Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It's a great painting, really great. Artists and people who know go
and look at it over and over.
Some of them say it changed their lives for ever. I've wanted to see
it for years.
Go then.
The wonderful thing about frescoes is their permanence. The faith
that goes into their making.
You can't take them down if you're tired of them, or move them to
a different room.
Go.

But the fresco Eleanor went all that way to see was sealed up behind
scaffolding, awaiting cleaning or restoration. She took it personally, and spilled out her distress to me in a letter which crossed with one of mine, telling her of the final failure of my marriage. She found me on her return.

You'll miss the house.
Not at all, as a matter of fact.
But this room...

She turned away from the window and let her eyes rest on each wall in turn, as though she were in a gallery. There were light patches on the grubby emulsion, where pictures had once hung.

It suits me. For the time being.
I can see how it might.

She sat down on the bed and put her hand through the rails of the iron bedhead. She began to pick at the peeling wallpaper. There was rising damp.

Will you decorate?
I shouldn't think so. Though I might have to if you don't stop doing
that.

She looked at me, surprised.

You do care then.

I went through into the kitchenette to put the kettle on for tea. That was how it had been described in the advertisement. Room with compact kitchenette. Room had not been qualified. So although there might be expectation, there could be no disappointment. I tried to explain this to Eleanor, who had followed me through.

But if you had an idea and it didn't materialise, then of course there
is disappointment. I didn't have an idea.
You said...
I said expectation. I expected a room. It said a room. Four walls, a
floor and a ceiling. That's what I got.
Yes, I see. Looking at that room, I do see. But why did you not
expect more? Surely it is natural to be optimistic.
We shall never agree on that.
Perhaps that was the problem with Susan. Perhaps you didn't expect
enough.

I made the tea and came back into the room with the tray. I put it down on the bed. There was nowhere else.

Of her?
Of yourself.
I don't want to discuss it.

Eleanor had gone back to the window. When I offered her tea she shook her head.

Nobody warned me. It had been there for seven hundred years.
Seven hundred years. And then when I got there...
A disappointment.
More than that. But I didn't expect too much, did I? Only that it
should be there, where it always was, looking as it always did. I
didn't want a red carpet, flowers, a ceremonious unveiling, a private
view. I only thought to be there, with it, as it was.
One of the crowd.
No, not exactly, but anonymous, you know.
Like the painter.

She was crying now, whether in anger or in sorrow I could not tell. Later we sat on the bed, leaning uncomfortably against the iron bars, staring at the blank wall opposite.

Will she have you back, do you think?
I wouldn't go. Will you return to Florence?
Not for the time being.