Mme. Blanchard hits the roof

03 April 2017

Selected poems

Artifice He photographs her on the Cobb at Lyme Regis,a shadowy shot to be published in a journalunimagined then like other scenariosdestiny stores between expectation and realisation. They had read The French Lieutenant's Woman.Wave-smash sprays her op-shop capeas if a film is being enacted in a surf-hiss of grief,a heartsore woman staring seaward from the revetment. Absorbed, they learn of a town, its yeomanry, transformed,chaos caused by the adaptation of a romance.Karel Reisz repeatedly directed a scene set in 1867,sheep driven over muddied cobbles past this teashop. They lean in, picturing soldiers in scarlet tunics,the cinema dormant in destiny's plot development.His staged photograph forms part of memory's mirage,a film location he would revisit if possible. For many seasons he travels only in his thoughts,acknowledges novels are devices, artificial,as John Fowles didactically reminded readers,so too, films with towns disguised as the past. Another book, about tramping England's eroding coast below Lyme's fossilised cliffs, carries him sweetly back.He recalls her cape, touch, dark green velvet,wonders what became of it, of the characters they were. Mme. Blanchard hits the roof Summer, 1819, Napoleon grounded, but not human spirit.Those basket cases, balloonists, hang in clouds. Paris by night, a sight to die for.To reach for the sky is the French tradition,so, too, looking down on people.She looks good in that Regency style,diminutive, décolletage cinched above a high waist,dressed to kill, you could say, or to be killed.She is the queen of fireworks, pity about hydrogen. In the Tivoli Gardens the bandstand rocks,warm air above lit by her Bengal lights.A magical rain showers the sky silver and goldfrom parachute bombs she lights with a long taper,thrills revellers whose murmur drifts up to herfloating inadvertently close to a sparkling heaven,a suitable distance from her terror of crowds. Riding her gondola, a skimpy thing like herself,she sees her balloon ablaze, begins her descent,feathered hat lost, a rushed farewell performance.The house roof's pitch steep, her rigging tangled,fire almost out, burned, broken, she can't hang on,she who once remained aloft all night over Rome.It's me. Help! Sophie gasps, then the cobbles. Snow Fashionable ladies tripping along white streetspast tall buildings, their long skirts and bootsin one of the many prints of Utrillo’s snow scenes,remind me of the bare beauty in a world quieted,whitened streets, leafless trees eerily lit, a wonderof muffled sound walking to the bus with my mother. I feel the icy sting, smell the sharp memory,my hand snow-ploughing a fence, a cheap

Join the conversation. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter Subscribe

ARTS AND CULTURE

Mme. Blanchard hits the roof

Subscriber login