“If you did, I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” I said. “We all have two faces. I wrote about it—”
He interrupted me. “In ‘The Longest Way Around.’”
I smiled. Toller’s apparent rejection was losing its energy. “Yes. My false face. It can get in the way. I don’t see God as magic; you know that. I wanted my conversion to escort some change into my life, but sadly I think I’m essentially the same. Only with God. My masks remain. Anger still bursts out before I can stop it. I built my masks readily and with such skill that I believe they lock into place when I’m unaware and nervous. It can be blisteringly difficult to show one’s real face.”
“Perhaps it’s a lifetime’s work.” He covered his face with both hands and then peeked around them to make me laugh.
“What do you see?” I braved the question.
“A brilliant mind,” he said with force and slapped his hand on the table. “Take a gander around, Joy. There’s none like yours. Maybe some men can’t admire you for your manly virtues the way I can. Your intelligence and forthrightness.”
His words were concrete on my chest. “My manly virtues?” Tears sprang to my eyes, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. “Jack, how would you like me to extol you for your womanly virtues?”
His face fell, his jowls seeming to settle farther over his tight collar. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his forehead. “It’s not exactly what I meant. I can be a bumbling fool.”
“You can’t see me as a woman, can you?”
“It’s not so easy as that, or as simple, Joy. The book I’m working on . . .” His voice trailed off.
“It’s always the work with us.” I took a deep breath and softened it. “Don’t talk about your work. Tell me how you feel. Even in Screwtape Letters you didn’t include emotions—just will, intellect, and fantasy. What are your feelings?”
He bent his head, considering. “Like you, I find my way through such things on paper. But how I feel is that there are four kinds of love. And you and I are the luckiest kind.”
“Yes,” I said. “Philia.”
“From storge to philia—we are indeed blessed.” Then with a great laugh he leaned forward conspiratorially, as if we were in on the same joke. “And no matter my feelings, Joy, you are married.” He paused before adding with a smile. “And I prefer blondes anyway.”
It was a joke meant to soften the blow, but it did not. “I don’t believe you always know your effect on others.” I settled back in my chair. “Or maybe you don’t want others to affect you as you keep up that armor of words and wit.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did you know that Vogue magazine called you the most powerful force in Oxford? They wrote of your huge following and your large crowds. And you sit here and act as if your words have no impact.”
“I don’t read Vogue.” He tried to smile. “And I don’t intend to be callous, Joy. I was aiming for levity and missed by a few miles.”
I was saved from further humiliation as Warnie returned to our table. I attempted to be light and playful. Finally the night grew darker, and I said, “I have an early train. Here we must say bye for now.”
The three of us stood, and Warnie made me promise to return. Jack strolled outside with me. Facing each other in the darkened night, he slid his hand into his coat and withdrew a book.
“I have something for your boys.” He held out to me a first edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. “I signed it to Davy and Douglas.”
I eased the book from his hand and clasped it against my chest as if it were a warm ember. “Jack, this is such a generous gift. They will adore it. I’ve read it to them more times than can be counted, and I know that Douglas especially wanders into the woods and hopes to find Narnia.”
“Then maybe he will find it,” Jack said.
A light rain began; the mist glazed my cheeks with a chill that would settle into my bones until I crawled into bed with the hot water bottle. “When I think of Oxford, I shall remember so much, Jack. But the rain will always be a part of it.” I stuffed the book into my bag, protecting it.
“Remember Oxford? As if you won’t return?”
I wiped the wetness from my face and manufactured a smile, hiding the sadness of leaving.
“You must come back,” he said. “Warnie and I insist. We’d like you to join us for the Christmas holidays, if you don’t mind staying in a bachelor’s home with rattling pipes and inadequate heating. But we do have a roaring fire and books to your heart’s content, and Oxford at Christmas is quite charming.” Jack opened a black umbrella and held it over me as the rain quickened. “Or will you have sailed back across the pond by then?”