With a sonnet so perplexing as this, there only seemed the one course of action: to call in the literary investigator, Professor Zazzo Thim.
He asked for accommodation on the second floor, where he might afford a view of the lawns and the sculptured hedgerows. He said he wanted to see a peacock. He said he had never seen a peacock, not a real one. I reminded him of the bad sonnet, that he had a duty to perform. I want to see the peacocks first, he replied, dropping his bags in the hall and rubbing his hands together with glee.
I reminded our guest that he had a job to do, that he had been promised a quite substantial sum to analyse the sonnet we had uncovered in our renovating of the library.
“Yes”, he said. “Yes, of course, how silly of me to forget. I am here for a specific reason and your hospitality should not be taken for granted”
The old man was taken to his room and I repaired to the library, expectant of his appearance therein. It was a crisp autumn morning and a mist rolled in from the vales across the lawn in front of the french windows. As a devotee of literature in all its forms, I had been intrigued to discover the sonnet in a notebook hidden in a crevice between two shelves and I was anxious that the work be scrutinised. that any literary merit might be deduced from its faded pages. Upon inquiry as to who might best carry out this investigation, I was told that Professor Zazzo Thim was at the very top of the profession, and I spared no expense at securing his services. I looked out on the mist-shrouded gardens with my hands behind my back, expectant and looking forward to the knowledge that he would impart, only to see his decrepit form ambling across the eastern lawn in hot pursuit of a peacock, waving his arms in the air, and hooting with delight.
Over dinner he showed no sign of his exertions. He leaned his padded elbows on the edge of the table and grinned at me. “You know”, he said, “This whole place exudes a certain atmosphere. I can tell that there might be more to it than just the one sonnet. I fear, my friend, that this whole building might conceal a wealth of literary surprises”.
“How so?”, I asked
“It has a certain feel to it, the same sensation I get when I walk into a library for the first time, or museum, or even a bookshop, and sense that words have been played with here, that language has been exerting itself, contorting into new and uncomfortable positions for the benefit of general entertainment”. He then grinned, and leaned closer. “And another thing”, he said. “You’ve got peacocks here”
“And what of it?”
“Peacocks congregate around places where sonnets have been written. It is a well known fact in the literary community. Wherever you see peacocks, there have been works of great power created. The peacock, you see, operates on the premise of sonic reverberations, and, in particular, the beat created by iambic pentameter. Mark my words, young sir, there are sonnets in this house!”
That next morning we met in the library and I showed him the notebook I had found during the renovations. He sat down next to the fire and, with a quizzical expression on his face, began to examine it in detail with a magnifying glass. The wood crackled and spat, and I stood there, awkwardly, with my hands behind my back. The old man was a sight in himself, every facet of his aged countenance concentrated upon the page, his thin, bony legs crossed at the knee, the long, slender fingers holding the magnifying glass daintily, as if he might lose all thread of his conscience if he were to hold the handle too tightly. At long last he turned to me and he said:
“It’s a sonnet”.
“I know! I know!” I could not help the tone of exasperation in my voice, for I had long imagined this moment.
“Ah”, he said. “You mean, you want me to analyse it in some greater depth?”
“Yes!”
He gave a great sigh and leaned his head back in the chair. “That could take some time”, he said.
“Is this not what I am paying you for? You may have all the hospitality you need, but I want a thorough dissection of this poem so that we might know exactly what it is about, where it came from, and what it means for the history of this house”.
“Fine”, he said. “Give me ten minutes”
I went for a walk around the gardens. The winter chill bit into me and I pulled the coat around my shoulders. The old man was plainly mad and I wondered if he really knew what he was doing. The university department, it is true, had seemed glad to be getting rid of him for a while, or at least, that was the impression I had received from their eagerness to unload him on me. Yet he had not come without his plaudits. I had entered his name on a search engine to find a list of credible achievements in the field of literary extremism, as well as several spoof web sites in which his methods were derided and mocked by affectionate ex-students. The more I thought about him, the more I told myself that he was a gentle man, an eccentric devotee of literature who would, I was now certain, get to the bottom of the mystery of the sonnet.
At this moment I heard a strange hooting sound. I turned a corner to see Professor Zazzo Thim, his arms outstretched, inches behind a peacock, which appeared to be running for its life.
We met again that night over sherry in the grand hall. “I must say”, he told me, “I was surprised and enthused by the sonnet. It is a peculiar work, but it fits all the criteria of a Petrarchan sonnet, with a rather perplexing turn and a couple of cheekily-placed caesura, and a rhyme scheme which lends it a certain credibility. Yes, my friend, you have a sonnet and I think you should be proud of it”
“I am glad”, I replied. “I feared it may have been nothing but a cheap imitation”.
“It is a fine work, which, within its lines, compares the love of a simple country boy for a young milk maiden, for the simple joy a cow feels upon milking. Some of its imagery could be seen as quite daring for its time.”
“Such as?”
And now the Professor quoted, “How joyously, betwixt thumb and forefinger, the teet is squeezed”.
“I see”
“But my friend, there are greater mysteries here, are there not?”
“What do you mean?”
“The peacocks, I note, are particularly agitated in my presence”
“Perhaps that’s because you keep chasing them all over the place”.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing”.
As I was saying, the peacocks , perhaps knowledgeable of my literary credentials, are loath to let me into certain pars of the garden as if they are protecting something. Have, you ever noticed this before?”
“I can’t say that I have”.
“It is a quite odd manifestation, and I think it should be investigated at this moment. You see, it is my prognosis that the peacocks are protecting another sonnet, perhaps one of such magnificence that its iambic pentameter powers them and keeps them agile in these autumnal frosts. Surely, by now they should be deep in their hibernation”.
“Peacocks do not hibernate!”, I told the old man.
“Then you see, they are being energised by something beyond our control.”
At this, Professor Zazzo Thim pulled on his jacket and slugged back the last of his sherry. “Come, he said, “We shall investigate this moment!”
Indeed, his enthusiasm was infectious. We left the grand hall and, by way of the main front door, entered the grounds of the house. Zazzo led the way, despite the cold, and a frost which had already begun to form on the lawns, a sparkling white which lent an ethereal splendour to the night. How strange that the peacocks should still be so restless, and not confined to their winter hut. For the first time I started to believe that the Professor might even be correct in his assessment, that the peacocks were hiding something, that they didn’t want us to proceed any further.
The gravel paths crunched under our footsteps and the lawns were hard with frost. The Professor was fearless as he pushed his way through the peacocks, their tails fanned as if in some attempt to halt our progress. And it was so cold, down in the hollow where the ornamental gardens were laid, a strong coldness which gripped my body and chilled me right to the bone. Our breath turned to vapour in the light from the torch, while the peacocks followed us down the hill, constant footsteps in our wake. At last we turned a corner to find a barrier of them blocking our path, their tails fanned, an impenetrable wall.
“What should we do?”, I asked, now fully reliant on the old man.
“We must do as they want”
“But we might risk the whole project!”
The beady eyes of the peacocks bore down on us, and, as one, they started to call, their shrill exclamations bouncing back at us from the shrubbery, from the trees and the bushes of the ornamental garden. A cacophonous moment, both frightening and sublime, and, with a force I had never seen before, they guided us, gently but persistently, into the entrance of the maze.
We were running now, running with them right behind us. We couldn’t stop, there would have been no option but to be pecked to death by their beaks. We turned corner after corner in the maze, the scampering feet of the peacocks just inches behind us, until, as if they had guided us, we were in the very centre, the small statue of my great, great uncle which marked the epicentre of the maze.
And there we saw them, hundreds of them. Peacocks lined around the hedges, as if in parliament, and were in the middle of them, just us and the statue.
“This is it”, I whispered, “This is the end”.
“On the contrary”, the Professor replied.
He bent down and began to wipe his hand along the wording on the plinth of the statue.
With a beating heart, I saw as the moss and the dirt began to be flaked off, and a poem be revealed to us, centuries old perhaps, yet persistent in its survival. The peacocks began to crowd around. The stone letters, so regular and formal in the light from our torches, archaic in their construction, their sentence structure.
“A sonnet!”, I breathed.
But the Professor was frowning. He crouched down and worked his way around the plinth, reading as he went. “It has a rhyme scheme”, he said. “And a ceasura, and a definite turn between the sixth and seventh lines. Yes, a sonnet, but….
By now, the peacocks were crowded in on us, as if they, too, were trying to read.
“But what?”
“There’s a syllable missing in the ninth line”.
“Read it to me!” I urged The Professor bent closer.
‘And yet my old heart it be not saved””.
“Nine syllables”, I whispered, counting them on my fingers.
The peacocks were pushing against us now, evil in their intent, crowding around, and they could surely have crushed us if they had the inclination.
At this, the Professor reached into a pocket and pulled out a chisel. And then, using a rock to hit the top of it, carved a small accent over the ‘e’ of ‘saved’ to transform it into ‘savèd’.
The result was instantaneous. The peacocks drew back, satisfied, then began to file out of the exit, allowing us to follow them into the cold night, from where they went back to their winter hut for hibernation.
The Professor and I returned to the Grand Hall and helped ourselves to another sherry.
He left the next morning and I was more than happy to cough up the extra money he demanded from his extra investigations. How happy we both were, to have solved a little mystery and put right the travesty of a bad sonnet. I thanked him once again as he clambered into the taxi, and as it pulled away he rolled down the window and he waved, smiling. His last words to me were:
“The peacocks shall bother you no more”,
I went back to the library and looked once again at the poem l’d found, the old notebook, now so faded as to be hardly recognisable.
I counted down the lines. “Hang on”, I said, to myself. ‘This isn’t a sonnet! It’s for fifteen lines!”
Robert Garnham 