Becoming Mrs. Lewis(30)

“Oh, Warnie!” I said, looking to him, his baggy cuffs puddling at his feet as he leaned on his walking stick. “There is nothing plain about Oxford.”

“The eye of the newcomer,” he said and straightened. “Let me look again.” He squinted against the sun and leaned forward as if on the bow of a ship. “Yes, a fairy-tale land it is. You are very right, Mrs. Gresham.”

“This land must be part of you.” I inhaled the cleansing aroma of grass and soil, the blue sky above like the bowl of an alpine lake. “I want this landscape to be mine and the landscape to have me.”

“Then you shall,” Jack said. “I doubt there is much you set out to do that doesn’t get done.”

The brothers came to sit on either side of me, and we talked: of Warnie’s new work, of Jack’s students’ upcoming Michaelmas semester exams, of the Socratic Club meeting he must attend the next day. We debated Winston Churchill’s conservative views and his recent announcement that England had an atomic bomb. Would they test it? Where was it? We talked of how Prince Philip must feel with his wife becoming queen, and of course the tea rationing, which had all of England annoyed. We were three chums who’d been friends all our lives, or so anyone who came upon us would have believed.

“Even the Garden of Eden could not be as beautiful.” I poked at Jack. “Although I know you don’t believe there is such a thing at all.”

Warnie put his fingers to his lips. “Hush, don’t tell anyone that the great C. S. Lewis believes that Adam and Eve are a myth.”

Jack made a snorting sound and stood to stretch. “I’ve never claimed to be a theologian.” He shook his head. “Now let’s walk off this hill to a decent pub. A beer is due us.”

As we descended, Warnie piped up. “Where to next for you, Joy?”

“Well, I’m here for another week.” I stopped at a switchback to catch my breath and ease the ache in my knees. “Then I’ll travel to Worcester, where my king lost his battle at Powick Bridge. Then on to Edinburgh to dig into the library archives.”

“Worcester!” Warnie turned to Jack. “Isn’t that where the Matley Moores live?”

“It is,” Jack said. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.” He turned to me. “Dear old friends of ours who might give you accommodation.”

“Oh, that would be simply wonderful,” I said. “To save what little money I have.”

“Consider it done.” Jack nodded, and then we slowly walked down the hill, the sun at our backs warming us. We reached town and collapsed onto the hard benches of a nearby tavern, guzzling our thick brown beer eagerly. Warnie ordered pork pies, and we dived into them with abandon.

“Pubs might be the greatest invention of the English,” I said, basking in the warmth and the smell of whiskey and fried food.

“You think so?” Warnie asked. “Not pork pies or the pencil or the electric telegraph?”

I almost sputtered against my glass. “The pencil?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded seriously. “In Cumbria in the 1500s, or so Oldie told us.”

“Then yes, the pencil is grand, and after that, the stories. What is it,” I asked, “that makes British stories so much better? Or am I just being seduced at every angle?”

“You are being seduced,” Jack said and reached his arms across the back of his chair.

Our glances caught and then slid away. I swore he blushed at his blunder.

“But what do you believe is the difference in the stories?” Warnie asked and motioned to the waitress for another beer.

“Your stories, the English I mean, contain magic. Mysticism. Our American stories are more realistic. You know, Tom Sawyer for us, Mary Poppins for you. That kind of thing. The day-to-day– ness in our American stories weaves a tale but doesn’t transport. Nothing pragmatic about your George MacDonald and The Light Princess. And that extraordinary Phantastes, nothing like it in the world.”

“Phantastes changed my life,” Jack said simply. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it did.”

We’d written about this, but how much better it was to talk about it. There was no comparison.

“I felt the same.” I slugged back another gulp of beer to dull the throbbing of my blistered feet. “Tell me,” I said and lifted my drink too eagerly, splashing it onto my face and into my eye, causing both men to laugh.

“Oh, laugh at me, but look at you,” I said and leaned forward to wipe a fleck of crust from Jack’s chin.

Warnie coughed. “That’s what happens when old bachelors live together. We don’t notice when food has fallen onto our faces.”

I nodded. “Well, that’s what happens when a woman gets excited. She spills beer in her eye.”

Jack smiled, falling back into reverie. “Phantastes. I found it in a bookshop at Great Bookham Station on my way back to school one lonely afternoon. One shilling and a penny was what I paid for it. I, who have no head for money, remember exactly what it cost.” He wiped at his chin with his napkin, as if to make sure nothing remained.

In a gust of emotion, I wanted to travel with him to that train station. I wanted to be with that lonely boy when he found the book that baptized his imagination.

He smiled at me. “You weren’t yet born.”