Becoming Mrs. Lewis(90)
“I don’t believe I do, but it might very well be that I can’t access feelings as easily as you do. You feel so much and so deeply.”
“I do, but I wouldn’t change that. There’s much I would change, but not that.”
He cleared his throat and stated simply, “I don’t want you to change anything at all.”
And with that, he lifted a book to read and the conversation was over. I sank back into the chair—I’d heard from Jack most of what I needed to know, if not everything. And it would forever be something I would hold private. Janie Moore was a love affair and one he regretted, ended, and also paid for with pounds of flesh and servile actions.
How I wanted to redeem his idea of love, his idea of what true desire might cost.
But who was I to redeem anything at all?
CHAPTER 40
(Love) You can be very sure it will not kill you,
But neither will it let you sleep at night
“SONNET III,” JOY DAVIDMAN
I saw the letter from another woman on his desk, and all propriety and all goodness told me not to read it, but my eyes could not turn away. I don’t know how I couldn’t have read it, although it had been a full two blissful weeks in Oxford with Jack and my sons, and I had no need to go ruin it.
The four of us had been a kind of family—we traipsed around Oxfordshire and took a train out to Studley Priory, a country estate that had been both a nunnery and a sanatorium—what a combination! We’d gobbled clotted cream and biscuits while the boys rampaged about with the animals, from Dalmatian puppies to hamsters.
Through those summer weeks, the house became an author’s workshop—Jack and I toiling away on all of our projects. My work was still as important to me as it had always been, and I fit it into the open spaces of our days.
We worried about Warnie, and Jack called the facility to check on him every day, hoping for the news that he was sober and well enough to travel. Meanwhile, the boys turned the Kilns acreage into their personal playground—playing cricket on the lawn, picking fruit, building forts, fishing in the pond. Shotover Hill became their conquering lands. There was chess at night, and walls and piles of books to peruse.
It was a rainy evening when I found Davy reading a French translation of Prince Caspian, muttering out loud and slowly—French words in a part American/part English accent.
“I’m proud of you, Davy. Greek and French and Latin all there in your brain; you’re brilliant.” I hugged him so tightly that he had to push me away.
The time passed in this pleasant way until it was midmonth and the news arrived that Warnie was being released from the hospital and was healthy enough to travel. Jack was to launch off to Ireland the next day. I’d slept in later than usual that morning and wandered upstairs to look for him in his office. So why I felt I must wreck this peaceful bliss with my nosiness, I’ll never understand.
The room was empty but for the things of him: the papers, letters, notes, and manuscript pages written in his tight cursive handwriting; the pipe tobacco and ash-scattered rug. I went to the desk checking for pages to type. The letters he’d answered that morning were piled to the left. The sealed letters, his answers, were stamped and stacked to the right.
He tossed letters after he answered them. I knew this because when I’d asked if he still had my first letter, he’d told me, “No. If something were to happen to me, I’d never want a greedy chap to come in here and gather my personal correspondence. People write to me of the most personal things.”
“As I did,” I’d said.
“Yes, as you did.”
I lifted the morning pile of correspondence—it was from a wide array of people on varying subjects: Oxford-related news, dinner date requests, notes from the publisher, a letter from Dorothy Sayers, another from the Socratic Committee from which he’d just resigned. There were authors soliciting advice, children who asked if Aslan was real or if they might find Lucy in London. And every morning Jack rose and read this pile and answered nearly every letter.
I glanced to the right and saw the one unfinished answer in his handwriting—it was to Ruth Pitter. He hadn’t finished or sealed this one yet.
I knew who she was, of course—a renowned poet and a friend of his. He sometimes visited her garden; he’d told me as much. Was it wrong for me to look? He’d written to Ruth on the stationery I’d given to him as a thank-you gift after the last visit: thick cotton paper with his name and the Oxford address on the top right corner, the emblem of Magdalen College stamped on the top middle in gold filigree. I’d spent an hour picking it out, designing the paper at the custom stationery store in London with the last few of my month’s shillings.
My Dear Ruth,
No “Miss Pitter,” or any other formal name. “My”?
I am writing to you on this fancy stationery given to me by the American.
“The American”? Bloody hell.
Your poetry collection is brighter each and every time I read it: drunk or sober, it’s always a delight.
I wanted to look away, to wrench my attention from the private letter, but I could not. Wormwood had hold of my eyes, setting them farther down the page.
Surely you shall come to Oxford one day soon? Whether for the books or the shopping? If so, let us lunch together.