AFTER-DINNER COFFEE

It was to the Greenways drawing room

that we withdrew after meals

into green dusk

garlanded with washed-out roses, apples and pears

sculpted by long-dead hands.

The panels borrowed living light

from sun-painted landscapes

hung in tall sashes,

including the thinning copper beech

(obligatory topic of discourse)

behind iron park palings,

the brook’s alders

and the reclining ridge

which separated earth from sky.

My mother, unknighted Dame,

took precedence through the double doors,

enthroning herself in her pygmy armchair

of wilting flowered chintz.

The tray with the galloping stags

by some magic

was already there

with its silver pot

of steaming Nescafé.

Dame Vivien poured

into dolls’ cups

while I put Brandenburg Number Four

on the radiogram –

piano so as not to impede

the after-dinner chat.

Dame Vivien purred.

‘The copper beech is dying.’

Dame Vivien’s shoe –

size four or five –

conducted Bach.

My hand rose

to protect me from the offending metronome,

but I knew it had not gone away.

‘He is so boring.’

He was the absent guest,

historian Sir Ernest Barker

who had the misfortune to be from Yorkshire

and modestly professorial.

‘So common!’

I took my hand away:

the baroque foot was still jigging.

And now the presto

as a silence came across the lawns

with an invisible, sensed vapour,

cool invitation to storm from this drawing room,

exhale dead air, inhale warm summer life.

The leather toe,

prestissimo,

became frenetic in the fugue,

uncertain which of the voices it should tap.

Bach’s imperative of young blood

congealed –

my coffee too.

‘The copper beech is dying.’