And yet, not too forlorn a memory:
Oxford, autumn leaves, and you, and me
“SONNET VI,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Oxford held ancient secrets, and if I leaned close enough and was quiet, I could hear its whispers, and then maybe even hear my own. In that place I started to feel the contours and edges of my internal landscape, a world that at thirty-seven years old I’d still never quite mapped.
I saw Jack and Warnie every day during that week and a half. When we weren’t together I wandered Oxford, where I’d found a corner in Blackwell’s Bookshop to read or write until my eyes ached for nature. In my letters to home I attempted to describe the landscape, but found myself giving up and walking outside, leaving the letters unfinished on my bedside table at Victoria’s.
In New York I’d spent hours anticipating Jack’s letters—the anticipation to see him now was no less than that waiting, just more pleasant, like being hungry but smelling the meal to be served in the very next room.
For days I’d walked the paths from my room in Victoria’s house on High Street, a cramped room full of dark English furniture too big for the room, dusty and mildewy, but warm enough with her chatty companionship, to the staid elegance of Eastgate and around the green and flower-speckled perimeter of Headington. I climbed to the top of its hill and spied the hummocks and lakes below. Jack’s home—the Kilns—was a three-mile walk along Headington to Kiln’s Lane, but I didn’t venture there. I hadn’t been invited.
On Tuesday afternoon I wandered slowly to meet Jack in his rooms. Students spilled out from the heavy, carved door of Magdalen with books under arms, laughter echoing just as it had in the generations that had come before. Coasting as if I were on a punt in the Cherwell, I passed the deer park and imagined my boys, how they would run through it, battling with imaginary swords, chasing the fallow deer with the huge curved antlers. I closed my eyes and offered a prayer for my sons’ safety.
Jack’s rooms were on the third floor of the New Building, “new” meaning built in 1733. The building was a beige stone rectangle behind the quad of Magdalen proper. I strode under the arched entryways on the bottom level and then climbed the curved stairwell, worn smooth by shoes and time. I ran my hand along the cool stone wall and then found myself in front of his door—third floor, third door. Mr. C. S. Lewis stated the brass nameplate, Tutor of English Literature. I knocked timidly, and yet the door sprang open as if he’d been waiting with his hand on the knob.
“Joy!” He stepped aside. “Welcome.” He stood there with his arms spread wide, that lighthearted smile on his face, his eyes steady upon mine. He wore a dressing robe, thick gray flannel with a wide collar and striped piping at its edges. It was tied around his waist with a thin rope, and below I could spy his suit and the blue tie loosened against his throat.
He noticed my gaze wander to his dress. “My robe.” He patted his chest. “There’s only coal for warmth here, and this keeps me warm. Come in. Come in.”
I straightened my shoulders and smiled at him. “Seeing all of this is great fun. Thanks for the invitation.”
“If only my students felt the same way. You might be the only one who has ever crossed the threshold of this room and offered the word fun.”
“I will do my best to be more solemn,” I said and formed a serious expression, furrowing my brow.
“Ah, yes. Much more appropriate.”
His rooms were a trinity—a cluster of a bedroom (closed door), office, and living area. I followed him into the office, which was covered in cream-painted panels rather than the dark wood I’d imagined. Books seemed to stabilize the room. A grandfather clock ticked nearby, and an earthy-colored oriental rug covered the floor edge to edge. His desk sat in the middle of the room—simple and dark wood, a chair shoved tightly underneath. A plush upholstered chair faced the desk askew, as if glancing sideways at the work in progress.
“Is this where your student sits?” I asked and pointed to the chair.
“It is.”
“May I?”
“Please.”
I plopped down and exhaled, wiggled off my shoes and stretched my feet. “I believe I have walked all of Oxford and Headington.”
“Well then, I’m all the more glad to offer you a rest.” Jack sat at his desk chair, bordered by the fireplace behind him. Framed photos of what appeared to be either the Irish or England countryside were lined along the mantle.
Jack tapped out a cigarette from the package on his desk, lit it, and took in a long draw. He rested his right arm around the back of his chair and with his left held the cigarette across his bent knee. “I know,” he said, as if I’d rebuked him. “It’s a terrible habit, but I started at twelve and there doesn’t seem much to be done about it now.”
“Twelve?” I laughed. “However did you get away with that?”
“I got away with a lot,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“No. Not at all. I stayed out of trouble mainly because my most pleasurable activity was reading, and you can’t get in much hot water doing that. And of course I was scared to death of my father—that helps one be good as one can be.”
“Ah, fear as motivation.”
“You know, right now you look like your photo in Time magazine,” I joked with him. “Like you’re posing all over again.”
He adjusted the round spectacles on his nose. “I was much younger and thinner then.” He sprang from his chair. “Which reminds me. I have something for you.”
He walked to the bookcase, plucked a slim volume from the lineup, and extended it to me. I accepted it into my hands.
Mere Christianity.
My eyes flashed with tears, and I hoped he didn’t notice. “This book changed my life,” I told him.
“No. God changed your life. My book just jolly well appeared at the right time.”
“Yes. At the right time.” I opened the cover to the title page: For my friend, Joy Gresham. C. S. Lewis. I looked up. “It’s a first edition. Signed to me.” I gave myself away by brushing at a tear.
“Yes, it is.”
I flipped to a random page in the middle of the book and read as if he’d highlighted the words. When a man makes a moral choice two things are involved: the act and the feelings and impulses inside of him. The words rang like condemnation, and I closed the book.
“I don’t know how to thank you.” I wanted to hug him, but instead I sat primly in the chair with the book clutched between my hands. My heart, I felt it bending toward him, our friendship as intimate as any I’d ever had in my life.
“No need for thank-yous,” he said. “I’m honored the book has meant so much to you.” He stepped closer, looking down at me gently, and if it had been any other man, I would have believed it was not only admiration that emanated from his eyes, but quite possibly more. But it wasn’t any other man—it was Jack.
I pointed to his desk, where a thick pile of papers lay scattered among an inkwell, unopened letters, and a cup of half-drunk tea. “What are you working on now?”
“Oh hell,” he said with a wash of his hands over his desk. “It’s my nickname for the work that might be the very death of me. Sixteenth century—The Oxford History of English Literature, Volume Three. O.H.E.L.” He shook his head. “You see why I just give the bloody thing a nickname.”
“Indeed.” I crossed and uncrossed my legs in some attempt to find a comfortable position.
“Magdalen gave me a sabbatical to finish, but I’m covering over two hundred books—no sabbatical will do the trick.” He moved back behind his desk, crushed his cigarette in an ashtray, and immediately, in the same smooth motion, lifted a pipe from his breast pocket and a bag of tobacco from his desk drawer. “I’m also working on a college edition of Spenser and finishing the seventh, and final, Narnian adventure.”
“How do you work on so many things at once?” I asked. “My mind runs like a train with whatever project I’m working on, and I can’t jump from track to track.”
“What are you working on?”
“Seeing England,” I said with a smile.
“Of course you are. But I know you have something brewing. Your mind and pen won’t be stayed. How are those articles coming along?” As he spoke I swore his eyes glittered, the deep brown of them almost changing to dark green, the lushness of Oxford seeping into his spirit.
I glanced away to the window. “Right now I’m polishing the Fourth Commandment.”
“The Sabbath,” he said without hesitation.
“Yes. I’m calling it ‘Day of Rejoicing.’”
“I’d like to read it when you’re ready.”
“Really?” I held my hand over my heart. “My goodness. I’m happy to have you read it, yet feel tremulous with fear to even think of it,” I said in a splurge of honesty.
“Joy.” He uttered just my name. And it was so simple that a warm rush of happiness flowed over me. “I’ve read some of your poetry, and of course your conversion essay. Why would you fear anyone reading your writing?”
“Sometimes I believe I’m a better editor and helper than I am a writer. I have two novels out in the world, and neither seems to have dented many souls.” I paused in that truth. “But if you’d like me to read pages of O.H.E.L. or anything else, I’d be honored. When I’m not with you and Warnie, I’m quite bored at night in that little room, and I’ll be traveling later this week.” I took off my black grosgrain plate hat and set it on the side table, and as I did a pin fell from my hair and a lock fell over my shoulder.
Jack looked away as if my shirt had fallen off and was quiet as I pinned it back in place. When he turned back to me, he smiled. “Well, that is quite the offer, and I’ll indulge if you allow me.”
The dominating grandfather clock with three pointed bevels above it rang the hour in a sound of clashing gongs. We both startled, and Jack stood. “My, the time has flown from us, has it not?”
I glanced at the clock, a single-eyed monitor of the room, and wanted to tell its black hands to stop moving, to please allow Jack and me to sit longer, extend time.
He spoke as he tapped his pipe against his palm. “That happens between us, doesn’t it? Time takes on a different measure when friends gather, I believe.”
I donned my hat again, tilted it to the right. “Yes.”
“Well, it is a Tuesday, and I must be off to the Inklings.” He paused as he removed his robe to hang it on a hook next to the bookcase. “I have hesitated to ask, Joy, but I feel I must. Your eyes give away some sadness. Has your marriage healed at all? Are things at home improving?”
It was a subject that had to be addressed. I had written to him about the awful mess, and we couldn’t sidetrack it anymore.
“My eyes?” I asked, blinking with a meager attempt at humor.
He didn’t smile but kept his own sight steady on mine. He would not allow me to wiggle free of his question.
“No, Jack. It is not any better. I’m praying for healing and peace on this journey. What is it that King David asks?”
“‘Create in me a new heart.’” Jack stated the prayer with reverence. He took another step closer to me. “What do you say to your husband during these troubled times? When he comes home from another woman or erupts?”
“He can’t hear me, Jack. When I get upset, he asks if I’m on my period or if my shoes hurt. And then he launches into his ten million excuses.”
“Joy, I’m sorry for your troubles.”
“There’s this gap, Jack. This opening between the story it is and the story I had wanted it to be—that’s where the pain is, and that’s where God came in and where I now hope transformation can happen.”
“For too long we avoided that gap, didn’t we?”
“Yes. I turned away from it with every preoccupation known to man. But no more.” My heart opened. When had there ever been anyone I could talk to like this?
Jack donned his tattered gray fisherman’s hat, retrieved his coat from the rack by the door, and placed his hand on the doorknob. “Whenever you’d like to talk about it, you know our friendship is big enough for even the sorrow.” He opened his office door to the stone hallway.
“Thank you.” I stepped into the hall. “Please give Warnie my regards.”
I walked away, and as with each time I departed, I felt I left a piece of my heart in his hands.
Back at Victoria’s, I tweaked the poem “Ballade of Blistered Feet” (merely a way to relive that glorious day on Shotover), organized a folder of King Charles research, wrote another letter to Bill, wondering why he hadn’t written back in so long, and drank a long hot cup of tea. My mind circled back again and again to Jack’s rooms, to his bright eyes and easy manner, to his laugh and his wit, to each subtle compliment or connection. I lifted the book he’d given me and ran my finger over the inscription of my name in his handwriting.
Eventually I lifted my own pen. Some had journals; I had sonnets.
I’d been writing them for years—it wasn’t a new way to release my pent-up emotions. Through those many years the faces of “love” had changed—the sonnets weren’t meant for one man, but for the amorphous feeling of being loved and loving in return, for that moment of connection and intimacy. And yet, that night in Victoria’s guest room, the sonnets began to pulse their sentiments, like a heartbeat that had quickened, toward Jack.
Even as I wrote about the commandments, the beast in the heart is always the self and how God was a being who demanded your whole heart, I knew to protect my heart. The monster that seduced me to break the very commandments I wrote about lived and seethed inside of me. And there was no Wormwood to cast my blame upon.
“No,” I said out loud to the empty room. I would not descend into that impossible fantasy of being with Jack.
Yet reason and emotion never wedded well in me. As Blaise Pascal stated, “The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.”