He laughed. “No one really knows you, do they, Joy?”
“I wouldn’t say no one.”
With a few tentative steps back into the courtyard, Jack spoke. “That’s what Tollers says about me also. But I don’t believe he says this with great affection, merely annoyance.”
I laughed. “Tell me more about Tollers. How did you become such grand friends?”
“We met in 1926 at a Merton College English faculty meeting.” He sat on a bench in the courtyard, and I joined him. “I thought him a pale little chap, but soon found that we had the same mind about many things. From poetry to English literature. We’ve been each other’s first readers, and we haven’t always liked what we’ve read.” He paused before telling me, “He’s not a big fan of the Narnian stories.”
“What does he know?” I said, obstinately horrified.
“Oh, he knows very much indeed. As with any good friend, we have many of those moments when one turns to the other and says, ‘You too?’”
“Like?”
“We don’t like politics. Neither of us has bothered to learn to drive a car. Dante. Theology.”
I nodded, but felt envious also.
“But there are our differences also. He’s the don of linguistics and language. Not a literature fan as I am. Yet what draws any two people together toward friendship is what drew you and me—that we see the same truth and share it. For example, there was this moment in an Inklings meeting when we both agreed to this—if someone won’t write what we want to read, then we shall write it for ourselves.” Jack paused. “For now he’s working on a sequel to The Hobbit. I’m quite astounded at his ability to create another world.”
“You’ve done the same.”
“I try, at least.”
“Let’s always do so.”
“Indeed.” He nodded with that smile, and we stood to head down the path.
Once home, Jack retreated to his room to “enter the fourth dimension,” and I took his O.H.E.L. papers into the common room and began to read with a pencil in my hand. For many pages I had to pretend this was not his work on which I wrote, to feign that I wrote marks on any old paper, and not become muddle-headed with admiration, forgetting to be honest.
A new twist but plenty good, I wrote in the margin and continued.
The fire puttered out, and Mrs. Miller came in to stoke it. She turned to smile at me, and I thanked her.
“’Tis wonderful to have a nice woman in the house,” she said as she hung the poker on the hook.
“Was there a not-so-nice one here before me?” I asked cheerily, not expecting an answer.
“Oh, not-so-nice is a kind way to describe her.” And with that, Mrs. Miller was off to the kitchen, not allowing for any more questions.
I closed my eyes as the fire reignited and a flood of gratitude and grace filled me. How very blessed I was to be there reading Jack’s work, warming by the fire after spending a morning in his church. But, oh, how many women had Mrs. Miller seen come and go in this house?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
CHAPTER 25
Why, you may call the thing idolatry
And tell no lie; for I have seen you shine
“SONNET X,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Jack awoke early in the mornings, which wasn’t in my particular bag of tricks, and began returning letters to his wide array of correspondents, some fantastic and some boring. It occurred to me that maybe his morning letter writing greased the wheels for his stories. He spent hours doing this, bent over his desk, a cigarette burning a long dry ash before falling onto the carpet or into the ashtray, his spectacles perched low and his brow furrowed with thought. He read the Bible every day, not from beginning to end, but wherever his eye fell. Sometimes he perused it in the original Greek and other times in Latin.
It was his upstairs office where he worked, and I adored it—crammed from corner to ceiling with books, stacked and lined up on floors and tables and bookshelves. There were two upholstered chairs, one in which he bid me to sit many times when we were working on separate writings. The desk, large and dark wood, had belonged to his father and was set for Jack to see out the front windows to the garden and beyond. To the left of his desk was the door to his bedroom, always closed and bolted. He didn’t even unlock it to go through the office and down the inside stairs to use the downstairs bathroom, but instead used the door in his bedroom that led outside to the metal staircase that descended to the side door of the kitchen. He’d then enter the kitchen and use the only bathroom in the house. I wanted to ask why he had this funny little habit, but bathroom behaviors didn’t seem quite right for discussion.