I step off the bus in downtown Oxford. It is eerily quiet. Most students have gone home for holiday. Without the crowds bustling by, the stone and brick buildings seem larger, more eternal, as if they have always been there and always will be, even without us. I kick my way through a snowdrift. I want to be home by dinnertime.
I bundle my scarf and coat as tightly as I can. I’ve forgotten my hat at Mr. Lewis’s house and my hair is growing damp with the few snowflakes falling, leftovers from a swollen cloud that has already sent an inch to the ground. I shiver. I will go home and I will tell George the last of what I’ve learned today, but it doesn’t seem enough.
It will never be enough.
I pass the Bird and Baby, the pub where Mr. Lewis met with the Inklings. Through the dusty window I see a small crowd inside. I remember meeting Padraig in a pub. I thought I’d never be able to really talk to him, but now we are friends. The warmth of the light draws me forward. One pint of cider might warm me up before I get on the train.
Also, I need to catch my breath. I want to write down everything Mr. Lewis told me—the lion and the faun and the umbrella—before I forget.
When I push the wooden door and step inside, warm air rushes toward me. I brush the snow from my hair and find my way to the bar. It is dim inside, the lights low. Its wood-beamed ceiling makes me almost feel like I’m within a ship. I set my satchel on the floor and my elbows on the bar. Behind it are shelves and shelves of liquor and glasses that glisten. The bartender, a short older man with white hair and a nose that appears to have been broken a few too many times, walks over and tosses a towel over his shoulder. “What can I get you?”
“A cider, please. Warm.”
“Just the night for it,” he says.
I sit and glance around the room and see others, students who haven’t gone home yet or are local, talking to each other as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, being witty and gabbing about as if they are in a movie.
I will never be able to be like that.
Then I see him: Padraig is across the room, in a thick Irish fisherman’s sweater. It is the first time I’ve seen him without his school uniform. He’s with a crowd, and the blonde girl—the one who giggles as if it’s an art form—is hanging on his arm. Turning away, I quickly pull my notebook and pen out of my satchel and begin writing as furiously as I can, thinking about Mr. Lewis in his campus rooms, writing with an ink nib and mumbling his words out loud. My cider appears and I take a long swig, my pen moving fast.
Connections are coming to me: Mr. Lewis’s voice, his laughter, and his hints. Lucy is his goddaughter. The lion might be from dreams or from Mr. Williams’s stories. Or somewhere else. The idea had come with a picture of a faun when he was sixteen. He talked about the firmament of stars and planets.
These things begin to turn into a catalog of facts.
I am scribbling as though the world is held together by these very notes, as if the planets spin according to the correct order of all that could have contributed to the universe that is Narnia. As if I can unravel the beginnings of this world the way Einstein tries to unravel the beginning of our universe.
Padraig’s voice startles me from the writing frenzy.
“Stop!”
I come back to myself and the pub and the crowd.
Padraig swipes the notebook out from under me and begins reading it. I have made lines that connect one event or idea to another, attempting to make sense of it all: a web of scribbles and circles to show where one thing came from and how it might turn into another, proof that Mr. Lewis’s story is logical and connected to the pieces of his life and his favorite myths. This diagram of interconnectedness would make sense to no one but me.
Padraig’s gaze still on the paper, he speaks too loudly. “Lucy might be his godchild. Peter is Peter Rabbit? Edmund is Edmund Spenser?” Now he looks at me. Is it disappointment that paints his eyes? “The lions of Trafalgar Square and the Maid of the Alder?” He sighs. “Oh, Megs.”
“Give me that back,” I say as fear crawls up my neck. I am on the verge of understanding, of figuring it all out, and he will spoil my efforts.
Can I solve it?
I must!
I jump up and reach for my notebook, but Padraig is holding it over his head while still reading. Seeing how he’s five inches taller than I am, there’s not much I can do except hop off the barstool and jump up and down, looking the fool.
I stop my jumping. Take a breath. Stare at him and use my sternest voice. “Give me that. Now.”
Padraig lowers his arm and sets the notebook on the bar next to my empty cider glass. Disapproval is set hard on his face and in his green eyes. “Why do you want to ruin it all with a chart and a list? Meaning and knowledge cannot be measured or calculated like this! Mr. Lewis didn’t give you a list. He gave you these beautiful slices of his life.”
“I know all that, but it helps me think.” I want to back away from Padraig, but the bar is behind me, its edge digging into my spine through my thick green sweater.
Padraig’s full lips flatten to a thin line and his brows bend in a V. The scolding expression on his face is more powerful than any words on paper.
My brain clicks back to defiance. Of course Mr. Lewis didn’t give me the stories to make a list! But there I am, wanting to make a list. “I thought it might help George.”
“Oh, did you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You might want to rethink that.” He looks down at me, his hands on his hips.
Anger rises in a defensive heat that hurtles me off the stool. I shove my notebook into my satchel and grab my coat, squeeze past Padraig, past the students in their black turtlenecks and the girls in their red lipstick, past the wobbly Christmas tree and the wreath with the loosened red bow that hangs pitifully by a thread. I rush out the pub door into the snow and freezing air.
Anger warms me.
“Megs!” Padraig’s voice chases me, dampened and softened by the snow.
I ignore him and walk faster. I’m too frustrated to be kind; I can’t find the answers I want, and Padraig is teasing me. I do not want to be teased. At the same time, I know my anger is unrighteous, parceled out to a sweet boy who doesn’t deserve it.
I hear him slogging behind me. He reaches my side, slipping and stumbling to keep up. He grasps my arm just as we both step onto hidden ice.
Together our feet fly from beneath us. We tumble to the ground in a heap, landing in a snowdrift that had been cleared from the sidewalk.
I’m still angry. I pound my fist on his arm, my legs tangle with his, and my neck burns cold.
He grabs both my hands. “Why are you so mad with me?”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad. Just flaming mad.”
“Then why are you taking it out on me?”
I pull out of his grasp and slam my fist into the bank and attempt to sit, sliding and falling back into his chest. He laughs. I don’t.
“I’m not taking it out on you. I’m just trying to get away from you.” I wiggle until I sit up straight. Ice is melting through my wool tights, seeping cold onto my thighs.
Padraig finds his way to sitting and there we are, covered in snow. With a gloved hand, he brushes some from my cheek.
I shiver, not with the cold so much as his touch. But I will not show emotion. I have other more important matters to attend to.
“Why are you trying to get away from me?” He claps his gloves together, then takes my hands in his, easing me closer. “I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You were making fun of me. Making light of what I’m trying to do.”
“I wasn’t. What you’re trying to do is as noble a thing as any sister can do. I only meant for you to slow down and look at why you need a list. Or why you don’t need a list.”
“I was making connections—”
“You think turning imagination into logic will help George? Will that answer his most important questions? In my opinion, lists never answer the biggest questions.”
“Padraig, I don’t know. I can’t give him what he wants for Christmas. I wanted something solid. I can’t give him that either.”
“And what’s that?”
“To see Dunluce Castle.” Hearing the words come from my mouth, I want to cry. The impossibility of it all. And then Padraig, here, now, confusing me even more. I have wasted too much time and need to get home, but I tell him, “He thinks the castle is Cair Paravel in the Narnia book.”
“Let’s go!” Padraig says, his voice strong and a laugh hidden within. “I have my father’s car and I know how to get there. Let me take you both.”
“What will your girlfriend say?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“She’s just a girl you let hang all about you?”
“Are you jealous?” He winks at me, joking when I am serious. I am furious and elated. There are too many feelings at once.
“No, I’m just wondering why you would spend your holiday with us when you can be muggling with her.”
“Muggling isn’t a word.”
I push at him, trying to stand but instead managing to plop back in the snow again. “I know it isn’t a word,” I say, trying not to look ridiculous as I attempt again and slip again, failing to get off the ground. “But you know what I mean.”
“Megs, sometimes a man changes his mind when he sees the truth of things. I ask you to have a little confidence in my sincerity.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiles. “Do I need to tell you in a math equation?”
“Tell me what?”
“Let me take you and George on a grand adventure to Ireland.”
“I can’t.”
“But you can.” His face is the picture of confidence. It scares me a bit.
“And why do you even care?” I ask. I’m angry; I’m frustrated. I want to throw my arms around him and let him hold me until I stop shaking, and at the same time I want to push him away. All the feelings are banging up against each other, fighting for first position. “What does it matter to you at all?”
“Megs, are you dotty?”
“Most likely.”
“I care because I care about you.”
Time freezes. The winter evening’s steady course toward night pauses. Something is about to happen, and I’m fairly sure what it is.
Padraig leans forward and his lips are on my lips, kissing me. I’ve imagined kissing in an abstract way, something that would one day happen. But not in a snowbank outside a pub.
My first kiss.
I’ve been waiting for it and expecting it, even as it totally surprises me. I close my eyes.
Padraig pulls me closer, and there’s nothing in the world but the feel of his lips on mine. I have a giddy sense of rightness and goodness that has nothing to do with logic or lists or facts.
“Whoop, whoop!” a voice calls out, and a chorus of others laugh in return as a group of students stumble past.
The kiss and the moment are over.
“That was Megs Devonshire,” says a girl.
“And Padraig Cavender,” says another.
“Miss Prissy Lane won’t be too pleased,” says the first girl. The laughing resumes until it turns into a group singing a rough ballad about a farmer and a milkmaid. The gaggle of students round the corner to High Street.
Embarrassment floods me. Me, Margaret Louise Devonshire, canoodling in the middle of a snowbank. I jump up, slip, banging my elbow against the curb so rightly that electric shocks run up my arm and I cry out.
Padraig stands slowly and carefully, reaching his hand down to pull me up. I face him and shake out my arm. “I must go, Padraig. Please don’t follow me.”
And off I go. He doesn’t follow, just as I’d asked.