Douglas moved behind me and pulled my skirt around him like a coat. He spoke from his hiding place. “Not Aslan, sir, but maybe . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Oh, Jack,” I said.
“It happens all the time,” he said in his good-natured way. “I write a story to give them a fantasy, and then I ruin it all with reality. Come now,” he said and leaned again down to Douglas. “Let’s eat some lunch and then explore the woods. Who knows what we will find there.”
“Mr. Beaver?” Douglas asked with a shy smile.
“You rebound well, son.” Jack patted him on the head as if he’d had ten of his own sons and knew the language and warmth involved, and I loved him all the more.
Mrs. Miller moved about us, fluffing her skirts and talking of food and wanting to show us our rooms.
“Look there,” Jack said to my boys. “You got her all in a kerfuffle.”
We laughed, but the nervousness in the pit of my belly began again, rising in a delicious and devastating mixture of love and yearning.
After the boys had been shown around the house, Jack announced, “I must pick up some papers at school. How about your first outing to Magdalen?”
“But I want to see the pond and the forest,” Douglas said with such petulance that I felt a hot blush rise in my cheeks.
“Oh, you will have plenty of that. We have four days ahead of us,” Jack said. “But first things first.”
“Because,” I said with a deep voice and a terrible imitative British accent, “you can’t get second things by putting them first.”
Jack smiled. I’d quoted a line from one of his letters. A moment of understanding passed between us—we were okay. All was well. The closeness and intimacy returned as if I’d merely left that house a fortnight ago.
“Then let’s go.” Davy pulled at my coat.
Warnie joined us and greeted me, clasping both of my hands. “It’s as if my sister has returned.”
Soon the five of us were trampling the paths and sidewalks to Oxford. Jack with his worn flannel pants and overcoat, his old fisherman’s hat low on his forehead. Warnie the same. With every step they poked the ground with walking sticks and then suddenly, every fourth or fifth step, swung the stick both up and back before letting it sweep onto the ground again. I wondered if they knew their own rhythm.
I heard Douglas’s voice float over the air.
“Mommy said I could ask you something.”
“What is it, son?” Jack’s walking stick clicked against a rock and he stopped to face Douglas, just as I imagined he would a graduate student with his thesis.
“Is it true that your gardener is Puddleglum?”
Jack’s laughter startled Douglas, and he jumped. “It is true only that I made Puddleglum very much like Paxford. But Paxford is just Paxford. Wonderful in his own way.”
Warnie and I lagged behind and talked of his Sun King book, the help I’d given him with the appendix, and how much we had left to do.
“It must be the travel and the getting settled into a new life, but I’m exhausted,” I said. “Look at them up there, practically running.”
“You’ve been through so much, Joy. Be gentle.”
I smiled at him, and we continued in amiable silence as if I’d never left, as if it were another day of many we’d been together. In my mind, London and Oxford pitted themselves against each other, the war-torn remnants of London still as yet unmended while Oxford’s nature and hills shimmered in their wintry mix. We made our way toward Magdalen campus, and my heart hammered in my chest.
Davy and Douglas, red-faced and full of laughter, ran to my side.
“Mommy,” Douglas said, and pointed to the sky and Magdalen tower as we drew closer to campus. “Mr. Lewis said we could climb the tower to the very top. You must go with us.”
“Must I?”
“Yes, you must,” Jack said.
Warnie stayed below, and the rest of us climbed a narrow staircase with marble stairs smooth as silk. We walked in a single line, and still the stone walls were close. Jack climbed ahead of me. I would only have to reach forward and touch his hairline at the back of his neck to know what his skin felt like on my fingertips. I couldn’t stop the first thought, but I could stop the second, or whatever came next. And I did.
We reached the top, out of breath, only to find a little ladder that still must be climbed. Gingerly, step-by-step, up the ladder until we reached the top overlooking all of Oxford. Warnie stood below us on the lawn peering up with a smile.
“Hello down there,” Davy called out.
Warnie couldn’t hear, but waved as if trying to take flight. The boys then pointed outward at the expanse of grass rolling toward the river.
“What is that?” Douglas asked.
“The deer park,” I told him.
“Deer park? Deer live in a park?” Davy placed his little hand over his brows to squint into the winter sun.
“Yes,” Jack said. “They are fallow deer and will come right up to you.”
Douglas nearly jumped a step closer to Jack. “They will come right to me?”
“Yes, they will.”
“Let’s go!” Douglas was already moving toward the ladder down.
“Let’s stand here for a moment and look out,” I said. “Make it worth the climb.”
“Oh, Mommy,” Douglas said, as if I were the child. “We can just climb right back.”
Jack glanced at me, and together we laughed heartily. “Yes, Douglas, we can just climb right back,” Jack said.
Yet off they ran, my sons, around the tower to view the campus from every angle: the river as it curved to give the illusion that one was standing between two rivers, Addison Walk and the scrolled iron gates. Puffs of cold breath came from the robed professors bustling through the grounds, as if from invisible cigarettes. My sons craned their necks to spy each stone gargoyle and angel that bolstered the grand buildings. The other colleges appeared as miniature countries, each with its own castle and tower. Far off in the distance, the Headington hills rose and undulated like waves in the sea we’d just recently crossed.
Jack and I were alone for the first time. “Your letters,” I said. “They gave me both sustenance and courage.”
“Yours do the same for me, Joy.”
“From the very beginning; from the first one.” He lowered his eyes. Such raw emotion always a thing he looked away from.
“Are you writing now?” Jack asked as the boys passed us for the fifth time.
“Between the move and the boys underfoot and finding a decent place to live in London, I haven’t had much time for the writing itself,” I said. “I was just talking to Warnie about helping him with the index for his Sun King. But first I must get the children settled.”
“Dane Court, you decided?” Jack asked.
“Yes. I’m hoping to find enough money from Bill when I return to London in a few days. Thank you for your suggestions. I chose the school partly because it’s the only one that doesn’t whack the children. Not that I haven’t whacked them a few times myself.” I smiled with a tinge of regret.
Jack laughed as the boys whizzed past us one more time, this time grabbing at my coat to pull me toward the ladder. “The deer!” Davy said. “Let’s go see the deer.”
“I cannot imagine how anyone could become aggravated enough to whack these boys. They are full of beans.”
“Exhausting, aren’t they?” I asked.
His smile and a tip of his hat was his only reply.
Together we walked down the winding staircase, and instead of taking my breath, this time the stairs slaughtered my knees, but our voices continued in conversation.
“Joy, I have an education fund for children who can’t afford the public schooling. The Agape Fund. If you’re in a bind, I’m here to help.” His voice echoed off the stone wall, rolling down the stairwell.
I stopped midstep and turned around to face to him. “That is generous and kind, but I’m not here to take your money.”
I placed my hands over my heart. “Thank you, Jack. If Bill doesn’t come through, that gives me tremendous peace of mind. But know I won’t use it unless I must.” I continued on down the stairwell, holding tightly to the rail.
We made it to the bottom and then to the deer park, where Jack opened the gate to let us all in. Warnie joined us again.
“Do you miss home?” he asked quietly as we watched the boys drawing close to a fawn with Jack.
“I don’t.” I pulled my hat lower and my coat closer around my body. “No. I don’t miss New York at all.”
“We’re glad to have you here,” Warnie said. “And your sons. They’ll bring life to the house.”
“The Kilns,” I admitted, “feels more like home than anything in New York has for a long time.”
“Well, Joy, it’s ours to share with you.”
“I hope they adapt well.” I stared off, watching them run. “I took a chance bringing them here—it might not work. But it was one I had to take. I had to try.”
“That’s the best we can all do,” Warnie said. “Try.”
CHAPTER 35
To be rejected, O this worst of wounds.
Not for love of God, but love of blondes!
“SONNET XX,” JOY DAVIDMAN
The sunrise had barely lit the trees when the boys were full of Mrs. Miller’s sausage and eggs and bundled up, their ear-flapped fur caps drawn with tight strings beneath their chins. Off we went into the day, interrupting Jack’s normal slow morning of Bible reading and correspondence. But his buoyancy belied any annoyance if he felt it at all.
Once deep into the forest, ice tinkling in the trees and crackling under our feet, Jack crouched down as if peering behind an oak tree, his jacket flapping in the wind and the faint smell of tobacco wafting toward me. “Keep a lookout for Mr. Tumnus,” he said to Douglas.
“He isn’t here,” Douglas half whispered.
Davy plodded on, not seeming to want to be a part of the fantasy, still weighing the merits and deficits of England in his ten-year-old way.
“But how can we know they aren’t here?” Jack asked Douglas, his hands resting on top of his walking stick.
“We can’t know for sure.” Douglas peered at the ground.
“And what about giants?” Jack asked in a low voice.
Douglas stopped and glanced upward as if expecting to see one as real and obdurate as the birch tree with its silver bark glistening in the winter frost.
“Giants can’t hide, though,” Douglas said, his words echoing in the winter quiet.
Jack pulled his old fisherman’s hat lower and stated with authority, “Oh, Douglas, my boy. How could you know? You would only see his foot and you might think it a tree. If you don’t pay attention, you might miss it.” His laughter bellowed and off they went, the two of them on a hunt for magical creatures.
I saw the forest and pond, the guesthouse and the gardens, through my sons’ eyes, and then through those of Jack, the storyteller. Yes, a White Witch might ride on her sled down the path leading to the pond. Tumnus might prance under this very snow-clad forest with his umbrella. And the pond, padded at the edges with tall grasses, could very well shroud a talking beaver. And of course Aslan could come plummeting through that forest, crashing his way toward the children or carrying them on his back to safety.
This man, with a mind as sharp as any I’d known, could become as childlike as my sons, imagining a world so intense and full of color and myth that it became more real than reality.
As we reached the pond, Douglas asked Jack how to cross it with the old punt, which bobbed against the rickety dock.
“You see that old stump sticking up in the middle?” Jack asked.
Douglas squinted against the sun, took two more steps to the edge of the pond, where thin ice cracked when a ripple moved against it. “Yes! I see it,” he said.
“When it’s warm, that is where I tie the punt and dive in. Swim to our hearts’ content.” Jack smiled as if he could already see the next sunny day when leaves would rest on top of the murky water and he would dive into its chilly depths.
“Let’s go.” Douglas took another step forward.
“Not now,” I told him. “It’s freezing, and if you fall in, I’m not the one to save you. I’ll have to let you both sink to the very bottom of that muck.”
“I’m so cold,” Davy said and moved closer to me. “I want to go back to the house and play chess with Warnie.”
“No!” Douglas cried, and I put my fingers to my lips.
“Shhh,” I said. “You’ll scare off Mr. Tumnus.”
With that both Jack and Douglas burst into laughter.
I grasped Davy’s hand. “Look. I’ll take Davy back, and you two follow along when you’re ready.”
Davy and I began to walk back, skirting fallen branches and patches of ice. Far off a loud crash sounded. Davy looked skyward. “There’s not really giants here, are there?”
“Only if you want there to be,” I said.
“I don’t want there to be.” He drew closer, and his head banged against my ribs. “Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“There’s a really awful noise in the wall where me and Douglas sleep. What if the giant is in there instead of out here?”
“The giant, if there is one, is not in the walls.”
“Well, there was a terrible banging.”
“Maybe the sun bangs for you before it wakes.” I tried to joke with my son, to lighten his somber mood.
“No, Mommy. That can’t be true or I would have heard it before.”
“I’m being silly, sweetie.” I squeezed his hand. “I heard the same noise when I stayed in there. It’s the water in the pipes. It’s an old house, and they haven’t done much to fix it.”
“And it’s very cold,” Davy said. “Except by the fire.”
“You don’t like it here?” I asked.
“I do like it.” Davy stopped before the green door and lifted his thumb to obey the sign PRESS.
“We can just go in,” I said and opened the door.
Mrs. Miller must have heard us approaching because there she was, kerfuffling around us, taking our coats and brushing ice off Davy’s cap. “I have tea for you,” she said.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Miller. I know that three extra guests right before the holidays is not something you much looked forward to. And two little boys to boot.”
“It’s lovely,” she said in her thick brogue. “Absolutely luvvly-jubbly. The house seems to wake when you arrive, Mrs. Gresham.”
I took this admission and let it warm all the cold doubt about my place in this new world.
That night, as Warnie taught Davy chess as promised, and Jack and I read by the fire, Douglas came bursting through the door carrying an armload of wood.
“I cut all of this with Paxford,” he called out and dumped it on the hearth. “Mommy, there are real kilns. That is why this house is called ‘the Kilns.’ There is even an air raid shelter by the pond.”
“I’ve seen it, Douglas. Isn’t it marvelous? Except if you’d had to go there during the war, of course.”
“Except that,” he said and fell, covered in wood chippings, into a chair. It was only moments later that he fell asleep, all that energy expended, his mouth slack. He was as spent as were we. I imagined Jack and Warnie had not had this much activity since the war itself.
“Boys,” I said, “it’s time to hustle off to bed.”
Davy groaned. “But I’m almost done winning.”
“And that he is,” Warnie said. “But you have saved me from the disaster of losing to a ten-year-old who has never played before. So off to bed with you.”
I gently shook Douglas. “Bedtime, son.”
He roused himself, and both boys
stumbled to the back bedroom where they’d been sleeping with the framed steamships above their heads. They settled into their little room off the kitchen, warm water bottles tucked into the beds to stave off the cold. Piles of blankets covered their little bodies as I tucked them in.
“Nothing here is the same as home,” Davy said as I kissed his cheek. “I don’t like it like I thought I would.”
“I’m here, and so is your brother. All will be well. It takes time, my love.”
“I like it,” Douglas said from the next bed. “But I wish we could just stay here at the Kilns with the pond and the big forest and the guest cottage full of little creatures and the garden and Paxford . . .”
I knelt at the bedside for nighttime prayer, closed my eyes, and told the truth. “Me too, son. Me too.”
Four days passed too quickly. Paxford and Mrs. Miller took to the boys as if they’d known them all along. Warnie rang a gong for lunch (only he was allowed to ring the small treasure from his time in Hong Kong during World War I), and Mrs. Miller cooked for us. Paxford showed the boys all through the property, giving them jobs and teaching them about the land. While Davy looked to the stars and wanted to know every constellation, Douglas touched each plant and wanted to know its name. In their individual ways, they were both trying to find their place in the world.
On the last night I approached Jack in the common room. “I have a gift for you,” I said.
“Oh, you do? Is it a ham?”
“The ham! I sent that all those years ago.” I laughed and found myself in a coughing fit—the cold settling in my chest. I shook my head. “No, not a ham.” I held up my finger. “Wait here, it’s in my room.”
I returned quickly with the long box I’d carried from London. “You can save it for Christmas under the tree or—”
“Open it now,” he interrupted and ripped the top off the box.
And there it was—an antique Persian sword I’d found in a flea market in London the week before. He pulled it from its sheath, and it shimmered in the light of the fire.
“It reminded me of your stories, of the magic in them,” I said.
Becoming Mrs. Lewis Page 24
