To Heaven by Water Read online

  I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

  High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

  In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing...

  He cannot continue alone. Adam comes and puts an arm around his shoulder and kisses him. Adam begins and they go on together to the end:

  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

  Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

  Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

  Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

  Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold vermillion.

  In the car, Adam says that there will never be another meeting of the Noodle Club. Then he falls asleep, as the Jaguar makes its way through the shires.

  Near Hayward’s Heath he wakes for a moment and says, ‘We saw the face of God.’

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my agent James Gill for his patience and diligence; all at Bloomsbury, but particularly my editor Michael Fishwick, Alexandra Pringle, and Colin Midson. Nobody, however, knows better than me that many others have played a vital part, and I thank them too. I am also deeply indebted to Liz Calder, as so many writers are.