I had booked our tickets to Dublin by phone but insisted that Brian collect them and pay for them. It was important that he did this right because if he didn’t we would miss our connections and the opening of the Summer School. It was his first time in the West End of London, the main downtown area, so I was understandably apprehensive. Before he left I made him promise to phone me. I devised an ingenious plan.
“I know you won’t talk,” I said, “but I’ll ask you questions and you click your tongue once if the answer is yes, and twice if it’s no. That way I’ll know if everything went alright, if you got the tickets and if there’s anything I have to do.” By this time I wished I had gone for the tickets myself, the principal didn’t seem worth defending. I could see that Brian wasn’t convinced by the plan, would it be violating his silence? But for the sake of peace, he relented.
On edge, I waited for his call. One hour. Two hours. Three hours. Four hours. But no call from Brian. Surely he would have called had he got the tickets. Something must have gone wrong. By now the ticket office was closed. We were supposed to leave early next morning. What was I to do? Why hadn’t I left him in Lesbos dancing for the Greeks?
Suddenly the phone rang. “Did you get the tickets?” I shouted into the silence. One despondent click, “yes.” What a relief. But why had it taken him so long to call? “Are you alright?” Two clicks, “no.” No?
“Are you hurt?” One click. Oh my god, he’s hurt. “Where are you?” He couldn’t answer that. Quick, rephrase the question. “Are you in the hospital?” One click. My god, he’s in the hospital. Suddenly a woman’s voice.
“I’m nurse Murphy. A very kind couple found your husband unconscious in Regent Street. They called an ambulance and brought him to hospital. He injured his head and required several stitches. He’s fine now and we’re arranging for a taxi to take him home. He’ll be right as rain after a good night’s sleep. But do have a doctor check the stitches in a week or so. Nothing to worry about.”
I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t think what to ask. I thanked her and she hung up. Within an hour Brian was home, looking pale and subdued but proudly producing the tickets.
When I finally unravelled the story, told to me in mime and dance punctuated by guilty clicks, I learned that all went well until Brian collected the tickets and was on his way home. On Regent Street he was suddenly inspired. He would treat the English to some street entertainment as he had so often treated the Greeks. Only London was not Athens. The English were not only indifferent, but disapproving, even hostile. They hurried past him, their eyes averted, as though by looking at him they would be condoning some obscene activity. No laughter, no cheers, nothing. Brian grew more and more determined to make them respond, to bring them joy. Finally, executing a mad desperate twirl, he went smashing into a lamp post and fell unconscious beneath it. Then the English responded. They were good at tragedy, not so good at comedy. My poor Brian, he was learning the hard way. I put him to bed with kisses.
The Yeats Summer School in Sligo was a very verbal affair with lectures, seminars, discussions, analysis and readings. Brian’s non-verbal stance didn’t go down well. It was a thorn, an irritant to the professors, the literary critics, the Yeats experts. But there were also the poets. Some of Ireland’s finest poets were present. For them Brian was a wonderful enigma. Some, like Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, and Jimmy Simmons, considered joining him and forming a non-verbal contingent. Two camps developed, a pro-Brian camp and an anti-Brian camp. The professors were impatient, they had no time for him; the poets admired him, wanted to imitate him, invented their own soundless scenarios, discussed the advantages, the possibilities inherent in silence, the space between the words. I watched from a distance, enjoying the fray but unable to be objective, not knowing which side I was on.
The natives of Sligo responded much as the Greeks had, with delight. Once walking down the main street of Sligo I noticed a crowd and approached to investigate. In the middle of the crowd Brian was mine-dancing. I watched him for a while impressed. He was miming the pathos of two lovers separated by some overwhelming force, his own version of Romeo and Juliet. The crowd was enthralled. As he built up to the climax, I wondered how he would end the performance, there were no curtains, no lights and the drama was so intense it required a grand finale. Suddenly there was the shrill scream of a siren. A police van sped up to the crowd and screeched to a halt. Two policemen burst from the van descending on Brian, pulling him into it. Brian was unrattled. The police became part of the performance. With raised arms, like a helpless Christ, he submitted to his executioners. Then from the back of the van he saluted his cheering audience as he was driven off. It was the perfect ending. His offence turned out to be obstructing traffic. He was released with a warning and a smile.
For the entire two weeks of the Summer School Brian remained silent, but his presence was increasingly felt. The police encounter transformed him into a minor folk hero — the Irish being prone to the creation of folk heroes. His salute from the police van became a badge, a password, a salute to him. People saluted him on the streets. In the school he was asked to give illustrations of mime, dance, performances of Yeats.
Seamus Heaney, later to become the dominant poet of our time, a noble laureate, suggested that he present a dance from one of Yeats’ plays — a surprise performance for the closing ceremony of the school. Brian was delighted.
He decided on the climatic dance from At The Hawk’s Well, one of Yeats’ dance plays based on Irish mythology. He would dance the young hero, the warrior Cuchulain, seeking the well of eternal life. “He who drinks, they say, that miraculous water, lives forever.” I would dance The Hawk Woman, the Guardian of the well, who lures Cuchulain from the well just as the mysterious waters bubble up and begin to flow. “She is always flitting upon this mountain side, to allure or to destroy.” Cuchulain resists the Hawk Woman but finally, hypnotised by her dance, follows her, forsaking his chance for immortality. We practised all afternoon, improvising costumes and music, mainly drum beats and strange discordant sounds. The well, true to Yeats’ directions, was represented by a square of blue cloth. We painted our faces white to suggest the masks Yeats wanted for the plays.
That night Brian danced Cuchulain, strong, magnificent, his shins laced with leather thongs, his hand clutching a spear. I danced the Hawk Woman, an embodiment of the bird of prey’s cruelty coupled with a woman’s beauty, dressed in grey/black with a shawl whose dark fringe unfurled to suggest malevolent wings. “It flew as though it would have torn me with its beak, or blinded me, smiting with that great wing.” My cry of “Taka!” intermingled with the drum beats, the wild sounds. A bitter yet heroic duet, making tangible the “imagery of emotion,” ritualising a universal quest with mythological significance “beyond the scope of reason.”
The most powerful moment came when Cuchulain stood, his back to the well, hearing its water bubbling up, but unable to turn from the Hawk Woman, her power compelling him to abandon the well. In a last heroic effort to free himself from her, recollecting his past conquests as a Warrior King, he slowly raised his wrist and warned:
Run where you will,
Grey bird,
You shall be perched upon my wrist.
Some were called queens and yet have been perched there.
Brian’s voice shattered the silence, rich, intense, passionate, defiant, agonised. The audience held its breath. Brian had spoken.
The magical power of the play exploded with the miracle of his voice. The play, the dance, Yeats, the poetry, Brian, me, the poets, the school, we were all miracles together. And Brian’s silence was over.
Six
Victoria
It was at the Yeats Summer School, the first year I attended, the year before the Brian event, that I met Victoria. I had quickly become friendly with some of the Summer School leading lights, mainly