“Children?”
“From London,” he says.
“Like in your book!” I feel the thrill of solving a problem. This is a direct line, an answer, an equation solved. The children in Mr. Lewis’s book came from London to live with a professor. The children in World War II came from London to the Kilns. I settle back in my chair with a self-satisfied smile.
He sees it and laughs, as if he knew all along this next story might satisfy my logic.
*
Later that afternoon, I wait for the train at Oxford station, the floor slick with melted snow from the hustling feet of those rushing to the platform to catch their trains. I glance at the flicking tiles on the board announcing the time and platform of each train, at the cart of sandwiches and beers, at the stand with the bitter tea I love sipping on the way home. I think of Mr. Lewis stepping off the train at this station and walking out the opposite side of the building and into the wrong town. How disappointed he must have been! There is a slide of disappointment when a self-told story doesn’t match what you encounter. But then there can also be a wonderful surprise when despair changes to rejoicing merely by turning around.
I hand my ticket to the conductor in the blue uniform. I walk onto the platform just as the black hulk of train approaches, sliding to a full stop and breathing out like a smoker with a deep cough.
I slide into my seat, and a woman with a large red hat and a wide smile sits across from me. She unwraps her sandwich, and just as she opens her mouth to speak to me, I lift the book I brought with me to block all conversation. Thinking of George, I have no desire to engage with her right now. I’m always within two breaths of crying. I hold myself together by being alone. Her long exhale tells me of her disappointment, but I want to read Spirits in Bondage, Mr. Lewis’s book of poetry from the war, the book he published under the name Clive Hamilton when he was twenty years old.
He’d done so much at twenty: fought in a war and written a poetry book. It makes me wonder what I will have accomplished when I am twenty. What will become of me?
On this day, Mr. Lewis told me stories about the wartime London bombing, Operation Pied Piper, the friendships that changed his life, and a peculiar literary group called the Inklings, which was the anchor for so many of those friendships.
After I left him, I ran by the library and quickly wrote in my notebook what I could recall from his stories. Then I checked out two books to carry home: his book of poetry and a history book that includes information on Dunluce Castle. If I can’t take George to Ireland, which of course I can’t, I’ll take Ireland to him.
Eager to read, I turn a page in Mr. Lewis’s poetry book. I want to compare his younger self to the man who wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I begin to read the lines:
Woe unto you, ye sons of pain that are this Day in earth
Now cry for all your torment; now curse your hour of birth.
I am stunned at the poem’s misery. Jolly Mr. Lewis hardly seems the kind of man to write of such despair. I have heard that war changes people, but I can’t quite put together these pieces of his biography.
My mind wanders as the landscape passes by: villages glistening in snow and cows roaming wire-fenced fields, lifting wet noses at the sound of the train. When I finally arrive home, after taking the long way along the River Severn to watch it never give up its incessant journey, the sun is sinking. Mum waits in the kitchen with warm bread and a bowl of lamb stew. I shed my clothes and drop my satchel onto the table before hugging her so tightly that she lets go first.
I sink onto the chair and begin to gobble the dinner, realizing I haven’t eaten since the porridge early that morning before I caught the train at dawn. After I finish, Mum and I sit in amiable silence as sleet ticks against the windows. Day slinks toward night.
“Why did you return to Oxford today, dear? Are you concerned about your marks?”
I look up and shake my head. “Not at all. Have you been worried about that all day, Mum? I thought I told you; I took Mr. Lewis up on his offer to come to his rooms and tell me a few last stories.”
“You didn’t let this silly storytelling ruin your status at Somerville, then, aye?”
“Mum.” I pause because I want my words to be real and true. I want her to understand that although I had been the first to call Mr. Lewis’s stories silly, I no longer can. Indeed, I am well aware they have changed me. I don’t yet know how, but I want to convey this without worrying her.
She waits patiently, a wide-open space of love between us.
Finally I say, “It’s not silly.”
She nods, stands, then absently wipes the counter.
“I might have thought so too,” I say. “But there is something in his stories, Mum. Answers without answers.”
“You know that makes no sense, right, my dear Margaret Louise?”
“I know it sounds like it makes no sense.” I put down my teacup and dig into my satchel to bring out my notebook. “Look. It’s full of stories. Why would such an important man spend so much time with me if it weren’t meaningful? He wouldn’t do this if it meant nothing, if it were silly.”
Mum takes the notebook from me and opens it smack in the middle, reads a few lines quietly and looks as if she wants to say something, but George’s voice interrupts. He’s calling for us, and after a few steps down the hallway we are both at his side. I sit next to him in the chair and Mum perches at the end of his bed. She still holds my notebook open and continues our discussion.
“You’ve written all of this.” It is not a question.
“Only as much as I can remember. Mr. Lewis and I walk and we have tea and I can’t take notes, so some of it might not be exact, but it’s all true.”
“Why would he waste his time telling you about things like”—she runs her finger down the page—“a horrible boy who teases him in public school?”
George pipes in now with a sincere laugh that is his alone. “Maybe because that’s what Edmund is like when he teases Lucy about finding Narnia. Maybe the cruel boy who tortured Mr. Lewis for not being good at football shows up in Narnia as Edmund.”
Mother and I lift our brows, and Mother walks to the head of the bed, leans down, and kisses his forehead. “My brilliant son.”
I look at George and say, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
He sits up straight, then swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “Did he tell you more stories when you went to Oxford today?”
“He did, and I’m afraid these are the last. I can save one until Christmas.”
“We don’t know such things! He might tell you more.” He suddenly sounds to my ears like Mr. Lewis himself. “Now tell me everything,” he orders.
Eighteen
The First Start
Megs settles back in her chair and opens that black notebook that George has come to love so much. Its pages chronicle a man who turned all he was and all he is into a magical story about Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.
Mum leaves the room to clean up the dinner dishes and Megs begins to read. “Now we skip all the way to World War II. There were, astonishingly, only a little more than twenty years between the two wars. This means that men who fought in the First World War could fight again in the next, or their sons or their brothers or their nephews would be fighting in it.”