The pews, dark wood and shining in the dim light, were lined to face an altar and stained glass window of Christ with his hands spread wide. The simplicity of this church compared to the grand cathedrals in London brought my heart to humbleness. White plaster walls surrounded us. To the left a white curtain hung, separating the sanctuary from the back hall. Candlesticks sprouted from pews’ ends, and wan sunlight washed through the stained glass windows in multicolored hues, a nimbus on the angels and saints, the pews and floors.
“That’s beautiful,” I said and pointed to the window above the altar. “So beautiful that I wish I possessed a better word.”
“Words,” Jack said quietly. “The joy and art of them. Saying exactly what you mean.”
I pondered for a moment, staring and then closing my eyes. “Sublime,” I whispered.
“Yes! That’s it.” He paused. “That window was installed just last year as a memorial to those who died in World War II.”
“I wonder sometimes what those days were like for you. For all of you.”
Jack ran his hand across the back of a pew, and his sight seemed far off, as if those wartime days danced on the altar. “There was a time I believed that they’d invade and we would belong to them,” he said. “I threw my pistol into the river off Magdalen Bridge because it was rumored that the SS would find me for all the Royal Air Force lectures I’d given, and that a gun would be my demise.” He shook his head at the memory.
“We felt the fear in America,” I said, “but nothing like that. I’m not sure that the fear of invasion would have been something I could have tolerated.”
“You tolerate what you must when it becomes your reality.” Jack pointed to a pew on the left-hand side about halfway back and walked that way; I followed him.
“This is our pew, Warnie’s and mine.” He sat and I joined him. “Not exactly ours, but where we prefer to sit. We started coming here all the way back in . . . I don’t know, 1930 or thereabout? I like the eight a.m. service. The organ music in the other services grates on my nerves.” He lowered his voice as if the organ might hear his insult.
I leaned close to him. “I don’t much mind organ music; it’s the eternal sermons I can’t stand.”
Jack laughed and pointed to the Communion table. “It was here during the Eucharist, during World War II, that I thought of Wormwood and his story.”
“Oh, Jack,” I said. “Tell me. I love hearing where stories began.”
He turned slightly in the pew to face me. “I’d heard a speech Hitler gave over the radio waves, and I was easily convinced by him, if only for a moment. I started thinking what it would take to convince one of evil, just as the sermon that morning was trying to convince one of good.” His voice was quieter than usual. I didn’t want him to stop talking; I wanted him to unload his heart into mine.
“While the preacher spoke of temptation, my mind wandered. How would a head devil instruct his underlings on such things? Would he do it in the same but opposite manner as this preacher?” He paused and smiled at me. “I had almost the entire book in my head before I returned home. And then I believe I wrote the whole thing during the Battle of Britain with airplanes overhead. Young children were sent to live here. Hitler was on the radio with his fierce voice. And during all of that, my mind was churning with the idea.”
“I’m envious,” I said. “You just decide to write a book and then you do it.” The church was growing warm, or I was. I removed my coat and laid it gently in my lap. “You have tapped into something others have not.”
“Don’t admire me in that way, Joy. I write stories just as you do, one after the other. People believe I spent years studying for Screwtape and Wormwood, but the idea and words came from the wickedness of my own heart.” He rose from the pew and motioned for us to leave.
I sat for a moment longer. “Maybe they are the type of stories we think of during war—the devil and his works. Paradise Lost was written during the English uprising.” I stood and followed him.
He opened the door to the outside and wrapped his coat tighter. “I read that when I was nine years old and fancied myself a critic.” He paused. “And how do you come to know these things, Joy?”
I donned my coat and squinted into the sunlight. “Because I’m writing about King Charles II. It was his father who was executed during that time. I retain the oddest information, Jack. I can’t quite remember to pay the bills or buy a new button for my jacket or answer a letter, but I can remember a piano score after seeing it once and little facts like Milton writing Paradise Lost during that terrible war. Those obscure things burrow themselves into my brain. But ask me to catch a train on time?”