JJ’s NOTE by KEN ARMSTRONG
It seems that granny's heart was broken by a poetic locomotive driver
from Aberystwyth. I only found this out on the day of her funeral, at the
gathering afterwards. Mother drew me apart from the other guests. We stood
silently for a while, watching them lose salad out of their triangular
sandwiches, then she told me all about it.
His name was JJ, apparently. He had first seen my granny as she waited
for her train home from work one cold evening, November 1952. Although,
for him, it was love at first sight, it was eighteen months before he finally
got up the nerve to speak to her. She was in Holland Park fingering Yeats.
JJ sat down beside her and read a verse he had written in her honour. It
was a lot closer to doggerel than poetry but granny nonetheless was very
taken by it and by the gentle, soft spoken man who recited it. An affair
began within weeks.
"Did granddad know?" I asked.
We both looked over to where he sat, slippered, tartan-blanketed, unaware. Since the stroke, he spent most of his time in the company of colleagues who had died many years before. In his rasping voice, he frequently carried on conversations with them - never us.
"Father knew nothing darling", my mother said, "and cared less."
Granddad, a successful architect, was considerably older than granny when they wed. Passing years coupled with her rapidly failing eyesight did little to reduce this gap.
By the time she met JJ, granddad had retired from his practice and spent most of his time locked in his study constructing elaborate cryptic crossword puzzles on huge sheets of tracing paper. Granny, fighting her disability angrily, returned to work late in life and, at fifty, proved she was as good a personal secretary as any of her fully sighted work mates.
"At the time, she worked for the chief planner of some local council. Buckinghamshire, or someplace like that. This was against daddy's express wishes. Inevitably, the void between them grew greater by the day."
Mother paused.
"And then?" I prompted.
"Then JJ asked her to run away with him. They'd been seeing each other - you know what I mean, they'd been going out - only nine months."
Some distant cousin rolled up to us to offer final condolences before going home. I could hardly wait until he left.
"And you knew about all this?"
Mother smiled.
"I was her eyes. I read her his poetry, made excuses for her. She deserved him, he was a good man."
"So what happened. No, don't tell me, he ditched her, right?"
"No, he did not 'ditch' her, Katie. She hesitated, heavens knows why, perhaps she was thinking of father and me and how we would react. Whatever the reason, JJ saw at once that she wasn't sure. He wrote her one of his poems and then...well, read for yourself."
From her pocket mother produced a yellowed rectangle of sharply folded
writing paper. She handed it to me.
I think you need some time to ponder
so I will go off on a wander
and return to hear what you will say.
At this same time a year today.
On the Glorious Twelfth I'll wait a while
and pray to see your loving smile.
2
So if you love me there you'll be
then we will love eternally
If you're not there to make our date
I'll know true love was not our fate
Then I'll trouble you no more sweet Faye
But I'll return on that same day
On every year until I die
to see if you'll come by and by.
3
Where shall we meet?
I've not yet said
but you will know
'tis in your head
and if you don't
then you will find
old JJ by reading
between the lines.
Yours always
JJ
I laughed.
"Well...it's crap! It's just like something a child would write."
Mother didn't like that very much.
"Katie, come on! This was above mere iambic pentameter and imagery. This was honest, from the heart."
"Okay, sorry mum. So, JJ sailed away for a year and a day...then what?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The story ends with that letter in your hand. It arrived in the post on the Twelfth of August 1953. I took it from the hall into the garden and I read it to your grandmother on the stone bench under the oak, you remember the one."
"Sure. How did she take it?"
"At first, she was furious, then she wept a little and then, oh then Katie - I've never seen such panic in a persons eyes, never!
"She made me read it all again, and again. She even tried to read it herself but her sight was really too far gone by that time. It was too awful!
"She didn't know, you see. She didn't understand where JJ planned to
meet her the following year. The poem said that she would know if she read
between the lines but she couldn't, you see, and no matter how many times
I read it to her she couldn't work out where it was."
© Ken Armstrong 1995