adultery 30s style

Belle holidayed alone each year, chose

off-season months, she liked October,

with Baedeker guiding her ‘Grand Tour’;

Uffizi, the Louvre, and, even though

opera bored her, La Scala

her fancy man, no culture-vulture,

(his father, a black-list coal miner)

packed his Humber 12 saloon and drove

to the cottage he rented each June,

(outside Tenby) and romped on the sand

with twin sons he never wanted, watched

by a wife who knitted and bored him

their weeks apart were a living hell

of breathless midnight whispered phone calls

‘miss you, darling, wish you were with me’ -

Clive thumbing a brand-new Baedeker,

Belle, a tourist guide to Pembrokeshire,

nightly kneeling praying earnestly,

“please, god, next year, let it be Tenby.”