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But write I must, and I shall. And I hope these meagre words do justice to a fabulous creative spirit and a deeply valued co-worker, and that for those of my readers who knew Helen (which I suspect is most of you), something in here will strike a chime of recognition at a sad time.
Since I’ve mentioned breadcrumbs, let’s start with these – or rather with the trail of reflective glass balls set into the pavements of central York. They were put there in 2005, a year before I arrived in the city, as part of a storytelling trail designed to guide children through the history and folklore of the medieval city. Accompanying the trail was a rather beautiful book that I well remember being sold in cafés and indie outlets around the city, including my favourite restaurant of the time. York Breadcrumbs (“Tales of adventure that trace a path around York”) was co-written and illustrated by a group of local writers. The book itself is out of print, but you can still pick up second-hand copies from Amazon, and follow the trail through the streets of York for yourself.
Helen Sant was one of the contributing authors. I met her very soon after my absorption into York’s literary scene. I knew her first as the small, striking, slightly Gothic-looking lass who worked on storytelling projects alongside another of the city’s legends, the late great Adrian Spendlow. Before long I had been spellbound by her translations of medieval legend into the language of today. She led ghost walks, under the pseudonyms Gothic Molly and The Yorkshire Storyteller. Even better, hers were no mere trap for the tourist pound – her ghost tours were bespoke affairs, the venues and the material tailored to the interests and enthusiasms of the audience. I still get shivers when I remember her telling the tale of the Barguest – the malevolent phantom hound – underneath the arches of Lendal Bridge, to a tour party made up of many of my oldest friends. I also vividly remember her taking my writing group around York, telling us all about the benign spirit who haunts the wings of the Theatre Royal, amongst other, seemingly endless tales.
Helen became a regular at The Speakers’ Corner, the spoken word open mic that I hosted until 2018. She would use the open mic to try out snippets of new stories, gleaned from near and far, and re-told with an idiosyncratic Yorkshire spin. Eventually she joined me as a host. I think we shared hosting duties for about five years, though in my head, it seems much longer. Helen was very much part of the furniture – as inextricably linked with York as the outline of the Minster against the skyline, or the scent of sugared chocolate that fills the air when the wind is in the right direction.
One of the curses of the coronavirus pandemic was the way it separated people from one another. We got into the habit of Not Seeing People. After Speakers’ Corner closed its doors for the last time in 2018, the places where Helen and I would coincide became fewer, but they still happened regularly. It didn’t seem as if successive lockdowns had removed her from my life; even if in-person events had ceased to take place, Helen would still post regularly on social media – vignettes about the day-to-day dramas of her neighbours, or news of her ventures into playwriting, performing (when restrictions allowed) and, more recently, her excursions into stand-up comedy. There was a sense of continuity there – that “when all this is over” there would be plenty of opportunities to enjoy each other’s creativity once again. So when the news came, that this wasn’t going to happen, it truly felt as if it wasn’t just a friend and a collaborator who had gone, it was a part of the spirit of the city too.
Church of England funerals can be uncomfortable affairs when the person being remembered was not part of the worshipping community, a stranger to the minister officiating at the ceremony. I have no idea whether this particular funeral was anything like what Helen would have chosen for herself, had she been in a position to choose. Somehow, though, it felt appropriate. The vicar had clearly done her homework, spending time with family and friends and “tuning in” to the memories of what made Helen special. The service itself had a minimum of formality to it – a shared recitation of the 23rd psalm and the Our Father was as religious as it got – and instead of hymns, we had the pleasure and privilege of being able to listen to a recording of Helen herself, singing to a jazz-piano arrangement of The Stray Cat Strut. She was buried next to her father, on a picture-postcard early summer’s day, in the grounds of St John the Baptist church, Adel – a lovingly maintained old Norman church – amongst nose-high grasses and cow-parsley, with a choir of wrens in the trees singing their little hearts out in tribute. As a memorial to someone with such a sense of her connectedness to the earth and to the turn of the centuries, it all felt fitting.
Old Norman churches were very much Helen’s aesthetic. Probably my favourite memories of Helen are those of the times we worked together on our combined poetry performance and storytelling show, Telling the Fairytale. Its first outing was at Bar Lane Studios (as was) in 2011, followed by a bigger show during the York Literature Festival of March 2013 in the decidedly atmospheric surroundings of Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate – a gem of a place that you’d think had materialised right out of a medieval ghost story. My first poetry collection, A Long Way to Fall, was launched that year, and the folklore and fairytales that inspired many of the poems in that collection worked beautifully alongside Helen’s marvellous storytelling. I remember the box pews, our breath forming condensation-clouds around us in the chill of the air inside the church, our set lists and performance notes scattered about the pulpit. This was Helen in her element, treading in the footsteps of generations gone before – imagining their ghosts, perhaps, stirring themselves awake to listen spellbound to her tales.
I had completely forgotten, until the funeral day prompted me to look back at the Telling the Fairytale set list, that one of the stories Helen included in her performance was one of her own devising, about an enchanted shop somewhere off the Shambles in the heart of York, and a customer who falls in love with the magical lass behind the counter. He leaves without declaring himself, but when he goes back to find the shop again and offer his heart to the fair maiden, he cannot find the place. It has disappeared, gone in a breath of magic, leaving him wondering if it was all a dream, or if he’ll ever see it – and her – again. Of course, I can barely do justice to the story here. It really needs Helen to tell the tale, to weave the magic. But it occurs to me that having Helen vanish from our lives is not altogether dissimilar to what the hapless protagonist of that story must have felt, when he realised what he had allowed to slip through his fingers. Helen brought a little spark of magic to York; and now that the magic has worked its spell, the whole city feels diminished by her absence.
Thank you, Helen, for the joy of your words and the quiet delight of your presence. We’ll miss you.
(The accompanying photo shows Helen and me and was taken as part of the publicity material for Telling the Fairytale)
(If you want to know more about the York Breadcrumbs trail there is a great recent article here).
