Once Upon a Wardrobe(57)
I love you.
Yours, Megs
Within minutes, a perfectly thrilled George with a self-satisfied smile is bundled into the back of the Wyvern on a bench seat of leather with blankets and pillows piled all around him.
I’ve brushed my hair and donned my favorite thick gray lamb’s-wool sweater, grabbed a hunk of cheese and a loaf of bread. I bring George’s sketchbook and his pouch overflowing with colored pencils. Padraig has a big wicker basket on the floor of the back seat. The car radio is playing “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and George’s cheeks are aflame with adventure.
Padraig starts the car and then turns around to George. “It is lovely to meet you, George. If you look on the floor back there, you’ll find I’ve brought something for you.”
I sit in the front of the car, knowing I have about one minute to change my mind, but then George lets out a holler of glee that I haven’t heard in ages and I know I won’t. I turn in my seat to see that George has pulled from the floor a huge world atlas. He opens it as Padraig presses the gas.
We are off on the London Road of Worcester, heading toward Holyhead, then through Birmingham. It’s all too wonderful to believe.
“George,” says Padraig, “I think you are very, very brave.”
George nods solemnly and says in a very big voice, “Yes, but Peter didn’t feel brave when he stabbed the wolf chasing Lucy; he felt sick with fear, but he did it anyway.”
Padraig and I look to each other and smile; he reaches over with his free hand and pats my leg just as Bing Crosby’s voice sings from the car radio, filling the cab with the music and words of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.”
Padraig joins Bing, singing in a tenor voice that gives me a thrill of happiness. “Lean your ear this way.”
George joins in. “Don’t you tell a single soul what I’m going to say.”
Without breaking the stride of the song, I sing off-key, “Christmas Eve is coming soon; Now you dear old man . . .”
The three of us join in laughter.
Padraig sings the entire song, tapping the steering wheel, knowing every word. His voice is beautiful with the lilt of his Irish accent, but also with something I hadn’t known: his singing voice is as melodious as Bing’s. My voice, meanwhile, is as out of tune as an abandoned piano, but I care little for how I sound. I am singing with Padraig and George, and we are with St. Nick.
Watching the English countryside fly by the windows of Padraig’s car, I am as nervous as I am excited. Every mud-splattered sheep, every black cow, every thatched-roof house and smoking chimney are brilliantly vivid in the snowy countryside.
George naps and I put my feet on the dashboard, something Dad never lets me do. We laugh, and the feeling is like growing wings. Within a few hours, we arrive at the ferry port, where we see the monstrous metal ship that will carry us across the Irish Sea with Padraig’s father’s Wyvern inside.
Once the car is in the ferry and we’re riding the waves, Padraig and I get out of the vehicle and walk to the metal railing. We feel the wild wind that makes it too difficult to talk. George naps in the back seat. It’s so cold I can’t feel my fingers. Mum will be frantic with worry, and I can only hope my note will soothe her somewhat.
We land in Dublin. Back in the car, Padraig tells George stories. One here, another there, sometimes nothing more than a poem or song. We drive along winding Irish roads where hedges sometimes brush the side of the car. Villages with small churches and corner pubs rush past.
Both George and I had faded off to sleep when Padraig stops the car. We awake with a jolt, my neck cranked to the right. I am mortified: Padraig has probably watched me sleep with my mouth open like a turtle’s. Just before winter’s early nightfall, we arrive at Dunluce Castle’s ruins on the basalt outcropping of the seacoast.
George opens his car door and jumps out before I can say a word. Padraig and I get out and join him. He’s standing with his face lifted to the castle. He is bundled in coat and sweaters, his scarf about his neck and high above his lips, his black wool hat low on his forehead. All I can see of him are his eyes, and they are as wide as they have ever been, taking in the view of the castle in the evening’s fading light.
“We made it just in time,” I say. “George, we made it.”
Padraig nods. “Yes. We don’t have long.”
The three of us gaze up at a luminescent Dunluce Castle as the sun eases low behind it.
*
It is just as George had imagined, and this is all he wanted for Christmas. To know and see a place in the real world that can be transformed into something wondrous and unknown in another world.
Yards out past the cliffs, the sea thrashes the jagged and steep rocks with all its might, then retreats, only to try again. These broken walls and half crumbled towers had been seen by a young boy named Jack, who turned it into a magical place where goodness and love conquered winter, and a lion rose from the dead, and four children unexpectedly sat on royal thrones.
If George squints just right against the setting sun, he can see the castle intact and whole.
Padraig crouches next to him. “Jump on my shoulders, and we’ll get closer,” he says, his Irish accent flowing like a song.
George does it and instantly is above the ground, taller as if he has grown, as if he has become a man who can walk seven feet high and see the world from there. As the castle looms closer, George thinks of the Irish fairy folk Padraig told them about on the drive. Padraig said they live inside this world, in a fantastic place where seven years equals one. George thinks of Lucy in Narnia, gone for hours and hours, though her sister and brothers think she’s been gone only for minutes. George thinks of his life and how short and how long it will be. He thinks of Jack Lewis at nine years old, gazing at this castle, tucking it away in his memories, turning it into Cair Paravel.