Becoming Mrs. Lewis(75)

“Look,” I said, kissing them on the cheeks, then wiping off the red lipstick marks I’d left on their faces. “We’re here.”





CHAPTER 34


My love, who does not love me but is kind,

Lately apologized for lack of love

“SONNET XX,” JOY DAVIDMAN



We stood, a bedraggled group, in front of the Kilns, its thatched roof a russet-colored welcome mat rolled out for our return. Smoke curled from the chimney, as if imitating Jack’s pipe. Ivy, even in winter, grew along the brick walls, and the front door, green and cheerful, was closed to us. But inside I knew what waited.

“I’m hungry, Mommy,” Davy said. We’d eaten our sandwiches on the train.

“Mrs. Miller will cook us something warm and wonderful,” I told them.

“Then why are we standing outside?” Douglas, always pragmatic, pulled at the hem of my sleeve and we moved forward, under the arbor and along the gravel walkway where stones crunched under our feet. As we reached the door, the boys lagged behind me, suddenly shy.

I rang the bell, the one that appeared in my dreams and placed that smile on my face, and waited. Mrs. Miller opened the door. Her stolid figure covered by her work dress and apron made her look all the part that she was: guardian of the house.

“Well, look who’s finally returned.” She bustled us inside, and the boys looked at her and then at me with expressions that seemed to ask if we had arrived at the wrong house.

The entryway felt warm and familiar, with its dark wood filigreed bench and coat hooks on the wall. Mrs. Miller took our coats and hung them on the hooks and informed us that she would chivvy along and prepare lunch.

“You’re here!” Jack’s voice bellowed from the back of the house, and then suddenly he stood before us.

His accent, easily forgotten in letters, returned to my heart. He smelled of pipe smoke and dusty books as he greeted me with a hug and then bent down to introduce himself to Davy and Douglas, not waiting for me to do the honors.

“Well, what do we have here? Two American boys in England. Welcome,” he said.

Davy held out his hand and shook Jack’s, but Douglas stared at him with an open mouth, dumbfounded. “You can’t be Mr. C. S. Lewis,” he said in a small voice.

“My boy.” Jack stood straight with his hands on his waist. “You expected Aslan, perhaps, and for that I must apologize. I’m merely a short, balding man with tattered clothes.”

I looked at Jack through Douglas’s eyes and laughed: a bed-rumpled man wearing gray flannel trousers with worn holes at the knees. A wrinkled collared shirt once white, now almost gray, and house shoes bent at the heel from walking without slipping them all the way on. Small flecks of tobacco had fallen onto his collar, and his glasses were crooked on his face. For me, this was a man of such warmth and charisma, such light and tenderness . . . but to Douglas, this was not the man who could write of Aslan, of Edmund and the White Witch. This was . . . well, just a balding man with yellowed teeth and a bellowing voice.

Douglas moved behind me and pulled my skirt around him like a coat. He spoke from his hiding place. “Not Aslan, sir, but maybe . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Oh, Jack,” I said.

“It happens all the time,” he said in his good-natured way. “I write a story to give them a fantasy, and then I ruin it all with reality. Come now,” he said and leaned again down to Douglas. “Let’s eat some lunch and then explore the woods. Who knows what we will find there.”

“Mr. Beaver?” Douglas asked with a shy smile.

“You rebound well, son.” Jack patted him on the head as if he’d had ten of his own sons and knew the language and warmth involved, and I loved him all the more.

Mrs. Miller moved about us, fluffing her skirts and talking of food and wanting to show us our rooms.

“Look there,” Jack said to my boys. “You got her all in a kerfuffle.”

We laughed, but the nervousness in the pit of my belly began again, rising in a delicious and devastating mixture of love and yearning.




After the boys had been shown around the house, Jack announced, “I must pick up some papers at school. How about your first outing to Magdalen?”

“But I want to see the pond and the forest,” Douglas said with such petulance that I felt a hot blush rise in my cheeks.

“Oh, you will have plenty of that. We have four days ahead of us,” Jack said. “But first things first.”

“Because,” I said with a deep voice and a terrible imitative British accent, “you can’t get second things by putting them first.”

Jack smiled. I’d quoted a line from one of his letters. A moment of understanding passed between us—we were okay. All was well. The closeness and intimacy returned as if I’d merely left that house a fortnight ago.

“Then let’s go.” Davy pulled at my coat.

Warnie joined us and greeted me, clasping both of my hands. “It’s as if my sister has returned.”

Soon the five of us were trampling the paths and sidewalks to Oxford. Jack with his worn flannel pants and overcoat, his old fisherman’s hat low on his forehead. Warnie the same. With every step they poked the ground with walking sticks and then suddenly, every fourth or fifth step, swung the stick both up and back before letting it sweep onto the ground again. I wondered if they knew their own rhythm.