The world tasted fragrant and new
When we climbed over Shotover Hill
“BALLADE OF BLISTERED FEET,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Shotover Hill rose from Oxford like the breast of a woman in recline. Jack, Warnie, and I began our hike in silence, our conversation lulling and beginning again like waves. Through bracken-covered slopes we walked; blackbirds and wrens swept above us. The brothers swung their walking sticks in a step-step-swing-step rhythm, swatting at nettles and pushing rocks or debris from the path for me to pass. We climbed the hill and our breathing synchronized.
With the physical exertion, logical thoughts fell away, unspooling and leaving nothing but sensation and the bliss of nature’s quiet. Jack had already told me that it was a mistake to combine talking and walking—the noise obscuring the sounds of nature. So through switchbacks and jagged turns, soft heather swept us forward. When we reached the top, all out of breath, we stood above the patchwork of valleys and rivers, ponds and forest, an area called South Oxfordshire.
“A land fashioned of someone’s fairy tale,” I murmured, out of breath as we reached the top. The sunlight settled on me with such warmth as I sat on the ground, my knees tented to rest my hands.
“Yes,” Warnie said. “It does seem so from here, does it not?” He took in a deep breath and bent over to clasp his knees. “But it’s just plain ole Oxford.”
“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.”
“Not yet,” I agreed.
He continued. “Only now do I know to call the experience of reading that book, holy. Books can help make us who we are, can’t they?” Jack settled back in his chair. “What a treasure it is to find a friend with the same experience.”
“MacDonald sees divinity in everything,” I said. “But when I first read it, I would have just said he saw magic. You do the same in your work.”
“Not like MacDonald. He was such a corking good writer. He so influenced me that I wrote my first poem in answer.”
“Dymer,” I said. “A poem you wrote at seventeen. It was Chad Walsh who showed it to me, and I loved everything about its allusions to a life of fantasy . . .” I paused and then quoted a line, one that had snagged long ago in the crevices of memory. “‘She said, for this land only did men love; The shadow-lands of earth.’” I paused. “And to think you wrote that as an atheist—how beautiful. How profound.”
Jack’s ruddy face turned ruddier, his smile crooked and his eyes averted. “Thank you, Joy.”
“Yes,” Warnie said, and we both looked at him as if we’d forgotten he was there at all. We were deep in our cups, but Warnie, I realized, was sloshed. Adorably so, but sozzled.
For an hour, or maybe it was longer, I lost track of time. The three of us talked about our favorite books, what had influenced our childhoods and our minds, and most importantly what had ignited our imaginations. Our voices grew quiet as we drew closer and closer to each other.
When our yawns overcame our words, we rose to leave. Outside, rain thrashed the sidewalks, blurring the sky with a waterfall veil. Gray skies and bent tree limbs, leaves loosening from their final anchor and swaying to the ground, socked us in. Yet there was nothing in that moment that could dampen my soul. Water dripped into my shoes, filling them as if I’d waded into Crum Elbow Creek.
We bade a soggy farewell with promises of tomorrow. I made it to my little room and collapsed wet as a fish, exhausted but satiated. Before I allowed sleep to steal the memories of the day, I took pen to page and started to write “Ballade of Blistered Feet.”
But my mind was restless. Away from Jack and Warnie, I was back in the guest room, where a letter from Bill sat on my bedside table. My other life rushed in like a tidal wave.
Bill:
Thanks for the story suggestions. I’m working hard to get something together. The boys are doing well and they have enclosed letters here. Davy now has turtles and Douglas is building a fort down at the creek. Renee is keeping us all together—I don’t know what we would do without her. Right now she is mending the boys’ clothes.
Joy:
Dear Collection of Poogles,
I miss you! I wish you could see the complex splendor of this city. I could never, ever grow tired of Oxford and its towering buildings and moss-covered stone. I don’t miss London at all but for the chummy friend I’ve found in Michal Williams. I pray every day for all of you and hope that things are getting better there financially. Bill, once you set your mind to it, I know you’ll find the right story. You have always been talented this way.
P.S. Will you please send my thyroid meds, and a copy of “Longest Way Around”?
As I readied for bed and thought of my sons, I sent a prayer to cover them with love. Oh, how I wanted them to see everything I’d seen that day, let them touch the heather that ran across Shotover Hill, have them feel the rain soft on their faces, raise a kite in the wind at the top of the hill.
Putting the pen and paper aside, I gave up on the poem that memorialized the day. I drew the pillow close—all that was soft for me to hold.