Jack made a snorting sound and stood to stretch. “I’ve never claimed to be a theologian.” He shook his head. “Now let’s walk off this hill to a decent pub. A beer is due us.”
As we descended, Warnie piped up. “Where to next for you, Joy?”
“Well, I’m here for another week.” I stopped at a switchback to catch my breath and ease the ache in my knees. “Then I’ll travel to Worcester, where my king lost his battle at Powick Bridge. Then on to Edinburgh to dig into the library archives.”
“Worcester!” Warnie turned to Jack. “Isn’t that where the Matley Moores live?”
“It is,” Jack said. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.” He turned to me. “Dear old friends of ours who might give you accommodation.”
“Oh, that would be simply wonderful,” I said. “To save what little money I have.”
“Consider it done.” Jack nodded, and then we slowly walked down the hill, the sun at our backs warming us. We reached town and collapsed onto the hard benches of a nearby tavern, guzzling our thick brown beer eagerly. Warnie ordered pork pies, and we dived into them with abandon.
“Pubs might be the greatest invention of the English,” I said, basking in the warmth and the smell of whiskey and fried food.
“You think so?” Warnie asked. “Not pork pies or the pencil or the electric telegraph?”
I almost sputtered against my glass. “The pencil?”
“Yes.” Jack nodded seriously. “In Cumbria in the 1500s, or so Oldie told us.”
“Then yes, the pencil is grand, and after that, the stories. What is it,” I asked, “that makes British stories so much better? Or am I just being seduced at every angle?”
“You are being seduced,” Jack said and reached his arms across the back of his chair.
Our glances caught and then slid away. I swore he blushed at his blunder.
“But what do you believe is the difference in the stories?” Warnie asked and motioned to the waitress for another beer.
“Your stories, the English I mean, contain magic. Mysticism. Our American stories are more realistic. You know, Tom Sawyer for us, Mary Poppins for you. That kind of thing. The day-to-day– ness in our American stories weaves a tale but doesn’t transport. Nothing pragmatic about your George MacDonald and The Light Princess. And that extraordinary Phantastes, nothing like it in the world.”
“Phantastes changed my life,” Jack said simply. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it did.”
We’d written about this, but how much better it was to talk about it. There was no comparison.
“I felt the same.” I slugged back another gulp of beer to dull the throbbing of my blistered feet. “Tell me,” I said and lifted my drink too eagerly, splashing it onto my face and into my eye, causing both men to laugh.
“Oh, laugh at me, but look at you,” I said and leaned forward to wipe a fleck of crust from Jack’s chin.
Warnie coughed. “That’s what happens when old bachelors live together. We don’t notice when food has fallen onto our faces.”
I nodded. “Well, that’s what happens when a woman gets excited. She spills beer in her eye.”
Jack smiled, falling back into reverie. “Phantastes. I found it in a bookshop at Great Bookham Station on my way back to school one lonely afternoon. One shilling and a penny was what I paid for it. I, who have no head for money, remember exactly what it cost.” He wiped at his chin with his napkin, as if to make sure nothing remained.
In a gust of emotion, I wanted to travel with him to that train station. I wanted to be with that lonely boy when he found the book that baptized his imagination.
He smiled at me. “You weren’t yet born.”
“Not yet,” I agreed.
He continued. “Only now do I know to call the experience of reading that book, holy. Books can help make us who we are, can’t they?” Jack settled back in his chair. “What a treasure it is to find a friend with the same experience.”
“MacDonald sees divinity in everything,” I said. “But when I first read it, I would have just said he saw magic. You do the same in your work.”
“Not like MacDonald. He was such a corking good writer. He so influenced me that I wrote my first poem in answer.”
“Dymer,” I said. “A poem you wrote at seventeen. It was Chad Walsh who showed it to me, and I loved everything about its allusions to a life of fantasy . . .” I paused and then quoted a line, one that had snagged long ago in the crevices of memory. “‘She said, for this land only did men love; The shadow-lands of earth.’” I paused. “And to think you wrote that as an atheist—how beautiful. How profound.”