Three Horseshoes
good breeding / heavy reading / writer’s writers / class crisis at the freehouse
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying, and failing, to get on top of this research into John Cheever, the American short story writer and novelist who frequently disassembles (upper) middle class life in his fiction – its malaise, hypocrisies, anxieties – before attempting to conjure something transcendent from the wreckage. It’s not really happening. The research, I mean. At least not at the rate it needs to. There’s something about the whole Boston-Brahmin-aspirant imaginary I can’t grasp – insecure attachments to ancestry and ‘good breeding’, passenger lists from 17th century sailing vessels full of Ebenezers and Ezekiels… I just don’t get it. Emailing a US archive, trying to track down a memoir fragment of Cheever’s apparently known as the ‘Bloody Papers’, another possibility presents itself: research into this man, whose life was – despite periods of joy and contentment – characterised by alcoholism, philandering, acute loneliness, professional jealousy, and self-loathing driven by his (bi)sexuality, is bloody depressing. And that weird reader-author transference, or inevitable identification, or faux-empathy, or whatever, which occurs through this process is beginning to drag.
Occasion to hype books that have had the opposite effect on me this year. Back in summer I received a proof of Philippa Snow’s Which As You Know Means Violence (Repeater), read it in two sittings, immediately lent it to a friend, later bought my own copy, re-read it, lent that to a friend, this rapid read-lend routine a way of insisting that others share in my excitement over what is maybe the most incisive, illuminating and totally fun nonfiction book I’ve read in years. In WAYKMV Snow considers the role of self-injury and sadomasochism in art and entertainment, scrutinising a slew of (mostly North American) artists, actors and performers, from Buster Keaton to Johnny Knoxville to Chris Burden. Snow is particularly wonderful on the relationship between masculinity, social alienation, violence and the male body – giving a stunning close-read of ‘British lads hit each other with chair’ – as well as the twisted, sometimes beautiful war-games of heterosexual coupling. Holly Connolly referred to Snow as a ‘writer’s writer’, which I immediately agreed with, in the sense that her work gives us (writers) something to aspire to: criticism that is imaginative, dare-devilish, luxurious and entertaining, criticism that delights in language.
Lucy Mercer – another writer’s writer, a poet’s poet – published Emblem (Prototype) in the spring. It challenges the ‘neat’ narrative logic we’ve been conditioned to expect from the printed, bound collection of poetry (‘a composite mass that scarcely resembles the author’s intention’). The poems are intricate, hypnotic, incantatory, and (very broadly) consider motherhood-selfhood, the role of the author-artist, and the relationship between image and text: Emblem is interspersed with images from the 16th century book the Emblemata, and some of the poems interpret and refract these images. When I worked at The White Review, Lucy Mercer won the magazine’s inaugural Poet’s Prize; we printed out a poem from her winning portfolio, ‘Dream Houses’, and stuck it on the office wall, both as a reminder of what very good poetry looks like, and as a portal, so that we could turn our eyes from the spreadsheets and track-changes to ‘chapelles / of blue peaches’, and be transported, that particular poem, like many in the collection, an entire frieze in miniature.
I’ve seen a lot of old friends this week, all back for the holidays, we’ve played a lot of cards, walked a lot of dogs, creating an illusion that this transitional period’s on permanent pause… But the glut of social contact makes the lack of it infinitely worse, and back at the desk, nothing sparks. Nothing ignites the imagination. There is absolutely nothing to do outside, in the rainswept fields. Walk around the garden, sit on the concrete wall. Count the magpies on the telephone wires. You might as well go down to The Three Horseshoes for a pint of local ale.
The Three Horseshoes – formerly a coachhouse, hence its equine nomenclature – sits on a bridge in town, above the postage-stamp train station, equidistant from the Avon and the canal. Its low-ceilinged, wooden-beamed, cavernous interior (and the various antechambers, offering darts and pool) is always packed with locals. Outside, a veranda full of old, cracked, solid wood furniture overlooks a vast beer garden. Riveted to the stone walls are decaying mannequins, a novelty road sign (Warning: UFOs!) and a chalk board listing the weekend’s live music, blues bands on the West Country pub circuit. The entire pub – inc. beer garden – is wired-up to a sound system which cuts between ‘60s rocker standards (Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, etcetera) and misc house music, a pairing that might seem odd to anyone not from round ‘ere, but which makes perfect sense if you are. The Three Horseshoes is a relic. The fact it exists in this anti-freehouse economy is remarkable; the fact it appears to be thriving is miraculous.
The barman’s of indeterminate age, could sincerely be clocked at anywhere between 30 and 50, and will unfailingly serve the regulars before any unfamiliars, regardless of who arrives at the bar first. Though this is a paradox, as many of the regulars are installed on stools at the bar, and so, in some sense, are always here first. He’s casually homophobic, quick to reassure a regular that the landlord, who is currently having a private conversation with another barman, isn’t up to anything ‘gay’. He is also loudly, enthusiastically disdainful of ‘middle class wankers’. He fears that ‘middle class wankers’ are overtaking the town, and might soon overtake The Three Horseshoes.
Who are they, these middle class wankers, the MCW? Not the old money, the eccentric posh and moth-eaten elite who occupy the decaying mansion houses of the valley, and the half-empty, surely haunted townhouses nearby. These people – at least the men, the old men – are welcome at The Three Horseshoes. They sit in the corner, clutching dog-bitten walking sticks with worn silver handles, they smoke pipes or big fat cigars, they put away their ales and brandies with aplomb, discussing local matters. The MCW are maybe that stratum of comfortably-housed, liberal ‘boomer’ who tend to populate towns like these, from Frome on down to Totnes, those firmly allied to the Extinction Rebellion cause: latter-day hippy-cum-millenarianists, or, conversely, the heroes and heroines we all need. But they’re also welcome in The Three Horseshoes. Possibly, I wonder, in lieu of their political allegiance with the Horseshoes’ key contingent: those who live on the canal, in floating homes stickered with weathered XR insignia. But I’ve never attended an XR meet, can only speculate on the class solidarity or lack thereof engendered by its holocracy-type structure.
When I considered renting in the town, a couple of months back, before reality hit that one-beds around here are more or less out of budget, I met with a letting agent who told me that a very real post-pandemic ‘chain migration’ was occurring, whereby Londoners flooding into Bristol and Bath and whatnot were incentivising Bristolians and Bathians to migrate to smaller satellite towns, such as this one – in fact, he said, some Londoners are skipping the whole Bath-Bristol downshift and coming straight here – and demand is outstripping supply, prices are going up, displacement’s happening, the works. Perhaps these people, these strangers, these well-salaried city dwellers looking to cosplay country, are the real MCW. But I didn’t interrogate the letting agent, at the time, as to the veracity of his claims, nor did I decide to press the matter further when I bumped into him, dressed down from his three piece pinstripe suit to jeans and a navy blue turtleneck, drinking ale in The Three Horseshoes, for he is, I thought, surely allied to the MCW, an expediter for their arrival, and perhaps befriending him under the all-seeing eye of the ahistorical barman would mark me out as an MCW, so I blanked him, the letting agent, and he, for his own reasons, blanked me.
Waiting to be served at the Horseshoes’ bar, for what seemed like forever, the penny dropped: perhaps I am one of the MCW our friend the barman is referring to. After all, I’m part of that downshift, in a sense, and while I may be in disguise as my former from round ‘ere self – hair as long as it was when I was a teenager, mud-stained trainers, rhoticity slipping back into my speech – four months in the West Country won’t undo seven years in London, the veneer is thin, and underneath it I remain estranged, feel vaguely threatened, a nervous tourist in my home country, eyes darting around, assessing, parsing, calculating… Caught between craving acceptance, having returned here, tail between legs, unable to make the ‘big city’ work, and a panicked instinct to bolt…
But this is The Three Horseshoes. The lights are warm and welcoming. The pints of ale, once pulled, are a solace for all on a wet December evening. The bar is sticky with spittle and beer. The beams of wood creak and ache. The sound of laughter resonates in every corner. To sit out on the veranda under cover from the rain with a damp rolled cigarette slowly burning down to my fingertips, gazing at the dark green-black curtains of water and all the dripping ivy and bramble in the last days of the year I recall that the word ‘paradise’ is derived from ‘walled garden’, and I sense that the light will soon return, redoubled, and that everything is soon to change.