Once Upon a Wardrobe(20)

“How so?” This seems important.

“Good stories introduce the marvelous. The whole story, paradoxically, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual world. It provides meaning.”

“Yes,” Warnie says. “It takes us out of ourselves and lets us view reality from new angles. It expands our awareness of the world.”

The significance of these statements creates tingles on my arms and neck. I realize fantasy and imagination aren’t just for escape. And to dismiss them is absurd. But I say nothing. I sit and wait.

Mr. Lewis nods to Warnie. “I also wrote and read because I was so terrible at maths.” He looks to me again. “Horrid, as matter of fact. When we reached the horrible school, it was one of the things that earned me cruel discipline from Oldie.”

I have the irresistible urge to hug Mr. Lewis, but he doesn’t seem the hugging sort. I want to press my hand to his heart and ask him if it is okay, but instead I ask, “How did you live through so many awful things?”

Mr. Lewis looks at me as if deciding how to answer.

“So dreadful,” I say.

“Yes.” He smiles. “There was a seventeenth-century mystic named St. Julian of Norwich. Have you heard of her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She has written many beautiful lines, but the one that echoes through the world is ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’”

“I don’t always believe that, sir,” I tell him. “So many bad things happen.”

“Yes, they do and always will, and yet, all will be well.”

I can feel inside that it is true even as doubt whispers the opposite. I listen, afraid that if I do or say anything else, he will stop talking.

When the brothers tell me this part of their story, they look back and forth to each other as if to check that the other is doing just fine.





Eight

Exile




Studying for my own exams while also thinking about George and the tales of Mr. Lewis set my brain fizzing with distraction. The usual focus I have for my figures and sums becomes muddled with stories and, oddly, with thoughts of Padraig’s kindness to me.

Since that afternoon four days ago, Padraig has twice sent a note to my dormitory to meet him for a pint, and twice I’ve refused him. Not because I don’t want to see him or gad about in the pubs with his friends, but because I can’t get my mind in the right place to enjoy myself. As it is, I’m also not one for gadding about. I never know what to say in a crowd, what to talk about, and I worry I’m not wearing the right thing or that my jersey is the wrong color or that my hair is out of style. I feel old-fashioned in 1950, as if I were meant to be young in the 1930s and 1940s like Mum.

Now I sit on the train as it rocks its way to Worcester, and I carry a bag from Blackwell’s bookshop loaded with papers and colored pencils for George. I used my weekly allowance to get them, and I can’t think of a better use.

By the time I get to the house, shed my coat, and warm myself in the kitchen with Mum, it is late afternoon. I sneak into George’s room to surprise him, holding out the bag of art notebooks and pencils to make him holler with glee.

His bed is empty. I glance about the small room to find it the same. Maybe he’s gone to sit in Mum’s study at the far end of the house, where her stash of mystery books topples over each other. Sometimes George goes there to curl into her chair and read.

But then I notice the wardrobe door ajar. I slip my hand behind the carved wooden door. It creaks open and there is George, sitting cross-legged and staring right at me as if he expected me to find him just as he is.

“Georgie Porgie.” I bend down. “You’re in here again?”

“It’s nice in here.” His hair is all adrift as if he’s been in a forest, as if the wind has taken its hand and tousled his curls. “It’s quiet and dark, and nothing bothers me so much.”

I show him the bag. “Look what I brought you!”

He holds out his hand. I give the bag to him. He is not coming out of that wardrobe. He opens my gift, peeks inside.

“Thank you.” He looks up and his eyes fill with happiness. “I am going to fill up that whole notebook. Just you wait and see.”

“I can’t wait.” I grab a pillow off the bed and drop it to the floor in front of him. I sit on it cross-legged. “Guess what else I have?”

“What?

“Three more stories.”

“Three!” He claps his hands together. “Did Mr. Lewis tell you where Narnia came from? Where it is? Where Aslan lives?”

“No. He just won’t answer me that way.”

George nods. “I understand.”

“I think he wants us to figure it out ourselves. Like a puzzle,” I say. “That’s the best I can guess.”

“I don’t know.” George stares past me, over my shoulder to the window. “I think he’s trying to show us that there is no figuring it out.”

“Huh?” I open my notebook of facts and stories.

“Just tell me the next one . . . ,” George says, his words trailing off to quiet. He shoves the wardrobe door wider, so we are face-to-face and the light from the lamp across the room shines in his eyes.