then waked my Wedder with a good high tea.
“Where have you been?”
I told.
“Who did you meet?”
“No one.” “Do you expect me to believe
you walked all day and never saw a man?”
“No — I saw crowds of men but spoke to none,
except a policeman in Regent’s Park
from whom I asked the way to Drury Lane.”
“Of course!” he said. “It would be the police!
They’re very tall and handsome are they not?
Guards officers are strong and handsome too.
They prowl the parks for girls who won’t say no.
Perhaps your policeman was in the Guards.
The uniforms are very similar.”
“Have you gone daft?” I asked him. “What is wrong?”
“I’m not the only man you ever loved—
admit you have had hundreds before me!”
“Not hundreds — no. I never counted them,
but half a hundred might be about right.”
He gasped, gaped, groaned, writhed, sobbed
and tore his hair
then asked for details. That is how I learned
he did not think that kissing hands is love.
Love (Wedder thinks) only deserves the name
when men insert their middle footless leg.
“If that is so Dear Wedder, rest assured
you are the only man I ever loved.”
“Liar cheat whore!” he screamed. “I am no fool!
You are no virgin! Who deflowered you first?”
It took a while to find out what he meant.
It seems that women who have not been wed
by wedders like my Wedder all possess
a slip of skin across the loving groove
where Wedderburns poke their peninsula.
This slip of skin he never found on me.
“And how do you explain the scar?” he asked,
referring to a thin white line which starts
among the curls above my loving groove
and, like the Greenwich line of longitude,
divides in two the belly Solomon
has somewhere likened to a heap of wheat.
“Surely all women’s stomachs have that line.”
“No no!” says Wedder. “Only pregnant ones
who’ve been cut open to let babies out.”
“That must have been B.C.B.K.,” I said,
“the time Before they Cracked poor Bella’s Knob.”
I let him feel that crack which rings my skull
just underneath the hair. He sighed and said,
“I told you everything — my inmost thoughts,
childhood and darkest deeds. Why did you not
speak of your past? Or rather, lack of past.”
“You never gave me time before tonight
to tell you anything, you talked so much.
I thought you did not want to know my past,
my thoughts and hopes and anything of me
not obviously useful when we wed.”
“You’re right — I am a fiend! I ought to die!”
he yelled, then punched his head, burst into tears,
pulled off his trousers, wed me very quick.
I soothed him, babied him (he is a baby)
and got him wedding at a proper speed.
Yes, wed he can and does, but little Candle,
if you are reading this do not feel sad.
Women need Wedderburns but love much more
their faithful kindly man who waits at home.
I had a baby once. God, is that true?
If it is true what has become of her?
For I am somehow sure she is a girl.
This is a thought too big for Bell to think.
I must grow into it by slow degrees.
God, do you read the change there is in me?
I am not quite as selfish as I was.
I felt for Candle though he is not here
and tried to comfort him. I start to fear
the feeling that will grow if I think much
about the little daughter I have lost.
Strange how the baby-minded Wedderburn
has taught this cracked and empty-headed Bell
to be more feelingful for other folk.
He managed it by making me his nurse
when we reached Switzerland. I’ll tell you how.
The jealousy which he had shown in London
did not depart when we reached Amsterdam.
The only time we were not arm-in-arm
was when he left me in a waiting-room
to see a doctor for his lethargy—
that’s what he called the tiredness that he felt,
which was quite natural. We all need rest,
and time to sit and look and dream and think.
The doctor’s pills let him dispense with rest.
We rushed through racecourses and boxing-clubs,
cathedrals, café-dansants, music-halls.
His face was white, his eyes grew huge and shone.
“I am no weakling, Bell!” he cried. “On! On!”
Thank you, dear God, for teaching me to sleep
by simply sitting down and shutting eyes.
In omnibuses, trains, cabs, trams and boats
this came in handy, but was not enough—
I had to find some other way to sleep.
The second night abroad we went to see
an opera by Wagner. It was long,
and Wedder, every time I shut my eyes,
nudged me and hissed, “Wake up and concentrate!”
This taught me how to sleep with open eyes.
Soon I could also do it standing up
and rushing arm-in-arm from place to place.
I think I answered questions in my sleep—
the only answer he required was, “Yes dear.”
I always wakened up in our hotels,
offices where I sent you telegrams
(while Wedder telegrammed to his mama)