Meeting with the dubious importer
you could sense, even while showing off
expansive lawns and woodland, how
he was assessing whether you could be
of use as an appendage to his contacts.
Then, introduction to the gracious wife.
Much later, meeting the son, contingent
on a different narrative, surprise
at how he proved to be both charming and
disarming, glad of any opportunity
to dispense from his extensive
knowledge of ecclesiology.
Yet all the time aware of being your
familiar retentive self, ready
to engage, while struggling to find words;
as at the garden party afterward where
as outsiders, so of no intrinsic interest,
some unaccustomed effort was required.
Which may be how you found yourself squeezed
in a sports car driven by Mollie Someone,
frilly matron, travelling too fast
to reach the station, although when she backed
into that road-sign you were a spectator
on a rolling hill in open country
where it proved possible to get a signal,
ring emergency, but not give any
clear location, only describe the scene,
with fragments of a story you could barely
comprehend, and so had no idea
if it was one that you were meant to tell.
.
Tony Lucas
.