Jack and the Wardrobe

by Nicola Jemphrey

  “Mum will be home from work by now,” she said, looking at her watch. “I just hope she hasn’t noticed I’m not in bed.”

  “Well we can give her a ring as soon as we get to my mum’s house and let her know we’re both OK,” I said cheerfully. “Look, here we are – Somerville Road. Number 7 must be just up there.”

  I held my breath as we stood on the doorstep and rang the bell. No one appeared, though there were lights on upstairs. Mum might already have gone to bed. I just hoped she hadn’t gone out for the evening. I pressed the doorbell again. This time, after a few minutes, the hall suddenly lit up and we could see a shadowy figure behind the frosted glass. The door opened a chink and a woman’s face appeared. It wasn’t Mum’s.

  “What do you kids want at this time of night?” the woman demanded. “You should both be in your beds long ago!”

  “We… we were looking for my mum, Caroline Bryans,” I said. “We thought she lived here.”

  “Oh, Caroline!” the woman said, closing over the door. I thought she was shutting it in our faces, but it turned out she was just taking off a chain. When she opened the door properly, we could see she was quite old and wearing a dressing gown. We must have got her out of bed.

  “Caroline did have a room here for a few months,” she told us, “but she left a week ago for a new job in Oxford. She gave me the address so I could send on her post. I’ll get it for you.”

  She disappeared into one of the rooms inside. I looked at Kate. She was making a big effort not to burst into tears. I knew I had to do the same.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “Oxford’s not too far from London. Remember in Shadowlands when Joy and Douglas went by train from London to visit Jack and Warnie?” Who’d have thought my CS Lewis project would come in so useful?

  “I’m OK,” Kate said. “At least your mum left her address. We’ll find her, Jack, I know we will. We’ve two whole days, remember?”

  “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” asked the woman, coming back with a piece of paper. She didn’t seem too keen to ask us in.

  “N...,” Kate began.

  “Yes, we do,” I cut in. “We’re going there now. Thanks very much for this. Bye.”

  “Why did you tell her that?” Kate asked, as we walked back down the street.

  “Well, we couldn’t let her know we’ve nowhere to stay or she’d phone the police.”

  We went into a chip shop and asked the man behind the counter the best way to get to Oxford. He gave us a hard stare, but there was a queue of proper customers forming behind us.

  “You need to get to Paddington Station,” he said quickly. “It’ll take you an hour or so. First you’ll have to catch a bus from the stop across the road, and when you reach Whitechapel, you’ll need to go on the Underground.”

  This was all turning into a bit of a nightmare, but we couldn’t give up now. I was very glad we had the money Dad had given me for all these extra fares. We waited quite a while for the bus, but the driver was very helpful and when he heard we’d never used the Underground before, he told us exactly where to go and what to do.

  “Hope your mum’s there when you get to Paddington!” he called after us. I tried not to look at Kate. I’d sort of hinted to the driver we were meeting Mum there, but what else could I do? He was concerned about us travelling alone so late at night and if he’d thought no one was meeting us, he’d probably have called the police.

  When we got off the Underground at Paddington and asked about trains for Oxford, we were told the last one had just left. Flippin’ typical. The next one was at 5.20 in the morning.

  “Well, we need to have a rest and we don’t really want to be looking around Oxford for Mum in the middle of the night,” I said, trying to cheer us both up. We walked around a bit, trying to find a bench that was out of sight of any of the people who worked at the station. Eventually we found one and plonked ourselves down on it.

  “You get some sleep. I’m not all that tired so I’ll stay awake and watch our stuff.”

  “No, we’ll take turns,” she insisted. “Promise you’ll wake me in a couple of hours.”

  “OK,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t.

  We ate the rest of the sandwiches we’d brought and drank some hot chocolate from a drinks machine, then Kate leaned against my shoulder and fell asleep straight away.

  This was the first chance I’d had to think through what had happened and try to plan what we would do once we got to Oxford. I couldn’t believe Mum had moved house without letting me know. Maybe she just wanted to disappear out of our lives altogether! Well I wasn’t going to let that happen. If we got the early train to Oxford, we’d hopefully be with her before she left for work in the morning.

  At first it wasn’t hard to stay awake, I felt so hacked off about everything. I didn’t know who I was angriest with – Mum for going off again without telling me, Dad for trying to replace Mum, or God for letting all this happen. But after a while I felt myself drifting off. Next thing I knew, Kate was shaking me hard.

  “Jack, wake up! It’s after nine o’clock!”

  How could I have let myself fall asleep when we needed to get to Oxford as early as possible? I rubbed my eyes and grabbed the railway timetable.

  “There’s a train in five minutes. Get your bag and run!”

  A short time later we were facing each other in a railway carriage, hurtling through the English countryside. It was funny to think of CS Lewis passing the same trees and fields all those years ago when he travelled between London and Oxford by steam train. When Kate and I were watching Shadowlands the other Saturday, we’d certainly never thought we’d be visiting Oxford ourselves so soon.

  Halfway through the journey, a text came through on my mobile.

  “From Susie,” I said. The message read, “Jack where r u. Ur dads going crazy, Kate’s mum and dad 2. Pls ring. S.”

  “Please can we phone and let them know we’re safe?” Kate begged.

  “Not yet.” I didn’t want anyone at home butting in before we’d reached Mum. “We need to find Mum first and then we’ll ring.” I turned off the phone and put it back in my pocket.

  The train pulled into Oxford Station at 10.30am and we walked out onto a crowded street. As we stood wondering what to do next, a whoosh of cyclists passed us, with striped scarves waving out behind them in the breeze. Students on their way to college, probably. Everyone but us seemed to know where they were going.

  “Right, we need to get a map.” I said.

  “There’s a signpost for Tourist Information,” Kate pointed.

  But the maps in the Information Office were only of the centre of Oxford.

  “Do you know where this street is?” I asked the girl behind the desk, showing her the piece of paper we’d been given last night.

  “Let’s see, hmm, I think that’s in Wolvercote,” the girl said. “My aunt lives there. You’ll need to get a bus from the station, right beside the train station.”

  “Let’s go straight there.” I said to Kate, as we left. “Even if Mum’s gone to work when we find the house, at least we’ll know we’re at the right place.”

  “No, first we need to get some breakfast,” Kate replied firmly. “We haven’t had a proper meal since we left home.”

  She was right. We didn’t know how long it would take to find Mum’s house and I was starting to feel a bit dizzy. A familiar, very modern smell was wafting down the street, in contrast to the old buildings all around.

  “Over there, a KFC!” I grinned. “That shouldn’t cost too much.”

  It seemed a bit strange to be scoffing fried chicken and chips at 11 o’clock in the morning, but we both felt a lot better when we came back outside. We’d decided to get the bus out to Wolvercote and ask the driver to let us out at the right stop.

  “Kingfisher Walk?” he said, frowning at the address. “I think that might be near St Peter’s Road, but I can’t be sure.”

  “That’s all right, let us out as close as y
ou can to St Peter’s Road, and we’ll ask someone,” I said, moving on up the bus.

  No one we asked seemed to have heard of Kingfisher Walk, though they gave us plenty of suggestions. We spent over an hour wandering around before stopping for a drink in a cafe.

  “You’re in the wrong part of Oxford altogether,” the waitress there finally told us. “Kingfisher Walk isn’t far from where I used to live, in Blackbird Leys.”

  On the other side of the paper with Mum’s address on it she wrote down the number of the right bus and sketched a map of the streets around the bus stop, marking Kingfisher Walk quite clearly.

  “Thanks so much,” I said, leaping up from the table and handing her a couple of pounds. “Keep the change.”

  At last we were on the right track. Around two-thirty we got off another bus and looked at the map the waitress had drawn. We needed to head up the next street on the right and turn left at the Chinese takeaway on the corner.

  “We should be there in a couple of minutes,” I smiled at Kate. “As soon as we get there, we’ll phone home and let everyone know we’re OK.”

  “Jack,” Kate said in a strange voice, “I think that car’s following us.”

  As I turned round to look, the car pulled up at the kerb and a big policeman jumped out from the front passenger seat.

  “I don’t think you kids should go wandering off again,” he said sternly. “There’s someone here who needs to talk to you.”

  Surely we couldn’t be arrested just for running away. But the policeman did look very serious. The back door of the car swung open and someone got out.

  “Mum!” I gasped against the rough wool of her coat, as she folded me in her arms.

  Chapter 9

  After the police had dropped us off at Mum’s flat, which was only about a minute’s drive from where they’d picked us up, the first thing Mum made us do was phone home to say we were safe. I thought it was better if Kate called Eileen and got her to tell Dad, as I didn’t really want to talk to him until I found out how likely it was that Mum would be coming home.

  Kate came out of Mum’s bedroom, where the phone was, in tears. “We should have rung them this morning when we were on our way to Oxford. They’ve all been going up the walls. Mum could hardly speak to me.”

  She sipped at a glass of milk my mum had set in front of her, along with a plate of sandwiches, and for a few moments none of us knew what to say. I was thinking to myself that if we’d met up with Mum last night as I’d planned, no one at home would have been nearly as worried. At last I couldn’t keep this in any longer.

  “Why didn’t you let us know you’d moved?” I demanded.

  “But I did,” Mum said, surprised. “I sent you an email the day after I arrived here.

  I’d been so busy planning our trip to London that I hadn’t remembered to check my emails recently. Anyway, I’d given up hope of getting any from Mum.

  “But you never emailed me before, even though I kept asking you to!” I said. “I know you couldn’t write to me in case Dad found out, but I told you he wouldn’t know if you emailed me.”

  Mum sighed. “Oh Jack. You were bombarding me with so many letters, asking me to come back, that I couldn’t think straight. I still needed space to work out what was best for our family. I know now I should have contacted you more often, but I found it hard to know the answers to the questions you were asking me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d thought it was important to be honest with her.

  “How did the police find out where we were?” Kate asked, a bit less tearfully.

  “When your mum called you for school this morning and discovered you weren’t in your room, she phoned Mike, who called Rick’s house to speak to Jack because he thought he’d been spending the night there. Rick knew nothing about this so Mike got in touch with some of Jack’s other friends. He eventually found out from Tommy that you’d both gone to London with his brother. Mike realised you must have gone looking for me and called the police. They must have got my address in London from Mrs King. She was the only person back home, apart from you, Jack, who knew what it was.”

  “So did the police in London look for us there?” I asked.

  “Yes, and Miss Trimble, the landlady, told them you’d been there late yesterday evening and that she’d given you my new address in Oxford. Apparently they gave her a lecture about not keeping you there and phoning for them to come straight away.”

  “I think she just wanted to get back to bed,” I said. “And I did tell her we had somewhere to stay last night.”

  “By the time the police in Oxford were contacted, it was lunchtime. They came here and the woman in the flat upstairs, who I’ve got to know a bit, was able to tell them where I worked. They picked me up from the office and we drove around for quite a while until we found you.”

  “Why did you move to Oxford anyway?” I asked. “I’d have thought living in London would be much more exciting.”

  “When I was young, I’d always dreamed of going to university here,” she explained. “My d… someone I knew had told me a lot about it and it seemed like a fairytale place to me. Of course, I ended up leaving school without even taking A levels and for a long time I forgot about my dream. After I’d been working in London for a few months, I saw an advert for a job here in Oxford and I thought it would be a chance to live here for a while and maybe do some exams. I’ve signed up for a couple of courses at the local Further Education College, and who knows? I might end up going to university some day. Probably not here in Oxford, but I suppose you never know.”

  It didn’t sound as if she was thinking of coming home anytime soon.

  “Queen’s in Belfast is meant to be a good university,” I said, remembering what I’d heard one of my teachers at school say. But before Mum could reply, the doorbell ran

  “I’ll get it,” I said, glad to get out of the room for a minute.

  I went into the tiny hallway and turned the handle. A stout old man was standing outside, dressed in a tweed suit and hat. I took a step back in amazement. It was CS Lewis!

  Mum had followed me out of the living room and saw the figure on the doorstep just a second after I did.

  “Dad?” she said, looking as if she was about to faint.

  “Hello, Caroline,” the old man smiled, though I could see there were tears in his eyes. “We came over as soon as we heard the children were here. Would it be all right if we came in?”

  “I suppose so,” Mum said, not sounding very sure. We both stood back to let the door open fully and it was only then I realised someone else had been standing behind the first man, on the step below. I darted back into the living room.

  “You’ll never believe this, Kate,” I whispered. “Your dad’s here!”

  Mum mumbled something about making a pot of tea and disappeared into the kitchen. Kate and Billy sat on the sofa, crying and hugging. Mum’s dad (my other grandfather, I suddenly realised) and I perched on the edges of the other two chairs, looking shyly at one another.

  At last the old man said, “I’m sorry for surprising you like that, Jack. It must be very strange to come face to face with a grandfather you’ve never met before.”

  I explained it wasn’t that which had shocked me so much; it was because he’d reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of CS Lewis.

  He gave a deep chuckle. “I suppose I am dressed in the sort of clothes he used to wear. I knew him, you know. He was my tutor when I was studying English Literature here in Oxford in the early 1950s, before he went to be a Professor at Cambridge University. But I’m not really much like him, apart from being on the plump side. He was quite a bit taller than me, with a red face, and black hair – what was left of it. Of course, I’m a good bit older than he was when he died, just before he was 65. People used to think he looked more like a big burly farmer than a lecturer or a writer.”

  Now he’d taken off his hat to reveal a head of thick white hair, I could see he was right. He didn’t
look much like CS Lewis at all, apart from the clothes.

  “Did you get to know him well?” I asked, glad we’d found something to talk about.

  “I used to stay behind for a chat after tutorials from time to time. My parents sent me a newspaper from home once a month and he was always keen to see it. He never lost interest in what was happening in Belfast and always referred to Northern Ireland as ‘home’. He also encouraged me when I told him I was thinking of studying to become a minister.”

  “I’m doing a project about him for school,” I said. “Maybe I could interview you.” It would be cool to do a piece on someone who’d actually known CS Lewis, especially someone related to me!

  “I’d be delighted,” he smiled. “As long as it’s OK with Caroline.”

  Mum pushed through the kitchen door with a tray of mugs and some biscuits. When the grown-ups were sitting back with their tea and Kate and I were munching custard creams, Billy began to explain how they both came to be there.

  “Eileen called Kate at 7.30 this morning and discovered she hadn’t slept in her bed, so she shook me awake. It took me a while to come to – I’m always worse in the mornings. By the time I did, Eileen had phoned Mike and they’d realised Jack wasn’t at his friend’s house like he’d said. I got dressed and we went straight up to Mike’s. Mike was ringing round all your friends, Jack, and at last found out from Tommy that you’d gone to London with his brother. We knew you’d probably gone to find Caroline, but nobody knew where she lived. While the police were on their way, Mike thought it might be worth phoning your parents, Caroline, just in case you’d been in touch with them at any stage since you’d left.”

  Mum raised her eyebrows at this and her dad said quietly, “Of course, you hadn’t been. We hadn’t heard from you in over 13 years, but Mike didn’t know what else to do. Eileen thought they still had your phone number in their book, so Billy went back down to their house to phone us. Helen and I were extremely concerned that Jack and Kate were missing, so we got in the car and came straight over to Mike’s to see if we could do anything to help.”