“Concerned?”
“To be found the fool.” He set a hand on the back of an iron bench and leaned forward, his pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. The wind rustled his hair and the yellow tie that hung from his neck. “Yet all seems right from this angle, doesn’t it? One of those moments when bother fades away.”
“Yes.” We were standing so close that our shoulders almost brushed. “Being here right now, I feel that nothing in the world could be wrong.”
He turned to me then. “But it is, isn’t it.” His cheeks rose with his sly smile, patient and waiting for my honest answer.
“Yes.” I pulled my coat closer, buttoned the top button to stave off the chill I felt coming. “The letters from home feel off. Bill is being hedgy at best.”
“Hedgy? There’s something he’s not telling you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“I’ve never been married, Joy. How can I give you advice? But I can say that letters don’t always give the full rounded truth of how someone might or might not feel.”
“Not between you and me,” I said. “I understood you.”
“Yes.” He nodded and tapped his pipe on the edge of the bench. “Not between us.”
I stood in the comfortable moment, its ease, and wondered if I could take it with me wherever I went. “I’m not asking you to say anything, Jack. Or give advice. But suffice it to say that it’s been a terrible few years and I’ve lost my steady sense of self in it all.”
“Why do you stay, Joy?”
“God’s will, I hope, but maybe safety. Not wanting to give up on my family. I want to do the right thing.” I wrapped my arms around myself, rubbed my arms to get warm as the wind above rustled the nearly naked trees.
“Sometimes it feels as if God’s demands are impossible, does it not?”
“Impossible.” I nodded. “Love. It’s a complicated endeavor, Jack.”
“I’ve attempted to write about it—over and over—drafts of a book about the subject, you know. We are the only ones who have but one word for it. In Greek we have storge for affection, philia for friendship, agape is God, and of course eros. But even words, Greek or otherwise, can’t hold the truth of what it is or isn’t.”
Jack’s smile was then replaced by a look of such caring warmth that I wanted to throw my arms around him.
“Your first love?” I asked, tentative and with a smile.
“Poetry.” He paused. “Or Little Lea, my childhood home.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” I jostled him slightly.
“I worked on the poetry for years until I realized that I would never be good enough.”
“Good enough?” I laughed so loudly that he startled. “I’ve read your poems. They are more than good enough.” I shook my head. “I left poetry for publication and money. And you left it because you believed you weren’t meant for it. Either way, we both left our first loves.”
“But it led us to the prose and to the now,” he said.
I folded my hands behind my back, stared off. “You know what I believe?” I asked, but didn’t wait for his answer. “It is poetry that is rooted in the sacred. The prose is good and well, but the poetry is something else.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes I believe it is only the paper and the words that understand me. I wonder what I haven’t tried—from screenwriting to essays to book and movie reviews.”
He was quiet, as if we had all the time in the world to watch the sunlit water move in waves, yellow and russet leaves riding the current. “A sestina,” he finally said. “Have you written one of those?”
“Oh, maybe not since school, if then.”
“Try it.” He stepped away from the edge of the bench.
“Before I leave for Edinburgh,” I said, “I will write us a sestina about these days.”
“Now there is something I’d want to read.”
A voice behind us called out Jack’s name, and a man in long black robes approached through the film of autumn sun. I wanted to shoo this man away.
“Good afternoon, Lowdie.” Jack greeted him with gusto.
He introduced me to his colleague, and I felt the shiver of knowing that I often ignored—it was time to take my leave. I departed with promises to meet Jack and Warnie for bangers and mash at the Eagle and Child that evening. I was anxious to enter its doors, settle into its corners, and be another part of Jack’s life, the very place where the Inklings—his group of fellows and writers who met to indulge in a pint or two while quipping about philosophy and writing—met on Tuesdays. No women allowed, of course.
As I wandered off I wondered what might have happened if right there on the banks of the river, as we talked of poetry, I’d told him of all the other poems I’d been writing—love sonnets naked with yearning, so quivering with need that he might jump into the river in fear of me. If they weren’t about him directly, they were most definitely about the feelings he disturbed inside me.
No, I would never show them to him.
Never.
CHAPTER 16
What I am saying is that I have nothing
To give you that you possibly could want
“SONNET XII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
It was my last night in Oxford, and eventide fell across the city’s architecture as I left Victoria’s house to walk the lamppost-lined sidewalks. Men rode by on bikes, their coats streaming behind them. Women strolled, pushing children in prams. In England I felt a sense of fragile joy, as if everyone was stepping into the sunlight yet still waiting for the sirens and overhead whir of aircraft, hesitant after the horror of the bombs and gunfire of World War II to believe in peace.
In my little clutch I had tucked the sestina Jack suggested I write. Forever I would be able to read it and summon our time as clearly as if it played on a screen. I planned to give him the carbon copy that night.
We’d had such grand times, and I knew he admired me as I kept up with him, whether it was speaking in Latin or quoting Shakespeare or poetry. But did he more than admire? If so, he kept it hidden well beneath his banter. He’d not so much as touched my sleeve; his comment about my eyes was the only physical attribute he’d ever mentioned. Yet he praised me for my writing or my wit or my intellect. He made plans for us to see each other every day.
I’d never been around a man who looked at me the way Jack did, and talked to me as he did, and yet never once made a pass. I expected a touch in the natural pauses between man and woman, but he kept an armor about him invisible as air but impenetrable as iron.
He was fifty-four years old, and he’d never married. Was it past the time to think of women as anything more than friendly companions? As many times as these thoughts prodded, I shoved them away. The theological quandary I found myself in was nearly laughable. I was a married woman trying quite desperately not to fall for a man whom I’d made an idol as I wrote about the commandments of God.
Instead of changing my emotions, I needed to surrender them. Maybe I could find a way not to indulge them, but the company and the walks and the intimate talks didn’t lessen the longing that flourished deeply in the places of me that had been lonely for a long while. After I left, would the emptiness inside be deeper? I was willing to pay that price.
My bags were packed—the next day I would head off to research King Charles II and try to forget my life by delving deep into another man’s. It would be a long journey to Edinburgh by train, through Worcester. Jack had, as he’d promised, arranged for me to stay in a cottage with some old friends of his, the Matley Moores, and I wondered at the fact that we’d become such grand friends he’d make arrangements for me with others he cared for.
I walked two more blocks toward the pub to meet him, my musings keeping me company. The woman I’d become in exploring England, and in spending time with Jack and Warnie, felt like who I really was. The real self, Jack would say, in God. I’d been covered so long in the coal soot of my home, buried in the laundry, silenced by the screaming of my c
hildren and the berating of first my parents and then my husband—it wasn’t until England I saw who I could be: a brilliant light, cherished for who I was.
I stopped at the corner of St. Giles and Wellington and allowed a red double-decker bus to pass. Across the street was the Eagle and Child. It was a whitewashed three-story building on St. Giles Street, its paired windows set beneath gables with a matching pair below. The sign that hung above the dark wooden door showed an eagle in full flight against a sea of blue, carrying a baby in his wings. That explained the loving nickname: the Bird and Baby.
Crossing the street, I opened the door and stood, letting my eyes adjust to the dim. The pub was divided into smaller rooms, the ceiling hovering close. I entered the “Rabbit Room,” with its arched opening like a church window. Jack stood before the fire there, poking it back to life. There was a scarred wooden table set with worn stools. But it was the corner banquette, clothed in burgundy, where the Inklings usually sat.
If that august group had been there, I wouldn’t have entered the room, no matter how brave I was feeling. But it was a Friday night, not a Tuesday, and I’d been invited. Just two men sat in the corner, one being Warnie.
The bar glittered in the lamplight and the space was warm. I shed my coat and flopped it over my bent arm, then smoothed the front of my best dress—the one I’d worn the day I met Jack.
He didn’t see me at first, his attention intent on the fire, but Warnie called out my name. The other man looked up; his white hair sprouted in many directions, and a pipe dangled from the edge of his mouth. There was no mistaking him: J. R. R. Tolkien.
I wasn’t ready.
I wanted more time with Jack before someone he dearly valued arrived to judge me. A near panic fluttered under my chest. I walked toward them, hoping that the soft glow of the room might make me look pleasing to Tolkien.
“Good evening, Joy, there you are!” Jack hung the fire poker on a hook and hurried toward me, gesturing to Tolkien. “I’d like you to finally meet Tollers.”
Tolkien stood, but when I held out my hand to shake his, he merely nodded. “Good evening, Mrs. Gresham.” He lifted his hat an inch as bushy eyebrows towered to meet a deep line between his eyes. Freckles scattered and blended across his face, and there were deep furrows on either side of his mouth, rendering a look of disapproval or judgment.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.” Nerves flared under my ribs; I felt young and unsure. I grasped for surety and flashed a smile. “You’ve had a profound effect on my friend here.”
I sat and Jack joined me. This was the bench where the Inklings sat on Tuesday nights. I didn’t believe their genius could rub off on a slab of wood, but I nestled in farther just in case.
“As he does me,” Tolkien replied and sat with his attention firmly set on Jack, as if I were a specter.
“Is your wife here?” I asked, wanting a woman’s companionship, another buffer. “I should like to meet her.”
“My wife is home with the children. She does not frequent pubs.”
Suddenly I was ten and Father was telling me my grades were disastrous. I was twelve and my mother was telling me Renee was more beautiful. I was thirty and Bill was telling me I was a horrible wife and he needed to recharge his batteries with another woman.
It was Warnie who spoke up. “Mrs. Gresham here has two sons and a husband in America. She’s a writer doing research on our King Charles II, and she’s also toiling away on a book about the Ten Commandments. A crocking good writer indeed, and an even better poet.”
Jack nodded in agreement. “Her writing is flaming.”
Tolkien nodded at me as if acknowledging the Lewis men’s assessment. “Why are you here in Oxford?” he asked.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Tolkien.” I stiffened. “I’m not here to collapse the walls of your men’s world or beg of you to let me become an Inkling. I’m only here for the fun of it all, and for Jack and Warnie’s friendship.” I paused. “Now where is a whiskey when you need it?”
“On its way,” Warnie said. “Along with a good heaping of pork pie. Sadly, it’s your last night.”
“You’re leaving England then?” Tolkien asked with an air of satisfaction, leaning in with a long puff of his pipe, short bursts of potent tobacco wafting toward me.
It reminded me of when I’d first met Bill. I’d thought him debonair with his pipe and his drawl, his guitar flung across his lap. Look how that had turned out.
“I’m not leaving England, not yet,” I said. “But I’ll be off to Edinburgh and other sites tomorrow. Then back to London. Of course I’d love to return to Oxford before America, but we shall see how the days unfold.”
“Of course you must return here before you leave,” Jack said. “There is no question about that.”
“Yes,” Warnie agreed.
The relief they offered was like a warm bath after the chill of a rainy walk.
“Mr. Tolkien,” I said, “both of my sons have read The Hobbit and were enchanted. I want to hear more about your work. Jack tells me it is brilliant.”
“I never said such a thing.” Jack laughed into these words and banged his hand upon the table. “Don’t let him think I said such daft nonsense.”
“No, then,” I said, “I say your work is brilliant. When Jack tells me of your conversations, I’m envious. There was a time when I believed that religion was not something nice people talked about in public. What a relief to be able to discuss and debate and it not be an argument. Do you believe that I used to think that people who believed in God were mundane and ignorant? And now I can’t get my fill of the bottomless discussions. Isn’t that a thing?” I was talking too fast; I could feel the words bubbling up in nervousness.
“What do you find the most fascinating about what I believe, Mrs. Gresham?” Tolkien asked, his hands wrapped around his nearly empty mug of beer.
“Your views about fairy stories,” I said.
“And how do you know my views on fairy stories?”
“I was fortunate to befriend Michal Williams in London. She’s been a bright light in that city that seemed enchanting until I found Oxford, which is a million times more so. But anyway, she loaned me the volume of essays that should have been presented to her husband. It was a lecture you gave—”
“I know what it was,” Tolkien said.
“How you began your essay ‘On Fairy-Stories,’” I said, “about the perilous land and stars uncounted and how a fairy cannot be caught in a net of words.”
“Well, well,” he said. “You must have the most photographic memory.”
“I confess I do,” I said. “It’s helped me through the worst of schooldays. But with your essay, I didn’t just memorize. I digested it. And it seems your views have rubbed off on Jack here.” My hand lifted without thought, and I touched Jack’s shirt sleeve in what must have seemed a gesture of ownership. I withdrew my hand quickly.
Tolkien sipped the last of his beer and pushed back on his chair. I could see he was ready to leave, and the fear that I’d sent him away made me try one more time.
“What is it about fairy tales that we all love so much?” I asked.
“You’ve said you read my opinion.”
“It is the consolation we want,” I said. “When you wrote of the sudden joyous turn of events, the grace, the happy ending. I think we love our fairies and their stories and their lands because through all the hardship, there is the consolation of a happy ending.”
Tolkien slipped his coat on and settled his tweed hat onto his head before looking at me. “There you have it.” He nodded at Jack and at Warnie. “I’m late for supper at home. See you chaps tomorrow.”
The pork pie, usually comforting, tasted like cardboard in my mouth. Had I offended Jack’s best friend? Warnie excused himself to greet a friend across the room and left Jack and me alone with the fire burning bright behind us.
Jack watched Tollers until the pub door closed and he was gone. Then he leaned back to lig
ht a cigarette and smile at me. “He can be a bit gruff, I fear.”
I nodded, but directed my attention to Warnie, who stumbled and grasped on to the back of a chair, laughed it off, and strolled to the bar. “Is he all right?”
“I think so, yes. But if he’s not, this won’t be the first time I’ve had to pour him into a taxi. I’m sorry you must witness it.”
I held up my hand to stay his words. “Jack, I’ve lived through this. Not with someone nearly as wonderful as your brother, but still the same. If you should ever want to talk more about it, I hope you know that you can.”
Jack nodded, and a sadness he usually kept cloaked beneath his smile overshadowed his face for a moment. Then, just as quickly, he turned his attention back to me. “Did you enjoy Tollers?”
“I can’t yet tell,” I said. “I do want your friends to like me.”
“Ah, but Mrs. Williams likes you bloody well—blinding, I think she said.”
“We’ve gotten on quite well and laughed so much, which is important, don’t you think?”
“To get on well or to laugh?” That twinkle in his eye, and it was a twinkle.
“Isn’t it the same?” I asked.
“Yes, it is.” He leaned forward. “What draws people together is when they see the same truth. As we do.”
“But your Tollers does not approve of me. He set his eye on me as if I were here to steal you into the night and never let you return. He bristled.”
Jack laughed with that merry bellow. “I don’t think Tollers is quite worried about me running off. But he is married with children and maybe doesn’t understand the friendship that can grow between a man and a woman.” He stared off for a moment. “Tollers separates family life, academic life, and pub life each into its own sequestered box. And what matters of it anyway? I don’t bristle.”
“If you did, I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” I said. “We all have two faces. I wrote about it—”
He interrupted me. “In ‘The Longest Way Around.’”
I smiled. Toller’s apparent rejection was losing its energy. “Yes. My false face. It can get in the way. I don’t see God as magic; you know that. I wanted my conversion to escort some change into my life, but sadly I think I’m essentially the same. Only with God. My masks remain. Anger still bursts out before I can stop it. I built my masks readily and with such skill that I believe they lock into place when I’m unaware and nervous. It can be blisteringly difficult to show one’s real face.”
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