Croft Andy - 1948

Though sporting verses can be splendid
They mostly end in platitude,
As this one must, for now its ended
I want to show my gratitude
To those who cheered me when I tired;
Who understood that it required
A marathon and not a sprint
To force this bastard into print;
Who knew the pain of keeping going
Was more than I could bear alone,
Who helped me stay inside the zone,
And when my spirit started slowing
Towards the 26-mile sign,
Supported me across the line.

Comparisons of sport and writing
Are usually employed to make
A writers lot seem more exciting,
And not this bloody belly-ache
Of staring at a blinking cursor
For years on end. But vice-versa,
All poetrys a kind of race:
The hare-like start, the tortoise-pace,
The plodding feet, the aches and bruises
That show you where you hit the wall,
A running joke, a metered crawl,
In which youre beaten by the Muses
And with the knackered athlete share
Long, lonely miles of blank despair.

So thanks to Gordon, Ross and Nikki,
To Richard, Nigel, Mike and John,
Who when the race got pretty sticky
Encouraged me to carry on.
Without your patience and assistance,
This book would not have gone the distance.
What spurs all runners from the Start
Is finishing, not taking part
(Vide Aesops Hare and Tortoise fable).
Make friendship an Olympic sport
With points for threats, advice, support,
And you would head the medal table;
Till then were going to have to shelve
Our hopes for gold in 2012.

Oranges and lemons, say the Bells of St Clements

Naturally, about a murder. But what kind of murder?
George Orwell

A slow start

It was a bright cold day in April.
Oh no it wasnt for a start
I cannot find a rhyme for April,
And anyway, prosodic art
Demands a rather tighter meter
(I always think iambics neater).
But if it isnt April, when?
September? March? Lets try again.
It was a bright but does it matter?
How relevants the time of year?
The clock was striking dear, oh dear
Though you may like descriptive chatter,
Id rather cut out these delays
And start at once in medias res.

It was a bright oh sod the weather
Who cares what kind of day it was?
Im going to drop this altogether,
Or well be here all day because
Ill need to introduce some debris
If were to start this side of February,
Or rhapsodise about the moon
If we begin in flaming June
(Which wont do justice to the idiom
Im after here). Look, I know what
Lets make it Summer. Make it hot.
The time? Just make it pm.
No make it night. But make it quick
This intros getting on my wick.

Some atmosphere

The wharf rat slips behind a derrick
And disappears into the night.
(To make it seem more atmospheric
This scene is filmed in black and white.)
The headlights of a truck grow bigger,
Then fade away. Some steps. A figure.
He stops to light a cigarette.
Its hot. His shirt is damp with sweat.
This heat wave shows no sign of stopping.
He checks his watch and wipes his brow.
His contact should be here by now.
The moon that shines tonight on Wapping
Looks like it badly needs a drink.
The clouds move in. The shadows shrink.

Id like to pause here for a second
In critical parenthesis,
And ask if you have ever reckoned
How hard it is to write like this?
It dont come cheap, this kind of writing
The dockland scene, the low-key lighting,
The morally ambiguous tone,
That late night, smoky saxophone.
Dont get me wrong, Im not complaining,
Im partial to a spot of Noir,
The problem is, you wont get far
Without a lot of special training,
Especially when it has to rhyme.
And that, these days, means cash and time.

That said, I think I ought to mention
That no expenses have been spared
On character, dramatic tension
Or complicated plots, compared
To which your average Peter Wimsey
Looks pretty bloody thin and flimsy.
The shadows on my flickering screen
Are shot in black and white and Greene;
Here every moods subdued, crepuscular;
Like Hammett, Cain and Hemingway
The only ink Ive used is grey;
The verbs are manly, strong and muscular,
The adjectives are hard and taut.
Some sentences. Are very. Short.

Though some prefer to dream in colour
And hold up Nature to the light,
Theres those of us who, dimmer, duller,
Still see the world in black and white,
Old-fashioned as a Pushkin stanza,
Quixotic as a Sancho Panza
But here the reader intercedes
Observing that this novel needs
More narrative and less narrator;
Just get on with the bloody plot
Before somebody else gets shot!
Somebody else? But that comes later.
Youll have to wait for Chapter 2
For that. But first, a rendezvous.

A policeman

The figure by the dock is waiting
To meet a man by name of Syme,
A journalist hes cultivating
With contacts in the world of crime.
Last night he rang him at the station
To say he had some information
About the spivs and racketeers
Whove worked the London docks for years.
An open meeting with a bobby
Was not a risk he cared to take,
There was, he said, too much at stake;
Though selling gossip is his hobby
He wouldnt say more on the phone.
They must meet here. Tonight. Alone.

A word, perhaps, of introduction
About our copper, Winston Smith:
Though Derridean deconstruction
Might help us understand Smiths pith,
He doesnt care for high-brow reading,
Preferring books where love lies bleeding
And tough guys get the femme-fatale.
One day perhaps hell learn to snarl
Like Bogart playing Philip Marlowe
And walk off in the final frame
To meet a girl (or rather dame)
Like Mary Astor or Jean Harlow.
Instead of which, he stands and yawns
And thinks about his poor old corns.

Though you may think him somewhat stolid,
His friends would call him quiet, unspoiled,
The kind of good egg, average, solid,
Who wishes he were more hard-boiled.
If only life were more like fiction!
This may sound like a contradiction,
But which of us does not suspect
The life in novels is more echt
Than that to which were daily summoned?
Hed like to be a proper cop
Like Hammetts Continental Op,
A Raffles or a Bulldog Drummond.
Such are the dreams that compensate
Our hero for this nights long wait!

A mystery

A car pulls up. An Austin 7.
The shadows hide the drivers face.
Smith checks his watch. Five-past eleven.
He steps out from his hiding-place.
Then hears some footsteps right behind him.
A shout. And then the headlights blind him.
He runs across. The drivers gone.
A smell of fruit. Whats going on?
A second car-door slams. Smith hurries
Back round towards the gangway stair;
He climbs the steps, but no-ones there.
The moon comes out. A wharf-rat scurries
Behind the gantrys silhouette.
Smith lights another cigarette.

The bombed-out waste ground on the corner
Is filigreed with silver light,
A pastoral scene of bricks and fauna,
(Oh god, this could go on all night)
The missing houses frame a skyline
(This sort of stuff is not in my line)
Of broken streets beside the Thames
Like silent blocks of printers ems.
Though never what you might call pretty,
These days old Londons past her best,
Worn out, fed-up and poorly dressed;
Still Smith cant help but love this city,