Goodlord: An Email
By Ella Frears
()
About this ebook
Ella Frears
Ella Frears is a poet and artist based in London. Her collection Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Ella has been Poet in Residence for Tate St Ives, the National Trust, Royal Holloway University physics department, John Hansard Gallery and the Dartington Trust’s grade II listed gardens, among others. In 2023 she was a Creative Fellow for Exeter University’s environmental history department. She is currently RLF fellow for the Courtauld Institute of Art. Ella hosts Tears for Frears on Soho Radio.
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Goodlord - Ella Frears
Dear Ava,
It’s not your fault this caught me like it did –
Goodlord – the name disturbs me most. As though
we’re meant to pledge ourselves, to call our faceless
landlord good… or God, and I should – should I? –
feel graced, or blessed to live under this roof?
Oh Ava, I was snagged on it.
To tell the truth a thread came loose,
I should explain:
picture me in this little flat you rent us, lips
parted, blowing my coffee’s meniscus into waves – soft
at first, then crashing up the mug’s insides
and over,
yes, the sheets will surely stain,
and I was thinking of the old gods, Ava,
and ships they sank without notice, without malice,
I was reading an article, just the top, peeking
over the paywall; the surface-foam of current events
lifted with a teaspoon,
the surface is where the art is, I said.
Not everything’s like coffee, he replied.
I like my men bitter.
It’s been a while since we’ve – well,
we did have thrush – a pox
on both our crotches! – see, Ava,
the article spoke of basements being built across the city
they can’t go up,
and so they dig
I think that was the gist but
what intrigued me most was the idea that
once they’d dug – what – three floors down?
the digger was too big to get back out,
cheaper then, it said,
to dig a little grave and bury it there – imagine!
Thousands of diggers entombed across the city…
you must have many questions but I only read the tip
of it,
it struck me though,
and I thought about the summer’s day
a surveyor friend, well, more-than-friend,
let me climb into a digger’s little cab and pull the earth
from deep inside a trench,
a thrill!
Perhaps you’ve also tried,
I made a joke, a good one,
about burying a body, then my phone rang –
my uncle had died.
All those diggers sealed in concrete, underground,
so sad,
and then your email, Ava,
and though it was a Sunday,
that soft buzz is like a siren’s call – I couldn’t help but tap
the icon,
I was in bed.
Did I mention that? Lazy, you might think, but
I’d had this dream…
I was wandering through a house I visit
often, though I’ve never actually been.
The Big House, I call it.
The grand construction of my sleep.
It’s funny,
but I’ve never dreamed of here – this little flat – though
it’s – what, nine years now? –
you’d know.
I suppose these boxy multi-purpose rooms don’t suit
the architecture of dreams.
The Big House has winding halls, and grounds,
and countless rooms that shift,
shall I show you around?
Might be nice to take a tour yourself, no?
Come on in,
observe the polished concrete floors, the
big bay windows, and that view! The stars and planets
swimming – the universe in perpetual bloom,
and inside, my previous day unfolding
like a fern,
look there!
You might think that’s my granny on the carpet,
in child’s pose, but things change in the peripherals,
stare directly and you’ll see she is in fact
a rotisserie chicken.
Ava, speak to it,
it might speak back! And tell you all about
its chicken life, that ended in
my kitchen –
that reminds me,
Re: my previous emails about the oven, Ava,
how we have to stick a chopstick through the back
and manually spin the fan like cranking an old car to
make it work,
all those emails to your office…
the dodgy lock,
the rising damp,
that swollen crack across the worktop – Ava, I can’t bear
to press it!
Though it’s begging to be pressed
and no reply until this email, Ava,
Goodlord
that closed compound, enough to
make me housesick, how I hate it!
Hated him too, first time we met
that surveyor more-than-friend
it was winter,
I was queueing at the cinema, lost
in thought, I was thinking about dogs – the extra things
they see and smell and hear beyond our reach…
He wanted to get by, I hadn’t seen,
and so he moved me with the rolled-up newspaper
in his hand.
Startled – shifted – I looked at the paper
rolled-up tight, then at his eyes, cold, already locked
ahead and moving past me and I was sure, that in that
moment, I had thought so deeply of dogs
I’d transformed.
Ava, please don’t stress, I know pets aren’t
allowed here – honestly,
I’ve never even known a dog.
Once when I was walking home I saw
a small, quite fluffy dog beside its owner.
As I passed I met its eye and thought,
what a stupid little face,
I heard my brain annunciate the words, my mouth,
of course, was closed.
The dog began to bark, tugging on its lead,
gnashing its tiny teeth, growling…
The owner was shocked,
she’s never done this to anyone before.
Is there a digger under your house, Ava?
Hard not to think of them like buried pets.
Not dogs, but diplodocuses their arms like long necks,
raised.
Thousands of machine graves.
That uncle – my uncle – was an impressive man,
bodily I mean, broad and tall. A brick. A house.
His wife was mean and small.
They put his coffin on a gurney,
I guess to save his friends the struggle.
It looked odd to me,
I much prefer the carrying of men by men –
the gravity.
My uncle’s small, mean wife wore lace.
She’d paced about the house waiting for the hearse as
though about to go on stage.
The cemetery was on this steep, steep slope,
ankles buckling in their black-heeled shoes.
The greyest sea beyond, the houses far below.
Everything to the side of grief. Even the sun
beside the point, you know?
The priest was young, I’d watched him
kiss the book and thought the kiss a little wet for death.
Anyway,
the undertaker almost lost the gurney
to the slope.
I willed it, I confess!
To speed past your small, mean widow and her
ghoulish friends, and shoot over the edge, to make one
final joke, refuse the grave they’d dug for you,
take flight –
now there’s a death!
Do you believe in ghosts?
You must, Ava. I don’t.
And yet I have seen two.
Seen one, heard another.
As a child, whenever I had a fever, I’d hallucinate:
clocks, where no clocks were, the hands spinning
at a weird speed, too fast but also sort of… lagging.
It’s common, I’ve heard, in children – maybe you used to
see things too.
Sometimes I’d see the ceiling gently falling in,
a train hurtling towards me – much too fast… and yet
too slow.
During one especially bad night, my mother called
a doctor. He asked to speak to me, she handed me the phone.
What can you see? He asked. He had an accent, maybe
French.
A train, I whispered.
What you need to do, darling, he said, is board that train.
‘Darling’ – I know!
No doctor’s ever been as tender since!
Thing is, Ava, it worked. I never saw the train, or clocks,
or ceiling
coming down again.
That doctor’s voice became a talisman of sorts, you see –
do you? – where I’m going with this…
whenever I was overwhelmed, I’d feel that weird
speed push me forwards, drag me
back,
and I’d play
his voice
inside my head, darling
board that train…
and everything
would settle,
Ava,
do you
understand,
for years
I comforted
myself with darling,
board that train,
and then
offhand
one day
I told the story
at a dinner
that my mother
was also at
and after, quietly
she said, no
that never
happened,
no night
doctor,
no sweet, French
doctor, just you,
a child with a fever,
speaking
in an accent
we had never heard
before. Quite
spooky, actually,
she said,
one’s child calling
herself
darling
like that –
Ava, what the fuck.
Better for me to say he was a ghost, than unpick that
tapestry,
though rich, I’m sure.
Actually,
the dream I’d had before your email moved
my phone across the bedside table with a buzz –
I could hear him in the basement of The Big House,
the sweet French doctor, I could hear him through the
floor, but couldn’t find the stairs or door
to get to him.
I asked the other people there – party guests,
all wearing masks that bore the faces of my favourite
people fixed in disappointment, I felt sweaty –
I guess it’s on my mind… I mean –
I’m trying this new deodorant out,
a natural one – have you gone through this phase
yet, Ava? You know those spray ones kill the planet or
your breasts –
it’s pretty herbal this one, intensely so
and though I’m not so sure it’s any nicer than the smell
of me… I persevere.
I must have worn it in my dream while looking for the
doctor because a figure with my mother’s face sniffed
and asked,
have you been marinating pork?
…sage, citrus, rosemary leaf oil…
I am the pork.
And still the doctor called me from the basement,
darling… darling…
but I couldn’t find the stairs
or door –
in horror films the basement is where monsters are.
I lived in someone’s basement for about a year,
it wasn’t you – was it? – The letting agent
for that place?
I hope not, Ava.
I’ve never been so frantically unhappy!
Corridors so narrow that my shoulders touched
both walls as I walked down, my bedroom had no