Once Upon a Wardrobe(7)

“Have you read the story, Miss Devonshire?”

“Yes, and I know it’s a children’s book.”

Mr. Lewis laughs with a bellow that startles me. “Our mother had a mathematics degree herself in a time when women didn’t do such things. But she was never above a good story, myth, or fairy tale.”

Embarrassment floods my mouth with a metallic taste, like I bit my tongue, and I can’t find the words to defend myself. He waits. Finally I speak with a stutter. “Sir, I’m not above it. It’s just . . . It’s a children’s book.”

“Well, well. It seems you are poorly informed, but sit, sit.”

“Poorly informed?”

“As I say in the front of the book, ‘maybe someday you’ll be old enough to read fairy tales again.’” He points to a chair. I sit, cross my ankles, and prepare to be kicked out of the warm room any minute. “I’m not sure I can answer the question for your brother, but I can tell you a story or two.”

The warmth of the room begins to make me dizzy and I just stare at him.

“Did you know there will be more books about Narnia?” he asks.

“I’ve heard. But right now we only have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“The next will be released in autumn of next year.”

“George probably won’t be able to read that one. He probably . . . Well, Mum says he probably won’t . . .” I can’t finish, the tears puddling in my eyes.

“Oh, Miss Devonshire.” His voice breaks in half with the syllables of my name. “That is tragic in a way words can’t contain. He’s only eight years old?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let us give your brother some stories to carry with him on his journey.”

“Please, sir. Anything at all that I can take home with me.”

A rustling noise interrupts, and we both turn to see Warnie holding a black lacquered tray. Atop it is a brown common teapot with three cream pottery cups and saucers. Nothing fancy here, and that brings me comfort.

He pours us a cup of tea, and the three of us sit in a circle as the fire crackles like a man coughing. I wish for sugar but the rationing still prohibits it. Five years after the war, the rationing for flour and chocolate biscuits and syrup has been lifted, but sugar is still a rare treat.

I take a sip of my tea. It scalds my tongue, but I don’t flinch. My skin buzzes with nervousness.

The Lewises’ common room isn’t what I expected at all. I thought that a tutor who is likely the most revered lecturer at Oxford would have a dark-paneled chamber full of books and awards, a musty room with a ladder to the top shelves, and glass cases of rare books. But no! This is a room crowded with well-worn furniture, knitted throws, and books scattered about like toys. Blackout curtains left over from the Second World War are hanging on the windows as if the fighter planes still buzz overhead.

There are masses of books: on the tables, on the floor, on the desk at the far end of the room. The walls must have once been painted a creamy white but are now yellowed from pipe smoke.

Mr. Lewis begins to speak. “Who knows where Narnia came from?” He lowers his voice. “Who knows when exactly a story begins? Probably at the start of time. But maybe Narnia had its first seeds in a land that my brother and I imagined as children in our attic. We called it Boxen. What do you think, Warnie?”

“It’s quite possible,” replies his brother. “But there was no real magic in those stories. Maybe the magic came later. In Narnia.”

“Perhaps I was training myself to be a novelist.”

There is a large wooden desk at the far end of the room below the window, almost glowing with twilight, papers piled everywhere. “Is the original on that desk?” I ask. I’m thinking I want to tell George I saw the pages typed up or written in Mr. Lewis’s house.

“The original?” he asks.

“The original The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“Oh, no, no. I don’t have that anymore. When I finish a piece of work I flip the pages over and start something else on the other side. After it’s all typed up, it’s gone.”

“Is that where you wrote it?” I ask Mr. Lewis.

“No. That was my mother’s desk. Mine is upstairs in my study.”

His eyes dim, and he looks at Warnie as if they are the only two people in all the world and their mother’s desk holds a secret I can’t know.

“I want to understand, Mr. Lewis. I want to understand how you can imagine something like that.”

“There is a difference between imagination and reason,” he says. “You want to understand with reason; I hear you. And I once believed they battled each other—imagination and reason—that they stood in sharp contrast one to the other.” He takes a draw of his pipe. “But that’s not why we are here right now, Miss Devonshire. Maybe that shall come to you later.”

I don’t understand what he means, but I nod anyway.

“Should we tell her about the little end room at Little Lea?” Mr. Lewis asks, turning to his brother. “Which does, by the by, look like the Kilns, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do.” Warnie sips his tea and nods. “And yes, tell her.”

Then Mr. Lewis, in his charming accent and thunderous voice, begins a tale of two brothers in an attic in Ireland. He tells me the story as the fire fades and night falls hard against the windows.