It was the next afternoon, late in the day, as I stood in the kitchen sifting through the mail and humming a tune from an old song I hadn’t thought of in years—Bing Crosby, “Swinging on a Star”—when Jack came to me. I’d spent the day in the garden, and I was dirty with the sweet earth under my fingernails and swiped across the kitchen apron over my flowered dress. Tired and satisfied.
“‘Between two rivers, in the wistful weather; Sky changing, tree undressing, summer failing.’”
Sonnet VI. From the days of our first meeting.
“You’ve read them.” I dropped the mail to the table.
“Not all of them. Not yet. I want to savor them as slowly as a fine glass of wine. They are stunning and, as I’ve described your work before—flaming. The imagery and heartache and aching loss are palpable. I’m honored that you offered them to me.”
“You understand those sonnets are for you?” I wiped my hands on the apron, mud smudged across it.
“But some were written before you met me. Some of these are for other men. Other men you’ve loved.” He spoke quietly, and I could hear in his tone that he didn’t abide well the thought of me loving another man. Was it jealousy or fact he stated?
“Yes, but they were always meant for you. Can’t you see that? Still they are for you. The collection, and how I ordered them . . . they are the trouble of my heart.”
“The trouble of your heart.” Jack stepped forward. “There is no trouble of your heart. It is exquisite.”
I paused in the beauty of his praise, wanting to dive deep into the timelessness of his words. Decades of love poetry were now in his hands.
“You are magnificent, Joy.”
“Jack.” I said his name, tasted his name with the same love I always did.
He exhaled and drew one step closer. “This is an extraordinary journey for an old man. I never expected someone like you to come into my life, and I’ve been set in my ways and worked to live the virtues. We’ve talked of this before, but maybe it is best explained by something my mate Owen Barfield once said about me in a great debate over beers—that I cannot help trying to live what I think.”
“Well, my dear.” I smiled at him. “I want you to live what you feel.”
“It’s not as easy for the rest of us as it is for you.”
I tapped his chest, the place of his heart. “Why do you close that door in your heart that lets me in, the room that is all ours?”
“You are in there.” He leaned forward. “I feel your love, and it changes me every day. But I can’t force my long-set patterns to change. I don’t know how. When I met you, you were married, and then divorced. Our union would be adultery.” He paused.
It was then that I quoted a sonnet. “Love. ‘You can be very sure it will not kill you, But neither will it let you sleep at night.’”
He laughed. “Sonnet III.” Then he grew serious. “And you are very correct.”
I shook my head. “You are bloody infuriating.”
He ignored my comment, drawing closer. “Joy, I’m late for Evensong at St. Mary’s. Then on to a pint at the Six Bells. You’ll accompany me?”
“Oh, tonight I think I’ll stay in and enjoy the quiet.”
He frowned but nodded. “I’ll be back soon.”
As he walked off he glanced back over his shoulder at me as if the two of us carried a great secret of sonnets together, and indeed we did.
CHAPTER 47
What a fool I was to play the mouse
And squeak for mercy!
“SONNET XLIII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
April 1956
My wedding day, if one could call it such, yet who would have thought there’d be another?
At my new home on 10 High Street in Oxford, I stood in front of the mirror buttoning the front of the cream dress I would wear that day to my second wedding, although it was clear it wouldn’t be a “real” wedding at all. Just in the nick of time to save me from another visit and plea to the courts for an extended visa.
Jack knocked lightly on the door.
“Come in.” I spun around to face him.
He entered with that smile I loved. “You look beautiful, Joy.” He straightened his tie and smirked a little bit. “‘The angels disapprove the way I look at you.’” And he came closer, brushed my hair from my shoulder.
He’d just quoted from “Sonnet XXXVIII.”
He’d been doing this for months now, privately inserting sonnet lines into our daily lives: whether in my backyard while I planted tulips and daffodils or tossed a net over my garden to keep the birds from destroying it, or while we hailed a taxi to attend a party. For the past eight months, since I’d handed my heart over in those sonnets, he’d become softer and more affectionate.