serious woes, threats and resentment from their lives.
A little before midnight, the birthday evening’s rightful enchaînement having been long re-established, Lucy and I were alone at last, intimately ensconced at the corner of the largest table in La Belle Epoque, my favourite French restaurant. We were considering the last of our dessert with a certain languid desire, and feeling about as happy as two young lovers can reasonably expect to feel in a London so beleaguered by medieval licensing laws. A little drunk perhaps, a little reckless with the cross-table kissing, a little laissez-faire with the last of the Latour; but undeniably at ease with one another and, well, having a good time. The bill was paid and my friends had all left – William and Nathalie among the last to go, along with Don, another university friend, over from New York, with his wife, Cal, and Pete, Don’s fashion-photographer brother, who had arrived with a beautiful Senegalese woman called Angel.
If pressed, the casual observer would probably have informed you that he was watching a boyfriend and girlfriend quietly canoodling while they awaited a final pair of espressos. If he was any good at description, this observer might have gone on to say that the woman was around twenty-eight, five-foot six or seven, slim, with dead straight, bobbed, light-brown hair, which – he might have further noticed – she had a habit of hooking behind her ears. Had he dashed over and stolen my chair while I visited the gents’, he would also have been able to tell you that her face was very slightly freckled, principally across the bridge of her nose, that she had thin lips (but a nice smile), that her eyes were a beseeching shade of green and that she liked to sit straight in her chair, cross her legs and loosen her right shoe so she could balance it, swinging a little, on her extended big toe. He might have rounded the whole thing off with some remarks about how – even now – England can still turn out these roses every once in a while. But at this stage we would surely have to dispute his claims to being casual and tell him to fuck off.
It is more or less true to say that back then, Lucy and I were more or less a year into it – our relationship, that is. I’m not sure why – these things happen …
Actually, I am sure why: because I liked Lucy very much. That is to say, I still like Lucy very much. Which is to say I have always liked Lucy very much. Lucy is the sort of woman who makes the human race worth the running. She’s not stupid or simpering, and she only laughs when something is funny. She’s intelligent and she knows her history. Yes, she can be cautious, but she’s quick-witted (a lawyer by profession) and she will smile when she sees she has won a point. Then she’ll pass on because she’s as sensitive to other people’s embarrassment as quicksilver to the temperature of a room. She keeps lists of things to do. She remembers what people have said, but doesn’t hold it against them. She seldom talks about her family. And she has no time for magazines or horoscopes. If you were sitting with us in some newly opened London eatery, privately wishing you had an ashtray for your cigarette, you might well find that she had discreetly nudged one to a place just by your elbow. Which is how we met.
Even so, it is with regret that I must add that Lucy is a nutcase. But I didn’t know that then. That all came later.
‘Close your eyes,’ she said, putting her finger to my lips for good measure.
I did as I was told and lowered my voice. ‘You haven’t organized a –’
‘Too late. It’s tough. I’ve got you a big cake with candles and all the waiters are going to join in with “Happy Birthday to You”, so you’ll just have to sit still and act appreciative.’
I heard the rustle of a bag and the stocky chink of espresso cups.
‘OK, open your eyes.’
A young waiter with a napkin over his shoulder hovered nearby – curious. A neatly wrapped present lay on the table.
Lucy smiled, infectiously. ‘Go ahead: guess.’
I leant across and kissed her.
‘Guess.’
‘Earrings?’
‘You wish.’
‘A gold locket with a picture of Princess Diana?’
‘Oh, go on, for God’s sake … open it.’
I undid her neat wrapping and unclasped the dark velvet case: a gentleman’s watch with a leather strap, three hands and Roman numerals. I held it carefully in my palm.
‘So now you have no excuses.’ Her eyes were full of delight. ‘You can never be late again.’
I felt that tug of gladness that you get when someone you care about is happy. ‘I won’t be late again, I promise,’ I said.
‘Not ever?’
‘Not for as long as the watch keeps time.’
‘It has a twenty-five-year guarantee.’
‘Well, that’s at least twenty-five years of me being on time then.’
On the face of it ‘Confined Love’ is one of John Donne’s more transparent poems: a man railing against the confinement of fidelity. Neither birds nor beasts are faithful, says his narrator, nor do they risk reprimand or sanctions when they lie abroad. Sun, moon and stars cast their light where they like, ships are not rigged to lie in harbours, nor houses built to be locked up … The metaphors are soon backed up nose to tail, honking their horns, like off-road vehicles in a downtown jam.
On the face of it, Donne, the young man about town, Master of the Revels at Lincoln’s Inn, seems to be striding robustly through his lines, booting the sanctimonious aside with a ribald rhythm and easy rhyme, on his way to wherever the next assignation happens to be. But actually, that’s not the point of the poem. That’s not what ‘Confined Love’ is about at all.
Take heed of loving me,
At least remember, I forbade it thee;
Some introductions. My name, as you may have gathered, is Jasper Jackson. I am twenty-nine years old. And I am a calligrapher.
My birthday, 9th March, falls exactly midway between Valentine’s Day and April Fool’s – except when there’s a leap year, when it comes closer to the latter.
What else? I am an orphan. I have no recollection of the day itself but it would appear that my father, the young and dashing George Jackson, wrapped both himself and my mother, Elizabeth, around a Devon tree while trying to defeat his friends in their start-of-the-holiday motor race from Paddington to Penzance. My mother did not die straightaway but I was never taken to visit her in hospital.
From the age of four onwards (and very luckily for me), my upbringing and education was placed in the hands of Grace Jackson, my father’s mother, at whose Oxford home I was staying when news of the accident arrived. In a way, therefore, my entire life can be viewed as one long, extended holiday at my grandmother’s. And I am pleased to report that I can recall nothing but happiness from my early years. Even the reprimands I remember only with affection.
It is a hot summer afternoon. The whole town is wearing shorts or less. My grandmother and I stand contentedly in the grocer’s queue. We are buying black cherries – a special treat – as a prelude to our usual Saturday afternoon tea. (Grandmother has a fondness for scones on Saturdays.) I am holding the fruit in a brown paper bag, waiting to hand them up to be weighed. My movements go unnoticed because I am living at waist height (oh, happy days). I glance around. I see a red-haired girl about my age passing by the vegetable stands outside. One hand is holding her mother’s and the other is clutching the sticky stick of an orange iced-lollipop, which is cocked at a dangerous angle and visibly melting as she half-skips along.
I move without thinking. Still carrying the cherries, in a second I am out