Tony Dawson was born in the East End of London in 1937 and has lived in Seville since 1989. He was educated at Hampton G.S. (now Hampton School) the University of Leeds, and the University of London. After a successful career teaching in the UK at Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University) and Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University) he took up a post at the University of Seville, retiring in 2007. He started writing in earnest during the pandemic and has published some 100 poems in English in the USA, the UK and Australia as well as a small number in Spanish both in the USA and Spain.

A Signal Failure…

‘I’ was dotty about ‘you’
right from the start,
quite happy to sign 
on the dotted line
even though you came… 
virtually sans dot.
 
Because, ‘you’ had plenty of ‘dash’ 
—and that came between ‘us’—
we drifted apart.
 
I’d always had to spell everything out
—dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s—
because you were not about 
to connect the dots.
Instead, you made a dash for it.
 
Now in my dotage,
(all hopes dashed)
I conjure you up,
a dot on the horizon
of memory,
and mumble to myself:
· · // · — · · / — — — / · · · — / · // — · — — / — — — / · · —
Morse… Remorse… Life… a signal failure.

How to Spin a Yarn

Squire Dixon, a sheep breeder on a remote Cumberland farm in the late eighteenth century, wasn’t simply avaricious, he was as tight as a duck’s arse, which is watertight, as the saying went. The wool produced was spun into yarn and sold to merchants on the last Friday of each month. Dixon kept his expenses to the minimum by employing a small staff. Just three shepherds tended the sheep and did the shearing. To supervise the half-dozen young women who spun the wool into yarn, he employed 35-year-old Ariadna Ragno who was built like a brick outhouse and toothless, so lived on nothing but soup. She too was a spinster. Nevertheless, Mistress Ragno harboured hopes of improving her station in life. First, she had to change her spinster status by becoming the distaff side of a marriage. The problem was finding someone to be the spear side, but she was working on that…or rather, on him.

Alfred Muscat, 28 years old and 5 ft. 3ins, was the only domestic servant in the squire’s employ. Despite his bulging eyes and spindly legs, Ariadna was determined to lure him into her trap as the first step in her plan for improving her station in life. He also made tasty soup.

Alfred did his best to resist Ariadna’s advances, and not just because she was ugly and older than him. After all, he was no Adonis himself. Mostly he was repelled by the viscous touch of her hands. He wasn’t sure if they were simply sweaty as a result of her spinning wool or whether it was the lanolin in the fleeces.

Ariadna persisted, nonetheless. She made him overtures, emphasizing that if they were married, the squire would be obliged to give them, as married servants, a rent-free cottage on his land. The argument eventually convinced Alfred, and when the squire gave the union his blessing, arrangements were made for “Ariadna Ragno, a spinster of this parish” to marry Alfred Muscat, “manservant to the squire” in the village church. The squire’s stinginess meant the wedding was a modest affair.

The cottage was equally modest: a tiny kitchen, a living room and two cramped bedrooms. No bathroom; only a pump in the yard. Ariadna was delighted, though. The first part of her social advancement plan had been accomplished: she now had a husband and her own home.

Consummating the marriage was not part of the newlyweds’ agreement, but Ariadna impressed on Alfred that she would be the one wearing the trousers. On the wedding night, her husband inched towards the other bedroom, at which point he felt as if his legs had been lassoed and he was dragged by Ariadna towards the doorway of what she considered the matrimonial bedchamber.

“I’m sorry. Your legs got tangled up in a strand of yarn and as I tugged you fell over!” She patted him on the head.

Alfred saw her roll up a silver ball of wool and slip it into her bag as she cooed, “Come my dear, let’s go to bed. Don’t be coy.”

They both had to be up at sunrise to go to the mansion to start work. When they arrived, the squire told them he had decided to dock five pounds from their annual emoluments because of their “rent-free” accommodation. This reduction in income irked Ariadna because the squire was earning huge sums of money from the sale of the yarn. She knew this because she was the one who wheeled the bundles of yarn out to the merchants at the farm gate and then used some of the money from their bags of coins to pay the shepherds, also waiting at the gate. The miserly Dixon spent the absolute minimum on wages for his skeleton staff and hoarded the rest.

Later that evening in the cottage, Alfred didn’t stop grumbling.

“The squire’s a bastard! Listen, I’m not happy about having my pay cut just because we’re living in this damned cottage. I don’t think it’s worth it. I’d rather go back to my old room in the mansion and be paid what I was receiving before.”

“Oh, really?”

Ariadna looked thunderous, clenching her fists.

*****

The next day, Alfred didn’t turn up for duty. Ariadna ordered one of the young spinsters to attend to the squire’s needs instead.

“Where the hell is Alfred?”

 “He’s feeling unwell, sir, not his usual self.”

A week passed and there was still no sign of Alfred, so Dixon decided to visit the cottage to find out exactly what was wrong with his manservant. Ariadna opened the door to welcome him.

“Where’s that malingering ne’er-do-well, Alfred?” the squire barked.

“Oh, he’s hanging around in the bedroom. He’s a bit lifeless and lost a lot of weight.”

When the squire went into the bedroom, he was dumbfounded to see Alfred hanging from the ceiling, cocooned in what looked like silver thread and reduced to a husk. (Well, he did make tasty soup). The squire spun around. Ariadna, standing right behind him, instantly smothered him in the same sticky silver threads that had cocooned Alfred and hung him from the ceiling too.

“He’ll make a tasty soup too.”

The following day, Ariadna informed the spinsters that the master had gone to discuss business with some new merchants and that she would run the household until his return. Since the shepherds had never dealt with Dixon, they didn’t realize that the squire was no longer there, nor did the merchants, who continued to buy from the same woman at the gate as they had always done. In the next four years, the normal turnover of young spinsters leaving to marry meant that their replacements had never known anything different. Ariadna’s plan for rising up the social scale was working out perfectly.