The Kiss

As he grows older, David finds the window companionable. He sits by it in the early evenings, waiting for Ruth to come home, not smoking, for he gave that away, finally, as the one definite thing he could do.

David sits in his leather armchair by the window and regrets his lost agility, his speed and his hunger for the chase. He thinks occasionally of the success of his youth: his celebrated oratory in court as a barrister, the thrill of having too much work to do.

He realises he is more comfortable now, without these things: he whose limbs were once taut and lithe. He who once ran in Central Park marathons with the best of them, cheered on by his wife and children. He of whom his mother once said, devastatingly, ‘It’s just as well David will never know how handsome he really is.’

Now David’s teaching at the Law School ends early in the day. Now it is Ruth who is busiest, who is always out at meetings, consultations, seminars, who so often calls to say she is with colleagues or friends and will be home late. It is David who has begun to slow down.

As if to compensate for this, as if perhaps to justify his afternoons by the window, now in his middle life David has become a poet. The second volume of his verse has just been published. In fact, David remembers with a jolt, this is the evening of the launch. A speech is to be made by the illustrious Elias Brown, the one writer of stature David knows. He finds this thought embarrassing.

Through the window David watches the birches, black in the rain. He looks down into the faces of those who pass, struggling children, quarrelling lovers, the broken ones.  Sometimes the telephone rings, but he does not answer it.

Through the window David can see the street where Ruth drives up and parks her car. In this way he prepares himself. He takes up a book, turns on a lamp, even bustles about as if busy in the kitchen.

Ruth’s neat, dark head is bent a little as she climbs out of ‘the bug’, as she calls the old VW. David loves Ruth. He loves her more now than he has ever done in their twenty-five years of marriage. She is so deft and certain, he thinks, so determined in her principles, so clear about what she will and will not do.

‘I called you this afternoon,’ Ruth says as she comes in. ‘Were you out?’

‘Oh. Yes. I haven’t listened to the messages yet. Was it anything in particular?’ David can see she is weary. He takes her heavy coat. Ruth’s fine skin is pale and crumpled a little around the eyes. He wants to kiss it: not better but with adoration. Yet David is unsure. Ruth has had so little time for him lately. As he hesitates, she quickly turns and drops onto the sofa. He begins to make them both some tea.

‘I just wanted to ask you about tonight,’ Ruth calls through the open doorway. ‘What time do we have to be there?’

‘Oh yes, the launch. A little before seven-thirty, I think. You know, I had almost forgotten it.’ He smiles. ‘What do you think I should wear? Will a suit be too formal?’

David rarely thinks about clothes.  During his days as a barrister the strict code of dress relieved him of decisions about what to wear. These days such matters agitate him.

‘Why not wear that lovely tweedy jacket? It’s very writerly you know, quite the thing for an established poet.’

‘I’m hardly that,’ says David, passing her the cup of tea. But he is pleased. Ruth notices things, knows what is right and what is wrong and does not doubt her own judgement.  She has already made him feel more confident.

‘So where did you venture to, this afternoon?’ she asks, her eyes closed, her hand clasped around the cup.

‘I went for a walk,’ he says. ‘In fact I went to Borders. I wanted a copy of Dante’s Inferno. I’ve never read it and I thought– well, but they didn’t have it so I came back with Ovid instead.’

Ruth can see the copy of the Metamorphoses, in paperback, on their little table. She can’t remember seeing this edition of the book before. Changing, she thinks. We are both changing. She wonders, as she has before, if he is having an affair. He has been so distracted lately, so absent-minded. When she speaks, he barely hears.

This causes a twinge. Ruth would rather not think about David’s possible infidelity. Later- life love affairs seem to be common among the married men they know. She is aware that David has had one affair during their marriage, although it was a long time ago. 

In the bathroom Ruth examines her face. Her friends tell her she has aged beautifully.  They say she has aged with grace. There is no way to disguise the slackening of flesh and she is too proud to colour her hair. Besides, the white threads are themselves a decoration, she thinks, smoothing an eyebrow. They provide contrast and an impression of experience.

Ruth, like David, is a lawyer. Her cases mostly involve domestic violence, divorce or child abuse. They frequently upset her, but she insists on continuing to take them, as if afraid no-one else could do this work. In the whole of her career she has never taken a case which she could not morally, as well as legally, defend. She once refused to prosecute a woman who murdered her violent husband with an axe as the only way of escape from her imprisonment in marriage.

David knows that Ruth is stronger than he is. He, who sought to protect himself from the cross-fire of the law by teaching, must now listen to Ruth, who can only support the burden of her labours by releasing them each night to him, in words. He finds her words, her stories, almost physically painful.

‘I expect Elias will be in fine form,’ says Ruth.

Elias Brown is their literary friend. A long time ago he was saved by David from a publisher’s lawsuit. Elias believes that a poet must live, as well as write, extraordinarily well. He is a drunkard of distinction who propounds and enacts this philosophy as often as he can. As Ruth often comments to David, Elias is an interesting if wearing friend to have.

Following the launch, David is to read from his collection. He has prepared for this carefully, with coloured markers. 

At the bookshop, they are all there waiting: the publisher’s representative, the arts bureaucrat, the bookshop manager who will introduce Elias, and the little crowd. David shakes various hands. He feels it is almost amusing, but also distressing, to see them all at once, lined up like witnesses for the prosecution. His first book was a much more dignified success.

‘David, are you ready to be launched? Your critics don’t believe that you can do it again,’ says Elias, patting Ruth’s hand. He is wearing a red velvet waistcoat. ‘I can’t wait to prove them wrong. You look as if you were at the dentist. I know it’s hard to have fun at these events: they are so pompously decorous. Never mind, since there are no monkeys or divas, we shall have to make the words themselves perform.’

Once he begins speaking it is obvious Elias came early for the wine, but this only serves to glisten the swell of his rhetoric. He is enjoying himself, as usual. David, hearing such phrases as ‘singular, contemplative voice’ and ‘the distilled voice of a true poet’, is embarrassed. He suddenly realises with horror that he has left his glasses in the car. He knows he will have difficulty reading. He is certain that he will not be able to rely on his memory.

For years he resisted wearing glasses. Now he feels insecure without them.

He looks towards Ruth, but it is too late for him to signal the crisis, too late for her to dash out to the car. Elias is reaching his conclusion.

‘As you see,’ says the poet, ‘I am full of compliments for this poet who is still relatively new to our literary circles. Yet young though he may be in poetry, this gentleman has the advantage of experience. Youth, I believe, is a time of action. Contemplation is for those of a certain age, and poetry requires contemplation. David was an active young man, successful in his chosen profession. Now he is taking a new look at the world. Indeed, here is a mind looking at the world as if for the first time, with freshness but without distortion. His poetry is deceptively opaque. Its depths are reflections on the surface of language. This is the poetry, as Blake could have wished, of an experienced innocent. I urge you all, go forth and multiply his sales!’

Then, with a flourish: ‘And now, I believe, we are to hear from the poet himself.’ At last Elias stands aside.

As he pauses between poems, David looks up for a moment at Ruth. She is looking away from him, across the room, but her eyes are shining. She is smiling and no longer tired.  She is looking, he realises, at Elias Brown. He wonders, fractiously, why at this moment she is not looking at him.

Afterwards, among the drinkers, Ruth contemplates David. He is talking to eager young women. He is so attractive with his quiet mixture of wisdom and folly. She sees the man she married, with his handsome leanness softened and his ambition satisfied, made shy by the confident young women who ask him questions about his poetry he does not understand.  He smiles at them, flattered and bewildered, and is charming in reply.

‘Do you think so?’ she can hear him say. Youth is very appealing to a middle-aged man, she says to herself almost bitterly. Suddenly Elias is at her ear, suave, smiling and full of eloquent, drunken compliments.

‘Ah, the lovely, gracious, impenetrable Ruth. Won’t you slip away with me into the night? Let us leave David to his voracious young women!’

Elias has his moments, considers Ruth as she extricates herself, but this is not one of them. She once made the mistake of accepting his invitation, something she is determined David will never know. The recollection still sparks a glow of shame.

At the end of the evening, David is elated. Despite his fears, his reading went well.  Someone from The Times wants an interview. The wine and his popularity among the young women have dissipated his anxiety. But he is out of his element here, and glad to be rescued by Ruth bringing him another drink. 

He says: ‘Let’s go.’ Outside, it is snowing. They pause in the doorway, close under the eaves. David covers them with his umbrella. He looks at Ruth, at the contrast of her brow and hair in the black and white night under their black and silver canopy. Between the heat of the room and the cold street, this time, wine-sure, Elias-goaded, poetry-strengthened, they kiss.