The Poets' Wives Read Free

made me feel dizzy as if I’d played that childhood game where partners spin each other round.
    He had arrived with what he thought was a broken heart having been rejected by the unworthy object of his desires and, as he unburdened himself that night when a storm rattled the windows and threatened to lift the cottage roof clean off, I simply spoke what I felt when I said, ‘I pity you from my heart.’
    ‘Do you pity me?’ was his question.
    ‘Yes I do, most sincerely.’
    ‘Then I love you for that.’
    So he loved me, without the need for a drawn-out courtship, and he swore that in a year he’d have gathered the funds to marry me properly and take me to be part of his life in the city. And in these present days it pleases me to remember that once I was his teacher, walking out in the country lanes and telling him the names of wild flowers – what pretty colours they cry out for now, each delicate to the eye – and the tools that the men used in the fields and he’d draw them right there and then, making as true a representation as I could ever have thought possible. When he told me he’d never been to school I was foolish enough for a little while to think him like me but I soon understood it could never be so because no man ever knew so many things as Mr Blake. And there were his letters. Every few weeks another one with little drawings in the margins and what was in every letter broke my heart so that sometimes I slipped away to the fields beyond the house and found amongst the grove a secret place where my tears went unseen and unheard.
    I keep them still and in the last few days have read each again and am sad that I was denied their comfort all those years ago. And what did he think when he never received a single one in reply? Perhaps his faithfulness after that silent year proved his love more than anything else could. I go to the table drawer and take out the yellowed ribbon-tied bundle and search one even though I know its words by heart and when I find it I read it aloud to the empty room that has been deserted by the day’s light and so have to take it close to the fire to let what last flames flicker there help my eyes:
     
    But that sweet village where my black-eyed maid
    Closes her eyes to sleep beneath Night’s shade,
    Whene’er I enter, more than mortal fire
    Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire.
     
    I think it was always my eyes he liked the best. I don’t know what colour to use for them and won’t look in the mirror in fear of seeing them dull and clouded with age. Some nights by candlelight or the fire’s final burn he’d lie and look into them as if he could see into another world. He’d say they were black as jet, as deep as far-off seas, or say some great fire burned there. And sometimes he’d take his fingertips and gently close them saying that if he didn’t they would consume him, set his very soul ablaze.
    We got married in St Mary’s church by the river and I wore wild flowers in my hair and carried a posy of bluebells. But such dread I felt that it replaced all the things I was supposed and wanted to feel and then the moment came, not when I made my vows or received his, but when we stood before the parish certificate and unable to meet his gaze I signed my name with an X. So it was finally made known to him what I had hidden but no words were said and when I looked at him in shame nothing marked his face but love and he took my hand and as if with a fullness of pride led me through the church.
    After all my fears and confusions it proved not such a great mystery after all. I took to it quick enough, as quickly as I took to so many things that were unknown to me in my previous life. We’d sit in Green Street where we first lodged and each evening after his work was done he’d teach me to read and write – Catherine was the first word I learned – and it pleased him that I mastered it so well. While he worked during the day I practised my letters when time was