Becoming Mrs. Lewis

by Patti Callahan

  “You understand those sonnets are for you?” I wiped my hands on the apron, mud smudged across it.

  “But some were written before you met me. Some of these are for other men. Other men you’ve loved.” He spoke quietly, and I could hear in his tone that he didn’t abide well the thought of me loving another man. Was it jealousy or fact he stated?

  “Yes, but they were always meant for you. Can’t you see that? Still they are for you. The collection, and how I ordered them . . . they are the trouble of my heart.”

  “The trouble of your heart.” Jack stepped forward. “There is no trouble of your heart. It is exquisite.”

  I paused in the beauty of his praise, wanting to dive deep into the timelessness of his words. Decades of love poetry were now in his hands.

  “You are magnificent, Joy.”

  “Jack.” I said his name, tasted his name with the same love I always did.

  He exhaled and drew one step closer. “This is an extraordinary journey for an old man. I never expected someone like you to come into my life, and I’ve been set in my ways and worked to live the virtues. We’ve talked of this before, but maybe it is best explained by something my mate Owen Barfield once said about me in a great debate over beers—that I cannot help trying to live what I think.”

  “Well, my dear.” I smiled at him. “I want you to live what you feel.”

  “It’s not as easy for the rest of us as it is for you.”

  I tapped his chest, the place of his heart. “Why do you close that door in your heart that lets me in, the room that is all ours?”

  “You are in there.” He leaned forward. “I feel your love, and it changes me every day. But I can’t force my long-set patterns to change. I don’t know how. When I met you, you were married, and then divorced. Our union would be adultery.” He paused.

  It was then that I quoted a sonnet. “Love. ‘You can be very sure it will not kill you, But neither will it let you sleep at night.’”

  He laughed. “Sonnet III.” Then he grew serious. “And you are very correct.”

  I shook my head. “You are bloody infuriating.”

  He ignored my comment, drawing closer. “Joy, I’m late for Evensong at St. Mary’s. Then on to a pint at the Six Bells. You’ll accompany me?”

  “Oh, tonight I think I’ll stay in and enjoy the quiet.”

  He frowned but nodded. “I’ll be back soon.”

  As he walked off he glanced back over his shoulder at me as if the two of us carried a great secret of sonnets together, and indeed we did.

  CHAPTER 47

  What a fool I was to play the mouse

  And squeak for mercy!

  “SONNET XLIII,” JOY DAVIDMAN

  April 1956

  My wedding day, if one could call it such, yet who would have thought there’d be another?

  At my new home on 10 High Street in Oxford, I stood in front of the mirror buttoning the front of the cream dress I would wear that day to my second wedding, although it was clear it wouldn’t be a “real” wedding at all. Just in the nick of time to save me from another visit and plea to the courts for an extended visa.

  Jack knocked lightly on the door.

  “Come in.” I spun around to face him.

  He entered with that smile I loved. “You look beautiful, Joy.” He straightened his tie and smirked a little bit. “‘The angels disapprove the way I look at you.’” And he came closer, brushed my hair from my shoulder.

  He’d just quoted from “Sonnet XXXVIII.”

  He’d been doing this for months now, privately inserting sonnet lines into our daily lives: whether in my backyard while I planted tulips and daffodils or tossed a net over my garden to keep the birds from destroying it, or while we hailed a taxi to attend a party. For the past eight months, since I’d handed my heart over in those sonnets, he’d become softer and more affectionate.

  I straightened his tie. “You look mighty handsome for your first wedding day.”

  He placed his hand on top of mine and held it there until the anguished cry of Douglas echoed from across the house.

  “Mummy.”

  “What is it?” I patted Jack’s tie and stepped out of my room.

  Douglas tore down the hallway and stopped in front of me, his hands held out in supplication. There in his palms were the remains of what I assumed was his precious budgie bird, Chirpers.

  “Sambo ate Chirpers,” he wailed. “The horrible cat ate my bird.”

  “Are you sure it was Sambo? Maybe it was Snowball?” We had adopted a new kitten, a white fluff of shivering fur.

  “It was Sambo!”

  “On my wedding day?” I tried not to laugh, but what else was there to do? It was a mean and nasty bird anyway, although I would never say that to Douglas.

  “It’s not a real wedding day. And Chirpers is dead. Dead.”

  I took the bird from my son and covered it with my other hand.

  Jack appeared behind me. “We will give Chirpers the proper Christian burial he is due. He is now flying among the other cat-destroyed birds in heaven,” he said.

  “I hate cats.” Douglas wiped at his tears and stomped away. The front door slammed hard enough to shake the floor.

  Davy was somewhere close by, probably delving into his newfound passion—Shakespeare.

  I took Chirpers to my bedroom where I found an old shoe box and placed him with care while Jack headed out to console Douglas.

  What an odd little family we were.

  We’d been on Old High Street for seven months by then. On a blazing hot August afternoon, after Jack had left on a delayed journey to Ireland with Warnie, the boys and I departed from London. We’d settled into the three-bedroom half-brick house with a sitting room, a kitchen, and even a tiny dining room. On moving day, while boxes and tattered furniture were being dragged through the front door, we three had stood in the backyard and stared at the spacious lawn we shared with the attached identical house. Both plum and apple trees stood in our yard, echoes of the past.

  “Beauty for ashes,” I said to my boys. “God redeems what’s been lost.”

  Of course they only stared at me with confusion and then tossed off their shoes to feel the soft grass beneath their feet.

  “Oxford is much better than London.” It was the first time in a long time I’d seen such a wide smile on Davy’s serious face.

  “Yes, my beautiful boy, it is,” I agreed.

  Months fly by in many ways, and those months had been the best of ways, even with my continuing and confusing declining health—oh, it’s just middle age and stress, the doctors continued to say. Walking had become difficult—rheumatism, I was told—and I only forty-one years old. When had that become middle age? Davy tried to teach me to use his bicycle to get around easier, but I couldn’t even put the weight on my hip to get on the seat.

  Oxford became home quick as a flash, and I began to entertain again. Friends and neighbors visited. I cooked, made plum jam from the fruit of the backyard, gardened, and of course wrote and edited as I’d always done. The White Hart Pub was a block away, and its gardens were as lush as a tropical jungle, so I often ordered a pint and sat at a wobbly table to write.

  Jack spent long hours with the boys—he’d bought them a horse to pasture in the back acreage of the Kilns, and he allowed Davy to buy books to his heart’s content in Blackwell’s. There was a football for Douglas and clothes for them both. Jack had come to love them and they him; it was obvious and endearing.

  Surprised by Joy had been released the previous month to great acclaim. How many times I was asked if the title referenced me.

  “Oh, that would be lovely,” was my pat reply, “but no. It’s the essence of Jack’s lifelong search for something he found as a child in a miniature garden—joy.”

  I worked on The Seven Deadlies, for which I’d been paid an advance, but it seemed a dead end. Forgetting what I’d concluded when I wrote Smoke—writing theology was not my forte—I was being stretched to the l
imits. I took breaks from my own work to type like mad on Kay Farrer’s mystery pages, which not only brought in money but also proffered a favor for an admired friend. I niggled away on short stories and still hoped to make something of my Queen Cinderella novel. I typed for payment, but did not and would not give up on my own work.

  And oh! For my own ego’s benefit—I’d been asked to speak at the Pusey House about Charles Williams, and at a London church on the problem of being a Christian Jew. In many ways it felt that my love for God, my soul, my family, and my friends had become a magnet, drawing all the broken and scattered pieces of my life together.

  Bill and I continued a rigorous correspondence—sometimes I begged for money, sometimes I thanked him. I offered news and always kept him updated on our sons’ lives—Douglas playing on the under elevens football team. Davy corresponding with Tollers about The Hobbit, learning runes and the Erse alphabet. I told him of Davy’s favorite pastime—roaming through Blackwell’s Bookshop for as long and often as he pleased, as Jack gave him a large book allowance. And of all surprises—Douglas had begun writing poetry!

  “A golden peacock flies,” one poem began. I hoped I painted a picture of our happiness for Bill, for it was a happy life.

  Jack was alongside me every day he came to Oxford from Cambridge, and many whispered that he’d moved in. What vivid imaginations they had.

  There had been a night I thought we were on a “date”—when he took me to see Bacchae, the great Greek tragedy. In the dark of the theater he had taken my hand. With our fingers wound together and the great tragic ending of the play approaching, I believed in more for us. But alas, after leaving that darkened theater our natural rhythms returned—philia, banter, beer, and laughter.

  Every Sunday we went to church together at Holy Trinity, where he and Warnie had gone for years, attending the service without the organ and sitting behind the pillar so the priest could not see when Jack disagreed with his sermon. Always, the three of us slipped out directly after Communion and walked to town for a beer. There were sections of the liturgy that fed my soul and others that made me bristle with argument.

  One splendid evening in the beginning of the year, I dug out a fancy dark-blue ball gown from my days in New York. Surprised to find that it still fit, I wore it to attend a dinner that Jack threw in my honor at Magdalen. Here I met his friends I’d heard about but never encountered. I behaved. I smiled demurely. It was a smashing evening that ended with a cab ride full of laughter as he imitated each one of his friends. We were a team, the two of us understanding each other in a way that no one else could or ever had.

  Twice I’d been to meet Jack before or after an Inklings meeting, which is where I learned that Tollers’s talking tree, Treebeard, was modeled after Jack.

  Just when I believed I’d learned all I might, there was more to discover about this man. I was confident in this: it was only the beginning. I felt we were on a threshold, a precipice. We had a lifetime to grow closer and come to truly know each other.

  A lifetime.

  And who knows what that lifetime is made of? How many days, or hours?

  “Jack.” I faced him as I plucked my purse from the hook on the wall to leave for the registry office. “Is this meant to be a secret? This marriage?”

  “It isn’t so much a secret as it is between us. Because it’s not in the eyes of the church and we aren’t living together, it is ours to hold close. Of course Dr. Humphrey and Austin Farrer will be there today, so they will know.”

  “I want the world to know,” I told him.

  He smiled sadly and buttoned his jacket before looking directly at me. “We shall know, Joy. We shall, and that is what matters.”

  I smoothed my cream suit to leave for the office on St. Giles, down the street from our beloved Bird and Baby, where we would sign the papers binding us legally as husband and wife on April 26, 1956.

  CHAPTER 48

  Open your door, lest the belated heart

  Die in the bitter night; open your door

  “SONNET XLIV,” JOY DAVIDMAN

  “There might not have ever been a more sublime October,” Jack said quietly. The lit end of his cigarette glowed, its own full red moon, and then fell in sparks to the ground. “The mornings cool, the days warm, and the nights like this. I can’t remember another as beautiful.”

  The October moon was full, hovering over us in the back garden of my Old High Street house. We’d grown silent after hours of talking as we sat on the same bench, our knees touching.

  I nodded, and although he wasn’t looking at me I knew he felt the agreement. Kay and Austin Farrar and others had just left a little dinner party I’d given. Kay had whispered to me in the kitchen, “Austin and I agree that Jack seems more genteel in the past months. He’s quieter and more relaxed. It’s as if his sensitive nature has at last come through. And we all know it’s because of you.”

  For dinner that night I’d cooked mutton the best I knew how, served mashed potatoes American style, and green beans I’d canned from last summer at the Kilns. I made the apple pie from my backyard apples and could almost taste summers in Vermont with the Walshes. The wine and conversation had flowed as smooth as could be.

  It was eleven p.m. by then, and Jack was the last to leave. He was always the last to leave. Every day he walked to my house from the Kilns, and we worked or wandered into town.

  “Today I bought fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day,” I said. “So don’t hoard any more or the boys will have enough to destroy your whole back forest.”

  “I’ll tell Warnie,” he said. “He’s the one who stockpiles them. Oh! Has he told you? He’s reading your husband’s book, Monster Midway.”

  I laughed and rested my head on his shoulder. “I believe you’re my husband.”

  “Indeed I am.” Jack patted my knee.

  I paused before delving into the subject I had held tight until all the guests had gone. “Jack, these days and nights have been some of the most treasured of my life. The dinner parties and friends. The conversation. I almost feel like I’ve made a life here.”

  He turned to me, his cigarette almost to the filter. He dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe. “But?”

  “There’s talk about me. About us.”

  “What kind of talk?”

  “Can’t you imagine, Jack? The Oxford don who comes to the divorced woman’s house until late at night, every night. People gossip.” I paused. “Kay told me that Tollers is afraid of what Cambridge will think when they get wind of it. We appear inappropriate.”

  He attempted a laugh but it didn’t work, so instead he quoted another sonnet. “‘Would smile contempt, and in the brazen noon.’” He paused after the line when I didn’t laugh or reply. “Since when have you started to care about what others think is inappropriate?”

  “I care, Jack.”

  “Would you like me to not come round as much? Because I couldn’t bear that.”

  I’d worn my hair down for the night, and it fell over my shoulders. The wind fluttered through and whipped it into my eyes as I spoke. “No, but I’d like to stop being your little secret. We’re married. I know not in the eyes of God. I know not in the eyes of eros, you’d say.” I stood then and looked down to him. “But we are married. And no one knows.” Tears rose in my eyes, ones I’d held back for so long. “I feel as if you’re ashamed of me. That you like to keep our friendship in this little cardboard box where only we and a few others have access.”

  “Joy, I have brought you into my life fully. I have introduced you to Oxford and Cambridge. I’m with you every day.” His face fell with sorrow. “There isn’t an area I have hidden from you.”

  “Do I embarrass you?”

  Jack stood to face me. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “I no longer know what to believe about us.”

  “If you don’t want me to stop coming round, what is it? Would you like me to tell everyone that we had a civil marriage so you could stay in the
country? I told my very dearest friend Arthur in Ireland.”

  I held my hand to stop his defenses. “I just ruined the night,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and probably not making much sense. My old insecurities are rising. But keeping our marriage a secret feels clandestine and dirty. And dismissive.”

  “Joy.” He took two steps closer to me, the aroma of the common room at the Kilns, cigarette smoke, and autumn air of crushed leaves engulfing me. He took my hands and pressed them to his chest as if it were something he’d done a million times before, not this, the first time.

  “Would you and the boys like to move into the Kilns then?”

  “Pardon?”

  Had I heard him right? Had he just asked us to move in? Not a vacation, not a holiday or a feast, but to move. Were the wine and moonlight playing tricks? Were we another Janie and Maureen?

  “I’ve been puzzling it out, and you’ve made me see that it’s time to stop merely thinking about it. It’s time to do it. We will make a life there, Joy. There won’t be any more gossip, and I’ll tell everyone that we’ve married.”

  “But not in the eyes of the church, and not in flesh?”

  “The church will never allow it.”

  “King Edward abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, the love of his life. But that doesn’t happen much—a love grand enough to defy the strict rules that make little sense.” I paused. “Here I am, a terrible divorcée just as she was.”

  “No.” The pain in his voice made me look up, and I watched his face crumple. He swiftly brought my hands to his lips.

  I closed my eyes and let the sensation wash over me, the simple bliss of his lips on my skin, my heart racing for more, the autumn air ruffling his hair in the moment that he asked me to move in with him. He released my hands, and I opened my eyes.

  His hand rose, and at first I couldn’t imagine why, an exotic choreography in the dance of our relationship. Then his hand was behind my head, fingers wound into my thick hair, and with a slight tug he pulled me forward.