Once Upon a Wardrobe(18)

But meanwhile, my exams barrel down on me; I feel like I’m carrying my heavy and unshakable books between my shoulder blades.

“Megs!” A voice stops me in my thoughts, and I skid a bit on the icy sidewalk over the bridge and grab the stone railing. I turn to see a figure running toward me. It’s a boy I know from the one time I went to the pub with Delia, a girl from down the hall. He attends Magdalen, his name is Padraig, and he studies literature. That’s all I remember, although we’d chatted for about five awkward minutes while sipping our Guinnesses. He has a girlfriend; I’d met her and quickly forgotten her name. She looked like all the other slick-ponytail, red-lipstick stylish girls I would never be.

Padraig rushes from the side gate and runs toward me, buttoning his coat and slipping his wool cap over his wild red curls. His presence makes me a bit jittery, and I know enough to know the feeling isn’t fear but attraction. Stupid, unnecessary attraction.

“Megs!”

“Hello, Padraig.” I nod at him as if I don’t care. I have somewhere I need to be.

“You remembered my name!” He grins as if I have given him a gift. “Where you headed?” He stops short next to me. “Want to be getting a pint with me?” His brogue gives away his Northern Irish origins, and his grin dares the world to be anything but what he wants it to be.

“Thank you, but I can’t. I’m going to see a tutor.”

Padraig looks over his shoulder, then to me. “You’re going the wrong way.”

I laugh easily, which is lovely. “I’m meeting him at his home.”

“That sounds a bit untoward.” He draws his chin back in mock disapproval.

I shake my head. His inference, even if joking, makes heat rise in my cheeks. “No, it most definitely is not. It’s Mr. C. S. Lewis and his brother, Warnie, at their place. They’ve invited me to tea. He’s not my tutor; he’s telling me stories. It’s hard to explain.” I wipe my runny nose with the back of my mitten, thinking Padraig surely must see me as a mousy math student.

“If I walk with you, will you try to explain? If it’s so complicated, I want to hear it.”

“I’d love the company,” I tell him honestly. We start to amble across the Magdalen Bridge and then from High Street to Plain. Padraig keeps stride next to me, so close that if he reached out his hand he could take mine. But of course that is not what he is going to do.

“You see,” he says, his breath coming in large puffs. “He’s my tutor for English literature.”

“He’s your tutor? What’s that like?” I pause, and two little boys running full pell-mell up the street bang into us. We stand fast and Padraig holds out his hand to steady me. I am struck mute by his touch. But I want to know—is Mr. Lewis different with Padraig than he is with me? Something like jealousy flares in my heart, but curiosity quickly smothers it.

We are on a corner where we need to cross to St. Clements. Padraig holds out his arm for me as he looks left and right and then nods for us both to cross. I am warmed by this, by his simple courtesy. We hurry and he cheerfully keeps talking as if we’ve done this a thousand times.

“He’s a right genius, he is. And so serious until his wit comes through like a firecracker. Some students say he’s a bully but most love him. He pushes us hard. He suffers no fools and some can’t abide that. But if you really want to learn to read, he’s the right tutor.”

“Well, he’s the grandest kind of storyteller,” I say. “I went to his house to ask him a question and then . . .” I pause but it is quick, because Padraig’s open smile allows me to launch into the story of my brother and his request—a story I haven’t yet told anyone.

It takes a few blocks, but when I finish and we reach Headington Road, Padraig exhales as if he’s done all the talking. “Wow.” His voice is so quiet I only think that’s what he says.

I tell him, “It’s silly, maybe, gathering stories of someone else’s life. But it’s the best I know to do for my brother.”

“Have you read Mr. Lewis’s other works?” he asks. Our words come in puffs of air into the cold afternoon.

“I haven’t.”

“They’re really good. There’s The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. A scientifiction trilogy, and of course the one that everyone is talking about since he was once an atheist, the lion book.”

I stop in my tracks. “Mr. Lewis was an atheist?”

“Indeed.” Padraig takes off his wool cap and runs his hands through those unruly curls. He grins with satisfaction at telling me something I don’t know.

“Well, I don’t know much about him. I study physics, not stories.” I feel defensive. “I’d only heard his name about university until my brother asked me to do this. I didn’t know his work or his life.”

“Maybe that’s good. Maybe all you need to know about Mr. Lewis is what he tells you.”

I shrug, my shoulders and neck aching from the hours bent over books when I studied in the hush of the Bodleian Library.

Padraig smiles warmly and seems to bounce with anticipation. “Will you tell me what he says? Will you tell me the stories?”

“They aren’t what you think,” I say, meeting his green eyes, which had been the first thing I noticed about him when I met him at the pub. Delia had insisted I go out that night with her, for it was her birthday. I’d ended up taking her home as she leaned on my arm, stumbling and stopping at least twice as she was too worse for drink.