‘My word, it’s a long time since anyone sent me a Valentine,’ I say early in February. I say it every year but to no avail. Well no, that’s not strictly true. One year, early in marriage, I received a card. ‘Here is my heart …’ it said. Mistily I turned the page. ‘… Why don’t you tear it out and eat it, you old vulture?’ it went on.
‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ said my spouse an hour later, a heavily lived-through hour for all concerned. ‘I honestly thought you’d laugh. Like you did when I bought you the rolling pin done up like a bunch of flowers.’
Our marriage has come a long way since then. But not quite far enough to encompass a regular stream of proper Victorian Valentines with ribbons and moss roses and lovely, treacly words.
I don’t usually like sentimentally worded cards. On most occasions I’d rather receive ‘Best wishes’ than ‘Heartfelt kisses tender and true; there never was a mum/wife/daughter like you’. But on Valentine’s Day I would be only too glad of red padded satin, pressed violets, passionate yearnings and all the kisses, preferably in purple ink, that the anonymous sender can squeeze on to the card.
There are girls whose husbands go out and buy them surprise theatre tickets, fistfuls of orchids and the occasional Aston Martin. There are even girls for whom other people’s husbands do this.
But I am not greedy. All I want is that, just once on 14th February, my doormat be littered, or better still heaped, with large white envelopes. And little lavender ones. And urgent bright yellow ones. And perhaps a few bulging airmail blue ones. I don’t mind just as long as all of them are crammed with heartfelt sonnets dedicated to me.
Failing that, do let there please be just one communication, any colour you like, with the signature: ‘Guess who?’ That’s the beauty of Valentines. Perhaps one’s cousin Nelly did send it as a joke. But perhaps, just possibly, one’s homely old profile has stirred an unknown manly breast.
I want to float through the rest of February wondering to myself who sent it. Was it the butcher? Does the fact that he broke into Take A Pair Of Sparkling Eyes as he weighed up my mince, have any special significance?
And what about the milkman? Does he favour all his ladies with such a direct, twinkly stare? I once had a milkman who went all pink one morning. and said he thought I was lovely. Anyone who sees me first thing in the morning and still says I’m lovely must be joking, I thought. So I laughed and said I could certainly use a little encouragement. Alas, I think perhaps ‘encouragement’ wasn’t the best word to have chosen in the circumstances because he went even pinker and blurted out that any time I needed encouragement he’d be round like a shot, day or night.
In spite of the fact that (a) I don’t really go in for that sort of thing, (b) I was about a foot taller than he was and (c) he was a fairly gnarled old grandfather anyway, that little doorstep encounter made me feel marvellous all day and is still a fond memory. I like to think that he’d been brooding and brooding and fermenting and fermenting for years, at the sight of me. Until at last his passion knew no bounds. Wouldn’t that be super?
I have often thought, too, that if door-to-door salesmen were trained to say: ‘Good morning madam … er, I say, aren’t you fabulous!’ they’d sell every one of their encyclopedias, tins of furniture polish, double glazed windows and loads of firewood before they’d even finished the sentence.
I have been re-reading my old Dornford Yates collection these past few weeks and, while I no longer expect my menfolk to go down on one knee and kiss my instep, I can’t help feeling that we could all do with some sort of Romantic Revival. And I could do with it more than most. Because one of the problems of being tall and – shall we say – sturdy is that I am constantly being requested by certain members of the family to:
‘Give the car a bit of a heave,’
‘Hold up this end until I come back,’
‘Just hand me down those sacks of cement,’
‘Put your shoulder to it,’
‘Get your knee under it,’
‘Keep her steady,’
And ‘Brace yourself.’
Which is hard luck because deep down inside I am not only Romantic. I am Frail. Come the summer I do not want to go out into the garden and help lay paving stones for the new terrace. I want to wear swirls of pink chiffon and sit prettily in the gazebo, reading Robert Browning. I want to stare dreamily up at the nodding ‘Félicité et Perpétué’ rosebuds and think lovely, drowsy thoughts about all those delightfully mysterious Valentines I once received …
We all deserve at least one silent admirer. If only to help us get through the rest of the winter. So come on chaps. My doormat is all swept and ready. Do pop out for some purple ink and start pulsating.