Warnie’s laughter echoed through the room as we sat to eat. “It seems there isn’t much our American friend can’t do.”
“Oh, there’s plenty,” I said. With that I turned my attention to him. “Tell me, Warnie, what are you working on? What are you writing now?”
“I’m toiling away on a book about Louis XIV, the Sun King. Probably not of much interest to you, but an exceeding obsession to me.” He sounded so like Jack that I felt a kinship I was not due.
“Not of interest to me?” I asked. “Well lordy! I’m working on a book about Charles II, and my Lord Orrery, whom I wrote my thesis about for Columbia, sat in the House of Commons at the very same time as your king.”
And we were off into the world of history as if Jack weren’t there at all. We talked about France and kings and battles. We chatted about research and how difficult it was to write history that had long ago disappeared and left only hints of its life for us to unravel.
Soon Jack joined in our conversation and we returned to the present. I reached to take another bite of my grilled sausages and tomatoes and noticed that Jack had polished off every bite on his plate.
“Am I a slowpoke?” I glanced at Warnie. “I’m sorry. Do you have someplace you need to be? I’ve been talking too much.”
“No!” Jack stated with a loud voice, his hands held in supplication. “It is a problem of mine. I eat too fast. I blame it on Oldie.”
“The horrid headmaster at your old boarding school,” I said, remembering a story from one of his letters.
“You know?” Warnie asked.
“Not very much, but some.” I glanced at Jack. Was I betraying a confidence?
Jack placed his fork over his empty plate, lit a cigarette. “We were in great trouble if we didn’t finish our meals on time or finish at all. It led to this terrible habit of gobbling, which I’ve tried to no avail to break.”
“That or he’s just itching for his cigarette,” Warnie said with a laugh.
“Well, I will savor mine.” I took an exaggeratedly slow bite, the tomato juice dripping onto the plate.
They laughed, as I’d hoped. After a few moments passed and I pushed my plate away, Jack asked, “Shall we walk to the deer park perhaps?”
“That sounds smashing,” I said with a terrible false English accent.
“Then off we go.” The bells of Magdalen rang again, chiming out the hour, the rich ring of sacrament.
Enveloped in the soft buzz of sherry and companionship, Jack, Warnie, and I exited the dining room onto the great lawn. Men ambled past with pipes and cigarettes, books tucked under their arms. Grass leached its green to the coming winter, turning the brunette color of fine hair, and yet the leaves fell, adorning the lawn’s nakedness. Students sat in clusters on blankets, books scattered around.
Jack pointed at a long rectangular building ahead of us across the lawn. “That is where my rooms are.” He swung his walking stick and headed away from the building and under the iron archway we’d passed through the day before. The three of us sauntered slowly across the small stone bridge, a miniature version of the larger Magdalen Bridge across the street, and onto Addison’s Walk and to the deer park.
Warnie walked next to me as a speckled fawn sauntered across the lawn, looking over her shoulder.
“My boys will love this,” I whispered before I realized I’d spoken aloud, a prayer or incantation for the future. “Those eyes of the deer,” I said. “As if they are looking at just us, so round and brown.”
“Like yours,” Jack said so matter-of-factly that it took me longer than it should to seize upon his statement.
“Mine?”
He didn’t answer, as if he’d already forgotten what he said. He walked ahead of us with his walking stick in sway. Warnie and I caught up to him; I already felt the blisters forming in the shoes I’d worn for beauty, not comfort.
“In the forties,” I said, “I spent a few months in Hollywood trying to be a screenwriter. The only screenplay that was nearly filmed was about fawns.” I watched the little deer before us as it sprang forward into the underbrush. “I borrowed Kipling’s white deer theme.”
“How very clever of you,” Warnie said. “Why was it never made?”
“Well, we had a director, but deer are mighty hard to find in Hollywood. If I’d known how to import them, I would have. But my powers have their limits.”
They both laughed.