Love universal is love spread too thin
To keep a mortal warm
“SONNET XVIII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
In that summer of 1955, barely did I register what went on in America anymore: there was Elvis and the civil rights uprisings. There was talk of the US sending troops to Vietnam, and Senator McCarthy finally ending his hunt for Communists. Meanwhile in England, Winston Churchill had resigned in April; Tollers’s The Lord of the Rings had been released and was making the huge splash it was meant to make. Yet I was immersed in the Middle-earth of the Kilns, as if nothing else were happening. The soil felt as I did—ready for more and more of what had already been born.
My writing was also fertile. I’d sold a proposed new work about the seven deadly sins called The Seven Deadlies to Stoddard and Houghton—telling them that the virtues become deadly when they become self-righteous. I had the idea to write of a protagonist who was a modern Pharisee, an intellectual prig who presented himself at heaven’s gate for admission.
None of it felt like work: the correspondence I helped Jack with every morning, the editing and indexing for Warnie, and typing for them both. I’d also finally sold pages of Queen Cinderella under the title The King’s Governess. And the English version of Smoke on the Mountain was actually selling copies (probably due to Jack’s name on the cover). Jack had adjusted to Cambridge, and the free time, more than he’d had at Oxford, allowed his writing to flow.
We gloried in the summer weather. We swam in the Thames at Godstow, slightly snockered and accompanied by a swan. Even the half-mile walk to and from the grocery could not tamp down my happiness. Jack paid the food bills, and I cooked for all of us; it felt surreal and dreamy.
We’d come to be dear friends with Jack’s pal Austin Farrer, whom he introduced to me as “one of my co-debaters in the Socratic Club, and the Warden at Keble College.” But of course, as with anyone, Austin was more than his introduction; he was a dear friend to Jack, and his wife, Kay, was a mystery writer. We hit it off over our very first whiskey, and now she paid me to type the handwritten pages for her novels. We lingered long hours over finished dinners and empty glasses with Austin and Kay.
One black and loathsome cloud rested over all this beauty, one I’d kept from Jack: the British Office was niggling around on renewing my paperwork. If they didn’t agree to renew, I would have to return to America. The only way to stay was if I married a citizen. I needed to find a lawyer, write a letter, something, anything. I could not return to the States. I wouldn’t. I would do whatever needed to be done.
For me, bad news always seemed to arrive in the middle of the most tranquil moments.
“Mummy,” Douglas had asked in his thoroughly English accent only an hour before, “what is that?” He poked with his muddy shoe at my satchel on the floor where the certified letter poked up, its official document obvious among the typed pages and scribbled notes.
I shoved it deeper into the bag. “Nothing to worry about,” I lied. Just the British government informing me that my work visa was over, and unless I was married to a citizen it was back to Dante’s Inferno with me.
I was deep into typing the final edited pages of Bareface in Jack’s Kilns study one August afternoon, still not having told him. Outside my sons were laughing, and the merriness swooped to the open window like a bird. They were helping Paxford clear the garden for more summer planting, setting netting over the tomato plants.
In a repeat of last year, Warnie was again too sick with the drink to journey to Ireland with Jack. I’d encouraged Warnie to go to AA. It had been one of our very few disagreements, a lengthy and heated discussion by the pond. In the end, he agreed to go to a hygienic bastille in Dumfries, Scotland, but no AA.
Again it was the four of us at the Kilns for summer break—Jack, Davy, Douglas, and I.
I took that contemptible letter from my bag just as the ringing phone in Jack’s house startled me with its coarse sound. I answered. “Mr. Lewis’s residence.”
“I’m calling for a Miss Davidman,” the voice replied in a crisp English accent.
“Speaking.” I stood to look out the window and watched Davy run off to the pond.
“This is Dutton Publishing. Please hold for the production manager for Surprised by Joy. Mr. Lewis has told us to direct all questions about production to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll hold.”
Jack’s voice rose to the window. “Get cleaned up, Davy. It’s the most dreaded time of the day.”
Latin tutoring.
Davy’s polite voice responded with words I didn’t understand, and Douglas called that he was off to fish.
“Miss Davidman?”
“Yes?” I returned my attention to the phone.
“We have a question about page 32, where Mr. Lewis discusses his boarding school.”
I spent a half hour or more on the phone answering production questions before I rose to fetch the laundry from the line in the backyard. Jack and Davy toiled over Latin in Jack’s office, and I ambled outside. Sunshine had dried the clothes, and I took them down, burying my face in one of Douglas’s shirts, inhaling the sweet smell of summer and my son.
“Mommy?” Douglas bounded from around the bend, a fish flopped over and dead in his hand. “Will you give this perch to Mrs. Miller? Please? I’m going to Oxford with the boys.”
“I’m folding laundry, son. Take that fish to the kitchen.”
And off he went, running all hilter and such with a group of boys following.
“Have fun,” I said into the empty wind he’d left behind.
So different, my boys were—Davy tense and studious and Douglas gulping life by the mouthful. Still they sparred; after taking boxing classes at school they practiced with each other, ignoring my dissuading arguments that boxing was a disgusting sport. Davy was also studying magic, while Douglas studied the pond’s rich life.
Slowly I folded the clothes, setting them into the basket with great care. It had become these small things that nourished me. If I could have allowed this life to be enough in New York, could I have saved my marriage? Why had these tasks, the ones I now did with a happy heart, once been such drudgery, Sisyphean tasks that took me away from my writing?
I folded Jack’s shirt, a white button-down that needed mending, and I set it aside to remind myself to take a needle to the collar that evening.
No, it wasn’t entirely within my will.
What I had with Jack—the intimacy and understanding, the collaboration and laughter—transformed everything in its path: every chore, every moment suffused with great love.
I mused over how much had changed between Jack and me. Chad and Eva Walsh had come to visit us a few months before. Eva and I had taken a long walk alone, and she’d whispered to me, “Are you two in love?”
I told her the truth. “I believe I’m alone in that budding emotion.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
“Honestly, Eva.” We reached the end of the path and stood before the pond. “He has no interest in anything more than this deep friendship, what he calls philia.”
Eva had turned to me and shaded her eyes against the evening sun. “I see the way he looks at you. It’s like no one else exists and you have a secret language. He looks to you first when he says something, as if he’s checking with you.”
My chest filled with this hope that Eva’s words offered, but I knew the truth. “It is love, but a different kind to him. The man has been a philosopher since he was eight years old and he picked up Dante—it’s his medieval world view.” I shook my head with a smile. “His complete dedication to the virtues keeps him from falling into the kind of love that captures a heart. He knows how, after all these years, to guard his heart behind the moral goodness he’s practiced. He belongs to God and the church almost more than most priests I know.”
“But he’s not a priest, and you’re a woman, and a vibrant one to boot.” Eva drew closer to me and took my hands, one in each of her own. “Be patient, Joy. The heart has its own rhythm and timing.”
“I don’t think it’s a sense of timing, Eva. I must accept the golden friendship that we do have.” I paused. “And there’s more. His friends are suspicious of me—especially Tollers, who calls me ‘that woman,’ and he cares what Tollers thinks, cares a lot. I’m divorced. I have children. I’m a New Yorker. I have Jewish ancestry. There are reasons.” I glanced at the sky, thunderheads forming. “And the last time he loved wholly—his mother—he lost her in the most catastrophic way. He’s cautious. Temperate.”
“Joy, give him time.”
I shrugged and looked back to her dear smile. “These are only guesses, Eva. How could I know? I’ve come to know him better than anyone except Warnie, but still how could I truly know? He tells me he is too old to begin another love affair and that philia is our destiny.”
I hugged her as Chad approached from the far end of the pathway, calling his wife’s name.
As I folded the last of the pants, I reminded myself to tell Jack of the phone call from Dutton, scooped the basket under my arm, and ambled to the back door of the house. When I entered the common room, the sight of a woman in Jack’s chair startled me. It was too dim to make her out exactly, but she was definitely a woman, reading a book and curled comfortably with her shoes tossed to one side of the chair.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, rage flaring in a dark burst of the old angry-Joy.
She startled and dropped the book, stood and stumbled before pressing her fingers to her temples. “I’m Moira Sayer. We’ve met before.”
“I don’t think so.” I held close the laundry basket and took two steps toward her.
She held to the edge of Jack’s chair. “I have every right to be here, same as you. I’m George Sayer’s wife. Jack said I could come here to read while George worked at Magdalen.”
George.
Sayer.
This was the first friend of Jack’s I’d met at the Eastgate. Moira, his wife, with whom I’d had tea only last year.
“I’m so sorry.” I clutched the basket tighter. “I’m very sorry.” I fled the room with the heat of shame burning through my skin. Would I ever learn? Or change?
I carried the basket upstairs and left a pile of Jack’s clothes outside his room and took the remainder to the boys’ room. I then entered my downstairs bedroom and closed the door to sit and drop my head on the desk.
How did I slip backward into horrid old habits so easily? Into jealousy and rage, as if they were as welcoming as a warm river swim?
It only took a few moments until the knock arrived.
“Yes?”
“Joy?”
I opened the door to Jack.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was an ass to your friend. She startled me; I didn’t know she was here. I think I must have deeply embarrassed you.” I shook my head. “My anger—sometimes I still find myself at cross purposes with the world.”
He laughed. “Oh, it’s not so bad. I explained to her that I hadn’t told you she was here, and you having such terrible eyesight didn’t know she wasn’t an intruder meant to steal my manuscripts for her own.” He laughed, with that merry twinkle in his eye.
“My terrible eyesight?” I tried to laugh, but nothing came out.
“Yes, what with your glass eye in one and your cataracts in the other.”
“Jack. You forgive too easily and warmly. I’m not accustomed.” I smiled and exited the room to join him in the hallway.
“Let’s get out into the sunlight,” he said.
“Yes, let’s gather some beans and tomatoes for dinner.”
“Very good,” he agreed. “And then we’ll walk into Oxford?”
Together we scooted down the thin hall, where I grabbed a basket for the vegetables and an apron to cover my dress. Then we were outside to the summer sunshine again. Moira had gone, and neither of us acknowledged her absence.
I glanced around the grounds. “Where’s Davy?”
“He’s decided that he must lay down bricks for us to walk on from the house to the pond; he’s out gathering them from the old kilns and setting them into the deep mud.” Jack motioned toward the pond. “He’s down there.”
“Well, isn’t he turning industrious?” I laughed and squinted into the sun. “Building walkways. I wouldn’t have guessed it.”
“Joy.” Jack bent over and popped two green beans from their stalk and dropped them into the basket. “What made you buggered with Moira?”
“I assume jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” He made a tsk tsk noise, teasing.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I know it’s wrong,” I leaned down and chose a ripe tomato from the vine, placed it in the basket. “Like with Ruth Pitter.”
“You’re jealous of Ruth Pitter?” He almost laughed, but my seriousness checked him.
“I’ve read her poetry. She’s a more gifted poet than I am, Jack.” I held up my hand. “There’s no use arguing that, but that’s not the point—she’s in love with you.” I bent to pick another tomato, but my finger pressed too deeply into the delicate flesh. Red juice trickled down my arm. I dropped the fruit to the ground and wiped my palm on the apron.
“That’s not the case, Joy. We are longtime friends. We’ve been writing to each other for years now. We discuss writing and cooking and gardening and poetry.”
I faced him, my hand shielding my eyes from the late-afternoon sun. I wanted him to hear what he had just said. In that sentence he could have been describing us as surely as he was describing her.
“What is it?” he asked when I didn’t respond.
“She’s not any different from me, is she—to you?”
“Ruth any different from you?”
“Yes.”
Jack pressed his hands together as if in prayer and shook his head. “You’re right. This is jealousy speaking. You are here standing in my garden, after answering my correspondence and editing my work. You are right here with me and we are heading to town for a beer. Tonight we will read and play Scrabble and Davy will beat me at chess. Douglas will fall asleep talking a mile a minute.” He paused.
I took in a long breath. “I see when my ego takes charge. I’ve come to realize how my past affects me now—criticism and cruelty mingled with attachment have proffered a neurosis I’ll spend the rest of my life overcoming.” I paused. “I can’t get this Christian thing right. How does one get it right at all?” I slapped my hands together in frustration.
“Get it right?” he asked quietly. “What exactly is getting it right?”
“Sometimes I forget to turn to him, and then the woman I have been for all of my life rises up and is no less damaging than she was before.”
“God is no magician, Joy.”
“Oh, how I could use some magic—it might take all of my life, what remains of it, to surrender fully.”
“All of this life, Joy, and maybe most of the next.” He winked but then drew closer. “As with our art, we must surrender and get ourselves out of the way if any good is to come.”
“Must I surrender again and again?” I paused for effect. “And again?”
“I believe all of us must.”
Our basket was full by then, the vegetables enough for dinner, when I told him, “The truth is I was already on edge—you see, I might not be here for long.”
His eyes widened. “What do you mean? Whyever not?”
“The British Home Office won’t renew my paperwork again. I’ll have to take the boys back to the States.”
“Joy, I’ll not let you be sent back home. We’ll find a way to make sure you stay.”
“There is only one way to stay, Jack. And that’s marriage. So unless I take myself over to the Globe Tavern and pick myself a good Englishman to seduce, it looks as if I will be packing for America.”
“You can’t leave,” he said. “I will not let you return to that terrible place.” He took my face in his hands. I dropped the basket, tomatoes and green beans scattering to the earth.
I placed my hands on top of his. “You don’t want me to go?”
Our faces were close now, his lips near mine, his eyes shadowed by sadness.
“No. I would miss you too terribly. I have come to depend on you, Joy.” He dropped his hands and placed them on my shoulders, drawing back a step.
My body trembled with the need for him, and I could feel the same from him—a thrumming below the words and the touch. He pulled me close and held to me, and I rested my head on his shoulder.
“You musn’t leave.”