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.
By David Selzer