(In 1938 a group of hunger marchers entered the Palm Court at the Ritz Hotel.)

 

I was at a loss.

I’d just given a couple celebrating their silver wedding

a silver teapot of Oolong.

 

The chatter and chinking of china stopped dead,

the harpist stilled her fingers,

silence poured over the room like a jug of thick custard.

 

Guests put down their cups of Ceylon Orange Pekoe,

their slim sandwiches, crusts cut off,

pastry boats crammed with cream.

 

One hundred men filed in,

standing round the room, filling empty chairs.

Some clutched their peaked caps in their laps,

 

some had shoes with flapping soles.

Their clothes made pools of darkness

between the palms.

 

They looked around –

at lilies reaching out from fronds,

at a golden nymph’s bended knee,

 

at tiers of scones, madeleines, choux,

all reflected in the gilt-edged mirrors.

One man, dripping rain,

 

his cheeks hollow as two fingerbowls, asked

Can I have a cup of tea please?

Ninety-nine orders followed.

 

I smoothed my starched white apron.

The manager moved through the room mouthing

words we could only hear when he was near.

 

Would you please leave now gentlemen.

They rose and moved towards the balustraded stairs,

along the lobby to revolving doors.

 

Slowly hands lifted cake forks,

the harpist began again, playing Mozart

more tenderly than she’d ever done before.

 

Chrissie Gittins writes poetry, poetry for children, short stories and radio drama. She has published three poetry pamphlets and three collections – Armature (Arc), I’ll Dress One Night As You (Salt) and Sharp Hills (Indigo Dreams). She appeared on BBC Countryfile with her fifth children’s poetry collection, Adder Bluebell, Lobster (Otter-Barry Books). She has received two Arts Council grants and an Author’s Foundation award; she features on the Poetry Archive and is a Hawthornden Fellow. Chrissie has read her poems on BBCR4, at the Royal Festival Hall, the StAnza, Aldeburgh, Ledbury and Shetland festivals, and at the British Council Bangkok and at the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York. Her recent poems are published in the anthologies Women On Nature (Unbound), Wonder (Natural History Museum/Macmillan), A Poet for Every Day of The Year (Macmillan), Empty Nest (Picador), and Night Feeds and Morning Songs (Trapeze), and in publications including Bad Lilies, Perverse, Magma and Poetry Salzburg Review. She has also published two short story collections and had four plays produced on BBCR4.