I followed him inside and slowly up the stairs, my caliper making a noise like a hammer on wood with each step. His bed, now ours, waited for our bodies to rest and to make love. Coming together was slow and luxurious and only ours, never to be shared or talked about in the world. On our soft pillows, my body long against his, skin on skin, I rested my head on his shoulder and a righteous grace overwhelmed us both.
We had traveled our individual and secret roads to this destination, both with our childhood mystical hints of nature that followed us—in a small box of moss brought to him by his brother or an ice-laden forest in a Bronx park for me. The signposts and messages along the way had been palpable and evident in hindsight—the lions I’d been drawn to all my life and his Aslan; my Fairyland and his North; George MacDonald and mythology; our lives intercepted and interrupted by the Hound of Heaven; our poetry, our writing, and our reading—all pointing to this one moment in time: Kairos.
But how could I have known how to read those hints and messages? They’d been scattered across many years. Only now did I know. Only now.
“I love you, Clive Staples Lewis.”
“I love you, Helen Joy Lewis,” he said. “For as long as we have. For as well as I can.”
EPILOGUE
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.
When he bares his teeth winter meets its death.
And when he shakes his mane we shall have Spring again.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. LEWIS
Grace does not tell us how long we have in our life, or what comes next—that’s why grace is given only in the moment. Unmerited mercy is never earned.
After that June evening in our Kilns garden, against all doctors’ prognoses, I was gifted three more years with Jack, three more years with my sons and my friends and the very earth that drew me to God. Three more years until I clung to the great Lion, buried my face in his mane, and dropped to my knees in surrender.
Much has been written and told of those three years when Jack and I were husband and wife. I didn’t deserve it: the ecstasy in the pain, the redemption of the past, love that surpassed all understanding. But God and Love don’t dole out their gifts on merit.
Our bodies slowly healed and came together in the love and passion I’d dreamt of for all those years, but more so. There are experiences that even imagination can give no due. No sonnet or words of lovelorn pity can draw one to love as our bodies were finally able. As Jack once wrote, Eros has naked bodies. Friendship naked personalities.
We celebrated our honeymoon in Ireland a year and a half after I’d been sent to the Kilns to die. Boarding the plane, we laughed that we had once vowed never to step foot in one of those dangerous monstrosities—oh, how love changes things. His childhood best friend, Arthur, picked us up at the airport with congratulations and a hearty laugh. It was obvious he was thrilled to see his true friend in love and married. Jack and I cozied up at the Old Inn in Crawfordshire. It was there that I met his storytelling and gregarious extended family, feeling left out at times but surrounded by love. My eyes soaked in the exquisite landscape of the Emerald Isle Jack loved. I was able to walk more than a mile by then, and we relished each day in what I called Gift Time and “unconvenanted mercy.”
When we returned, Jack performed a series of radio addresses that so shocked the conservative American station that they banned his teachings on the four loves and sex! Oh, my man telling the world that “the roughness, even fierceness of some erotic play is harmless and wholesome.” Laughter, he said, “is the right response of all sensible lovers.” It wasn’t quite what they expected to hear from him.
In those years I planted the garden with Paxford and cooked with Mrs. Miller. I redecorated, updated, and renovated the Kilns while rejoicing in nourishing friendships. Jack, Warnie, and I laughed and read and wrote, seeking the most out of every day as well as we could, as often as we could. Thanks to Jack’s resolute love, Bill was unable to take our sons back to America, and our little family flourished at the Kilns. Belle and the Walshes came to visit, as did my parents and others, encouraging my heart as well as my body. I had reconciled with my brother, but I never saw him again.
As much as we could, Jack and I sneaked away for private weekends in cozy inns, understanding the Damocles sword that swung above our heads, ever making the time more valuable, palpable with grace and thrumming with desire.
Toward the end we flew to Greece, the land of our beloved myths, where we climbed the Acropolis and drank the finest wines with friends. It was our last journey together.