Dreams, Endings and Disasters

Doc Williams, (nicknamed “Steamboat”) – he could teach.

But how to concentrate on ‘Faustus’, when

through the glass double-doors, beyond our reach

sat Hazel from the Girls’ End, playing Bach.

Remember Hazel? Heavenhazeled eyes,

hair like Golden Syrup, her sure touch

wasted, WASTED! on some baroque dirge

while twenty love-lorns, eager to explore the surg-

ing Terra Incognita of her bust,

hazeled, half-crazed with half-formed Sixth Form lust,

tried to read ‘Faustus.’?  “Westwood!”  “Me sir? Well -

‘Bell, Book and Candle. Candle, Book and Bell,

forward and backward goes Hazel . .’ “Oh hell,

Steamb . . Sorry! Mean ‘Sir’, Sir.” Come, Lustrous! Make

tracks for this fumbling schoolboy’s fiercest ache.

My mouth read ‘Faustus’, but my mind went blank,

apart from Hazel, giving me a - “Thank

You, Westwood. With luck you’ll get an E.”

Hazel completes her Prelude. Book One, in C,

rises, loosens her blouse top button – WOW -

takes a waist-deep, exaggerated bow,

sticks out her tongue – this behind Steamboat’s back.

But we read you, Hazel!  Your brassiere is black.

She stows her music, jams her beret on,

closes the lid, waves, turns - and  then is gone.

Leavers’ service in the paneled Hall.

Fox-trotting Hazel at the Leavers’ Ball,

her dancer’s cheek this close . . . her shoulders bare,

her long, smooth long smooth longsmooth polished hair . . .

“Your playing. Really good!” Callow, I croaked.

“My Bach’s worse than my Bitehoven,” she joked,

and kissed my on my rugby-crooked nose.

“Westy – you’ll be O.K.”  Well . . . I suppose.

And that was that. Goodbye School, Hello Life.

Uni. Job. Twins. Car. Satisfactory wife.

But . . hearing Bach, whose fingers stroked the keys

playing back Faustus, Steamboat, School, to tease . . ?

Years on, I heard she’d had a child.  One day

she slashed her wrists when Steamboat walked away.