Becoming Mrs. Lewis(44)
“You know how it is with Joy,” Michal said. “We’ve been talking about everything.”
Life flowed back into me. I smiled at Michal in true gratitude. “It is Michal who brings the interest. She’s like water in the desert.”
We were interrupted as the server, a young girl in an apron and a long braid down her back, brought two beers for the brothers. They took their long sips; Jack patted his coat pocket for his pipe, a habit now familiar.
“We miss your husband,” he said to Michal. “You know it was at the Mitre in Oxford where we celebrated after his first lecture there.”
“Ah yes.” Michal nodded. “And wasn’t that the same place you met T. S. Eliot? The good ole days.”
“Yes, indeed. When Eliot told me I looked older than my pictures.”
I blurted out, “What? You do no such thing. He was trying to get under your skin, because in real life you are younger, more vibrant than any photograph.” The blush began below my collarbone, and the heat of it rushed to my face. Why didn’t I think before I spoke?
Jack smiled, his eyes wrinkling. “Well thank you, Joy. I dismissed his insult, and together we worked on a revision of the Book of Common Prayer.” Then his attention turned to Michal. “Charles’s absence in my life and among the Inklings is profound. We miss him every day.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
“I wish you could have met him,” Jack said as his attention again turned to me. “Charles was what I called ‘my friend of friends.’”
“Even though I never met him, there is an odd tie between us,” I said. “My husband wrote the preface for Charles’s book The Greater Trumps.”
“He did?” Jack paused midway through the sip of his beer. “I didn’t know that.”
“See?” I lifted my glass. “We’re connected everywhere. Even before we met, we were all of us tied together with these funny little threads. I love those small hints that God brings people together and says, ‘Here you go. This one’s for you.’” I smiled at Jack. “Each chapter in Bill’s novel Nightmare Alley opened with a tarot card. So the publisher must have thought that he knew enough about it to introduce Charles’s work.”
“Fascinating,” Jack said. He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and drew out his pipe.
Warnie chimed in and stared off into space where he might see the long-gone Charles. “His work lives on.”
“That’s what we hope for, right?” I lifted my sherry in a toast. “That our work will live on.”
“Indeed,” Warnie said.
“Indeed,” Jack echoed, and we all lifted our glasses to Charles Williams.
The afternoon was spent with warm food and even warmer conversation. I was so content to again be near Jack’s friendship that I felt no need to be anywhere else. I had missed him and denied even to myself that very feeling, as if by pretending one doesn’t feel an emotion, it will dissipate.
Eventually and too quickly for my taste, Jack and Warnie bid us cheerio, as Jack had a lecture with Dorothy Sayers that afternoon. Before he departed, he leaned across the table. “Joy, next week I’ll be speaking to the children at the London library. Children make me nervous. Please be my guest? It would be smashing if you would go with me.”
I promised to meet him there. I would have promised to meet him anywhere.
Bill:
Dear Joy,
I have reread Weeping Bay and it is very good but depressing. Where you went wrong is in the tone-scale strategy. If tragedy is to be popular at all, it must have that Gotterdammerung quality, which you don’t have. I think when you read through it again, you’ll see I’m right. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a few carnival pieces and with Renee’s help I haven’t felt this energized and full of creativity in years.
P.S. I am very impressed with the sestina you sent me!
CHAPTER 20
Your pity and your charity; indeed
If I had courage, I might ask your love
“WHINE FROM A BEGGAR,” JOY DAVIDMAN
The London public library loomed over the landscape like a castle, as if London understood better than Americans the regality of story. With its arched windows and gables, its stone fa?ade and rich wood inside, it was a haven. That afternoon the reading room overflowed with young children sitting cross-legged on a thick brown carpet, jittery and bored while their teachers told them to hush and be still.
In the back conference room, amid books piled for reshelving and chairs stacked against a wall, Jack and I waited together for it to be time for his speech. I wore my new wool-lined boots and a beige tweed dress (with a scalloped collar) cinched at the waist, feeling as lovely as I had in some time. I’d started knitting again, and I wore a scarf I’d made from a fine blue sheep’s wool.
“Joy, must I face the firing squad out there?” he asked as he paced the room.
“You write for them,” I said with a smile. He paused in front of me, and I reached out to straighten his tie, pat it to his chest in a familiar movement that seemed to surprise us both.
He clasped his hands behind his back. “Ah, but that is not the same as speaking to them.”
“They will love you. They will be gobsmacked.” I teased him with a wink.