Lavinia Greenlaw

Lupins

From Minsk, Faber & Faber, 2003.

"That girl's uncomfortable just being inside
her own skin." Wolves comforted me.
I grew up within earshot.

Their howls would climb the hill
like tall spikes of blue flowers,
as if the zoo's iron railings

had unfurled beneath their spell.
Traffic gets up across the canal.
Some slip through lights

like golden baby tamarisk monkeys.
Others wait, baffled clownfish
behind glass.

The author lived near Primrose Hill as a child and remembers hearing the wolves when she walked there with her father. The Zoo is the subject of A Strange Barn, a sequence of seven poems that relate individual buildings to what was going on at the time of their construction.

An Irresponsible Age

Fourth Estate, 2006.

Like others walking towards the hill that night, Juliet imagined that she and Theo would be alone up there. She envisaged the pale green slope up to the black bushes and the steeper green beyond where they would stand at the top and declare themselves to the city. Theo might build a fire. As she crossed the footbridge she saw a group of people ahead, and beyond them more people. From every side of the hill, they were converging...There were several fires already and those who had found the spot they wanted, settled firmly into place...At five to twelve, she was at the front of the hill and stopped to look where everyone else was looking, across the city. She would not give up. Theo was back down here on earth and coming towards her

New Year's Eve, 1990: Theo, back in England after an absence abroad, has phoned from the airport, and they have arranged to celebrate their reunion on Primrose Hill. (It isn't named, but in an interview with the author it was mentioned as one of the locations in the novel.) Midnight strikes, but Theo has not appeared.

Juliet lingered, wanting to know what it might have been like had they been alone, had Theo been there. There are not many people left on the hill now. She turns and climbs further, looks down and sees him running...They stand at the top, alone as she had imagined - above the city, below the sky. It is one o'clock. "An hour west of here it is midnight and you made it on time," she says