expand out of Peggy’s eyes, creep unassailed down

drawn, twitching cheeks while her attentive audience

await her command – the edict? ‘The concerted effort

of all those gathered here today will stop, at all costs,

this unspeakable union. So let it be written!’

Then she blows her nose.

A RAINBOW flashes the exhausted sky,

framing low, gleaming buildings and refreshed trees.

The stockinged legs and baggy turn-ups of lovers

cycle joyfully in tandem across the common’s mulch

and on down the hill to the pristine terraced houses

where Taiwo deposits his beaming fiancée safely home.

Peggy, hearing foreign rumbles at her gate, flings open

the door, hisses him to go away before the neighbours

see him, shoos him off. Taiwo wheels his pushbike

off the pavement and pedals away, shoulders hunched,

and Ellen feels fury struggle up her windpipe but, unused

to its disturbing sensation, coughs it back down, sees

the despair in her mother’s half-open mouth, dashes

past her inside. The sapped sun drops to the east

over Woolwich, its farewell a lingering light as Taiwo

makes his exodus. How man must suffer, he sighs.

She judges me but she does not know me.

Oh Mama, these people hate me.

PEGGY’S duck pillows become ponds when Ellen visits,

her night-time sobs are an overflowing bath, journey

from the master bedroom to her daughter’s own, seep

steadily under the door like an army’s advancing front line,

then crawl up her blanket to claim her. Ellen knows

the ritual: first her mother derides Taiwo’s existence,

a volley of machine gun invective ensues, finally,

deflating, she becomes a sodden, spineless

vessel brimming with tears, pleas and cajoling;

her pain – a hive of frightened bees at Ellen’s heart.

Faith is the spinal chord which keeps the girl sane.

Were they not all God’s children? How very silly!

Why such fuss because of colour? She barely noticed it.

Other times the hoo-haa she caused exhilarated her

for she, who had never put a foot wrong in her life,

was finally, unequivocally, shamelessly Being Naughty.

A solution to the problem popped into her head as she

Macleaned her teeth one histrionic morning. Her mother

should meet Taiwo, see how nice he was. After all,

she’d never even met a coloured person, but Peggy beat

her to it: ‘Bring him to tea!’ she shouted upstairs.

‘AND HOW MANY wives do you have, Bill?’

A pyramid of trimmed and quartered sandwiches

separated Peggy’s high-collar from Taiwo’s blue-tied

Adam’s apple. Cheddar cheese lay guillotined

on a thin slice of oak tree; exposed lettuce, sliced

tomatoes and slaughtered carrot were criss-crossed

with a filigree of Heinz salad cream. Taiwo sipped

tasteless piss water from a midget’s cup, gripped

his back teeth like a pestle grinding corn in a mortar,

smiled mechanically at the diminutive devil opposite.

Peggy added, ‘And what do you do, exactly?’