What, she’d like to know, picking her footing among the nettles, would motivate such magnanimity? He hasn’t heard about last week’s triumph; he doesn’t know how she breezed into Broadcasting House and expertly delivered fifteen new poems, reciting each with the assurance of a gunshot. He doesn’t mind the thought of having her in London because he doesn’t think she’s enough of a threat to worry about. He’s got his regular programs broadcast on the BBC, his plays produced to accolades, his awards to squander on his manicured mistress and indolent holidays in Spain while his children outgrow their jackets. He’s sunk right back into the chummy pool of their old literary circle since he’s been in London, lurking there guiltily in the murk and the weeds. He’s graduated recently from crashing on the sofas of various friends to house-sitting the vacant apartment of Dido Merwin’s dead mother; Sylvia knows this, as Ted could no longer hide behind his homelessness as an excuse for leaving absolutely no way for her to reach him. That’s where she called him to tell him about moving to London, and he’s … encouraging her? He must think she’ll sit meekly by in a distant flat in Kentish Town or Islington, entertaining the babies and rinsing nappies. Maybe she’ll even type up his poems and sort his correspondence again, a dish towel flung over her shoulder. Ha! He’ll see. She’s the one stirring the cauldron now, bubbling thick with inspiration, her own scalding brew. Hers is the true muse. Hers is the poetry going straight to the bloodstream; they’ll be jumpy as addicts for it now. His words are nothing but lies, lies and fish recipes.

No need to warn him; he’ll soon see what force he’s unleashed by his departure. Take off the ring; debark at Waterloo in a new camel’s hair suit—he’ll get the message. She’s no nagging domestic hag. She’s a genius, a celebrated poet, a woman of thirty with style and self-assurance, on her way to London to house-hunt. Utterly civilized. Look—her estranged husband at her side, lugging her case; children singing with the nanny back at home.