Do Not Go Gentle

by Phil Carradice

Overview

It's November 1953 and Dylan Thomas, Britain's finest poet, is dying in a hospital bed in New York. What brought him to this end is not clear. But he is a man tormented by fear - fear of failing as a writer, fear of a marriage doomed to end in disaster, even fear of death itself - all of which have led him to find comfort in alcohol, outrageous behaviour and the arms of other women.

Now, as Dylan lies waiting for the end, he thinks back over his life, from his childhood in Swansea to his days as a wild young poet in London, from his tempestuous marriage to Caitlin MacNamara to his final weeks in New York.

Dylan Thomas may not have wanted to die but he had little desire to live. An interesting and attractive figure, who was doomed. Do Not Go Gentle paints a picture of a man who has clearly reached the end of his tether.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783755424
Publisher:	Headline Book Publishing, Limited
Publication date:	01/23/2014
Series:	Quick Reads , #1
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	125 KB

About the Author

Phil Carradice is a historian, novelist and poet who has published 29 books. He regularly broadcasts on Radio 4 and Radio Wales where he has his own programme. He works as a lecturer in Cardiff University Department for Continuing Education and takes creative writing classes for adults and children. A former Head Teacher, he now lives in the Vale of Glamorgan but originates from Pembroke Dock.

Read an Excerpt

The room is coldly white, like hospital rooms the world over. White walls, white bed, white sheets. Even the nurses are dressed in white, in stiff, starched uniforms that creak when they walk or bend over the figure in the bed. Like giant seagulls they hover and swoop at the faintest sound.

Above the headboard of the bed, half hidden by the oxygen tent, is a white nameplate. ‘Dylan Marlais Thomas, admitted 11/5/1953’ – written the American, way with the month before the day. Not that anybody takes much notice. Such detail hardly matters to those who sit and wait.

He doesnʼt move, the figure in the bed, just lies there like a rock on the seashore. He breathes slowly, noisily, through his nose. The tubes and wires that snake away from his body to the side of the bed, and the oxygen tent, make him seem like some science fiction robot.

Visitors have come and gone all day but, apart from the nurse and the patient, at the moment there is just one person in the room. He is a bearded man of medium height. He waits and he watches, staring around the room as if he is waiting for somebody to jump out and attack him. Eventually he sighs. The nurse glances across at him.

“It is sad, isnʼt it?” she says. “A writer like him, a man of such wonderful words. And now there are no words, no words at all.”

The bearded man nods. “I guess so,” he says, his mid-west accent surprisingly strong. “But itʼll come to us all, sooner or later. The one guarantee weʼve got in life is that weʼll all leave it sometime.”

The nurse stares at him, trying to work out if he is serious or trying to be funny with her. Finally she decides that his words are genuine.

“Are you a poet, too, Mr Berryman?”

The man smiles, embarrassed but happy to be included.

“A little poet. Not like him.” He points to the patient and then they lapse into silence again. Only the heavy breathing of the man in the bed breaks the quiet of the hospital room. Berryman sighs again and yawns. He tries to hide the yawn behind his hand – waiting for someone to die, even if he is a great poet – is tiring.

“Iʼm going outside for a smoke,” he says. “Thatʼs OK, isnʼt it?”

The nurse nods. “Thatʼs fine, Mr Berryman. He doesnʼt know if youʼre sitting there or not. He canʼt see or hear anything.”

 

Of course I can bloody hear. Iʼm not dead. Not yet, at least. Iʼve just gone back, retreated, you could say, to somewhere safe, somewhere nobody can hurt me. Nothing unusual in that, Iʼve done it all my life. First sign of a cold or sniffle? Bed, with Mam feeding me milky bread and sugar. Caitlin, my Cat, used to do it too – feed me, comfort me. But that was when she still loved me.

It’s restful, lying here like this. No more decisions to make, no problems to sort out, and the world such a long way away. Itʼs not telling a lie – and, believe me, I know all about telling lies – when I say Iʼm happy to be here, happy for the first time since Dad died.

Iʼve always told lies. Why tell the truth, I think, when a lie can be so much more interesting? Except that waiting here like this, it doesnʼt seem important to make things up any more. So maybe itʼs time for a little baring of the soul, a little telling of the truth. Iʼll try, anyway.