yorkshireman who can’t see when something is being offered to him on a plate… It’s all she can do not to bang their heads together!
By the end of the evening’s drinks, both have done their rounds of greetings, and the poet has signed books, shaken hands, nodded and smiled… She got her own copy dedicated and in other circumstances could easily have allowed herself to be utterly smitten by that dazzling smile and unshakably steady gaze. His hand is firm and dry when she shakes it, the skin like finest leather stretched over the muscles, the fingertips a little roughened, strong hands, deft hands… She’s quite envious of what she suspects those hands could do… But not to her, perhaps not to any ‘her’ if she reads him right…
As she leaves the insitute, with the garrulous Mrs Keighley in tow,
“…and Annie said they had to turn off the showers because kids were going in there, messing about – found wet floors of a morning she said…”
She glances back and sees the landlord and the poet walking down the street towards the Green Dragon, shoulders almost brushing, hands deep in pockets - until the landlord very tentively puts one hand between the poet’s shoulder-blades to guide him on his way. She smiles to herself – finally!
The following morning it’s Remberance Sunday and they head to the war memorial with everyone else. The brass band leads the singing and the traditional poem is recited after the vicar says a few words. It’s when the band plays Nimrod that the crowd moves and she spots the landlord, tears streaming freely down his face. There are tears on many cheeks, because this is after all a very moving occasion, but the landlord is huddled in his Barbour, introspective and very much on his own. She suspects things did not go well last night. She’d like to go over and give the poor, lonely man a hug, but knows it’s out of the question – not the Yorkshire thing to do.
“Such a bloody shame…” she mutters. They walk off with the rest of the crowd, but the landlord stays, slumped on the bench on the Green, staring off into the distant hills, a picture of abject misery.
After the Sunday lunchtime session in the pub – at which the landlord is noticeable by his absence, but Zoe the barmaid assures them it’s ok, it’s his weekend off – she steps out into the courtyard for a breath of chilly air to clear her head. It’s well into the afternoon and they’re about to start up the Sunday jam session her husband looks forward to. The sun’s brightly golden as it prepares to sink behind the hills, leaving some dark place still frosty in the shadows of their folds. It is very quiet in the village, very calm...
Apart from… apart from… the moans and gasps and unmistakably torrid pleas that escape from the slightly open window of the flat above the pub. Someone is giving somebody a very thorough seeing to – and from the breathy, rhythmically gasped name… she can guess who – as will the rest of the village if they carry on like that!
It’s fortunate for them that at the crucial, crescendo-ing moment - the band kicks in.
“Wow!” She thought, with not a little envy, and strolled back into the pub grinning from ear to ear.
Her husband can’t help but wonder why she keeps inspecting the ceiling and smiling smugly, but... whatever it is, she’ll tell him later, if she wants to...
Summary: Re-mixed AU saga entitled Sonnet XVII, written by Fawsley from the PoV of an outsider looking in
Rated: PG-13
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: AUChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 3832 Read: 692
Published: 06 Aug 2009 Updated: 06 Aug 2009