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“I love you.”
Three words that she craved, three words she longed for, three words she never got.
That is, of course, barring when he wasn’t drunk.
Joan Thursday had been with Endeavour Morse for what seemed like a lifetime. In reality, it was only three months. And in those three months, she had honestly wished she’d never met him. Never fallen for bashful, soft-spoken, wide-eyed Endeavour. She wished she had never seen him at all. Or if she had to, that it was simply in passing. That she never got to know him like she had. Because when she did, she couldn’t escape. He was like a honeytrap.
It wasn’t necessarily that he was a bad person- she knew that wasn’t true in the slightest. She’d seen enough of his kindness to know he was a good man. She didn’t mind his reclusive nature, nor his rather pretentious interests. None of that mattered. No, what bothered her was the drinking. God, the drinking. It was every day with him. Before work, at lunch, when he came home… drinking, drinking, drinking. She knew it couldn’t be healthy, all that alcohol. Breaks down the liver and all that, it’s what the doctors say. But he never seemed to listen to her. Stubborn, that one. And she couldn’t blame him. Habits were hard to break, she knew that.
If only he wasn’t different when he drank. He wasn’t a violent drunk, she would like to note, before you wonder about that. He was just…different. He was more affectionate, which was nice, except “more affectionate” in his case was being affectionate at all. Endeavour wasn’t one to show much in the way of fondness, usually because of work taking up most of his mental energy.
However, that knowledge didn't make it hurt any less when he would come home from work and simply brush past her, preferring the company of whiskey and Tosca to the woman she thought he loved. The simple part of her, the one that craved love, it felt a pang. She wanted someone to hold her, someone to kiss her and tell her she is beautiful. The love young girls dream of.
Some nights, he did just that. He would come home and pour himself a drink, just like usual. But he would drink a little more than usual, get a little more than buzzed. And he would look at her with longing puppy eyes, the ones she remembered from years months ago. And he would smile, a funny, lopsided smile. And he would reach out his arms, and she would embrace him, however hesitant she was.
She tried to ignore the smell of whiskey on his breath and focus on the scent of his hair. She made a point to ignore the slurring of his speech and focus on the words he spoke- focus on I love you, not how it was said. She tried to believe that this is love.
But one day, she had to face the truth. As much as she wanted it- as much as they both wanted it, she suspected, it just wasn’t. It couldn’t be. This can’t be what love is. Because this is nothing like what she imagined. Nothing like what the books say or what the old married women you meet in the park tell you. If she has one life, she realized, she can’t spend any longer in an unhappy-but-stable romance. She deserves more. Hell, he deserves more. They both know it.
The worst part was telling Endeavour Morse. He was Morse now. Endeavour is for mothers and lovers, of which Joan was neither. She knew he wouldn’t take the news well, and she was right. He didn’t. He looked at her with those pathetic wide eyes, the ones that had drawn her in, now filled with tears- and it almost broke her. It almost made her tell him it was a joke, that she didn’t mean it…it almost made her stay. But she stuck by her word. She wasn’t the kind of girl to go back on her word. Even if her word broke both of their hearts.
“I’m sorry, Morse, but I just…I can’t do this anymore. I wish you the best, I truly do, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep pretending like we love each other.”
“But we do love each other. Don’t we?” And it almost sounded real. Maybe it was real. She didn’t know. She didn’t think she ever would. She shakes her head.
“Morse, when you love a girl, you tell her. More often than once a month when you’ve had a bit too much to drink. You need to make her feel like she matters, like she’s the only girl in the world. You…didn’t do that. I know you tried, I do, but-“
“I’ll do better, I promise. Joanie…“
“Trying just isn’t working for either of us.”
And that was that. They both knew it was finished. It wasn’t coming back, even if Morse willed it to be so. Once a thing like that is done, it’s not to be started again. She packed her things and left the next day, moving back into her parent’s home. For some months, Morse didn’t even show up to pick up her dad for work. She half hoped he would. But he didn’t. It was Jakes that came around. Every day, she waited to see if it would be Morse this time. And it never was, and a bit of relief washed over her, and a little bit of disappointment too.
And I spent my months wondering about what could have been. What sort of poetic life I could have had with him, if only I was better he was sober.
- Joan Thursday, November 1967.
(my first attempt at cataloguing our time together.)