Of Time and the City Page #3

Bonfire night, a penny for the guy,

someone singing

Keep the Heaven Fires Burning...

(Fire crackles)

...as Jimmy Preston and me, the only

ones left now, roast potatoes on sticks.

We sit, quiet at the last.

Jimmy Preston who was a real boy,

and whom I envied.

Jimmy Preston who once put

his hand on my shoulder,

and I didn't want him to remove it.

"Don't go in just yet.

Please, not just yet... '

But he does.

Twilight and evening bell.

And after that...

...the dark.

(# Branesti:
Priveghiati si va Rugat)

(# Orchestra repeats and develops

a simple, wistful theme)

(# Chorus of voices collectively restates

the orchestra's theme)

(# Children sing playground rhymes

over the orchestral music)

(Child) # You bought me a shawl

Of red, white and blue

# And when we got married

you tore it in two

# Oh, gee, I love him, I can't deny it

# I'll be with him wherever he goes #

(Bells chime)

(Woman)

'I would have liked to have worked on,

'but they threw me out

because I was old.

'It's a sin to grow old, you know.

'We had an old lady here, and, erm...

'Everybody would run and get her

a cup of tea and they'd wait on her,

'and do all those little things, but

she'd always say, "Nobody wants me.'

'Well, I mean if you take that attitude,

'you can't expect anyone

to want you, can you? '

(Terence Davies) Oh, watch and pray.

Watch and pray.

Do you remember, you who are

no longer young, and you who still are?

Do you remember the months of

November and December?

Wet shoes and leaking galoshes,

and for the first time... chilblains,

with Christmas in the air.

God was in his heaven,

and oh, how I believed!

Oh, how fervent I was!

And on Christmas Eve,

pork roasting in the oven,

the parlour cleaned,

with fruit along the sideboard.

A pound of apples, tangerines

in tissue paper,

a bowl of nuts

and our annual exotic pomegranate.

Do you remember?

Do you?

Will you ever forget?

(Woman laughs) 'Happy days! '

My mother,

generous with the small nest egg

of twenty five pounds she'd borrowed.

Love and cellophane.

My brothers, with their made

to measure suits, bought on H P.

My sisters and a dab of scent,

maybe only Evening in Paris,

but making it seem as if the whole world

was drenched in Chanel.

Being taken to the Pictures, and in all

those movies, it was always Christmas

and it was always perfect.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,

Young at Heart,

All That Heaven Allows.

But all...

all are gone - the old familiar faces.

And yet, time renders -

deceives the eye; deceives the heart,

a valediction and an epitaph.

Now voyager, go forth, to seek and find.

But my eldest brother, lying in

an army hospital in Leamington Spa.

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