Seán Walsh: Storm Trooper
STORM TROOPER
Ah, years ago, now.
I checked into an inner city hospital:
gaunt, red-bricked, Victorian.
Creaking all the way from Main Entrance
to X Ray, Reception to Theatre,
Canteen to Cardiology…
A Men’s Ward that seemed to stretch forever
across a sea of russet linoleum
to Dickensian lavatories.
Floor polish and disinfectant.
Harassed nurses, whirling past,
fighting fatigue, resolute in white.
The old and the not-so-old:
empty-eyed, withdrawn, distressed.
Smokers coughing abominable sputum.
The camaraderie of an optimistic few:
wheezing gems of wisdom –
honed bons mots – in pristine Dublinese.
And then it happened,
the January of the Deep Freeze:
storm winds beating against the windows,
snow swirling down, blanketing,
from an ink sky…
Next day, stand-still:
impassable roads, treacherous footpaths…
“You wouldn’t put out a milk bottle…”
Yet she made it. Jenny. My 12-year-old.
Lurching, slipping, swaying, falling…
‘Determined to reach me on the eve
of the Big Knife.
I glanced up from a so-so paperback
to find her at the end of my bed:
smiling, glowing, radiant,
melting snow on anorak and headgear,
exuberant at the challenge of it all…
Jenny?… But how – ? Oh-hh…
Ah, come here to me…
Jenny… Jenny Alana!
Oh, Dad! Dad, will you be all right?
God, Dad, if anything happened to you I,
I don’t know what I’d… I’d be lost.
No, Dad you’re to come home to us,
safe and well, have to!
Mum sends all her love
and says she’ll be in to see you as soon as…
She’ll ring in the morning, first thing,
to find out how – how…
Dad, I’m using all your tissues…
COMMENT FROM DOWN UNDER.
It’s a fine piece, Fra Innocente, deep with honest emotions.
And I really felt like I was there in that hospital with you, all the way.
The lines flow effortlessly right through and up to your daughter’s arrival…
the joy of that, her overcoming of that foul weather,
your young storm trooper indeed..
But here I go again…I would cut it there after you have spoken to her.
It feels right to me that she does not speak.
Her presence now says it all, is enough, is more than enough…
So silence now, no dialogue needed, no more words!!!
I wouldn’t change a syllable prior to that…
because all the lines are marvellous…
but that final cut – I do suggest it?
What do you think? just my opinion of course..
Your Aussie mate…
BARBARA XX.”
Her name on Writing for All.com, mine was Fra Innocente;
a pen name was a condition of membership. I think she lived in Brisbane?..
The point is we helped each other, beginners all,
and I was helped mightily by the comments of
new-found friends – all encouraging.
So…do I make the cut as she suggested? Or not?
ALTERNATIVE ENDING:
I glanced up from a so-so paperback
to find her at the end of my bed:
smiling, glowing, radiant,
melting snow on anorak and headgear,
exuberant at the challenge of it all…
Jenny?… But how – ? No, I mean…
Oh-hh… Ah, come here to me… Oh, Jenny!
Jenny a lanna!
Should I accept this suggestion, do her edit and move on?
Or do I hum and haw – ‘Thank you but no thank you’ –
revert to my original screed while conceding she has a valid point?..
Not easy to cut what you have written, re-written,
worked at until you “got it right…” Especially when the sentences
under scrutiny look well, read well, sound ever so good…
The dictat of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch comes to mind:
“You must learn to murder your darlings…”
(Q C to his friends. His Penguin classic, The Art of Creative Writing,
is still “out there,” used copies available on Amazon etc. Riches aplenty…)
The more I mulled over Barbara’s suggestion
the more I warmed to it – despite others urging me
to the contrary!
“It feels right to me that she does not speak.
Her presence now says it all, is enough, is more than enough…
No dialogue needed, no more words!!!”
Memo to Editor:
Cut Jenny’s monologue at the end of my first draft.
End piece as suggested in Alternative, above:
“Ah, come ‘er to me, Jenny… Jenny Alana…”