Tannery Bungalow

What must our mother have made of it?
After Wood Farm and the outside privy
where the door didn’t shut.

That white mansion with its cupolas –
their finials and quatrefoils –
like bells perched on the roof

to summon the servants,
its sweep of steps to the veranda
flanked by two stone lions.

Was she expecting a “bungalow”
three storeys high with a terrace on top
for the sake of the breeze?

I think of how she spoke
to family on the phone, suddenly
dropping her articles again,

picture her mother and her pansies,
her brothers in sacking overalls
tied at the waist with string.

What did she make of a life of butlers
and nannies and gymkhana clubs?
What did she do?