“As I did,” I’d said.
“Yes, as you did.”
I lifted the morning pile of correspondence—it was from a wide array of people on varying subjects: Oxford-related news, dinner date requests, notes from the publisher, a letter from Dorothy Sayers, another from the Socratic Committee from which he’d just resigned. There were authors soliciting advice, children who asked if Aslan was real or if they might find Lucy in London. And every morning Jack rose and read this pile and answered nearly every letter.
I glanced to the right and saw the one unfinished answer in his handwriting—it was to Ruth Pitter. He hadn’t finished or sealed this one yet.
I knew who she was, of course—a renowned poet and a friend of his. He sometimes visited her garden; he’d told me as much. Was it wrong for me to look? He’d written to Ruth on the stationery I’d given to him as a thank-you gift after the last visit: thick cotton paper with his name and the Oxford address on the top right corner, the emblem of Magdalen College stamped on the top middle in gold filigree. I’d spent an hour picking it out, designing the paper at the custom stationery store in London with the last few of my month’s shillings.
My Dear Ruth,
No “Miss Pitter,” or any other formal name. “My”？
I am writing to you on this fancy stationery given to me by the American.
“The American”？ Bloody hell.
Your poetry collection is brighter each and every time I read it: drunk or sober, it’s always a delight.
I wanted to look away, to wrench my attention from the private letter, but I could not. Wormwood had hold of my eyes, setting them farther down the page.
Surely you shall come to Oxford one day soon? Whether for the books or the shopping? If so, let us lunch together.
I glanced to the bottom of the page.
Yours, C. S. Lewis
It was in the same fashion he wrote to me, no different. No better. No worse, yet still it hurt. Her poetry a delight? A bright light?
My throat clenched; my stomach sank and swooped up. This was jealousy, and I knew well its taste and its vertigo. I turned away from the letter and searched for a sheaf of her poetry. I could not help myself. But as much as I wanted to read the rest of the letter, the goodness in Jack seeped through the office. If it had been Bill’s papers, I would have torn through them, reading every word to find some infidelity, some betrayal. To invade the privacy of a good and decent man seemed far worse even if logically I knew it to be the same.
On the side table by the sitting chair were sheets of her poetry. I glanced at only three: “Early Rising,” “If You Came,” and “As When the Faithful Return.”
And I was sad, O my true love, for the love left unsaid.
This was clearly a woman poet, brilliant and clear-minded, lucid and soaked with longing, expressing her love, which was subtle and meant to be discovered. This was his kind of woman—aloof and sedated. Not me—open and outspoken. Nothing was left unsaid with me.
He was right—her poetry was a delight. A bright light. And an admission. She loved him; I had no doubt. But did he love her?
She was willing to hint, while I was too eager to admit.
She hoped; I reached.
She was coy; I asked forthright.
Dizzy with envy, I finally turned away from Ruth’s poetry. Tears hung on the edges of my lower eyelids, blurring my vision.
What if I placed one of my sonnets on top of Pitter’s poetry? What if Jack saw my growing need for his touch? If he glanced down and expected her “bright light” and instead saw my words, “I take you for my pleasure,” or even “Forever the tingle and flash of my body embracing you.” What if he read my poetry about bodies coming together, of its ecstasies, of the ways I’d loved other men? Would he want to read of this?
I shuddered.
What if the reason he didn’t love me as I was growing to love him was because he loved another?
“This is all yours for two weeks.” Jack spread his arms out wide in his Magdalen rooms. “I want you to make yourself at home. Write to your heart’s content while I’m gone.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I walked to the open window facing the deer park. A long whinny, which sounded more like a horse than a deer, echoed across the grass. I turned to Jack and removed my glasses, wiped at my eyes. “First you pay for Dane Court. Then you put us up for holiday. And now this?”
“My pleasure.” He paused. “All day I’ve been trying to find the right moment to tell you this news—I’ve been given the job at Cambridge. Seems after I turned them down twice they offered it to someone else; therefore there were days when I thought it was over. But she didn’t take the job, and now it’s mine. I start in the new year.”