Once Upon a Wardrobe(45)

Mr. Lewis sits back in his chair and lights his pipe slowly, tapping down the tobacco as if he has all the time in the world. It’s obvious his pipe has been fashioned by hand from the deep brown brierroot and soon glows under the smoke that rises toward his eyes. He blinks. I break the silence.

“I read Phantastes,” I tell him.

“Oh, did you now? And what did you think, Miss Devonshire?”

“It was very enchanting, with all the fairies and the adventure. Honestly, I had a hard time stopping.” I pause and realize in that small space of time that he also knows I’ve read his book too. “Just as I did reading yours,” I add.

He bellows with laughter and leans forward, his cheeks ruddy and cheery, his rimless glasses falling lower on his nose. “You can love more than one book. It’s not like a husband. You also don’t have to feign loving both books.”

“I’m not pretending, sir.” I try to fix my hair, which is falling into my eyes, but then give up. It is unruly and will stay so. “I loved them both. I don’t know why I believed . . .” I pause, because I don’t know quite where I’m headed with the sentence, but he does.

“That fairy tales were only for children?”

“Yes.”

He settles back into his chair. “Now where were we in our stories for your brother?” He pauses. “For George?”

“The last story I told him was about the war. It made us both so very sad.” I think about telling Mr. Lewis that I wish we were, at long last, at the part of his story where he tells me exactly—word and literal word, like a math problem spread across the blackboard—where Narnia came from. This plus this equals that. This plus this equals the faun and the beavers and . . . the lion!

Instead, he nods and says, “Have I told you about the next war?”

“You went back?” I hope this isn’t true.

“No, Miss Devonshire. Warnie did, but no, I did not. What happened during the next war is that children, many of them, came to live with me during the Blitz.”

“Children?”

“From London,” he says.

“Like in your book!” I feel the thrill of solving a problem. This is a direct line, an answer, an equation solved. The children in Mr. Lewis’s book came from London to live with a professor. The children in World War II came from London to the Kilns. I settle back in my chair with a self-satisfied smile.

He sees it and laughs, as if he knew all along this next story might satisfy my logic.

*

Later that afternoon, I wait for the train at Oxford station, the floor slick with melted snow from the hustling feet of those rushing to the platform to catch their trains. I glance at the flicking tiles on the board announcing the time and platform of each train, at the cart of sandwiches and beers, at the stand with the bitter tea I love sipping on the way home. I think of Mr. Lewis stepping off the train at this station and walking out the opposite side of the building and into the wrong town. How disappointed he must have been! There is a slide of disappointment when a self-told story doesn’t match what you encounter. But then there can also be a wonderful surprise when despair changes to rejoicing merely by turning around.

I hand my ticket to the conductor in the blue uniform. I walk onto the platform just as the black hulk of train approaches, sliding to a full stop and breathing out like a smoker with a deep cough.

I slide into my seat, and a woman with a large red hat and a wide smile sits across from me. She unwraps her sandwich, and just as she opens her mouth to speak to me, I lift the book I brought with me to block all conversation. Thinking of George, I have no desire to engage with her right now. I’m always within two breaths of crying. I hold myself together by being alone. Her long exhale tells me of her disappointment, but I want to read Spirits in Bondage, Mr. Lewis’s book of poetry from the war, the book he published under the name Clive Hamilton when he was twenty years old.

He’d done so much at twenty: fought in a war and written a poetry book. It makes me wonder what I will have accomplished when I am twenty. What will become of me?

On this day, Mr. Lewis told me stories about the wartime London bombing, Operation Pied Piper, the friendships that changed his life, and a peculiar literary group called the Inklings, which was the anchor for so many of those friendships.

After I left him, I ran by the library and quickly wrote in my notebook what I could recall from his stories. Then I checked out two books to carry home: his book of poetry and a history book that includes information on Dunluce Castle. If I can’t take George to Ireland, which of course I can’t, I’ll take Ireland to him.

Eager to read, I turn a page in Mr. Lewis’s poetry book. I want to compare his younger self to the man who wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I begin to read the lines:

Woe unto you, ye sons of pain that are this Day in earth

Now cry for all your torment; now curse your hour of birth.



I am stunned at the poem’s misery. Jolly Mr. Lewis hardly seems the kind of man to write of such despair. I have heard that war changes people, but I can’t quite put together these pieces of his biography.

My mind wanders as the landscape passes by: villages glistening in snow and cows roaming wire-fenced fields, lifting wet noses at the sound of the train. When I finally arrive home, after taking the long way along the River Severn to watch it never give up its incessant journey, the sun is sinking. Mum waits in the kitchen with warm bread and a bowl of lamb stew. I shed my clothes and drop my satchel onto the table before hugging her so tightly that she lets go first.