The Great Work by IRA MAINE

Years ago, when all the world was young and I was renting a basement garret in London, the presence of a typewriter, deliberately scrunched up foolscap, and a picture of Joyce on the wall was enough to convince young literary ladies to stay for another glass of Valpolicella.  I would arrange myself strategically on a calculated chaise longue, where the guttering light caught my finer features and would reflect romantically off my red velvet smoking jacket as they pored over my creations.  I was, as you can imagine, the very picture of Thomas Chatterton.

In reality the chaise was a single bed and all the other accoutrements came from the op-shop up the road.  The man I paid rent to lived up stairs, sold insurance, second hand Jaguars and appeared from time to time in the movies.  The lady next door had an antiques shop and a Saluki and wore extravagantly long leather skirts.  The Saluki bit me once, halfway up the stairs and if you’ve ever been bitten half-way up the stairs, you can be sure you’ll remember it.  The young, though eccentric lady on the other side had a house full of exquisite treasures her Grandfather had ‘repatriated’ following the Boxer Rising.  She was, even in the Sixties, a  Lady of some style, an Art Nouveau Klimt who wafted incense and parfum and an air of silky mystery.  She was never seen in the pub across the road, but her gentleman friend would call and waft her off, in an open car, to Fortnums for tea and cucumber sandwiches, and perhaps a glass of sherry.

Despite appearances, I was endeavouring to write, to create a poem, a panegyric, celebrating all that was young and wonderful, all that was magical and wild, all and everything that had come to separate we young people from the post war boredom and drudgery of the Fifties.  Trouble was, I was trying to write it in Gaelic.

I worked on it, how I worked on it!  Reference libraries, dictionaries, thesauri.  Gaelic, Scots, and Irish history.  Endless sessions in Irish pubs with Gaelic speakers of every shape, classification and description til I was black in the face.  I drank so much Guinness I developed an Irish accent, again.

‘When,’ somebody asked me at the Irish Club, ‘was the first mention of Guinness in the Bible?’

I shook my head, nonplussed.

“When the Lord said to Moses, them that are not with us, are a Guinness’

I finished the poem.  Long it was and complex, subtle and fiercely complex, sad beyond measure and at the same time struggling to express it’s joy.  It was, though I say it myself, my masterpiece.  Humbly, but quietly proud, I packed up my work and sent it off for judgement.

A month passed, then the letter arrived.

‘Dear Mr Chatterton,

It is with some regret that we must inform you that we found your use of the Gaelic language less than competent.  Erse, the Gaelic dialect of the Scottish Highlands seems to be beyond you.  Your use of this ancient language is, even to a native speaker, incomprehensible.  We are appalled that you would offer us this ill-prepared and slovenly offering, and have no hesitation in not only declaring your “work’ unacceptable, but an ill-conceived, interminable  Paean in the Erse.’

Yours etc.

Graham Greene had as much as two hundred rejection slips before being finally published. I’ll try again.