Meanwhile, I worked diligently on anything that could make us some more money—I finished Smoke on the Mountain and continued to outline my novel. In the lulls, I read and edited the work Jack gave to me. Bill sent a few dollars now and again, and I scrimped the best I could.
Socially, I was making the most of things. Just a few days before, I’d had lunch with Dorothy Heyward, who was staying at the most decadently gorgeous hotel—the Cavendish. She was a dear friend from MacDowell, fragile and in a steel brace from a car wreck, but still thrilled with how the opera Porgy and Bess （based on her husband’s novel and produced by the Gershwins） had done in its London premiere.
She leaned forward with that shake of her curls and said, “No one wants to tell you how it was my idea, how I helped DuBose adapt the book to theater.”
Of course I was able to sympathize. “Why is it we are often left at the wayside of their creative lives?”
Together we lifted a glass to our own imaginations and creations.
If the old anxieties laid claim to my heart, which sometimes they did, I walked through London to absorb the medicine of the roses and chrysanthemums, the iris in full bloom, the winter jasmine vines with their yellow flowers hanging from wrought iron flower boxes along the sidewalks.
It was time to set out for Oxford. I poured water into the flowerpots and made my bed. I straightened the small piles of work next to the typewriter on the kitchen table and then locked the door behind me.
With my purse clutched to my chest, I waited at the Victoria Coach Station on Buckingham Palace Road, a name that sounded so regal for a place that was just another station, dirty and thick with smoke.
Yet for the gladness of it all, still my belly churned with disturbance. Bill’s letters still weren’t arriving as they once had, and even when they did, he never addressed anything I’d written to him or answered my questions. Had he received the boys’ Narnian book? Could he send some copies of Weeping Bay? His cool tone startled me, and yet what more could I expect? There I was in England, and there he was with four children and Renee, both doing the very best they could.
But soon I’d go home—I’d finally scraped together enough money between a few dollars that Bill had finally sent and a small royalty check to make a stop at the travel agency and book my journey home on the RMS Franconia—a six-day journey departing on January 3. The ship wouldn’t be as lovely, fast, or as well appointed as the SS United States, but she would take me back to America.
Even with the expectation of hearing Jack’s lecture, I couldn’t shake the deep dread of Bill’s lack of communication and cold tone. The bus was delayed, and I found an iron bench where I sat and dug into my bag for stationery. I began, with a surge of pent-up emotion, to write in a furious scribble.
Joy:
Dearest Poogabill,
You have always known how to hurt me by omission, by leaving off what matters so that I must guess at your feelings. Maybe I have done the opposite, been too forthright with my opinions.
In loopy and desperate handwriting I filled six pages. I found myself needing to connect with him, with my family, and to do this I felt I must repent of my own sins and not focus on his. I admitted that I’d wounded his ego by leaving, and that I understood it must be difficult to forgive me. It wasn’t his fault that I had tried to be Superwoman and had failed miserably, and then blamed him. And I missed my sons as if part of my body had been amputated. The healthier I had become, the more I missed them.
Joy:
I will never be without my boys again. That much I know. No power from heaven or earth will keep me from them.
Just as the red double-decker coach pulled to the curb, its somnolent smoke trailing behind, I shoved the letter into an envelope and placed a stamp on it. I needed these sentiments to fly across the ocean to my family.
As if the words had emptied me of energy, I slept on the bus ride and only awoke as it rattled to a stop. Bleary-eyed, I glanced out the window at Oxford with its now familiar scenery: bikers, the lampposts and brick streets, the limestone buildings and bustling walkers. I spied Victoria waiting on a bench, bundled in her coat and scarf, her long brown hair hidden inside a blue wool cap. I knocked on the window but she didn’t look.
I blew out the door of the bus, and she jumped from the bench and hugged me.
“You’re back!”
“Are you not tired of me yet?” I asked.
“Not yet.” She smiled coyly. “You are, after all, taking me to hear the great C. S. Lewis.”
I looped my arm through hers. “Onward,” I said.