Becoming Mrs. Lewis(102)
We gloried in the summer weather. We swam in the Thames at Godstow, slightly snockered and accompanied by a swan. Even the half-mile walk to and from the grocery could not tamp down my happiness. Jack paid the food bills, and I cooked for all of us; it felt surreal and dreamy.
We’d come to be dear friends with Jack’s pal Austin Farrer, whom he introduced to me as “one of my co-debaters in the Socratic Club, and the Warden at Keble College.” But of course, as with anyone, Austin was more than his introduction; he was a dear friend to Jack, and his wife, Kay, was a mystery writer. We hit it off over our very first whiskey, and now she paid me to type the handwritten pages for her novels. We lingered long hours over finished dinners and empty glasses with Austin and Kay.
One black and loathsome cloud rested over all this beauty, one I’d kept from Jack: the British Office was niggling around on renewing my paperwork. If they didn’t agree to renew, I would have to return to America. The only way to stay was if I married a citizen. I needed to find a lawyer, write a letter, something, anything. I could not return to the States. I wouldn’t. I would do whatever needed to be done.
For me, bad news always seemed to arrive in the middle of the most tranquil moments.
“Mummy,” Douglas had asked in his thoroughly English accent only an hour before, “what is that?” He poked with his muddy shoe at my satchel on the floor where the certified letter poked up, its official document obvious among the typed pages and scribbled notes.
I shoved it deeper into the bag. “Nothing to worry about,” I lied. Just the British government informing me that my work visa was over, and unless I was married to a citizen it was back to Dante’s Inferno with me.
I was deep into typing the final edited pages of Bareface in Jack’s Kilns study one August afternoon, still not having told him. Outside my sons were laughing, and the merriness swooped to the open window like a bird. They were helping Paxford clear the garden for more summer planting, setting netting over the tomato plants.
In a repeat of last year, Warnie was again too sick with the drink to journey to Ireland with Jack. I’d encouraged Warnie to go to AA. It had been one of our very few disagreements, a lengthy and heated discussion by the pond. In the end, he agreed to go to a hygienic bastille in Dumfries, Scotland, but no AA.
Again it was the four of us at the Kilns for summer break—Jack, Davy, Douglas, and I.
I took that contemptible letter from my bag just as the ringing phone in Jack’s house startled me with its coarse sound. I answered. “Mr. Lewis’s residence.”
“I’m calling for a Miss Davidman,” the voice replied in a crisp English accent.
“Speaking.” I stood to look out the window and watched Davy run off to the pond.
“This is Dutton Publishing. Please hold for the production manager for Surprised by Joy. Mr. Lewis has told us to direct all questions about production to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll hold.”
Jack’s voice rose to the window. “Get cleaned up, Davy. It’s the most dreaded time of the day.”
Latin tutoring.
Davy’s polite voice responded with words I didn’t understand, and Douglas called that he was off to fish.
“Miss Davidman?”
“Yes?” I returned my attention to the phone.
“We have a question about page 32, where Mr. Lewis discusses his boarding school.”
I spent a half hour or more on the phone answering production questions before I rose to fetch the laundry from the line in the backyard. Jack and Davy toiled over Latin in Jack’s office, and I ambled outside. Sunshine had dried the clothes, and I took them down, burying my face in one of Douglas’s shirts, inhaling the sweet smell of summer and my son.
“Mommy?” Douglas bounded from around the bend, a fish flopped over and dead in his hand. “Will you give this perch to Mrs. Miller? Please? I’m going to Oxford with the boys.”
“I’m folding laundry, son. Take that fish to the kitchen.”
And off he went, running all hilter and such with a group of boys following.
“Have fun,” I said into the empty wind he’d left behind.
So different, my boys were—Davy tense and studious and Douglas gulping life by the mouthful. Still they sparred; after taking boxing classes at school they practiced with each other, ignoring my dissuading arguments that boxing was a disgusting sport. Davy was also studying magic, while Douglas studied the pond’s rich life.
Slowly I folded the clothes, setting them into the basket with great care. It had become these small things that nourished me. If I could have allowed this life to be enough in New York, could I have saved my marriage? Why had these tasks, the ones I now did with a happy heart, once been such drudgery, Sisyphean tasks that took me away from my writing?
I folded Jack’s shirt, a white button-down that needed mending, and I set it aside to remind myself to take a needle to the collar that evening.
No, it wasn’t entirely within my will.
What I had with Jack—the intimacy and understanding, the collaboration and laughter—transformed everything in its path: every chore, every moment suffused with great love.
I mused over how much had changed between Jack and me. Chad and Eva Walsh had come to visit us a few months before. Eva and I had taken a long walk alone, and she’d whispered to me, “Are you two in love?”