Dressed in her scarlet one piece swimsuit, using

her new off-road walker with a seat

and pneumatic tyres, she crosses the narrow road

between her row of converted cottages

and the concrete slipway, bumps slowly

over the stony beach – where each fragment

has a tale to tell of times and tides, of

snowfall and sunshine – and into high water

up to her waist. She turns the walker,

and sits, seemingly contemplating

the horizon she once would swim towards.

 

Holidaymakers visit her Dorset cove

rarely, and then only by accident

there being no public toilets or even

a coffee shack. Those who do are unaware

that the scarlet woman sitting in the sea

is the heiress of Austen, Eliot, Pym –

mistresses of comedies of manners,

and occasional passing tragedies,

always humane, ironic, redemptive.

 

She likes to imagine that when she looks

south there is no one between her and

the Antarctic other than chance mariners.

She feels she should begin to plan her next,

and probably last, novel. However,

the world she has always written about

was essentially orderly – the

comedy and pathos of her work

the exception that tests the rule as it were.

The world seems inherently dystopian

now  – more Salem than Salop, so to speak,

a havoc of witchfinder generals

pulsing with cruelty and righteousness.

Places that offered a prospect of peace

have become prone to annihilation

from fire, from flood, from drought, from famine.

Elsewhere there is torture and bombardment,

the immolation of generations.

 

She is tempted to emulate Dean Swift

and the ‘saeva indignatio’

of his self-written epitaph, and

excoriate humankind. The title

she has in mind is DIGITUS

IMPUDICUS – and the cover a

middle finger gesturing at readers.

But maybe humanity like the Gulf Stream

will last a little longer. So perhaps

the main character should be a refugee,

a widow with three children, set adrift somewhere,

and the title ALL THE WORLD’S A WAGER?

 

She suddenly realises that the tide is out,

and panics momentarily, stranded

among the silent stones.