Twenty miles of hairline and lipstick, all the way from the Jaeger shop in Exeter. Sylvia’s been staring at herself in the rearview mirror, gloating, her wedding ring ticking against the steering wheel, revolving loose on her skinny finger. On the passenger seat beside her is a new wardrobe, suit and skirts and sweaters and bangles, tissue-wrapped and crisply folded in candy-toned dress shop boxes. She’s pulling into the unpaved lane and onto the back court cobbles, navigating the Morris between the treacherous whitewashed gateposts of the stable-cum-garage, easing the brake, cutting the engine. Now, before she tugs on the door handle and steps out, she looks again, adjusting the mirror to a better angle of her face. Even in the muted autumn light of the dark stable—afternoon sun beating in slanted prisms through the leaded window to her side, leaf dust illumined, floating at the corner of her eye—she’s transformed. The hairdresser has worked a miracle. No more pale-faced married girl with a drab ponytail who cuts her own bangs at the bathroom sink. She’s sleek as a cat, with a fringe framing her radiant face, her long braids circling her head in a crown. Her dark lips look dangerous, her hair glossy as a two year old’s, the color of aged honey and as burnished as Frieda’s.

If only she’d done this last week. Last week, she was the toast of London! Summoned to the BBC to record some new poems (did she have any new poems? Why yes, she just happened to have a few. A poem a day for the last month, sometimes two. Here, she’ll read a dozen, and the three she finished writing this morning). Before lunch, handed an appointment from the British Council to head the American night at the summer’s international poetry festival at the Royal Court Theatre. Finally, cheered by all of her old friends and colleagues at a literary party; a London critic had pronounced her the first woman poet he’d taken seriously since Emily Dickinson. And Ted? Ted, to her satisfaction, failed to materialize. His doggy spoor lingered in the corners, but he didn’t show. Nothing, then, has burst her confidence; she’s still drunk on the honey of praise, giddy with the promise of more. Who wouldn’t want more?