Becoming Mrs. Lewis(22)
Phyl had proved herself to be the most loyal and uplifting friend; I wondered how I ever could have thought she’d take any such nonsense from my husband. And Bill had sworn his infidelity was over . . . but for a wife it is never over. Ever.
“Phyl,” I said as the train exhaled coal-tinged smoke and heaved toward Oxford.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m nervous. Isn’t that odd? Why should I be nervous about meeting a man and his friend at a restaurant? I’ve met a hundred writers in my day, and most of them not worthy of the awe I gave them.”
“Because you respect this writer so much. I think you’re quite afraid to meet the real man. Maybe he’s not everything you’ve imagined him to be.”
I laughed, too loudly as always, and two women a row ahead turned with disapproving looks. I offered them my biggest smile. Nothing like a little kindness to kill. “Oh, cookie,” I said to Phyl. “Could you be any more blunt?”
“We might as well face the truth, my dear.” She stretched and closed The Great Divorce, which she’d wanted to skim before meeting Jack. “There’s no real use in pretending you don’t care. Of course the butterflies must be flapping all over your insides.”
I thought for a moment as the landscape flickered by, green and gold. “It’s not losing the respect for him that makes me nervous; there’s no chance of that. It’s the regard he might or might not have for me. You know, my dear, Jews aren’t taken too kindly round these parts. Even ex-Jews. What if this ex-atheist, ex-Communist, Bronx-born woman appalls him?”
“Maybe appalled, but more likely a little enthralled. Like a good book unfolding, you’ll just have to wait and see.”
The checkered fabric-covered seats itched to the touch but I sank back anyway, lifting the shade higher on the window. Green fields passed by, wetlands and rivers, marinas and creeks. It seemed as if we crossed many rivers, although it might have been only one, snaking its way between London and Oxford. High on a knoll we blew by a small town where the chimney pots below looked like headstones. Then we passed through the coal-tinged Industrial Slough and onward through Reading. The rocking sensation of the train left me sleepy as I imagined a few opening lines for the moment I saw Jack.
It’s an honor and a privilege.
You’ve changed my life.
I’ve adored you since halfway through The Great Divorce when you stated, “No people find themselves more absurd than lovers.”
Hi, I’m Joy, and I’m a nervous mess.
But in the end I said none of those things.
CHAPTER 10
I’ll measure my affection by the drachm
“SONNET I,” JOY DAVIDMAN
The brick of the Eastgate Hotel, a grand dame of a structure in Oxford, was the tawny color of my cat’s fur. I was, even after a month, still struck by the solid antiquity in England—the fashion in which structures were built as if they’d known their ethereal beauty would be needed for thousands of years. The windows were inset like sleepy-hooded eyes. The four steps to the front door were wide and curved. To our right was what one might believe was a medieval fortress but was really one of Oxford University’s thirty-four colleges, Merton College, with the long stone wall that followed the curved street as closely as a lover.
“Phyl,” I said, and we paused at the dark wood doorway, “although I miss my collection of poogles, I’m very happy to be here.”
She gave me a calm and knowing look, her blue eyes squinting against the sunlight. “This will be interesting, my friend. Enjoy it.”
I nodded at her and placed my hand over my stomach to settle the nerves. Dabbed my lipstick with a tissue. For years I’d hoped to meet Jack, yet doubted I would, and now I stood on an Oxford sidewalk outside the place he met friends for lunch.
We entered the hotel bar lobby, where he’d said he would be waiting. I called to mind the photographs in which Bill said Jack looked like a kindly old basset hound. In those images, Jack sometimes wore round black-rimmed glasses, and he always appeared in a suit and tie—did he wear these things on a regular day to eat lunch at a hotel? Or would he be in his teaching robes? A pipe between his lips? A cigarette dangling?
My thoughts winged everywhere—caged birds.
Did I look all right? Beautiful but smart? Kind but intelligent? I’d never admired my looks, per se, except for one very lovely photograph on the back of Weeping Bay. And every time I tried to reproduce that exact pose, I came up short and disappointed. I fiddled with my strand of pearls and glanced around the bar. It was full at lunch hour: men in three-piece suits and ties, women in pearls and hats no different from what I wore. The room was a haze of chintz and velvet, low lighting from lamps at dark wood side tables. The walls were covered in green damask wallpaper, the ceiling with dark wood gables thick as railroad ties. It was all very stately and noble, which caused me to stand taller, shift my shoulders back.
My gaze roamed the room until I found him.
Jack.
There he was, animated, in deep conversation with the man across from him. His smile was kind and curved as he listened.
I took stock of him as if I had eternity to stare without his noticing.
His hairline had receded, and what dark hair remained on top was slicked back with comb marks. His smile sparked with life. His eyes were shadowed by his sloping eyelids beneath rimless glasses, as if he’d just woken and was happy to have done so. He sat casually, with one corduroy-clad leg over the other.