“How have you survived here?” Mother asked. “That horrid ex-husband of yours not sending money. And you being in another country. I’ve been worried.”
“Worried?” I almost laughed, but held back. If she’d been oh-so-very worried, maybe I would have heard from her more than in a random letter here or there. The only reason they were here was to see London on their way to a tour of Europe and Israel. And of course they wanted to meet my famous friend, C. S. Lewis.
I cleared my throat. “Are we going to talk about money and misery before you’ve even had tea and put up your feet?” I tried to smile. “Why don’t you wash up and meet me in the sitting room for a cuppa?”
As they shut the door to my boys’ room, I boiled water on the little gas circle and set biscuits on a flowered plate. I heard their murmured voices, but not the words. I wondered what they were saying, how they were judging this change in my life. Letters had been exchanged, but rarely had I confided my true feelings to them. What was the point? Could they have possibly understood? I hadn’t told them of my health problems. I hadn’t told them how I missed my boys but felt boarding school was best. I hadn’t told them that even though the job in the dank printing press basement was misery, I was bereft that it had closed down, leaving me in even a greater pinch for income. Or how I’d entered a writing contest and lost—another way I thought I’d make money and hadn’t.
It had only been two months since I’d left the summer enclave of Jack’s rooms, the pureness of those sacred hours alone working while my boys ran through the woods and took a kayak Jack had bought them out on the pond and ran through Whipsnade Zoo. We’d cooked together and gathered plums, apples, and beans. When we’d departed, they’d voiced what I felt: Why can’t we just stay here? But I was back in London now, and they were back at Dane Court.
“Darling?” Mother’s voice called out.
“In here,” I answered.
She smiled as she entered the room and went straight to the window to look out over my tiny garden. “Not quite the acres of vegetables you had on the farm, but you’ve made this your own.” She turned to me, and for one moment I thought there might be tears in her eyes. “Your garden outside and bright fabrics and paintings inside. You’ve made yourself a home.”
I laughed. “Did you think I was living in a bloody hole?”
“I didn’t know, darling. I just didn’t know.” She squinted at me. “And aren’t you quite the anglophile now, with your little words like cuppa and bloody. Next thing I know you’ll have an accent.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to fit in,” I said, “but yes, one does pick up these things quickly. I’m the only American around far as I can tell.”
Father’s cough caused us both to turn to him. “You very well could have been living in a hole, for all the support you’ve received from that no-good ex-husband of yours.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad, Father. He does what he can; it’s just that he can’t do very much. I took his sons across an entire ocean, and he misses them. He lost his house also, and he can’t seem to hold down a job. It’s not like he’s living it up and stiffing me.”
They both stared at me with such surprise that it made me laugh. My mother’s large brown eyes, so like mine, didn’t blink.
“Surprising, isn’t it? To hear me defend him? I think I just rightly shocked myself,” I said. “But you’re right. Money managing has been a dismal failure of mine. I’d expected more from my writing, and more from Bill’s.”
“We can help you, Joy. I don’t know why you don’t ask us for assistance.” Father set his hat on the kitchen table and straightened his moustache, which did not need straightening.
“Well, Jack pays me for typing, and Bill is getting caught up with payments. I’m writing as fast and furiously as I can. I have some pieces out, and I’m hoping for more from my novels soon. If I accepted anything from you it would be for the boys.”
“What do they need?” Mother fiddled with her pearls. “We have money set aside, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know, but can we talk about this later?” I asked. “I want you to enjoy your first day without worry.”
Always with my parents there were two conversations: the one on top and the one beneath. Here’s what rested below. I would not tell them that I had crawled to the bank just two days before, and in that bank, while trying to sort through the disaster of an empty account, I’d wept before a man in a three-piece suit and bow tie who had taken pity on me and given me some grace with time to fill the account.