Chapter 18
Lesson 18: Passion at ninety-eight isn’t only reserved for knitting.
Reading List: The Liar by Stephen Fry (unread)
Bridget Jones Tally:
husbands—3
tigers—1
We were off to Cambridge. Cambridge! The seat of so much history, the wellspring of inspiration for so many great minds and
great novels. I wanted to scream. I wanted to snap photos with wild abandon. I wanted to run laps around the city like a golden
retriever through a sprinkler. My ankle brace and crutches had a different plan.
Now Doris and I walked at the same speed, so we lumped in together and forged a slow-moving camaraderie, chatting and laughing
and helping each other hobble along the Gothic lanes with a glacial gusto, while Percy zigzagged across the streets looking
for fallen chips (or other far less savory unmentionables).
Robbie and the ladies seemed to take it in turns to check on us periodically, but we were getting along just fine, and I took the opportunity to decline Robbie’s offer of help in an effort to establish reserve and quietly transmit the notion that yesterday had been a mistake.
My brain, as it so often did, refused to comply. Scenes of yesterday’s erotic rescue kept popping unbidden into my thoughts,
sending butterflies to the pit of my stomach and blushes to warm my cheeks. The memories were so intimate—being carried in
his big, strong arms, our bodies pressing together through wet fabric, his warm breath snaking around the nape of my neck
until goosebumps rose. That incredible kiss. It was all so close to the skin, scratching at me with an incessant persistence.
I did my best to file these thoughts under “nice things that have happened which shall never be repeated” and put them aside.
But they hunted me. They chased me down the streets and teased me to distraction. Having Robbie hovering on the edges of my
periphery, feeling his eyes on me, did nothing at all to help the process of tempering my lustful mind. I made a grab for
all the very many reasons why I should not be feeling this way, but they sped and dodged from my grasp like mosquitoes in
the night.
I was surprised at myself, actually. It had been a long time since I’d felt this chemical charge, like I’d been hooked up
to a battery. It had been different with Hunter. Of course I was attracted to him. He was tall and blond and very handsome
in a polished New England sort of way—he could definitely model for, say, an L.L.Bean catalog. But looking back, I don’t think
I felt the butterflies and vibrating tension with him even at the beginning. He was nice, he was attractive, he took me to
one nice dinner, and then another, and things progressed the way they tend to do, but I was never dizzy with longing, and
I don’t think we were ever infatuated with each other. I had felt that way about people in my teens, and sometimes my early
twenties, but I had chalked it up to young hormones and an unrealistic worldview.
But now, I just couldn’t stop looking at Robbie, and every time I did, I got a high from it. I didn’t trust it. It was dangerous. More than likely it was just the natural result of being deprived of male contact for half a year, and I wasn’t going to allow my ovaries to trick me into thinking that this sudden erogenous rebirth meant anything more than it should.
As Doris and I trundled along, we chatted about architecture, books, and things we had learned on the tour. Beautifully decorated
shop windows implored us to gaze at them in wonder as we passed. Between talking about chocolates and handbags, we spoke about
our lives in a steady, comfortable ramble. Doris always had pointed, well-thought-out questions to ask about my personal life
and childhood between sights and stops. For my part, I felt I could talk to Doris for a lifetime and still have much to learn
and exciting stories to gush over. She had lived close to a century. She was like a living, breathing documentary—with juicy
interludes. She was the goddess of wisdom.
Then she sneezed and a little toot trumpeted out.
“Oh, pardon me, dear. When you get to be my age, you sneeze out of both ends.”
I laughed. “That sounds satisfying. I’ll have to give it a try.”
“Better out than in! Let’s move along before it catches us up. And, since we’re talking of moving along, tell me more about
this Hunter.”
I laughed again. “What a segue! Well, let’s see. We were together for about six years. We met at Yale. He was doing an MBA,
and I was doing business and international development, so we had some overlapping friends. He came from a nice family, and
he was liberally minded and wasn’t threatened by ambitious or authoritative women.” I frowned a little. “He’s tall, he dresses
well, he has good teeth—quite handsome, but not too handsome. Not a smoker, gambler, or heavy drinker. I mean... he’s perfect, really—just the sort of guy you should build
a life with.”
She harrumphed.
“What is it?”
“Well.” She looked sideways at me, as if giving in against her better judgment to keep her nose out of other people’s business.
“Since you ask. It’s just that, in my humble opinion, your description was very pragmatic for someone who you were willing
to marry till death do you part.”
“Well, he was nice to me, and he made a good salary... he wasn’t a wanted felon...” I tried to think what else could
be missing.
“Where’s the passion, girl? Did he make you laugh until you couldn’t breathe? Could you stay up all night just talking? Did he inspire you?” She
leaned in and whispered loudly, “Did he make you want to spend all weekend locked in the bedroom?”
“Well... I mean, there was”—I tried to think—“...I guess not so much passion.”
“I see.”
“But things were stable and comfortable and promising. Not everything has to be crazy, unbridled passion. Most long-term couples
are comfortably affectionate, and not consumed with infatuation. There’s more to love than that.”
“Yes, you are right. There is much more to love than that. With mature love there is pain, and sacrifice and support and joy, and yes, of course there is
comfort and stability. But without passion, you will find that you have married your friend, or worse, a business partner,
and not a lover. Some people are happy with that. But for others it’s not enough. We can have lots of very close friends we
share our lives with, but I think a partner should be something more than that. They’re the person you pick over all the others
and give your freedom to. They should be someone that you can’t imagine the rest of your life without.”
I thought about that for a while. It seemed a bit too romantic for my practical brain, and I was surprised to hear such saccharine sentiments from a woman of her years.
“How was it with your husband, Doris?”
“Which one?” she asked, with a sly smile.
I laughed. “How many have you had?”
“I’ve had three. One at seventeen, one at twenty-eight, and one at sixty-seven. And a fancy man here and there along the way.”
I gasped and gave her a conspiratorial little elbow. “Fancy men, huh? Just how fancy are we talking?”
“Oh, sequined from shoulders to boots, one was. They called him the Tiger.”
“Wait. The Tiger?” I had heard that before. I had a grandmother. “You can’t mean... Tom Jones?”
“Can’t I?”
“What? Doris! You dated Tom Jones?”
She laughed. “That was a lifetime ago. He was too young for me, but, well... you know how these things go.”
“I can’t believe this! I want to know everything. How did you meet? How long did it go on? What happened in the end?”
She winked. “Stories for another time.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
She laughed. “But that’s not the story I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you was about my first marriage.”
“Did you say you were a teenager? I think I was still playing with dolls then.”
“Yes, we were young, but times were very different back then.”
We walked past college quads and gardens, and little rays of sun broke through the clouds and warmed us while we strolled.
I stopped looking in shop windows. I even stopped taking photos of the colleges. Doris had my undivided attention. “Tell me
about him.”
“He was called Gerald. He was my childhood sweetheart.” She sighed, lost in her memories for a beat, and her soft, lined face came to life. “I had always wanted to marry him. Our parents were friends, we lived in the same village, and we were a natural match. He had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, even to this day. We had a happy marriage—he was a good man, and it wasn’t long before we had a baby boy in the nursery, little Timothy.” She quieted for a moment or two as we shuffled along. I waited, hooked on her line. “Then one day he brought a new friend home from work... and that’s when I learned what passion was.”
“Whoa! Doris!” I had not seen that coming!
She saw the happily scandalized look on my face. “No, no, it’s not as saucy as all that. We never betrayed Gerald. We both
loved him, you see.”
“Wait, tell me what this friend was like.”
“Roy. I’ve never known anyone to be so easy around others as Roy was. Anyone who met him loved him. He wasn’t as handsome
as Gerald was, his face a little too long, nose a little too sharp, and his family was poor, but he had an infectious charm
that took over the room. He could make even Sister Mary Joseph laugh so hard that tears came to her eyes.”
I smiled and slowed my pace, hoping that she would carry on.
“He could have had anyone, but he loved me. We both knew it from the very beginning. Even though the words were never spoken,
there was never any question. It was just something that we lived with. He came to visit more and more often. He loved Gerald
as well, and he wanted to be near us, even if he knew that was all it could ever be, somehow it was enough.
“Just having him in the same room set me on fire. It was intoxicating and exciting and so deliciously painful. Sometimes they’d
put a record on after dinner, and they’d take turns dancing with me well into the night. We were young, and it was such a
happy, carefree time.”
“Did you ever think that you weren’t strong enough? That maybe you’d give in to temptation?”
“Sure I did. Many times. But I had the love of a good man who trusted me. Silly, foolish girl that I was, I wasn’t fool enough
to hurt him, thank God. Sometimes I look back and wonder if Gerald knew. He must have seen it. But if he did, he never said
a word, and he never was jealous or angry, bless him.”
“Is that why... I mean. Did you ever feel... like you married the wrong person, that if you’d only waited...?”
“No, no. I loved Gerald. And he’d given me my Timothy, and I wouldn’t have changed that for anything. I was content. That
was enough. Until the war came, and they both went off to fight.” We walked a few slow steps in silence, and with each passing
second, my heart climbed its way into my throat. “My Gerald never came back.”
“Oh, Doris.”
“Roy came back to me, but he was never the same after the war. He had shone before, so brightly that we glowed just because
we were near him. But after the war he was a stranger to me. Dark, withdrawn, troubled, always somewhere else. Unreachable.
He looked after me for Gerald’s sake, but not his own. He had no love left for me or anyone else.”
“What did you do? Did you marry someone else? How did you look after the baby?”
“Well, I had worked during the war as a land girl. I was one of the lucky ones who had family to help with the baby. And after
the war was over, I tried to find paid employment, but once the men had returned, there were no jobs for women anymore. So
Timothy and I left our house and moved back in with my parents. I used what I had learned to grow vegetables on my parents’
plot. I grew enough to feed the family and sell the extra at market. I sewed and knitted. I made sloe gin. Whatever I could
do. It wasn’t much, but we scraped by right enough.”
We rounded the corner and ambled slowly down the next picturesque street where we’d seen the others turn not long before, but didn’t worry much about keeping up with them. I was like a fish on a line, feeling every emotion with the rise and fall of Doris’s voice.
“For years, Roy came to visit us every Friday afternoon. He would bring groceries and toys for Timothy, and help to provide
for us. I was too proud to take his money, so he brought small gifts of things that we desperately needed and couldn’t refuse—meat,
fruit, butter, flour, canned goods. He saved all his rations to spend on us while I watched him waste away.”
“I’m so sorry. I had a cousin in the Gulf War who was someone else entirely when he came home.”
“Then you know how it can be. We didn’t even have a name for it back then. Men were taught never to show weakness or talk
about their fears, never to cry. It took Roy years to even begin to heal.”
“But... he did heal though? Eventually?” My heart caught.
“Oh, yes. He was never the same carefree boy I had fallen so in love with, but he did learn to be happy again. After he got
over the guilt he felt for what he thought was betraying Gerald’s memory, he learned to love me again, and I learned to love
this new, beautiful, complex version of him.”
A warm smile spread over my face, like I had just watched the happy ending of a movie that had pulled at all my heartstrings.
“How did it happen?”
“It took him six years to finally ask me to marry him. We taught each other to laugh again. Oh, we were happy. My love for
him was sweeter and deeper for having thought that I had lost him. We had three more children of our own. Roy was the love
of my life, and I don’t think even Gerald would have minded my saying so.” She was quiet for a moment as we paused to let
Percy sniff a lamppost. “It was the very best part of a very long and wonderful life. And I want that for you, Alice.”
I was taken aback.
“Well. I want that too.” I had never thought much about it. But wasn’t an epic love what everyone hoped for, but only Disney
princesses got? I didn’t say that, though. It seemed disrespectful after she had shared so much. And anyway, perhaps I was
wrong. Here was Doris telling me that I was, in no uncertain terms.
“You may just have to wait a little bit for the right person to come along.” She gave my hand a little squeeze, and my heart
squeezed with it.
We found ourselves at King’s College Chapel then, and we shared a meaningful look before slipping into the door and finally
catching up with the others.
The atmosphere was so quiet and reverent that we all stood apart, no one speaking, each of us taking in the chapel in their
own way. I gazed up at the remarkable Gothic fan vault ceiling while our footsteps echoed along the stone.
Sliding into one of the creaky pews, I sat alone and just absorbed it all. It is no wonder that chapels and cathedrals used
such striking architecture—stained glass pouring in pools of light and color, impossibly high ceilings reaching up into the
heavens, walls thick with carvings, gold gilding. It put one in a state of awe.
I sat there in my own world apart. What Doris had said was still resonating quietly at the center of my mind like a small
bell that had been struck.