The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

Author:Ros Barber [Barber, Ros]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Literary, Biographical, Women's Prize for Fiction - all candidates
ISBN: 9781250017178
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-01-29T06:00:00+00:00

I’ve no idea how much they understood.

The presence of English was assault enough.

‘You have to leave this house.’

‘Then I will die,’

I say, with far less drama than I might.

‘But I will go. It is your house.’ I push

myself up on the table, and at once

collapse to the floor like laundry.

‘Apologies.

Perhaps you’ll help me to the door.’ They run

to lift me by the armpits (pity them)

and do my bidding; I am light as bones,

and the hefty mother hefts me off my feet

on the left-hand side. The daughter breathes on me

a lunch of peaches. ‘Woah! I am not dressed,’

I remember, coiling the sheet about my loins.

‘We’ll bring your clothes down presently,’ the whale

of a woman replies. ‘Let’s get you outside first.’

‘But my things. My trunk.’ I stop them at the door.

‘Can you send my trunk to—’

Here, the comedy

collapses. Christ, I can’t imagine where

my trunk might safely be received. What friend

would take it in, and me, except at home?

Some leafy, rutted lane in England’s shires:

the vision, clear as through a polished glass,

comes bridled with a shiver as I feel

the wind in the hedgerows, hear the clattering cart

that hauls my books and bones the final miles.

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