A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Jon provided each woman with twelve letters, unique artefacts, unrepeatable — seen only by him and by her. That old-fashioned kind of security. That old-fashioned kind of anonymity.

And it all granted him the baffling realisation that, for some, England was a land expected to supply delicacy and style, gentlemanly ardour. Crisp sheets and clean cuffs and the movements of cloth against cloth against skin, gracious, permitting, trusted and fragile.

And old-fashioned. Old school.

That I specialise so easily in being an anachronism could start making me feel decrepit.

Bizarre. It’s all bizarre.

I’m not even English. I pass. It’s easy to pass.

But I wrote letters for each stranger and hoped to catch her at the brink of foreplay so that I could be there, too. Or somewhere like it. Permanently arrested passion in Zanesville and Akron — and twice in Columbus and once in South Euclid.

And much the same for me — in London.

So terribly unwise.

He’d settled on those five women. He’d tried his best.

And I nearly gave up before I unleashed the whole mess. It took me three weeks to hammer out the opening attempt. So much stored-away softness that I thought I’d have on tap, I thought I’d finally be able … but I wasn’t.

My dear, my dearest, my darling, sweetheart.Love’s words are the weariest, nothing but stale.

One woman asked me to call her Slim and requested descriptions of holidays we hadn’t taken, and never would, near English landmarks. She helped, because she wasn’t demanding or off colour. She presented herself as real to me and was generous and therefore made my letters real enough to work.

Always the women.

I invented a trip for us that involved a high tea more perfect than ever there has been, the scone-laden event taking place within a stone’s throw — not that one should — of Windsor Castle. And then there was stroking her cheek on the train while mild green acres licked our windows, showed no blemish — trees straight out of Constable with broad shade and dozing sheep, a lake not so blue as her eyes.

Eye colour is important. They don’t have to send a photo — and if they do I only have their word for it that the picture is of them. They can be who they like for me, without me. But eye colour, there’s something true about that, whether they’re lying or not. Mentioning it means we can face each other and earnestly enquire.

Which I thought was a good and necessary thing when I began.

I think Woman 4 was elderly. She called herself Nora and posted me a black-and-white baby photo of a small blurred form with a quizzical bonnet thing on its head. And a list of outdated movie stars she’d admired. I enjoyed her. I pretended that her husband had died in the war — or a war — and that she was used to and deserving of a romance she could hold on paper. Love letters to tie with a ribbon and keep. I ignored the signals under her replies that she was married to someone retired and angry who was an ugliness in her house.

Once he’d overcome his stage fright, Jon had sent twelve letters each, in pretty much exactly twelve weeks, to five experimental subjects and nothing untoward had happened.

I was listed under Trades and Services.

The box had filled with long and narrow envelopes of the American type. He had winnowed. He had decided. Then he had written. And then he had checked the box rather keenly for replies, anticipating requests for this, that and no other. And he found them. Along with later modifications required from his content and style, which he did respond to within reason. There were also — he should have guessed — mirroring offers of regard and deliveries of tenderness. It was faking, but beautiful faking — certainly faking on his part — all unburdened by concerns for any future.

Inked out between two countries, he was faking satisfactory affection.

By the end of the eighth or ninth week of that initial trial, there was what he might have termed an easing between his shoulders and across his chest and a growing sensation of usefulness. And when his hands touched his wife — muzzy under the quilt at late hours — when he touched her … when he touched Valerie, something about him must have changed, because she let him, he was allowed. A kiss or a caress in passing while they used their separate bathroom sinks — were busy with preparing — this didn’t become commonplace, but it also didn’t inevitably emerge as a failed apology on his part, or the start of an argument.

A sign that you’re over, a couple’s inability to use the same bathroom sink. One could see it in the plumber’s face as he fitted the side-by-sides.

And Valerie would reach for Jon. She would glance at him and pause and be puzzled. ‘Have you changed from that dreadful barber?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. But he was a dreadful barber.’

Jon had his hair cut by a slightly secretive gentleman from Guanxian, now resident in Marylebone. The man did a good job and was incredibly cheap. Valerie had liked the idea of Mr Lam’s reclusive habits — they ensured his exclusivity — but she had been repelled by his inadequate charges.

‘I don’t know why you ever used him.’ She had been spooning at the marmalade, but had stopped, which was unfortunate because he wanted it. Her undecided hand, the clotted spoon, they put things stickily in limbo.

Jon had adjusted his glasses in the way that one does when one would prefer the world to be more bearable, ‘I wasn’t … What? I wasn’t apologising, I was saying sorry because I didn’t hear you.’

‘I said …’ She’d been facing Jon across the breakfast table, setting down her piece of partly marmaladed toast as if it were a token of love from some diseased former suitor. ‘… I said have you got a new barber?’

‘No.’

‘You look different.’

‘I’m not different.’

‘You look it.’

‘But I’m not. I haven’t even had a haircut from my old barber. I’m the same.’

Valerie had studied him for a moment and then given him his first sight of an expression with which he was now very familiar.

The complicit stare that tells you — I know what you’re up to and you haven’t got away with it.

Because he was different, he did look it and his difference was beginning to show.

It was predictable that he couldn’t spend lunch hours and early starts and extra-late finishes being sweet, just sweet, only that, across paper — to Slim and Patty and Nora and Robyn and Clare — without changing.

This feeling … a definite emotion … not specific, but definitely … this constant … ever since …

And there came, of course, a morning when he’d woken and his reach had been already anxious and seeking and then holding tight around his wife — his wife, for Christ’s sake — hard against her and a mew of insistence, growl, groan, some kind of noise he was making while his face searched in at her neck and his legs moved under, over, clasping, and there was no objection.

Until he realised.

Until he woke fully.

And could not proceed.

Which was a problem.

Which was — to a perhaps significant degree — the root of her actually leaving him in a permanent way.

Or rather requesting that I leave. The house was hers. Her mother married it.

That moment when he pulled his head back, flinched away and she saw his expression, what would have unfortunately been his honest horror at finding her there in his arms.

So absolutely a problem, yes.