The Marriott Room
I don’t think I’ve been in here
since last time we met – in this place,
two years and two months ago
at your book launch. Second-hand book
sales on Sundays weren’t resumed
once the library reopened for fewer hours.
Today we face each other across a table –
you say as you did then, that I’d been your pupil
a long time ago. I don’t add that it’s thirty years,
or will be in September, since that first
Monday afternoon in the room where
half the class had their backs to you.
Tomorrow I will re-read As You Like It
which I’m soon to see at the Theatre Royal.
When I get to All the world’s a stage
I’ll remember another lesson in classroom M8
when you weren’t there but had asked us
to copy out that speech and illustrate it.
I’ll never know why I struggled with
the second part of that exercise, as I did
writing plays instead of stories, or the time
we did drama in the hall with Mrs G.
Convinced I liked art not acting, I managed to
draw a cover for the novel by Bette Greene.
