He wondered if he really might become like Mr Reeves when he was older. If he too would have (still plentiful and handsome) silver hair.
Then he forgot Mr Reeves altogether and the overwhelming thought came to him: Remember this, remember this. Remember this always. Whatever comes, remember this.
He was so smitten by the need to honour and consummate this thought that even as he held Lisa in his arms his chest felt full and he couldn’t prevent his eyes suddenly welling. When Lisa slept she sometimes unknowingly nuzzled him, like some small creature pressing against its mother. She did this now, as if she might have quickly licked the skin at the base of his neck.
He was wide awake. Remember this. He couldn’t sleep and he didn’t want to sleep. The grotesque thought came to him that he’d just made his last will and testament, so he could die now, it was all right to die. This might be his deathbed and this, with Lisa in his arms, might be called dying happy — surely it could be called dying happy — the very thing that no will or testament, no matter how prudent its provisions, could guarantee.
But no, of course not! He clasped Lisa, almost wanting to wake her, afraid of his thought.
Of course not! He was alive and happy, intensely alive and happy. Then he had the thought that though he’d drafted his last testament it was not in any real sense a testament, it was not even his testament. It was only a testament about the minor matter of his possessions and what should become of them when he was no more. But it was not the real testament of his life, its stuff, its story. It was not a testament at all to how he was feeling now.
How strange that people solemnly drew up and signed these crucial documents that were really about their non-existence, and didn’t draw up anything — there wasn’t even a word for such a thing — that testified to their existence.
Then he realised that in all his time of knowing her he’d never written a love letter to this woman, Lisa, who was sleeping in his arms. Though he loved her completely, more than words could say — which was perhaps the simple reason why he’d never written such a thing. Love letters were classically composed to woo and to win, they were a means of getting what you didn’t have. What didn’t he have? Perhaps they were just silly wordy exercises anyway. He hardly wrote letters at all, let alone love letters, he hardly wrote anything. He wouldn’t be any good at it.
And yet. And yet the need to write his wife a love letter assailed him. Not just a random letter that might, in theory, be one among many, but the letter, the letter that would declare to her once and for all how much he loved her and why. So it would be there always for her, as enduring as a will. The testament of his love, and thus of his life. The testament of how his heart had been full one rainy night in May when he was twenty-five. He would not need to write any other.
So overpowering was this thought that eventually he disengaged his arms gently from Lisa and got out of bed. He put on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen. There was the lingering smell of toasted cheese and there was the unfinished bottle of wine. They possessed no good-quality notepaper, unless Lisa had a private stash, but there was a box of A4 by the computer in the spare room and he went in and took a couple of sheets and found a blue roller-ball pen. He’d never had a fountain pen or used real ink, but he felt quite sure that this thing had to be handwritten, it would not be the thing it should be otherwise. He’d noticed that Mr Reeves had a very handsome fountain pen. Black and gold. No doubt a gift from Sylvia.
He returned to the kitchen, poured a little wine and very quickly wrote, so it seemed like a direct release of the thickness in his chest:
My darling Lisa,
One day you walked into my life and I never thought something so wonderful could ever happen to me. You are the love of my life. .
The words came so quickly and readily that, not being a writer of any kind, he was surprised by his sudden ability. They were so right and complete and he didn’t want to alter any of them. Though they were just the beginning.
But no more words came. Or it seemed that there were a number of directions he might take, in each of which certain words might follow, but he didn’t know which one to choose, and didn’t want, by choosing, to exclude the others. He wanted to go in all directions, he wanted a totality. He wanted to set down every single thing he loved about his wife, every moment he’d loved sharing with her — which was almost every moment — including of course every moment of this day that had passed: the walk across the common, the rain, her red blouse, her black skirt, the small slithery sounds she made sitting in a solicitor’s office, which of course were the sounds any woman might make shifting position in a tight skirt, but the important thing was that she was making them. She was making them even as she made her will, or rather as they made their wills, which were really only wills to each other.
But he realised that if he went into such detail the letter would need many pages. Perhaps it would be better simply to say, ‘I love everything about you. I love all of you. I love every moment spent with you.’ But these phrases, on the other hand, though true, seemed bland. They might be said of anyone by anyone.
Then again, if he embarked on the route of detail, the letter could hardly all be written now. It would need to be a thing of stages — stages! — reflecting their continuing life together and incorporating all the new things he found to commemorate. That would mean that it would be all right if he wrote no more now, he could pick it up later. And he’d written the most important thing, the beginning. But then if he picked it up later, it might become an immense labour — if truly a labour of love — a labour of years. There’d be the question: When would he stop, when would he bring it to its conclusion and deliver it?
A love letter was useless unless it was delivered.
He’d hardly begun and already he saw these snags and complications, these reasons why this passionate undertaking might fail. And he couldn’t even think of the next thing to say. Then the words that he’d said to himself silently in his head, even as he held Lisa in his arms, rushed to him, as the very words he should write to her now and the best way of continuing:
I never thought something so wonderful could happen to me. You are the love of my life. Remember this always. Whatever comes, remember this. .
Adding those words, in this way, made his chest tighten again and his eyes go prickly. And he wondered if that in itself was enough. It was entirely true to his feelings and to this moment. He should just put the date on it and sign it in some way and give it to Lisa the next morning. Yes, that was all he needed to do.
But though emotion was almost choking him, it suddenly seemed out of place — so big, if brief, a statement looking back at him from a kitchen table, with the smell of toasted cheese all around him. Suppose the mood tomorrow morning was quite different, suppose he faltered. Then again, that ‘whatever comes’ seemed ominous, it seemed like tempting fate, it seemed when you followed it through even to be about catastrophe and death. It shouldn’t be there at all perhaps. And yet it seemed the essence of the thing. ‘Whatever comes, remember this.’ That was the essence.
Then he reflected that the essence of love letters was that they were about separation. It was why they were needed in the first place. They were about yearning and longing and distance. But he wasn’t separated from Lisa — unless being the other side of a wall counted as separation. He could be with her whenever he liked, as close to her as possible, he’d made love to her twice today. Though as he’d written those additional words, ‘whatever comes’, he’d had the strange sensation of being a long way away from her, like a man in exile or on the eve of battle. It was what had brought the tears to his eyes.