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.
I heard Douglas’s voice float over the air.
“Mommy said I could ask you something.”
“What is it, son?” Jack’s walking stick clicked against a rock and he stopped to face Douglas, just as I imagined he would a graduate student with his thesis.
“Is it true that your gardener is Puddleglum?”
Jack’s laughter startled Douglas, and he jumped. “It is true only that I made Puddleglum very much like Paxford. But Paxford is just Paxford. Wonderful in his own way.”
Warnie and I lagged behind and talked of his Sun King book, the help I’d given him with the appendix, and how much we had left to do.
“It must be the travel and the getting settled into a new life, but I’m exhausted,” I said. “Look at them up there, practically running.”
“You’ve been through so much, Joy. Be gentle.”
I smiled at him, and we continued in amiable silence as if I’d never left, as if it were another day of many we’d been together. In my mind, London and Oxford pitted themselves against each other, the war-torn remnants of London still as yet unmended while Oxford’s nature and hills shimmered in their wintry mix. We made our way toward Magdalen campus, and my heart hammered in my chest.
Davy and Douglas, red-faced and full of laughter, ran to my side.
“Mommy,” Douglas said, and pointed to the sky and Magdalen tower as we drew closer to campus. “Mr. Lewis said we could climb the tower to the very top. You must go with us.”
“Must I?”
“Yes, you must,” Jack said.
Warnie stayed below, and the rest of us climbed a narrow staircase with marble stairs smooth as silk. We walked in a single line, and still the stone walls were close. Jack climbed ahead of me. I would only have to reach forward and touch his hairline at the back of his neck to know what his skin felt like on my fingertips. I couldn’t stop the first thought, but I could stop the second, or whatever came next. And I did.
We reached the top, out of breath, only to find a little ladder that still must be climbed. Gingerly, step-by-step, up the ladder until we reached the top overlooking all of Oxford. Warnie stood below us on the lawn peering up with a smile.
“Hello down there,” Davy called out.
Warnie couldn’t hear, but waved as if trying to take flight. The boys then pointed outward at the expanse of grass rolling toward the river.
“What is that?” Douglas asked.
“The deer park,” I told him.
“Deer park? Deer live in a park?” Davy placed his little hand over his brows to squint into the winter sun.
“Yes,” Jack said. “They are fallow deer and will come right up to you.”
Douglas nearly jumped a step closer to Jack. “They will come right to me?”
“Yes, they will.”
“Let’s go!” Douglas was already moving toward the ladder down.
“Let’s stand here for a moment and look out,” I said. “Make it worth the climb.”
“Oh, Mommy,” Douglas said, as if I were the child. “We can just climb right back.”
Jack glanced at me, and together we laughed heartily. “Yes, Douglas, we can just climb right back,” Jack said.
Yet off they ran, my sons, around the tower to view the campus from every angle: the river as it curved to give the illusion that one was standing between two rivers, Addison Walk and the scrolled iron gates. Puffs of cold breath came from the robed professors bustling through the grounds, as if from invisible cigarettes. My sons craned their necks to spy each stone gargoyle and angel that bolstered the grand buildings. The other colleges appeared as miniature countries, each with its own castle and tower. Far off in the distance, the Headington hills rose and undulated like waves in the sea we’d just recently crossed.
Jack and I were alone for the first time. “Your letters,” I said. “They gave me both sustenance and courage.”
“Yours do the same for me, Joy.”
“From the very beginning; from the first one.” He lowered his eyes. Such raw emotion always a thing he looked away from.
“Are you writing now?” Jack asked as the boys passed us for the fifth time.
“Between the move and the boys underfoot and finding a decent place to live in London, I haven’t had much time for the writing itself,” I said. “I was just talking to Warnie about helping him with the index for his Sun King. But first I must get the children settled.”
“Dane Court, you decided?” Jack asked.
“Yes. I’m hoping to find enough money from Bill when I return to London in a few days. Thank you for your suggestions. I chose the school partly because it’s the only one that doesn’t whack the children. Not that I haven’t whacked them a few times myself.” I smiled with a tinge of regret.
Jack laughed as the boys whizzed past us one more time, this time grabbing at my coat to pull me toward the ladder. “The deer!” Davy said. “Let’s go see the deer.”
“I cannot imagine how anyone could become aggravated enough to whack these boys. They are full of beans.”
“Exhausting, aren’t they?” I asked.
His smile and a tip of his hat was his only reply.
Together we walked down the winding staircase, and instead of taking my breath, this time the stairs slaughtered my knees, but our voices continued in conversation.
“Joy, I have an education fund for children who can’t afford the public schooling. The Agape Fund. If you’re in a bind, I’m here to help.” His voice echoed off the stone wall, rolling down the stairwell.
I stopped midstep and turned around to face to him. “That is generous and kind, but I’m not here to take your money.”
“Joy, I have reserved it for children’s education—it’s already there. You aren’t taking anything that I haven’t already given. It will be used for the same purpose, whether your sons use it or not.”
I placed my hands over my heart. “Thank you, Jack. If Bill doesn’t come through, that gives me tremendous peace of mind. But know I won’t use it unless I must.” I continued on down the stairwell, holding tightly to the rail.
We made it to the bottom and then to the deer park, where Jack opened the gate to let us all in. Warnie joined us again.
“Do you miss home?” he asked quietly as we watched the boys drawing close to a fawn with Jack.
“I don’t.” I pulled my hat lower and my coat closer around my body. “No. I don’t miss New York at all.”
“We’re glad to have you here,” Warnie said. “And your sons. They’ll bring life to the house.”
“The Kilns,” I admitted, “feels more like home than anything in New York has for a long time.”
“Well, Joy, it’s ours to share with you.”
“I hope they adapt well.” I stared off, watching them run. “I took a chance bringing them here—it might not work. But it was one I had to take. I had to try.”
“That’s the best we can all do,” Warnie said. “Try.”