Now, having said the words that can be said,
Having set down for any man to see
“SONNET XLIV,” JOY DAVIDMAN
“I have something I want to show you.” Jack stopped on the Oxford sidewalk next to one of the ubiquitous red phone booths. August heat pressed upon us, and a woman pushing a pram strolled past, smiling at Jack in recognition.
“You do?” I asked, redirecting his attention to me.
It was only the day before that I’d told him about the British Home Office. He hadn’t said another word and I was nervous, reticent to bring it up again. Davy browsed through Blackwell’s, and Douglas ran off to find some friends to punt with at the Cherwell.
“I do.” He waved his hand. “Follow me.”
We moved a few blocks down the road, and he stopped in front of a split brick house, 10 Old High Street.
“This is for sale,” he said and pointed.
“That’s nice.” I continued to walk forward. Noticing the goings-on in town during our daily walks was as much a part of our routine as his morning correspondence.
He placed his hand on my shoulder, stayed me. “I can help you buy it if you’d move to Oxford,” he said.
Then the strangest thing happened—I had nothing to say, no fanciful retort, no witty comment. I stared at the little house, the dark red color of the geraniums planted in window boxes all around the city. The house was split with exact mirror images of two thin front doors set next to each other—a duplex. There were two upstairs windows, two down. A brick wall ran across the front of the house and pruned shrubbery hid the bottom half of the lower windows.
“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.
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.