“Move here?” Even as I asked, I already saw us—Davy, Douglas, and me—with boxes and furniture, books and toys, Sambo the cat, our lives in tow and moving into this house within walking distance to the Kilns, to town, to a better life.
Jack moved to stand before me and took both my hands.
“I’ve thought of little else since you told me that you might have to leave. I knew in the sleepless night that I would do whatever it takes to keep you here. We can marry, a civil marriage of course, and you can move here.” He pointed to the house, the FOR SALE sign pasted in the window.
“Marry me?” I tried to swallow the laugh but could not. “This might not be the most romantic proposal.”
“It’s not meant to be romantic. It’s meant to be sincere. I want you to stay here. I want you near to me.”
From the threat of returning to America to the thrill of having my own place in Oxford. He wanted me there. He wanted me near. And yet, a marriage of convenience? I smiled the truest way I could, and together we turned to stare at the house. “A real house,” I said. “I haven’t had one since I left New York. A real home.”
Jack’s cheeks rose with his smile. “Yes,” he said. He spun his walking stick in a circle and tilted his fisherman’s hat to me. “Home.”
Back at the Kilns later that evening, Jack had fallen asleep in his chair when I jostled him awake. “Oh, buggers. I nodded off.” He stretched and smiled at me. “I hope I wasn’t snoring.”
“Snoring? Of course you were. But that’s not why I woke you.” I looked at the folder I’d set on the table. “I have something for you. Something I thought I would never give to you, but now I am. It’s time.”
“You are oh-so-serious, Joy. What is it?” He shook the bleariness from his voice and eyes.
I held out the folder, my hand trembling same as my heart. “I’ve been writing these for years, Jack. They’re sonnets.”
When he proposed a civil marriage, I decided, standing there on an Oxford sidewalk with the sun beating down on his offer of both a house and marriage, that I would give these to him.
He plucked from me the beige folder with the word Courage written on the front, his hand brushing mine.
“Courage?” he asked.
“Yes, I needed it to hand these to you.”
“Sonnets?” He beamed. “You’ve been hiding your poetry from me? And now I have a great treasure to read?”
“I think you will have to decide for yourself if they are treasure or trash.”
What I didn’t tell him, what he would find for himself, was that the sonnets dated as far back as 1936. I’d spent hours putting the verses together into a coherent storyline, a progression of sorts shadowing the loves I’d felt before and my growing love for him. I’d woven the past and the present together in a collection that might illustrate the clearest vision of my heart. It was bold. It was an action that might very well embarrass me and break my heart.
The sonnets swung wildly from passion to despair, from desire to embarrassment. But I wanted him to take that wild journey so that he might finally understand the larger arc of my abiding love for him. I also included fifteen poems that weren’t part of the forty-five love sonnets, poems painting pictures of our days together—from “Ballade of Blistered Feet” （our first hike on Shotover）， to my “Sonnet of Misunderstandings” after leaving him that Christmas morning, to the last one titled “Let No Man.”
He flipped open the folder, carbon copies of every troubled-heart sonnet exposed to his eyes, to his knowing. But I couldn’t hide anymore. As Orual lifted her veil, so I handed him the folder.
“I’ve stopped writing them,” I said. “The last one was after my parents’ visit.”
His eyes grazed the cover page, on which I’d typed a silly rhyme and note to him—Dear Jack, here are some sonnets you may care to read . . .
“You’ve stopped writing poetry? Whatever for?”
“No,” I said with a smile. “Not all poetry. Just that kind of poetry. You’ll understand when you read.”
I stood as he sat in his chair, evening falling through the windows like honey.
“It’s the only gift I’ve got.” I quoted the opening letter in his hand. “You have given me so much, and now you offer me a home here in Oxford. This is a gift in return.”
His eyes radiated tenderness, and then he began to read. I walked away and left him with the love sonnets—with the poetry and with my heart.