THE BALLAD OF EDMUND TUPPENCE
by Mark Gullick
The second of four cantos in a look-in at the state of love in postmodern London. Canto One available HERE
‘Tis morning! Sally smooths young Edmund’s brow,
Her nursing skills unpaid unless you count
The coin of love. Oh, not that she rates now
As legal tender an unknown amount.
But wealth can lie unreckoned, so allow
Her tenderness as coinage and recount
That, though this Nightingale has loved before,
Her heart knows that she never has loved more.
As Sally takes a pulse and makes some tea,
The buzzer makes her start — now what is this?
She hesitates to view CCTV
But knows it has saved many a young miss.
The bulky frame enframed there seems to be
Our Royal Mullins. What could be amiss?
This guardian brought an angel to her door.
Now, who can say he can’t do something more?
Our Royal is a man quite made of granite,
And wider than a rugby scrum, and so,
Although the Mullins never meant to plan it,
Young Sal admits him with someone in tow.
We wish the young muse safe. But, wait; well, damn it!
We knew that Royal would not stoop so low.
He’s brought a doctor from a local surgery
(We’ll look away while he commits his perjury).
As Sally brews some tea, the GP kneels,
Attaches wires to Edmund, hooks him up,
Inspects his eyes by flashlight, then he feels
Young Eddie’s cranium — Lord! What a cup
That is to drink from! He who always steals
Has juice of memory from which to sup.
He tells young Sal, though Edmund still be game,
When he awakes, he may not know his name.
The doctor leaves, but not before our Royal
Informs poor Sal that there must be a fee.
She understands that now she is embroiled
And, as she knows that nothing is for free,
She reaches for her purse, but Mull is loyal
And takes her to one side and says that she
Should look in Edmund’s pockets, just the once.
There, she will find what Royal calls some ‘bunce’.
Ms. Quicklake feels inside the young man’s jeans.
The first thing there that strikes her is not cash
But warmth and life, and something else between,
But we will move on, lest we be seen brash.
She extricates amounts she has not seen,
Enquires of Mullins, who says: Don’t be rash.
The doctor names a price, a large amount
(A word from Royal brings a large discount).
Good Mullins says: “I will return again,
But there are things that you should know, um, Miss?”
“I’m Sally Quicklake,” Sal replies. “Your name?”
“I’m Royal Mullins” (truth won’t go amiss).
“You understand the nature of Ed’s game?”
“I do not,” says young Sal, and also this:
“It’s nothing would disturb or make me grieve.”
“Good luck with that,” says Royal as he leaves.
Now, Mullins leaving makes the building shake;
The man is a colossus! Sally knows
That she must care for… Name! For heaven’s sake!
Her curiosity for Edmund grows.
And just as there in Eden was a snake,
So Sally’s need to know a name now shows.
She reaches once again into his trousers
(Why do the smallest movements so arouse us?).
This time, it is not money that she takes
From Eddie’s nether parts. Some other thing.
A bag of flour? Does he look like he bakes?
She looks at it. A bell begins to ring.
How memory a saviour often makes
And oftentimes the strangest gifts will bring.
She vaguely knows what she holds in her hand
(The street value is roughly seven grand).
But Sal has little time here to assess
Her findings. Her poor patient now has stirred.
She primps her hair, adjusts her cotton dress.
How curious, we think of pride deferred.
She almost sees herself as in distress,
And then recalls she has a wounded bird.
She has no understanding, poor sweet thing,
That Ed has more than just a broken wing.
He’s with us now. Young Tuppence comes around,
And Sally looks into those hazel eyes.
Well, poetry must end. We’ve run aground.
No more of love; it is a greater prize
Than our poor art can summon up or sound.
We’ll watch our Ed and Sally realise
That sudden love is sweeter when unplanned,
Just as the drowning sailor sees the land.
Now, let us leave these foundlings for a while
And passively review the situation.
Exhibit A, M’lud. There is a pile
Of Charlie sitting in Sal’s habitation.
The lovers may begin their tryst in style
In jail (if you can find a police station).
And all the Royal Mullins in the world
Could never save our hero or our girl.
But aren’t we poets? We must hie us hence!
For love is our true subject, and we see
A mingling, a sense joined as one sense
Two rivers flow to join in one blue sea.
We must rejoin young Sally and E. Tuppence.
Oh, water, bathe us, poets as we be.
The rhyme there in line five is weak, we know,
But love, not poesie, makes this river flow.
So, here we are, spies in the house of love.
Oh, muffins! We have clipped our wings once more!
The usual suspects, glove and dove, above.
You know the drill; I won’t become a bore.
Unless… what if we cheat and just let love
Do double duty? For we stand before
Two lovers. Let not love now make them fools.
But please allow us — once — to break the rules.
An afternoon flows by. Young Edmund walks;
Just baby steps, and looks always at Sal
As if at mother. “If once they could talk,”
Thinks Sally Q, who has no child at all.
He sits, all tired, as Sally draws a cork.
A glass of wine for her; she needs withdrawal.
This poor child must be pitied. She is torn.
She’s birthed a child which has yet to be born.
And when young Eddie sleeps again, she thinks.
He is out like a light, sleeps like a cat
For many hours. But, even as she drinks
Her Côtes du Rhône, she can’t help but think that
She has a lodger criminal; the links
Between her old life and her new-style flat
Cannot escape her, nor those thoughts be louder.
Those thoughts turn once again to all that powder.
One point remains in Sally’s late events:
The telephone, that lifeline to us all.
Remember, Sal, remember. Marshal sense
And memory. Remember who to call!
So; Royal Mullins. Talking to a fence
May be the conversation overall
For dodgy escapades. But what a tonic!
Sal dials and vows to use her bond Platonic.
Now, there are moments, certain fulcrum times,
Where lives rotate. Here, Sally has reached hers.
We can but watch her, we who trade in rhymes.
‘Tis not within our gift what next occurs
As Sally views her life. Now something primes
This rootless, loveless girl as love defers
A tiresome life now Sally Q has seen
An underworld in which she may be queen.
Thus, Sally views time as a corridor
In which she stands. She looks one way and back.
The past recedes behind, the rest before,
And where she stands decides her future track.
Her life has been a dull thing, such a bore,
A terminus, a weary cul-de-sac.
She leaves the corridor turned all about.
One girl went in; a different girl came out.
This rearrangement must be stalled for now;
The patient stirs. She kneels beside his bed.
He is the key and codex; he is how
Our changeling child will strike her poor past dead.
As with her lips, she grazes Edmund’s brow.
The shades of inhibition are now fled
As Sally Quicklake, by her own admission,
Takes love and life and Edmund as a mission.
The door again: return of Royal M.
He’d wondered if the girl would change her tune
On seeing so much marching powder. Then
Again, he knew that he would see doubloon
With so much coke, but told himself again
His code would not allow him such a boon.
Though Royal had no father and no mother,
He’d always seen Ed as a little brother.
We’ll grant some privacy to Sal and Royal
And muse instead upon morality.
We know that Mullins R. remains as loyal
As faithful hound to master, loyalty
Being a habit difficult to foil.
But where does Sally owe her fealty?
To Edmund, yes, but what of moral codes?
Can right be found by following wrong roads?
Morality’s a river to the sea,
A Nile, a Danube, like a serpent flows.
But rivers muddy, though their course agree
With undulations all their hist’ry knows.
They reach the same place, ‘tis no mystery;
At least, no mystery that we suppose.
The mystery is how the water’s changed,
And how the moral system’s rearranged.
For Sally’s called her work and told them straight
She’s quit. She won’t be coming in again.
She has a new job now, which will not wait.
A new life with a lightning-lit terrain.
A man, a plan. They may have got here late,
But here they stay and grow; that much is plain.
For she has struck a dealer’s deal with Royal.
She knows the gentle giant will stay loyal.
She’ll hold the stock; he to a dealer sells,
Who hawks it on the street and takes a cut,
As does our Royal, whose presence there compels
The vendor to be honest injun. But
Young Sally is defended. If he tells
A soul, Mullins will crush him like a nut.
As Sally toys with Edmund’s silken hair,
She’s set her sail, and now, the wind blows fair.
Another day has passed, and Sally fades.
She knows that sleep must claim her for its own.
She turns the light out, closes all the shades,
And takes her clothes off, no longer alone.
As Edmund’s breathing softly serenades,
She hears something melodious in the tone.
She slips beneath the sheets and holds him tight,
Aware of wrong but feeling very right.
In darkness, now, we poets must perform
Our duty to the muses and the soul
Of poetry. Our theme begins to warm
As silence reigns. We scarcely need cajole
The words to find their order and to form
A bracelet charm’d to settle any toll
That love exacts, a bill that love may send
(We used ‘love’ twice — but never at the end…).
‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. Yes, yes, we know.
But judgement need not always be as stern
As Biblical pronouncements, nor as though
We seek to be judicial. Yet, we learn
Each situation has its yes or no
And sometimes both, which case will make us turn
Attention to the yea and nay together.
Will wind blow fair, or usher in foul weather?
When forces can’t be stopped or objects moved,
We have to re-think physics. One or other
Must lose its erstwhile signature; that’s proved.
But, which? Unless they blend with one another,
A moving lover, an unmoving loved.
An alchemical sister with her brother.
A new phenomenon! And so, what then?
(I know, we cheated with line five again).
“What can I know?” said old Immanuel Kant.
They set their clocks in Königsberg by him,
So regular his daily walk. We shan’t
Pretend our chances don’t look pretty grim
Of knowing what our lovers can and can’t
Achieve. We can’t quite quote Kant verbatim.
But, though a fairly knowledgeable bloke,
We’re certain he knew nothing about coke.
You see, young Sally is an ingénue,
A rube, a raw prawn, wet behind the ears.
A fly in spider territory, true,
She is an urban lass without the fears
The town-mouse has, but these are pastures new.
Her judgement’s green; the shell’s about her ears.
Yet, would she fly, she would risk all for love.
“For love!” we say. And say again: “For love!”
Hie thee. You find us here, a little worn.
In truth, we’re frit; we’ve scared ourselves with verse.
If any veil there were, ‘tis truly torn,
And truth revealed; it couldn’t be much worse.
To boost our sum of woes, here is the dawn;
It strokes the lashes of our naked nurse.
And when she strokes his tousled hair, it seems
To Sally, though she wakes, that yet she dreams.
Whatever dreams she has dreamed may have told
That imminence of action is at hand.
She’s out of bed, and pen in hand, she holds;
Here is a girl who likes her morning planned.
She writes and crosses out, a list unfolds,
And lists are something Sally understands.
A new life with a new man needs a start;
She’ll give rein to her head and shelve her heart.
And as she scribes and prioritises,
The mirror on her wall watches her there.
That silver surface which so oft advises
Her choice of dress, the styling of her hair.
She sees it not, nor sees as Edmund rises,
Now stands behind her, smells her essence rare.
She spins at last and has nowhere to go
As Edmund Tuppence smiles and says: “Hello.”
She freezes, and he stands as still as stone.
The mirror has them both, a painted frieze.
A speculum that speculates alone,
The mirror seems to hold the future’s keys.
As Sally rises slowly to intone
A hello to put Edmund at his ease,
She sees there is no threat meant here at all.
The poor boy needs to answer nature’s call!
She takes his hand in hers and leads him on,
Not to a sylvan glade but more mundane
A place. She shuts the door and thereupon
Retires. I think there’s no need to explain.
So, Sally walks away, auboustrephon.
To glance, embarrassed, at her list again
(We struggled once again in five for verse.
The word means ‘walking backwards’. What a curse!).
Now Edmund’s back. He says hello again,
And Sally dreads she has an empty shell
As lover. But she greets him all the same.
To see him smile is more than she can tell.
Then, he expands his theme: “What is your name?”
And Sally speaks, as tears she tries to quell.
It doesn’t take her long to work it out.
Ed’s tabula is rasa; there’s no doubt.
She leads him, smiling, to a chair. He sits.
“Where do you live?” she asks. Ed smiles once more.
“Well, I live here,” he says, “with you.” Now it’s
Impossible for Sally Q to shore
Up tears. He seems to take on facts as bits
Of information newly formed as law.
He may be Sally’s new angelic miracle,
But Edmund’s sense is totally empirical.
Perhaps, ‘empirical’ is not the word;
It smacks too much of dead philosophy.
And ‘sainted’ is not something that is heard
These days, and brings us to theosophy.
Though ‘holy fool’ is something that’s occurred
To us. We’re truly at a loss. If he
Be taught at all, young Sally Quicklake must
Enlist the help of friends that she can trust.
She has a teacher friend who’d understand
The turn that Sally’s life’s been wont to take.
A visit for that afternoon is planned;
Until then, Sal has other plans to make.
For Edmund has no wardrobe, none to hand.
How Sally longs to shop, but can’t forsake
Her changeling child. To visit an outfitter,
She’ll have to find herself a babysitter.
Who can she trust? There is but one sound man.
She is aware he’s on a different road,
But something whispers to her that she can
Entrust the boy-child to a man who’s showed
That Edmund is a loved one, of a clan,
A family, adherents to a code.
In for a penny? She’s in for a pound
(We’ve added for inflation; all seems sound.).
She calls up Royal; they arrange a time.
He has, he says, to attend to some chores,
Undoubtedly connected with some crime
Or other. Insubstantial things like laws
Were, as the Yankees say, nickel and dime
To men of Mullins’ ilk. Now, Sally, pause.
You have to understand, my girl, alack.
You’ve crossed a bright line; there’s no coming back.
Now Sally has some other fish to fry.
Why always fish? Does anybody know?
But here, it’s apt; she’s realised by and by
That Edmund has been there a day, and so
He must be fed and watered and — Oh my!
And bathed, as well. She can’t help feel a glow
Of warm anticipation at the thought
Of doing what she really didn’t ought.
Still Edmund sits, a princeling on a throne,
Not bored, distracted, not in any mood.
Just clear-eyed, slightly smiling, made of stone,
Yet warm and breathing. Let it be construed
He’s on the mend, at least in flesh and bone.
As Sally makes some light and wholesome food,
She wonders what’s inside the pretty head.
The body lives; might not the mind be dead?
Now Edmund’s sat at table, knife and fork
And spoon laid out as Sally serves the meal.
A hearty omelette filled with grated pork;
Ice-cream to follow. Why now does she feel
She feeds a child? Parental urges talk
Of her unborn. But this child is for real.
Then, Edmund speaks, his voice a little hoarse.
“D’you think that I might have tomato sauce?”
That’s it; the dam breaks. Sally throws her arms
Around his neck, all tears and sobs and kisses.
She feels life’s bracelet now replete with charms,
As though she were completed now, and this is
Sweet reward for all those false alarms
Each time that Cupid shoots his bow and misses.
And Edmund’s puzzled look’s in comic vein;
He thinks that he might ask for sauce again.
So, there is something in the Tuppence mind,
And something stirs the deeps behind the face.
And what was it St. Augustine opined?
The memory’s a place as yet no place?
And what if Edmund’s past life come untwined?
We know his alter ego’s a disgrace.
Oh, Sally. Though you are a force for good,
Do not get lost in the enchanted wood.
But Sally is encouraged now to speak.
Does Edmund like ice-cream? Oh, yes, he beams.
What day comes after Tuesday in the week?
That’s Wednesday, Ed replies, and now he seems
As priceless to our girl as pearls antique,
As diadems lain plundered from her dreams.
And as a tear of joy escapes her eye,
So Edmund tilts his head and says: “Don’t cry.”
And we have overstayed our welcome. Now
We’ll take our leave of love and lovers both.
We’ve seen strange things, that nature will allow
A metamorphosis that may be loath
To ever right itself. And ask us how
The future’s web will spin itself, in troth.
For Royal Mullins’ tread is on the stair,
And, just one step behind him, fate is there.
He enters. He is carrying a case.
He kisses Sally, tousles Edmund’s hair.
He still looks grave; something about his face
Tells Sally to be cheery but beware.
A place for everything, for each a place.
He sets his baggage, sombre, on a chair.
What cargo dread is in RM’s portmanteau?
You’ll find the answer in the coming canto…
CANTO THE THIRD
Mr. Gullick is a philosopher (Ph.D. University of Sussex) who writes on English politics and culture for American magazines. He was born in London in the early 1960s, and he currently resides in Central America.