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A country bus drew up below the church and a young man got out. This he had to do carefully because he had a peg leg 1 .
The roadway was asp halted blue.
It was a summer day in England. Rain clouds were amassed back of a church tower which stood on rising ground. As he looked up he noticed well those slits, built for defence, in the blood coloured brick. Then he ran his eye with caution over cypresses and between gravestones. He might have been watching for a trap, who had lost his leg in France for not noticing the gun beneath a rose.
For, climbing around and up these trees of mourning, was rose after rose, while, here and there, the spray overburdened by the mass of flower, a live wreath lay fallen on a wreath of stone, or on a box in marble colder than this day, or onto frosted paper blooms which, under glass, marked each bed of earth wherein the dear departed encouraged life above in the green grass, in the cypresses and in those roses gay and bright which, as still as this dark afternoon, stared at whosoever looked, or hung their heads to droop, to grow stained, to die when their turn came.
It was a time of war. The young man in pink tweeds had been repatriated from a prisoners' camp on the other side. Now, at the first opportunity, he was back.
He had known the village this church stood over, but not well. He had learned the walks before he turned soldier, though he had met few of those who lived by. The 20 graveyard he had never entered. But he came now to visit because someone he loved, a woman, who, above all at night, had been in his feelings when he was behind barbed wire, had been put there while he was away, and her name, of all names, was Rose.
The bus, with its watching passengers, departed. In the silence which followed he began to climb the path leading to those graves, when came a sudden upthrusting cackle of geese in a panic, the sound of which brought home to him a stack of faggots 2 he had seen blown high by a grenade, each stick separately stabbing the air in a frieze 3 which he had watched fall back, as an opened fan closes. So, while the geese quietened, he felt what he had seen until the silence which followed, when he at once forgot.
But there was left him an idea that he had been warned.
Propping himself on his stick, he moved slowly up that path to the wicket gate between two larger cypresses. He felt more than ever that he did not wish to be observed. So he no longer watched the roses. As if to do his best to become unseen, he kept his eyes on the gravel over which he was dragging the peg leg.
For there was a bicycle bell, ringing closer and closer by the church, clustering spray upon spray of sound which wreathed the air much as those roses grew around the headstones, whence, so he felt, they narrowly regarded him.
Which caused him to stop dead when a boy of about six came, over the hill on a tricycle, past the porch; then, as the machine got up speed, he stood to one side, in spite of the gate still being closed between the two of them. He sharply stared but, as he took in the child's fair head, he saw nothing, nothing was brought back. He did not even feel a pang, as well he might if only he had known.
Charley was irritated when the boy, after getting off to open the gate and climbing onto his machine again, shrilly rang the bell as he dashed past. Then the young man 45 started slowly on his way once more. And he forgot the boy who was gone, who spelled nothing to him.
For Rose had died while he was in France, he said over and over under his breath. She was dead, and he did not hear until he was a prisoner. She had died, and this sort of sad garden was where they had put her without him, and, as he looked about while he leaned on the gate, he felt she must surely have come as a stranger when her time came, that if a person's nature is at all alive after he or she has gone, then she could never have imagined herself here nailed into a box, in total darkness, briar roots pushing down to the red hair of which she had been so proud and fond. He could not even remember her saying that she had been in this churchyard, which was now the one place one could pay a call on Rose, whom he could call to mind, though never all over at one time, or at all clearly, crying, dear Rose, laughing, mad Rose, holding her baby, or, oh
Rose, best of all in bed, her glorious locks abounding.
Henry Green, the opening paragraphs of the novel Back (1946)
1 peg leg: wooden leg
2 faggots: a bundle of sticks tied together
3 frieze: a painted or sculptured decoration
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“I mirrored their breaking lives, I saw their pale
Distraught coming and going, lined despair,
His shaken bulk, her calm pose in the doorway—
I saw them. I was there.”
“I have so long been silent, even now
Hardly at all remember how her slim
Long fingers once caressed me—was that how
At one time she touched him?”
“His lips on mine in the morning, or, in darkness,
After a happy embrace, warmed my clay.
Where is the firm mouth now, where the kiss?
Broken and swept away.”
“They lay me down to serve their steady feet,
How many times they strode over my pile!
Of late those steps were tentative. Now, a street
For strangers, I am so much jute and wool.”
“Bit by bit they painted my walls, the ceiling,
Made me in terms of their vision—I was glad.
But signs of time flake down, the walls are peeling,
What is a house when occupants are fled?”
“My hands repeat themselves, so does not time.
The climactial moment is past, whoever will come.
I gather myself to cough one cautious chime,
But the works are rusted. Henceforth I am dumb.”
“I mirrored their coming here, I see their going,
Together once, now separately. Their outer
Semblance concerns me. I have no way of knowing
Their motives, or their reasons for departure.”
“Dust settles in the fireplace, and the curtains
Hang without a purpose in neat folds.
The books are stacked, chairs not to be sat on
Grouped over-nicely in a house grown cold.”
“I see no more. Their life gave our lives meaning,
But broken homes will not set again.
Their parting was our dissolution, they
Will never know their household gods are slain.”
Philip Hobsbaum, The Pattern of Poetry (1962)
Rosemary Hobsbaum c/o Dr David Sutton, WATCH copyright project

Marking Notes for excerpt from Back (exams 2003)
Satisfactory and good papers, three to four, on a spectrum of increasing precision and detail, may:
 comment on the portrayal of the protagonist
 discuss the relationship between the protagonist, Rose and the boy
 explore the use of the imagery of the rose
 discuss the effects of war
 establish the setting and comment on its relevance
 attend to the use of detailed description and literary features
 demonstrate an awareness of the passage as an introduction to a novel.
Very good and excellent papers, four to five, on a spectrum of increasing sophistication and literary sensibility, may also:
 include some speculation about the identity of the little boy
 explore the particularities of the prose style, for example, the use of physical detail. the role of the narrator, sentence structure, imagery, contrast and tone
 discuss the interaction of death and life
 explore the significance of the references to war in relation to the characterisation and setting
 discuss the relationship between the personal and the universal.
Subject Area Report for excerpt from Back
In the words of a senior examiner, “The very distinctive nature of the writing and of the situation was almost impossible to ignore”. Green’s presentation of Charley’s journey to the church and the cemetery made it possible for many students to write sensitively about the way Charley sees things, the way the war is still present for him, the way he has been wounded. Green’s interweaving of Rose and the roses, of life and death, were also focused upon. While some candidates wanted to discuss the horrors of war or the sorrow of lost love more than they wanted to discuss the actual text, most found the passage so full that they had plenty to treat without going too far outside it.
Despite the effort expended on finding literary features, remarkably few candidates noted the oddity of some of the phrasing, the difference in lengths of paragraphs, or even the role of the narrative voice. The repetition of roses and the varied ways they are described allowed many students to focus on some detail. Students had more difficulty treating
Charley’s relationship with Rose. Perhaps the denseness of the text and their careful treatment of it made it hard for them to give the final paragraph equal consideration.
Many students wrote well about the way this passage worked as the opening of a novel.
However, an equal number treated it as a self-contained unit. This created problems for them and points up the importance of balancing a treatment of the structure of a given extract with an understanding of its role in a longer work.
Marking Notes for “Household Gods” (exams 2008)
This poem offers a range of possibilities for interpretation, but an essential understanding of the nature of the speakers in the poem must be grasped in order to achieve a 3 in A.
Whether the speakers are identified as “the house and its parts” or there is an attempt to identify all of the voices, at least a few need to be identified plausibly. Interpretations which name a child, or a statue, or the couple, for instance, as the speaker cannot achieve a 3.
Satisfactory and good papers, three to four, on a spectrum of increasing precision and detail,
may:
 show some understanding of the nature of the “speakers” (mirror, clock, for example)
 discuss the situation in the house and the individuals who have left
 comment on the stanzaic structure of the poem and its relation to meaning
 consider the use and effects of some poetic techniques.
Very good and excellent papers, four to five, on a spectrum of increasing sophistication and literary sensibility, may also:
 identify more clearly the individual speakers, their qualities, and points they make
 analyse in more depth the presentation of the previous inhabitants of the house, their relationship, and their relationship with the objects
 convey a sense of the cumulative effect of the poetic techniques and their role in building the meaning of the poem.
Subject Area Report for “Household Gods”
Identifying the speakers was the single greatest challenge, and the title of the poem was seldom used to help with this. Many were unaware of the multiple viewpoints, often seeing the 'persona' as a single child of divorcing parents. Conversely, candidates who made efforts to identify the speakers were able to make some very sensitive and insightful interpretations. Most understood the central emotion that 'a house is not a home' without its owners. There was little recognition of sight- and half-rhymes and their effect within the context of poem, and for many candidates, responses to Criterion C still poses problems.
Many seem to be taught to approach poems as convention-spotting exercises (find punctuation, identify the length of sentences, talk about ΄flow΄). Those candidates who have been encouraged to see that a poem is like a piece of architecture write effective commentaries. They see that form follows function and, just as in good architecture the design of the building enhances and reflects its function, so in a poem its form is a part of its content, not a thing separate and imposed upon it. As ever, some adopted a rigid interpretation and mercilessly bent the poem to fit it.