Pat Jourdan

	The Laundrette	This is the poem referred to on page 137 of Ian McEwan's "Saturday", where "Yes, a little-known but gifted poet, Pat Jourdan, a woman of the Liverpool School had written up a similar idea in the sixties - the end of the affair, the spinning sheets at the launderette displayed before the thoughtful poet. John was saying, he wasn't accusing Daisy of plagiarism, she may have read the poem and forgotten about it, or simply reinvented it for herself. After all, it wasn't such an exceptional or unusual idea, but either way..."
	And they of course not knowing that dreams were being rinsed out beside them sat waiting for red lights and signs and cups of soap powder while the sheets I had held you in had you washed out silently, while more lights flashed. I began to know the rhythms of the clothes as embryo-like, they wound into each other, became a hot snowball of cloth, slithering round behind glass, round like falling angels or dancing couples. Second cupfuls brought the sea waves dashing high against the window, spray reaching the glass beach. And for us, no sea. Bubbles continued into a white wall hiding the clothes from me. Blankness, all washed out and hidden. The small you inside the window was disappearing. It's too late to drag them out and ask for my money and dirt back, for wanting the hot white sheets and our electric moments. Tenderly I dried them in the cabinet and took them home, warm like new bread, leaving the others to watch their dreams slowly murdered into whiteness for new surgical beds.