ANTHONY BURGESS: BYRNE
(Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc.)
Chapter One
Somebody had to do it. Blasted Byrne
Pulled out a bunch of dollars from his pocket,
Escudos, francs and dirhams. `Let them learn
If they've a speck of talent not to mock it
But plant it and expect a slow return.
I whizzed mine skywards like a bloody rocket.
Tell what they call a cautionary tale.
Here's on the nail. Expect more in the mail.'
He thought he was a kind of living myth
And hence deserving of ottava runa,
The scheme that Ariosto juggled with,
Apt for a lecherous defective dreamer.
He'd have preferred a stronger-muscled smith,
Anvilling rhymes amid poetic steam, a
Sort of Lord Byron. Byron was long dead.
This poetaster had to do instead.
Some lines attributed to Homer speak
Of someone called Margites. `Him the gods
Had not made skilled in craft or good in Greek.
He failed in every art.' Against the odds
His name survives. His case is not unique.
He should lie with forgotten odds and sods,
But still he serves to nominate a species
And lives while Byrne is mixed with his own faeces.
Byrne's name survives among film-music-makers
Because the late-night shows subsist on trash.
His opera's buried by art's undertakers,
His paintings join his funerary ash.
He left no land. `My property's two achers,'
Stroking laborious ballocks. As for cash,
He lived on women, paying in about
Ten inches. We don't know what they paid out.
Handsome enough, there was no doubt of that
Blue-eyed and with an Irish peasant's stature,
His belly flat, it never ran to fat;
Possessed of quite a punch whose crack could match your
Boundary-winning slam; lithe as a cat,
With two great paws, a natural outfield catcher;
Not that he ever wasted time on sport
Save only for the amatory sort.
The Irish are peculiar, no doubt:
They prefer drink to women. Nightly splurges
On whiskey, pints of plain or creaming stout
Serve to inhibit their erotic urges.
Seed-spending's peccative, but seed will out,
As Dr Kettle said. The Irish clergy's
At one with booze in locking semen in,
Though holy wedlock will annul the sin.
Byrne was no Rechabite by any means;
Drink was for him an aphrodisiac.
A foreign substance in the family genes
Burned up this Byrne alone. Long ages back,
When restive Erin was a redhaired queen's
Pain in the arse, the Spanish took a crack
At heretic England with their proud Armada,
Striking her navy hard, but that struck harder.
God's wind blew and they scattered, and some scattered
To Ireland's coast. When they had dried their doublets,
Survival seemed the only thing that mattered.
They swilled their buttermilk from peasant goblets
And, vowing they would never more be battered
By wind and wave, said, with a Spanish sob, `Let's
Resign ourselves to pigshit, peat and mud,
And tickle these mad Irish with our blood.'
The Spaniard darkly shone from Byrne's complexion,
Though this was tempered by his mother's colour.
She was a Liverpudlian confection,
With Wales and Glasgow brightening the duller
Pallor, and a half-hazy recollection
Of sourmilk skin upon a Nordic skull, a
Tobacco-chewer's beard, half-gray, half-flaxen,
Proclaiming Dutch or Dane or Swede or Saxon.
Since Ireland was all England's, Irish reason
Said England was all Ireland's, and it showed
In July barbering or, at any season,
Setting down rails or mammocking the road.
O'Connell preached his demagogic treason:
The English harrow crushed the Irish toad;
Freed, though not freed of economic panics,
Ireland would not use England as an annexe.
The County Mayo Byrnes were not political:
They only wanted to be free to eat.
Their situation wobbled to the critical
Each harvest time. Pigs were forbidden meat
That paid the farm-rent to the parasitical
Absentee landlord. Over smoky peat
They munched their murphies, stirred their rancid stirabout.
Poverty was the one thing to confer about.
Old Peter Byrne could not say: 'This is my land.'
So when the blight killed the potato crop,
He spat upon the stones, then cursed awhile and
Announced that Liverpool was their next stop,
A Celtic port in John Bull's primary island,
Where other Byrnes already ran a shop
That catered to the poor's nutritive needs
By selling wormy cabbages and swedes.
The vegetable Byrnes sent off the fare,
And then the seasick vegetableless,
Hearing the Cunard sirens blast the air,
Settled to chronic urban shiftlessness,
Except for Kate, who, with a dancing flair,
Cavorted at the Empire in undress
And fired the fancy of a cotton broker.
Her brother Pat became a Cunard stoker.
Another brother came like Christmas sun
When Byrne the father thought his wells were dry.
His wife's fertility had months to run
Before the menopause should bid it fly.
It seemed to him that what the Lord had done
Was like the dayspring flashing from on high.
His knowledge of the Bible being dim,
He did not think of Ann and Joachim.
It was coincidence that made them christen
The fruit of this late coupling Sean or John.
Paternal pride made rheumy optics glisten
Behind the mended glasses they had on.
It brought the country past alive to listen
To lullabies culled from a time long gone.
But, like Saint Joseph, he'd a certain doubt
About his wife the nights that he was out.
She was a pretty woman, with a figure
Whose slimness was a fruit of malnutrition.
Her eyes were like a doe's, though rather bigger
Because her face bespoke her past condition.
Was someone tupping her with cash and vigour?
She spread a table rich for the position
Of a mere Mersey Harbour Board nightwatchman.
The swine, he thought, could hardly be a Scotchman.
But Father Leary brooked no contradiction
About the unitary fatherhood.
Paternity was but a legal fiction,
And God was good, particularly good,
As was made clear from scriptural depiction,
At fertilising. Earthly fathers stood
Stuck in a kind of foster-parent's groove:
True fatherhood's a thing you cannot prove.
Catholic, of course, and good as Catholics went,
She crossed herself at thunder and forked lightning.
Hearing the sacring bell, she duly bent,
Ate fish on Fridays and went in for tightening
Her corset by eschewing stout in Lent.
The hellfire doctrine she found rather frightening,
But didn't fancy hymning the Almighty
Paraded in a chilly cotton nighty.
Young John grew up a pagan like his dad,
Even more pagan when his dad was dead.
The Christian Brothers schooling that he had
Assailed his rump but passed beyond his head.
His sister was, though long gone to the bad,
Good at odd hand-outs, so his mother said.
Pat stoked away and sent home half his screw.
They managed: Merseysiders sometimes do.
John had a treble voice so sweetly piercing
It quite belied his boyish heathen heart.
Old ladies, when they heard the little dear sing,
Could not forbear to let the teardrops smart.
He got a great audition. They said: `Here, sing
This Agnus Dei -- see, the solo part.'
And that was in the massive polyhedral
Holy of holies, Liverpool Cathedral.
He sang and sang, inspiring holy love,
But not averse to dirtying his hassock,
And then he'd give another lad a shove,
Who would shove back, being no Sacher-Masoch.
Then, after rendering `Wings of a Dove',
He'd wipe his snotty snout upon his cassock.
The Choirmaster did not appear to mind,
But he was growing deaf as well as blind.
During his sweetly vocal pre-pubescence,
John got a post that could be termed sub-clerical.
A shipping firm paid for his daily presence
Dogsbodying. And now the youthful lyrical
Gift had to go. To mock his adolescence,
The larynx squeaked or boomed. But, by a miracle,
Singing, while tidying his master's desk,
He found he'd turned into a young de Reszke.
Well, not quite of that heavy smoker's metal.
Say John McCormack, who became a papal
Count, gifted with a mistier, milder fettle,
Or syrupy, like drippings from the maple,
Or sensuous-soft, like stroking a rose-petal,
Whose songs would be the repertorial staple
Of Irish airs or such innocuous salads
As bland recitals of Victorian ballads.
John had, in fact, one of those tenor voices
You only find among the sons of Erin,
A sugary warbling flute just like James Joyce's,
Whose talent didn't get him anywhere in
The singing business. Still, he had two choices:
Butchering English was his other care. In
All honesty I'll give my verdict. This is:
He should have sung and not spewed up Ulysses.
John Byrne, not John McCormack, couldn't write,
Except fair copies of the company's letters,
But he would take his voice out every night
In temporary remission from the fetters
Of clerkly slavery. In the smoky light
Of pub or club or parish hall he'd get a s-
-Mall recompense for singing out his soul
In Tom Moore's words, set to the tunes he stole.
One Christmas he sang solo in Messiah --
With `Comfort ye, my pee-eople' etcetera.
He saw a dark-haired mezzo in the choir,
And a few days after he'd properly met her a
Fleshly affection in them both took fire.
They kissed and colled in parks and fields and, better, a
Warm bed, her own. There's danger, I suppose,
In singing sacred oratorios.
Here name was Sybil (Delphic prophetess:
The etymology meant nothing to her).
She was the sort of girl whose comeliness
Lies less in shape than sensual allure.
There are such women, often drab in dress,
Who give out thermal signals. Pure, demure,
They show, even when singing in a choir,
The lineaments of gratified desire.
Her parents were, for two nights, out of town.
When she and John wrenched their glued parts apart
No admonitory hagiographs gloomed down
Of Holy Family or Sacred Heart
Done in the Dublin style, thick-coated brown,
The piety more potent than the art.
Strict C. of E., she found it fun to doubt
God's seeing eye. Besides, the light was out.
Her father was a partner in a company
That specialised in oranges. They made
A decent profit, and they used to dump any
Gone putrid on to factories that paid
Not by the gross but by the sodden lump. Any
Orangy rot will do for orangeade
Or marmalade. They shipped them from the Bosporus.
The old man was illiterate but prosperous.
He did not much object to John Byrne's wooing
His little Sybil, and his literate spouse
Guessed what her giggling girl and he were doing
In the back parlour. Yet true love allows
Something more solid than mere billing, cooing,
Cuddling and kissing, petulance and rows.
But stern Victoria at this time was regnant,
And it was awkward when a girl grew pregnant.
Still, Sybil's mother's folk came from Glamorgan,
Where pregnancy was an engagement ring.
Accordingly she did not play the Gorgon
When Sybil blurted out that very thing.
The wedding would be now, with flowers and organ,
The bride in lying white, and John could sing
After, if not quite during, his own wedding.
Then there could be decorum in their bedding.
The father yielded to the nuptial knot
As fathers, pushed by mothers, always do.
John's dolled-up sister, best-man brother (hot
From stoking) looked, his snivelling mother too,
Uncomfortably alien in what
Was, in their native Irish papist view,
A church that God Almighty scowled upon.
This was no marriage. But it was to John.
It was, as well, a genuine advancement,
For Sybil's father fixed him with a place
Among the oranges. This citrous chance meant
Another insult to the Irish race,
According to John's brother, an enhancement
Of Williamite schismatical disgrace.
He'd wrongly smashed the fruit into a symbol;
His sense of history would fill a thimble.
So orange-fragrant John came home each day
To a mortgaged house, exiguous but clean,
Out of the noisy town, near Crosby way.
Sybil served up the Liverpool cuisine
-- Lobscowse with oranges for afters, say.
He sang, she sang, they both sang; in between
They pedalled joyfully the nuptial cycle
And soon their son appeared: they called him Michael.
So Michael Byrne, the figurative bastard,
Entered the world smugly legitimate.
His father's seed had prematurely mastered
The conjugation of the verb `beget',
But now forgot it. In that prim and plastered
Nest out at Crosby Michael was sole pet,
A kind of cuckoo-ego unsurprised
That later eggs should be unfertilised.
The Crosby bells clashed in this century
While Michael howled at cutting his first tooth.
A clash between his true biography
And what he swore was the untarnished truth
Is soon resolved. He loved mendacity
Especially when spelling out his youth.
And though his heart was all too glibly crossable,
Some of his tales are proved to be impossible.
For instance, he alleged that he was seated
Not far from Arnold Schoenberg on the day
That Pierrot Lunaire's screams were first excreted;
He lent his fists to the ensuing fray,
Flooring a Polizist, was badly treated,
Then kicked out of Vienna right away.
A lad of thirteen? Such a lie is manic
(This was the year that ice struck the Titanic).
And then, upon the twenty-ninth of May
In the year following, he burst a fist
At the Theatre des Champs-Elysees
When those who cheered were cracked by those who hissed
And vice versa. That well-known melee
Was in Le Sacre's cause. Byrne would insist
That he'd kissed Diaghilev, also Nijinsky
And (the rhyme's unavoidable) Stravinsky.
Clearly a passion for the sonic art
Was something that his father's voice bequeathed.
Above the rhythm of his mother's heart
The foetus heard it long before it breathed.
Erotic soarings of a tenor part
Would soothe his gummy twinges when he teethed.
But he was destined to be less than awed
By songs like 'Come into the garden, Maud'.
In nineteen-twelve and -thirteen he was merely
Taking piano lessons at his school
(Protestant, secular - the terms are nearly
Synonymous). Though known as the school fool,
He won high-pissing contests and was dearly
Attached to heating up his somewhat cool
Female coevals with a slap and tickle;
He jerked his gherkin too, apt for a `pickle'.
His father sang the tenor solo (badly)
In Elgar's famed Dream of Gerontius.
His son was there to listen, not too gladly,
Moved, though, against his will, by all the fuss
Of a huge orchestra careering madly
Through a next world weirdly euphonious.
He loved the tuba, trumpets and trombones,
Which smote his very scrotum with their groans.
He gained a chance to slide and lip and spit
Himself when, still a boy, he joined a band.
The war was on. He was not part of it,
Merely a junior munitions hand,
A teaboy really. John Byrne did his bit,
Serving the king of his adopted land,
Meaning he joined the Roosters, sang, wenched, boozed,
And oiled a rifle that he never used.
The trombone's a descendant of the sackbut:
Its music, solemn, martial, crisply clear, is
Produced by sliding forward and then back, but
You have to lip out the harmonic series
In something like an oscular attack, but,
In a young boy like Byrne, the action wearies.
An adjunct of the adult life is missing:
One needs the muscular panache of kissing.
The Industrial Revolution, Britain's pride,
Began, as we all know, in Lancashire.
It had a strong demotic cultural side:
Lest counter-revolution start to rear
Its snarling head, a salve was pre-applied
Whose safe cathartic properties we hear
In choirs that belt out oratorios,
And factory bands. Byrne played in one of those.
He played outside it too. At seventeen,
He put a Catholic Bootle girl in pod,
And, to avoid the inevitable scene
Of outraged parents crying out to God,
He swiftly packed a toothbrush and some clean
Shirts and, of course, the horn with sliding rod
(Both symbols of his sexual bravado)
And fled, like Nanki-Poo in The Mikado.
His mother, when she found him gone, was stunned.
There was a visit from a police inspector:
He'd taken nearly all the picnic fund
Entrusted to him by the band's director.
She howled, she was not far from moribund;
The news could hardly otherwise affect her.
His father came home with the armistice,
But neither got much pleasure out of this.
The gods of art were spitting on their palms,
So one might fancy, ready to create
A small creator who, unblessed by qualms
About the teachings of the Church and State,
Regarded prayers and penitential psalms
And all that truck as a sheer opiate.
Oscar had said art was above morality
Till the State buggered him for his rascality.
But national ethics, or what passed for it,
Had dumped some millions in the Flanders loam.
They whom the bombs banged or the bullets bit
(Trombonists were among them) had left home
For good, and some left places in the pit
Of the once famous Ardwick Hippodrome.
Here Byrne, though an apprentice still, got paid
To melodise, fart bass-parts, and glissade.
It was all conjurors and dancing dogs,
And veteran sawers of a girl in half,
Arthritic troupes that clumped about in clogs,
Comedians who never raised a laugh
Except in sentimental monologues:
Nobody ever sought their autograph.
But a soprano, once of the Carl Rosa,
Enabled Byrne to bud as a composer.
A faker really. Guinness on the brain
Had made this ageing warbler grow forgetful:
She'd left her music on the Sunday train.
The Hippodrome conductor was regretful,
But singers always gave the band a pain.
The pianist, asked to improvise, was fretful.
Byrne said he'd hammer band-parts out if she
Would name her songs and also name the key.
He named his price, of course. He knew about
The double-stops on fiddle and on'cello.
He'd read a book by Ebenezer Prout
And one by Higgs, both published by Novello,
And Stainer's Harmony. He had some doubt
About the pertinence of the old fellow,
Who said you could use that chord but not this chord.
The war had sanctified the use of discord.
(C) 1995 Estate of Anthony Burgess All rights reserved.
