Jack and the Wardrobe

by Nicola Jemphrey

  Billy took up the story again. “By the time Adrian and Helen arrived, two policemen were there. They’d got in touch with the London police, who were trying to find out if anyone had any idea where you’d gone after leaving the airport. Then Mrs King from next door came in. She’d seen the police car outside and wondered what was wrong. She was able to give the police Caroline’s address in London and they passed it on to the policemen who were looking for you there. We knew that when you were found, someone would have to go over and bring you home. Mike wanted to go, of course, but didn’t know how Caroline would react to seeing him, so Adrian volunteered to go instead, and I said I would go with him because of Kate. We managed to get seats on the next flight out and as soon as we landed, we phoned home to find out if there’d been any news. Eileen said the police had let her know you were safe and sound in Oxford, and had given her Caroline’s address. She also said Kate had been on the phone but she’d been so overcome to hear from her that she’d forgotten to tell her I was over here! Adrian hired a car at the airport and we got here as soon as we could.”

  “I need time to talk to Jack,” Mum said. “You’re not planning to take them back straight away?”

  “No, of course not,” her dad said. “Did you book a return flight, Jack and Kate?”

  “Yes, tomorrow evening,” I told him.

  “Well then, if you give me the details, we’ll see if we can get booked on the same flight. In the meantime, I know of a very good little guest house a few miles from here, where Billy and I can stay with Kate. That’ll give you and your mum time on your own to catch up.”

  “Thanks,” my mum said, smiling weakly at her dad for the first time.

  “If we can just have your number, we’ll give you a ring tomorrow morning to let you know what’s happening with the flights,” her dad said, standing up along with Billy and Kate and moving towards the door.

  “Bye, Jack,” Kate said. She was holding her dad’s hand and looking very happy.

  “See you, Kate,” I replied, suddenly nervous about being on my own with Mum. I’d been hoping to persuade her to come back with us tomorrow evening but now the time had come, I hardly knew what to say.

  “Well, I’ve made a right mess of things, haven’t I?” Mum said, slumping on the sofa once she’d closed the door on the others.

  “What do you mean?” My anger with Mum had died down after what she’d said about my letters getting her all mixed up. “It was us who caused all the fuss and made everyone so worried, well me. Kate only went along with it to keep me company.”

  “No, it wasn’t your fault, Jack,” Mum said. “It was me who made the big mistake all those years ago, getting together with your dad just to make my parents pay more attention to me. Things were fine when I was younger. I loved my mum and absolutely hero-worshipped my dad because of all the things he did to help other people. I heard you talking to him about CS Lewis, so you’ve probably worked out by now it was because Dad went to Oxford University that I started to dream of going there one day too.

  “Then, when I became a teenager, all of a sudden my parents didn’t seem to know how to handle me. I know all parents and teenagers feel at times they don’t understand each other, but mine found it much more difficult because they were a lot older than my friends’ parents. They used to send me on holiday with my friends’ families while they would go off somewhere by themselves, just the two of them. I see now it was because they thought I would have more fun with younger people, but at the time I thought they just wanted to get rid of me. So as I got older, I tried to shock them into noticing me. I began to resent all the time they gave to other people in their work at the church. When I started going out with your dad and shortly afterwards announced we were going to get engaged, I thought at last, they’d put their foot down. But they just accepted it, even though I knew they wanted other things for me. So, to get back at them, I ended up going through with it. I hadn’t seen my dad since the day before we ran away to get married, until today. It was quite a shock, I can tell you.”

  So Dad had been right. The main reason Mum had married him was to get back at her parents.

  “So didn’t you love Dad at all?” Thinking of Dad’s love not being returned, made me hurt inside.

  “Come over here beside me, Jack.”

  I joined Mum on the sofa and she put an arm around me. “I know this is hard for you to hear, but you’re growing up and I want you to understand why I felt in the end I had to leave you. At first I thought I did love your dad. He was so good-looking and all the girls were crazy about him. I was really flattered when he picked me out of all the others he could have had. But shortly after we got married, I realised I’d made the biggest mistake of my life and was never going to achieve all the ambitions I’d once had of going to Oxford and having a career. I thought if I had a baby, things would improve – at least I would have someone I could really love.”

  “Was I part of the mistake then?” I asked. I could tell I was about to cry.

  Mum gave me a big hug. “Oh no, love, you were no mistake. Like I said in the note I left, you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t know the meaning of love until you were born. And for a while things were better between your dad and me, because we both doted on you. Then, after a couple of years, I began to see that apart from you, we didn’t have much in common. If it hadn’t been for you, I would never have stayed with him as long as I did, but I didn’t want you to grow up in a home without both parents. There were times I felt so trapped I thought of taking you and moving out, but I knew that would have ripped out your dad’s heart; he was so crazy about you. That’s why I was such a hopeless mother. I knew I needed to leave for my own sake. But for your sake, and your dad’s, I just couldn’t do it, so I ended up being depressed a lot of the time. Then, last summer, after I’d got that job and wasn’t moping around the house so much, I began to realise we couldn’t go on as we were.

  “I knew that over the years your dad had been a far better parent to you than I had, so I thought it best to leave you with him while I went away to think everything through. I’m sorry I left without telling you, but I knew if I tried to explain things to your dad, he would try to stop me going and I probably wouldn’t have had the strength to carry through my plan. That’s why I just left you both notes. When I got to London, I found it hard to settle, even though I eventually made a few friends through work. It’s only in the short time since I’ve been in Oxford that my mind’s really started to clear and I’ve realised that I might be happy living here. I was planning to ring your dad next week and ask if he would let you come over for part of the Easter holidays.”

  So even if Mum didn’t come home with us, I would see her again soon. Easter was less than three weeks away.

  “There’s something you’d better know before you talk to Dad.” I took a deep breath and told Mum about Susie.

  She seemed a bit shocked, but said she was glad Dad had found someone who made him happy. After that we ordered pizza. Then Mum made up a bed for me on the sofa and kissed me goodnight.

  My head was full of so much stuff I didn’t think I’d sleep, but as I lay in the dark, listening to Mum moving about in the kitchen, I realised I felt more peaceful than I had in months, even though it didn’t look as if Mum and Dad would be getting back together. Was it because I was starting to understand why they’d acted like they had and I didn’t feel mad at them any more?

  But before my mind could answer that question, I fell asleep.

  Chapter 10

  Just after eight the next morning, Mum woke me.

  “Your grandpa’s on the phone – Billy, I mean,” she said.

  I went into Mum’s room and lifted the phone from where she’d left it, face up on the bed.

  “Morning, Jack. Hope you slept well. Just to let you know we’ve been able to get seats on the same flight as you this evening. Oh, and Adrian wants to know if you and Caroline would like to come on a tour of Oxford. He thinks it m
ight be helpful for your project if you saw some of the places to do with CS Lewis.”

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, laying down the phone again. Mum was in the kitchen buttering toast and I told her what Billy had said.

  “I’m really sorry Jack, but I have to go to work this morning. I’ve only just started this job and I had to leave at lunchtime yesterday when the police came. You go with the others and I’ll see if I can get away a bit earlier than usual. Ask Billy if he and Kate and… my dad would like to come here for an early dinner, say about five. Your flight’s not until nearly ten o’ clock, so that’ll leave you plenty of time to get to the airport.”

  I was disappointed not to be spending the whole day with Mum but reminded myself that we’d have lots of time together over Easter. And it would be a good chance to find out more about CS Lewis’ life in Oxford, as well as getting to know my new grandfather. I repeated mum’s words to Billy and he said they’d pick me up in an hour.

  “I can’t believe the change in your dad,” I whispered to Kate. We were sitting together in the back of the car, slowly approaching the centre of Oxford.

  “Isn’t it fantastic?” Kate beamed back. “He said the shock of us disappearing made him wise up and see what was really important.”

  We managed to find a space in a car park close to the train station.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” I told my mum’s dad as I walked beside him towards the colleges. Kate was behind us, holding her dad’s hand tightly.

  “Well, let’s see.” He thought for a moment. “You don’t call Billy Grandad or Grandpa or anything like that, and you’ve known him a lot longer than you’ve known me, so I think it will have to be Adrian – for the time being at least.”

  First of all, Adrian took us past the shopping streets where Kate and I had been yesterday, and pointed to a house on the corner of Mansfield Road.

  “That was the first place CS Lewis stayed in Oxford while he was doing his entrance exams in 1916,” he said. “He’d come up from Surrey where he was being tutored by a man called Kirkpatrick whom CSL called…”

  “The Great Knock!” I finished. I remembered reading this somewhere.

  “That’s right. Did you know that the character of Professor Kirke in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was based on him? CSL learned more in the two and a half years he lived with Kirkpatrick than in all his time at school. One of the most important things Kirkpatrick taught him was how to argue a point logically. This proved to be very useful later, in his teaching and writings.”

  The next building Adrian pointed out was University College where CS Lewis came as a student in 1917. Soon after starting, he had volunteered for active duty in the First World War but returned in 1919 to continue his studies. He turned out to be one of the cleverest people in his year, gaining top degrees in both Classics and English Literature.

  “I’ve never seen buildings that colour before,” Kate remarked.

  I could see what she meant. The stone most of the colleges seemed to be made of was sort of honey-coloured.

  We carried on walking for quite a while until we saw a tower rising in front of us. “This is the famous tower of Magdalen College,” Adrian told us, “where CS Lewis taught for nearly thirty years and where, much less importantly, I was a student for four years.”

  Adrian took us past the tower and up onto Magdalen Bridge, from where we could look down on the wee boats bobbing about on the Cherwell River.

  “Not many punts on the river today,” Adrian said, “but in another couple of months, there’ll be a queue of people waiting to hire them. CSL enjoyed boating on the river in the summer, and swimming in it as well. Now let’s go into the College itself.”

  Inside the grounds of Magdalen (which for some reason was pronounced “Maud–lin”), Adrian showed us the staircase up to the room he’d stayed in as a student and the windows of the rooms Jack had lived and taught in during his time there.

  “He only lived there during the week in term time,” Adrian said. “At weekends and in the holidays he had a house of his own about three miles away. I’ve made an appointment for us to see round it this afternoon.”

  At the back of the building where CS Lewis had his rooms there was a huge green area.

  “Look, what’s that over there?” exclaimed Kate, spotting something moving behind a fence.

  “It’s a deer,” Adrian said. “CSL had a view of this park from his room – imagine looking out on this every morning!”

  As we moved closer to the fence, we could see there were lots of deer, including a couple of wobbly-legged fawns. We stayed for a while, watching them nibble the grass, before heading down to a path that ran along the river.

  “This is known as Addison’s Walk,” said Adrian. “Strolling along here one night, CS Lewis had one of the most important conversations of his life, with two of his closest friends, Hugo Dyson and JRR Tolkien.”

  “The author of The Lord of the Rings?” I asked.

  “The very same!” Adrian smiled. “Later on, he and CSL encouraged each other to write the sort of books they both liked reading. The Lord of the Rings would probably never have been published if CSL hadn’t nagged Tolkien into finishing it, because he thought it was so good. Sadly, Tolkien was less enthusiastic about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But that was a few years later. On the night they walked here in 1931, Tolkien and Dyson, who were both Christians, were challenging CSL on why he found it so hard to accept that Jesus was the Son of God and this got him thinking. A week or so after this conversation he travelled to Whipsnade Zoo in the sidecar of his brother’s motorbike. By the time they got there CSL had come to believe that Jesus really was God’s Son, sent to earth by God to take the punishment human beings deserved for all their wrong thoughts and actions. It was the major turning point in his life and in his writing… Now, if anyone’s feeling hungry, I’ve thought of somewhere rather special where we can have lunch.”

  We were all hungry after so much walking, and even hungrier by the time we reached the pub where Adrian had decided we would eat.

  On the sign outside, there was a painting of a small child in the claws of a big bird. (“Scar–y,” murmured Kate.)

  “Welcome to The Eagle and Child,” Adrian said, holding open the door as the rest of us passed through, “known to locals as ‘The Bird and Baby’. It was here CSL used to meet up with Tolkien and some other friends who were interested in writing, to read out extracts from the books they were working on.”

  It was still quite early for lunch and we’d no trouble getting a table in the part of the pub where “The Inklings”, as Jack’s group of friends called themselves, used to meet. On the wood-panelled walls there were photos of some of them and a framed list of their signatures. I could see Jack’s and Tolkien’s among them. It felt quite spooky to be having lunch in the very place where bits from The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia stories had first been read out.

  Billy didn’t seem at all spooked.

  “Now this is more my sort of place,” he sighed happily, sinking into a padded chair. “All that learning and culture back there was a bit over my head. I was only fifteen when I left school and went to work in the shipyard, remember! You wouldn’t be offended, Adrian, if I ordered a pint?”

  “Go ahead,” Adrian said, as a waitress approached our table. “Would you children like Coke with your lunch?”

  After filling up on toasted sandwiches and chocolate cake, we were ready to walk back to the car. Our appointment at The Kilns, the house where CS Lewis had lived for most of his time in Oxford, wasn’t until 2.30pm. This gave us time to explore the woods behind the house, which were now open to the public.

  “The woods are all that’s left of the grounds which once belonged to the house,” Adrian explained. “The rest was sold off for housing development after Warnie Lewis died in the early 1970s.”

  Near the entrance to the woods was a big pond, which Jack used to punt and swim in. There were other smaller
ponds further up the hill, between the trees. They reminded me of the pools in “the Wood between the Worlds” in The Magicians’ Nephew, which Polly and Digory jump into to get from one world to another, with the help of the magic rings.

  “We’d better get going!” Adrian called from the seat beside the main pond where he and Billy had been resting. Kate and I scrambled back down the hill to join them.

  As we got closer to The Kilns, I noticed it looked quite like Little Lea, though not nearly as big. Both houses were built of red brick and had red-tiled pointed roofs, tall chimneys and windows with lots of small square panes. I wondered if this was why Jack had decided to buy The Kilns. We were met at the front door by an American lady called Louise, who explained that the house wasn’t kept like a museum but was a home to people with an interest in CS Lewis, who’d come to study in Oxford for a short time. None of the furniture there now had belonged to the Lewis family, as most of their things had been sold or gone to a museum in the United States.

  We did see some of Jack’s pipes on the desk in the window of the living room, where he would have done some of his writing. I’d been taking lots of photos for my project with the camera on my mobile; I got a good one Billy sitting at the desk, pretending to smoke one of the pipes. In the dining room, Louise showed us the typewriter Warnie had used to type out the family history and to answer the letters his brother was sent from all over the world after he became famous for his books and radio broadcasts.

  Louise told us that Jack and Warnie Lewis had bought the house in 1930 after their father had died and Little Lea had been sold. Mrs Moore, the mother of Jack’s friend, Paddy, who’d been killed in the war, also helped to buy it.

  “Before Jack and Paddy went off to fight in France, they made a pact,” Louise said. “If Jack died and Paddy didn’t, Paddy would look after Jack’s father. If Paddy died and Jack survived, Jack would look after Paddy’s mother. Jack didn’t find it hard to keep his promise as he thought Minto, as he called Mrs Moore, was wonderful. She’d looked after him when he was wounded and his own father hadn’t come to visit him. At first life was tough, with Jack, Mrs Moore and her daughter, Maureen, all trying to live on the student allowance Jack was given by his father, Albert.”