Once Upon a Wardrobe(3)

I sit on the edge of George’s bed and it slants toward me. “I received your letter. It was so beautiful the way you told me the story about Dad and the sheep he chased through the garden. When did you learn to write so well?”

George grins, and that hair of his is so blond it appears like cotton. Twilight rests against the windows as if it wants to join us in the bedroom, and I flick on his bedside light.

“George,” I say quietly, “why were you hiding in there?”

“I’m not hiding, I’m dreaming,” he says, looking out the window as if he can see something we can’t. “Imagining.”

Mum looks at me and nods her head for me to follow her to the kitchen.

“I’ll be right back.” I kiss George on his cheek, and he closes his eyes.

Mum sets the kettle to the stove’s fire and watches it in silence for a few heartbeats, until she turns to me with tears in her eyes. “It’s because of that book that he goes and hides in the wardrobe. He reads that story over and over. He wants to read nothing else. Not even his favorites, Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin. Now it’s all about Narnia and the lion and the four children who are living apart from their parents during the war. It’s about magic and witches and talking animals. It’s all he wants to talk about.”

“Have you read it?”

“No, I haven’t yet. Aunt Dottie dropped it off days ago. It’s a new book for children by that author who teaches at your university.”

“C. S. Lewis, yes,” I say. “One of his other books, The Screwtape Letters, was all the chatter. There’re more books to come from him, I’ve heard.”

“Well, he best hurry. I doubt your brother will be . . .” Tears gather in her eyes, and she brushes them away with the back of her hand.

“Mum, don’t say such things. Please.”

“It’s true.”

“You don’t know that.”

The teakettle screams, and Mum pours boiling water into the cup over the tea leaves nestled in the silver strainer and watches the steam rise. “Go on now. Take your cuppa and visit with your brother.”

She pulls her worn gray sweater tighter around her and buttons it near the neck as if she’s holding herself together with the Shetland wool of her father’s old farm lambs. I kiss her red cheek and she takes a linen handkerchief and wipes her eyes, then blows her nose into it with a resonating sound. We both laugh.

“Go on now,” she says.

His room is warm. During the day it’s the sunniest part of the house—intolerable for a few weeks every summer and favored in winter. It’s shaped like a perfect square (and I know a perfect square) with plaster walls painted an ivory color. The single bed is handmade by our Grandfather Devonshire, fashioned of oak with four posters squiring up like the tower at Magdalen. The hand-hewn oak floors are covered with a sheep’s-wool rug, fluffy in the places not often trod and flattened where our feet walk again and again. The blanket on his bed is striped, alternating blue and green, pulled high over the crisp white linen sheets that Mum irons smooth. The wardrobe across from the bed and between the windows, once belonging to Mum’s sister, Dottie, has the trees and birds of a forest glade carved into its wooden doors. I think how each of these things is a part of our family, each made or passed down through a Devonshire or MacAllister line that reaches us now.

George’s face is placid, and he rests on his pillow lightly, as if he hasn’t enough weight to dent the down feathers inside. His eyes are closed, and I watch him sleep. His easy breaths go in and out.

“George,” I whisper.

He opens his eyes, and his grin is wide. “I knew you would come home if I asked. I told Mum so.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I take his hand.

“Mum says you are too busy with school. Mathematics exams are very hard, she says.”

“They are, but I’m right here.”

“I need you to do something for me.” He sounds like an old man, or if not old, then just like Dad.

“Anything.” I drop into the hard, wooden chair next to his bed.

“Have you ever seen him?” he asks.

“Seen who?”

“The man who wrote about Narnia. The man who wrote the book.”

“C. S. Lewis. Yes, I do see him quite often. He walks quickly with his pipe and his walking stick along High Street and Parks Road, as if he’s always late for something.”

“I need you to ask him a question.”

“George, I don’t really know him. I’ve just seen him about. He teaches at Magdalen, and they don’t allow women students there. I’m at Somerville. They are a mile and worlds apart.”

“It’s the same. It’s Oxford University.”

I can’t argue that point. And I’m not one for arguing as it is. “What do you want me to ask him?”

“Where did Narnia come from?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you read it?” He asks as if his question is the answer.

I shake my head. “It’s a book for children. I’m consumed with physics and the way numbers hold together the universe. I’m learning about Einstein’s theories and . . . I haven’t had time to read some children’s book.”