In that summer of 1955, barely did I register what went on in America anymore: there was Elvis and the civil rights uprisings. There was talk of the US sending troops to Vietnam, and Senator McCarthy finally ending his hunt for Communists. Meanwhile in England, Winston Churchill had resigned in April; Tollers’s The Lord of the Rings had been released and was making the huge splash it was meant to make. Yet I was immersed in the Middle-earth of the Kilns, as if nothing else were happening. The soil felt as I did—ready for more and more of what had already been born.
My writing was also fertile. I’d sold a proposed new work about the seven deadly sins called The Seven Deadlies to Stoddard and Houghton—telling them that the virtues become deadly when they become self-righteous. I had the idea to write of a protagonist who was a modern Pharisee, an intellectual prig who presented himself at heaven’s gate for admission.
None of it felt like work: the correspondence I helped Jack with every morning, the editing and indexing for Warnie, and typing for them both. I’d also finally sold pages of Queen Cinderella under the title The King’s Governess. And the English version of Smoke on the Mountain was actually selling copies （probably due to Jack’s name on the cover）。 Jack had adjusted to Cambridge, and the free time, more than he’d had at Oxford, allowed his writing to flow.
We gloried in the summer weather. We swam in the Thames at Godstow, slightly snockered and accompanied by a swan. Even the half-mile walk to and from the grocery could not tamp down my happiness. Jack paid the food bills, and I cooked for all of us; it felt surreal and dreamy.
We’d come to be dear friends with Jack’s pal Austin Farrer, whom he introduced to me as “one of my co-debaters in the Socratic Club, and the Warden at Keble College.” But of course, as with anyone, Austin was more than his introduction; he was a dear friend to Jack, and his wife, Kay, was a mystery writer. We hit it off over our very first whiskey, and now she paid me to type the handwritten pages for her novels. We lingered long hours over finished dinners and empty glasses with Austin and Kay.
One black and loathsome cloud rested over all this beauty, one I’d kept from Jack: the British Office was niggling around on renewing my paperwork. If they didn’t agree to renew, I would have to return to America. The only way to stay was if I married a citizen. I needed to find a lawyer, write a letter, something, anything. I could not return to the States. I wouldn’t. I would do whatever needed to be done.
For me, bad news always seemed to arrive in the middle of the most tranquil moments.
“Mummy,” Douglas had asked in his thoroughly English accent only an hour before, “what is that?” He poked with his muddy shoe at my satchel on the floor where the certified letter poked up, its official document obvious among the typed pages and scribbled notes.
I shoved it deeper into the bag. “Nothing to worry about,” I lied. Just the British government informing me that my work visa was over, and unless I was married to a citizen it was back to Dante’s Inferno with me.
I was deep into typing the final edited pages of Bareface in Jack’s Kilns study one August afternoon, still not having told him. Outside my sons were laughing, and the merriness swooped to the open window like a bird. They were helping Paxford clear the garden for more summer planting, setting netting over the tomato plants.
In a repeat of last year, Warnie was again too sick with the drink to journey to Ireland with Jack. I’d encouraged Warnie to go to AA. It had been one of our very few disagreements, a lengthy and heated discussion by the pond. In the end, he agreed to go to a hygienic bastille in Dumfries, Scotland, but no AA.
Again it was the four of us at the Kilns for summer break—Jack, Davy, Douglas, and I.
I took that contemptible letter from my bag just as the ringing phone in Jack’s house startled me with its coarse sound. I answered. “Mr. Lewis’s residence.”
“I’m calling for a Miss Davidman,” the voice replied in a crisp English accent.
“Speaking.” I stood to look out the window and watched Davy run off to the pond.
“This is Dutton Publishing. Please hold for the production manager for Surprised by Joy. Mr. Lewis has told us to direct all questions about production to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll hold.”
Jack’s voice rose to the window. “Get cleaned up, Davy. It’s the most dreaded time of the day.”
Latin tutoring.
Davy’s polite voice responded with words I didn’t understand, and Douglas called that he was off to fish.