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

     There were two noises. There was the fire, which was nice and flamy, making a happy lion noise, and there was Philip tap-tapping on his word processor up at the other end of the room, in a red polo shirt, but with his back to her, and seeming pretty absorbed.  Ruth wished he would stop tapping and suggest a game of Scrabble. But she did not like to interrupt, to break the silence.

       They loved being at the Welsh cottage, and rejoiced in the fact that it had no phone or television, but for some reason this evening she could not get into her new Melvyn Bragg.  She closed it and fell to looking at a picture on the wall.  She must have looked at it hundreds of times, but this evening, perhaps because of her idleness, it seemed to draw her eye.

       It was an amateur painting, which, she always reminded herself, meant it had been done for love.  It had certainly been amateurishly framed.  Someone had stuck royal blue tape onto the wood all round it, probably with the idea of ‘bringing out’ the blue in the painting. Which was principally and solidly evident in a door painted blue, an outer door, but standing wide open so that not only could its blue gloss paint be seen but also so that the viewer, who seemed to be inside a room, could see out beyond it, to the sea. There was also a rectangle of blue just inside the door, which was perhaps a mat, the rest of the floor being of yellow wooden boards, and there was sky, in a much paler blue.

       The upper half of the door had panes of glass let into it, and the upper half of that had, curiously it now struck Ruth, a curtain hung over it.  It could not be for privacy, because the lower half of the glass was uncovered.  She decided that it must be to keep out the sun at certain times in the day.  And now she noticed that the window on the left-hand side of the picture, next to the doorway, had also a half-curtain, presumably for the same reason.  Ruth was taken with this small and (presumably) practical detail.  She herself had little practical imagination.  For example water had regularly flowed down the side of her house causing plaster to bulge and lintels to rot, but still it had not occurred to her that the gutters needed attention.

       She liked the proportions of the door - it was agreeably wide - and its panelled lower half and brass knob. The artist by means of a few touches of white had successfully suggested the light shining on the top edges of the panels, which in turn suggested that the sun was shining outside. Light also caught a flower jug which stood in the window and had three or four orange - what appeared to be - lilies in it.  Ruth had been taught that colours ‘go’ together in opposite pairs. You placed red, blue and yellow, the primary colours, equidistant from one another on a circle.  Then you filled in purple between red and blue because that is what they make, and green between blue and yellow, and orange between yellow and red.  Orange and blue are then opposite to one another and so they ‘go’.  The person who painted the picture, or the person whose house it was, who was perhaps also the artist, must have known this.  Ruth herself liked to put cornflowers and marigolds into a vase together.

       Through the open door Ruth could see a slice of what seemed to be a harbour. Various small boats sat as though at anchor, and there was one boat under sail, a dark sail.  In the foreground of the picture, at the left hand side and in front of the window, was a wooden table and chair.  She spent some time trying to see what the objects on the table were, but could not make them out. They were not to do with eating, not food or plates.

       She felt the urge to clear away whatever it was and appropriate the table for her own use.  And she would move it slightly to the right, so that she might have the view of the harbour, while sitting at it, through the open door.  And so with the chair, which had its back to the window and faced into the room, she would move that to the other side of the table.

       Just outside the door was a small wall of whitewashed concrete, and Ruth had the idea that just out of sight, to the left, were a few steps. As she had finished arranging the table and chair to her satisfaction she smelled a strong smell of tobacco, and could hear a man’s voice call a greeting to another further away. She thought he had probably sat down on the steps, and was smoking his pipe in the sun.

       She sat motionless at the table. At any minute Philip might turn round and catch her at it.  She didn’t want him to see.  She wanted to stay in France - was it France? - looking out at the sunny harbour and with that spacious table in front of her on which - her pen and papers? her paints? - were laid out. To the life.

       Philip was still typing, but the fire had burned down now and stopped purring, so she could more easily enter the summertime. If Philip turned round now she could laugh it off, persuade him that he’d been working too long and his eyes were playing tricks.  But she must not attract his attention.  So she must resist getting up and going to the doorway and seeing the man who was sitting on the steps.  Because if she did he might speak to her and Philip would hear him.  And if she went to the door she might easily go down the steps and then she would be out of sight of Philip altogether, and there’d be no explaining that.

       At that moment, there was the sound of someone getting up, and it was not Philip. The man was coming up the steps - any second he would appear in the doorway.  Ruth did the only thing she could. She leapt up, grabbed the door and slammed it shut, leaning against the inside and panting.  Philip stretched, stopped the machine, and folded down its lid.

       ‘Scrabble?’  he said over his shoulder.