Chapter Text
redcliffepoet: Okay, I have FINALLY finished correcting every copy of my new book. By going around to every bookshop in Swansea and correcting the copies myself in pen.
redcliffepoet: If you ever dare fiddle with my proofs again, Dylan...
rimbaudcwm: you'll what? Lick me? Knock me off the Worm? Bundle me under your arm and give me a paddling?
redcliffepoet: I'll cancel my Patreon subscription, is what.
trickysocialist: ooh, *burn*
rimbaudcwm: you don't even believe in money! you ought to be on my side!
trickysocialist: and i'll be on your side again, as soon as you pay me back for all those lunches i keep standing you. even at wholesale rates that's a fortune in sweets
dannyboywelsh has entered the chat
dannyboywelsh: another day, another girl, another eight bars, life's good. What's new with you lot?
trickysocialist: nothing much. Watkins is threatening to kill Dylan over that misprint thing again
rimbaudcwm: I did say, I mixed up my private copy with the one for the printers.
dannyboywelsh: you do know literally none of us believe you
trickysocialist: also the small point of the very much *not* small bill he owes me
dannyboywelsh: should have seen the one he racked up at the school shop.
rimbaudcwm: Did I miss an episode of Beachcomber? Is today rag on short, snub-nosed poets day, by any chance?
dannyboywelsh: Watkins, with your height it's two against two. I'd say we could take them, steal all the dosh in their pockets, and go carousing on the proceeds
redcliffepoet: Wasn't this supposed to be a poetry discussion group, once upon a time?
*****
rimbaudcwm: chewing tidbits of the hand that feeds me, yes, but I'm worried about Vicky.
rimbaudcwm: I mean I laughed when he told me his ex turned him into a camel, but I've seen Aleister Crowley now. He gives me the shivers.
redcliffepoet: All those wanna-be mystics are deluding themselves. They say they have all these secrets older than Christianity, and there's never anything in it.
trickysocialist: break my heart, Watkins. If there isn't then I'm plumb wasting my time trying to reverse engineer the socialist version
redcliffepoet: Since you ask, I do think that's a waste of time. Yes.
rimbaudcwm: The point isn't even whether Crowley can pull a Taliesin and turn into a creature, or if he can do it to somebody else. The point is whether he can convince somebody he's done it in a way that makes them very unhappy, and I think he can manage that without any trouble.
rimbaudcwm: And I don't like it. Besides. Vicky's publishing my first book, after all. I feel like I should help him.
dannyboywelsh: Really not seeing how you can help a bloke who thinks he's a camel.
rimbaudcwm: Of course he doesn't think he's one now.
dannyboywelsh: Then what's the problem?
rimbaudcwm: Suppose Crowley does it to Vicky again?
trickysocialist: or you?
rimbaudcwm: Of course not me.
rimbaudcwm: I'd be a worm.
dannyboywelsh: I bloody well wish you'd never started that meme.
dannyboywelsh: also, wasn't it a wyrm?
*****
trickysocialist: moment of truth. What did you all think of my poem on immortality?
redcliffepoet: I thought it was heartfelt and very sincere.
dannyboywelsh: it sucks balls. Leave the poetry to people who can write, Bert, that's what I do.
trickysocialist: Dylan. Ignore this very large bill I'm holding over your head. What did you think?
rimbaudcwm: It was so effusive and complete, that I'm having difficulty thinking of anything worth saying on my own account.
dannyboywelsh: procrastinating and complimenting at the same time! A proper two-fer!
redcliffepoet: There's no reason that the format has to be this uncharitable. You're all just using it poorly.
rimbaudcwm: It saves us saying any of this at the pubs.
*****
rimbaudcwm: So I haraunged Vicky about it until he coughed up some names, but there's only one that's even conceivably of any use.
rimbaudcwm: And it's a biggie. Yeats, of all people.
trickysocialist: Are you serious? They just let one of the most passionate voices for the Irish Free State into this hush-hush Secret Chiefs cult?
rimbaudcwm: This was thirty-ish years ago, back when Ireland was still British. And anybody would have to admire his poetic skill.
redcliffepoet: This. Is. Nonsense. Poetry is poetry, folklore is folklore, and bounders who think they're performing magic are either charlatans or scoundrels.
rimbaudcwm: Look, there has to be something to it. What d'you think you're writing on?
redcliffepoet: A Poste Telewireless. Talking, if we're being precise. With a speakwrite attachment.
trickysocialist: can you say posh
rimbaudcwm: posh
rimbaudcwm: I use BBC myself. Nothing else on the market even pretended to read my handwriting.
dannyboywelsh: that, and also he's using my old one. I upgraded to the Cambridge Squared when they accepted my Royal Academy application
trickysocialist: Marking you down to go up against the wall, Dan. Nice to have known you.
dannyboywelsh: what, having a big house named Warmley with servants wasn't fancy enough for you? I'm feeling like I should be offended here.
trickysocialist: Seriously? I'll be honest, I thought Dylan was making all that up.
rimbaudcwm: I do tell the truth sometimes. When it can't be helped.
rimbaudcwm: So here's another bit of truth to wiggle down your throats- all the patents on telewirelesses are owned by the Hermetic Order. The same umbrella group that Crowley and Vicky and, apparently, Yeats were all in doing their occult shenanigans.
rimbaudcwm: I looked it up at the patent office this afternoon. You'll never see that tidbit in the Times, but all this stuff still has to be on record for legal reasons.
trickysocialist: see, this is why I still hang out with you. Aside from ideology, you are extremely pragmatic when you can be arsed to put the effort in. You get things done.
dannyboywelsh: excuse me, are we saying practical about the same bloke who keeps taking all my shirts
rimbaudcwm: Seize the shirts, Bert would say.
trickysocialist: just because you don't *like* it doesn't mean it's not *practical* of him
rimbaudcwm: Somebody our age has to play the Taffy thief. And it's not going to be the bank clerk or the Royal Academy boy or the earnest socialist, is it? You've all got reputations to keep up.
rimbaudcwm: But when this book comes out, I'll have done what I wanted to do in life. I'll be a proper published poet.
rimbaudcwm: Everything that happens after that is just having fun.
*****
rimbaudcwm: So on the strength of my proofs for 'Eighteen Poems', I actually did wrangle a meeting with Yeats yesterday.
redcliffepoet: Congratulations. I'm sure it was a deeply rewarding experience.
rimbaudcwm: You could call it that. I asked about the Vicky thing.
rimbaudcwm: and he said, basically, that it's an English tithe. The telewirelesses just- eat people's souls sometimes. Sometimes you get it back and sometimes you don't.
rimbaudcwm: sometimes it comes back again only twice as bad, like the clap.
rimbaudcwm: He's not worried himself because he's Irish, and the Free State has a nationality working against demons, but of course that doesn't apply over here.
trickysocialist: Sort of leaves us in a grey area, doesn't it?
trickysocialist: We're not Irish, but we're certainly not English.
rimbaudcwm: I'm not really thinking about that, I'm just worried about this one man who nobody else is going to look out for. He's in too deep to be safe, but who's going to stick their neck out for a Jewish fag?
rimbaudcwm: And then I did some more digging. Wish I'd never learned anything from the farts at the Daily Post.
rimbaudcwm: Somebody Vicky loved died under very weird circumstances, and I can't prove it was Crowley. Not to a court of law. But I can be pretty sure of what happened.
rimbaudcwm: And ten to one, he did a working to safeguard her soul- but that leaves him open and vulnerable the same way.
dannyboywelsh: Have you been reading Agatha Christie thrillers again?
rimbaudcwm: Dan, it's not like it's difficult to put this stuff together! It just- it doesn't matter enough to cover up, because anybody who knows this much about poetic strictures is making a fortune off them, or they're scared too, or they're like Yeats and they just don't care as long as it stays on this our blessed isle.
rimbaudcwm: I mean, besides me. I am going to do something about all this.
dannyboywelsh: Write a strongly worded letter? Listen. I'd rather not spend all my hols listening to you blather about this occult stuff.
rimbaudcwm: Vernon, you still on?
redcliffepoet: I was just about to go to bed.
rimbaudcwm: You're honestly the most spiritual man I know. Do you think I'll be all right, if I go into this just wanting to help out another soul?
redcliffepoet: I don't see how God would ever let down a soul who asks for His aid, in a genuine spirit of humility and contrition.
rimbaudcwm: ok. thanks.
dannyboywelsh: humility and contrition.
dannyboywelsh: suuuuuuure. we all know you've got bucketloads of those
*****
rimbaudcwm: Aide. Que se passe-t-il? Je ne comprends rien de tout cela.
trickysocialist: pen of my aunt? wtf are you on about
rimbaudcwm: Aide! Qu'est-ce que c'est que tout ça à propos de la cité des cygnes? Je ne sais pas pourquoi je suis en vie. Je ne comprends pas ce qui m'arrive.
trickysocialist: oh come on. Dan? Watkins? I was never much for foreign languages.
dannyboywelsh: I've got a knack for tongues- but this is nonsense. Dylan, be serious.
rimbaudcwm: Ce n'est pas mon nom. Je suis Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud. Je suis poète.
trickysocialist: yeah, yeah. we know you're a poet
dannyboywelsh: Dylan, arrête de jouer aux idiots.
rimbaudcwm: J'ai l'impression de devenir fou.
*****
rimbaudcwm: what the FUCKS did u lot do to my boyfriend I'm gonna boil you all in lard
dannyboywelsh: Um, Dylan?
rimbaudcwm: of course I'm not Dylan you dimwit, I'm Caitlin. You know. We met in Fitzrovia, I dance, he writes poems about me, we're marrying as soon as he can scrape together enough for a marriage license and a honeymoon.
rimbaudcwm: he writes all his passwords on his shirt collars, they aren't hard to find.
redcliffepoet: I take it you're wanting an explanation of the situation?
rimbaudcwm: I HAD one. It's nuts.
rimbaudcwm: If I wanted to marry a Frenchman I'd have stayed in France.
rimbaudcwm: Anyway, I hauled him to Paddington and stuck him on the train to Swansea, because he thought it was the Continental train because I told him it was. One of you fuckers had better be at the station to meet him when he gets there. I have an audition this week and I absolutely do not need whatever witchy Welsh hassle this is.
dannyboywelsh: This literally has nothing to do with being Welsh.
rimbaudcwm: Then you tell me why he kept blathering about his precious Tawe.
rimbaudcwm: They don't have one of those in France.
*****
redcliffepoet: what do you mean, he's still at Warmley? Why isn't he at home?
dannyboywelsh: because they don't want an insane Frenchie in Mrs Thomas' neat little house, do they? His sister's marrying a soldier in two months, it'd throw everything akimbo to have a madman running about the place. which means it's either my folks' place or a nice quiet cell in the asylum up the hill
dannybodywelsh: just lucky that I'm on summer hols and can keep him tucked up in my room for now. I don't know what'll happen when I have to go back to London, I really don't.
redcliffepoet: Shit.
dannybodywelsh: And I'm blaming you for this. You're the one who told him he couldn't get into any trouble messing around with demonic forces.
redcliffepoet: You're sure that is what's happening?
dannyboywelsh: As opposed to what?
redcliffepoet: To put it crudely- he's not pranking us all again?
dannyboywelsh: Respectfully, I knew him when we were both kids. I'd know if he was putting this on.
dannyboywelsh: frankly, he was never this good at French either.
dannyboywelsh: so where the hell IS the soul of our poet?
redcliffepoet: It must- this has to be a case of hypnotism. Something with a concrete, material explanation. This is the twentieth century, we don't live in a world where souls can be snatched away into ether by mystic forces.
dannyboywelsh: I wish I believed you. I really do.
dannyboywelsh: But if the bloke in my bed is Dylan in any way besides the purely physical, I'm a Dutchman.
*****
trickysocialist: Okay. I've been in touch with some...foreign contacts of mine, let's say.
dannyboywelsh: so the whole Russian infiltrator conspiracy thing is for real, huh. I don't even care any more.
trickysocialist: actually I meant Spaniards. In case you haven't been paying attention to the geopolitical situation, your very own town is playing host to a number of refugees from the civil war they've been having over there. Some of them have witnessed battlefield soul captures that don't sound all that dissimilar to- you know. what we're talking about.
trickysocialist: And my own side, here in Britain, is denying any of that happened. because we don't want to admit that in another country, the people with the values we supposedly hold sacred are fighting just as hard and dirty as our enemies.
trickysocialist: Dylan wouldn't stand for that. I'm not sure I'd agree with him- but I'm not so sure I wouldn't, any more. Not knowing what this looks like up close and personal.
dannyboywelsh: Maybe Caitlin's right. Maybe we should let her loose to boil whoever did this in lard. I don't think I'd mind very much if she did, at this point.
dannyboywelsh: It's eerie as hell. He looks like Dylan. He moves like him, he laughs the same way when he does laugh. But the voice being all wrong, and the way he turns up his nose at cheap sweets- I tried taking him to a silent picture this afternoon, thought that language wouldn't matter for that. He just sat there glum as a stone.
trickysocialist: I never actually read Rimbaud. Does that sound like him?
dannyboywelsh: I've tried a few poems and I can't make heads or tails of the fellow. Maybe this really and truly would be a normal reaction for a discombobulated ninteenth-century mystic. It's not exactly like we can take him to the French Embassy and double-check, can we?
dannyboywelsh: And what we'd really need for a literary analysis is Watkins.
trickysocialist: Still in absentia, I take it?
dannyboywelsh: I didn't think he'd take me being pissed off with him as bad as that.
*****
redcliffepoet: I don't know if this plan will work. Or even help.
redcliffepoet: But you're right, Dan. This is on me. So the least I can do is try to make amends.
rimbaudcwm: well that's already one more idea than any of YOU LOT have come up with, isn't it?
trickysocialist: I'm not paid to have ideas.
dannyboywelsh: Orwell, Orwell. I think I've heard the name.
redcliffepoet: Dreadful poet, but a very good man. And he responded immediately when I wrote and said I'd read his book about Burmese possessions.
dannyboywelsh: pseudonym, isn't it? we ran into each other at the BBC once or twice- yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a penname.
dannyboywelsh: Eric Blair! That was it.
redcliffepoet: As a former policeman, he had some practical advice to contribute that didn't make it into the published book- and the rest was all strictures, I'm enough of a poet to handle those. Which is as much to say, if this doesn't work I'm at a loss for what to do next.
trickysocialist: so if the chap's named Blair, and he's helping us do black magic, does that make this a Blair Witch Project?
rimbaudcwm: ok if this doesn't work you are definitely dying first.
*****
trickysocialist: So did it work?
dannyboywelsh: no. Still speaking French.
trickysocialist: Alas.
trickysocialist: If I enlist in the International Brigade, Cat, that'll save you some trouble and expense arranging my demise.
rimbaudcwm: Just stop. Stop. I loved him a lot, you know.
rimbaudcwm: He promised me the moon. And I was going to live up to that, to be everything he asked for in a woman.
rimbaudcwm: And now he's gone in a way I can't even mourn? No wedding ring. No corpse. Nobody would understand.
redcliffepoet: I'm sorry.
redcliffepoet: If it makes you feel better, I recieved a very heartfelt letter from Victor Neuberg this morning. He says that he's been able to sleep without bad dreams for the first time in years.
redcliffepoet: So our poet accomplished that kindness, if nothing else.
rimbaudcwm: Your Christian sacrifices are SO not worth it.
rimbaudcwm: fuck you and the cross you rode in on
*****
redcliffepoet: So that- that's the story, I'm afraid. It's been three days. No improvement.
redcliffepoet: And I suppose, if anybody is reading this record- don't do what we did. I don't know what we should have done. But it wasn't this.
rimbaudcwm: yodel-lay-hee-hoo
redcliffepoet: Caitlin. Please stop.
rimbaudcwm: There was a young poet from Swansea
rimbaudcwm: Who got in a bit of a quandary
rimbaudcwm: But his friends rallied round
rimbaudcwm: Kept his soul above ground
rimbaudcwm: And even bequeathed him their laundry.
redcliffepoet: FUCK that's actually you???????
rimbaudcwm: o don't shout so, I've a thumping hangover and a head on me like a beast. I hope Rimbaud enjoyed his cups, because I certainly don't remember drinking any of them.
rimbaudcwm: not that I begrudge him. Dan's just spent an hour explaining what happened, and I'm thinking that if drowsing around and drinking up the Jones family cellar is the worst he could come up with, I could have made a much worse choice for guardian spirit.
redcliffepoet: You've been up for an hour and he didn't tell me?
rimbaudcwm: two. Mrs Jones insisted on a milk toast cure before she'd let me do anything else. I said he wasn't allowed to tell anybody I was up, till I'd come up with a bit of doggerel to prove I was all right.
redcliffepoet: I'll be right over.
rimbaudcwm: What? And leave the bank during working hours?
redcliffepoet: Some things are worth a write-up.
*****
dannyboywelsh: Are you seriously going to try to bed both of them at once
rimbaudcwm: I can but ask.
rimbaudcwm: Because if I've got Vicky's curse now, and maybe I do, I might as well go whole hog.
rimbaudcwm: Or camel, as it were.
dannyboywelsh: For the record, at no point during any of this did you think you were a camel.
rimbaudcwm: Not very Swansea, is it? No, I wouldn't be.
rimbaudcwm: Otoh if a worm ever sets Swansea Market on fire, it might be me belching after a long night of drinking.
dannyboywelsh: not funny
rimbaudcwm: little bit funny
trickysocialist has entered the chat
trickysocialist: okay I've got it. the perfect plan. we'll harness the next Eisteddfod! invoke all the poetic forces of Cymru and channel it straight into our poet, flush out all the Frenchness out until he's back to normal again!
dannyboywelsh: Uh, Bert? we don't need to do that any more.
rimbaudcwm: Hold my beer. I want to hear this.