A Cold Reception: Thirteenth Tattersby
The Folly
Tattersby
A Cold Reception
She’d written him a letter too confiding
for a cold reception
(Flying an enthusiasm, scientific enquiry, not…in his book)
A girl of twenty…she has since learned her lesson
1911—April it was—she’d been introduced at Newmarket races
to Mr. Ismay
All so gay
She thinks of his face
But…there he is—
Simon, always now, hovering
behind her in the glass, eyes beseeching
It makes Fiona want to spit
‘Simon!’ she snaps. ‘I do forgive you, of course’
And this lie dispels nothing
She is the sort who does the expected thing
The powder puff obscures him in a cloud of talc
The very words call up a succession
of infuriating faults
Most of all that twitch of the lip that was not a smile
Because she’d put it down in ink
‘Is it possible? I think I love you.’
And had it been possible? Well, youth fades
And in the sitting room below
The guest wrapped in a blanket
Propping a lap-desk with his knees
yawns by the fire
‘Give that up,’ the host suggests. ‘Can’t see any need.
Roscoe’s an unprincipled haunter, bound to be.
Dare say by Sunday you’ll find he’s annotated your account
In soot, or spilt tea, or melted frost-runes on the windowpane
If it happens you’ve set events down wrong.’
‘Capital!’ they think they hear,
from a pocket dark and cold
somewhere up the chimney
Tattersby
A Scientific Family: Fourteenth Tattersby
(2017, Stephanie Foster)