As we reached the pond, Douglas asked Jack how to cross it with the old punt, which bobbed against the rickety dock.
“You see that old stump sticking up in the middle?” Jack asked.
Douglas squinted against the sun, took two more steps to the edge of the pond, where thin ice cracked when a ripple moved against it. “Yes! I see it,” he said.
“When it’s warm, that is where I tie the punt and dive in. Swim to our hearts’ content.” Jack smiled as if he could already see the next sunny day when leaves would rest on top of the murky water and he would dive into its chilly depths.
“Let’s go.” Douglas took another step forward.
“Not now,” I told him. “It’s freezing, and if you fall in, I’m not the one to save you. I’ll have to let you both sink to the very bottom of that muck.”
“I’m so cold,” Davy said and moved closer to me. “I want to go back to the house and play chess with Warnie.”
“No!” Douglas cried, and I put my fingers to my lips.
“Shhh,” I said. “You’ll scare off Mr. Tumnus.”
With that both Jack and Douglas burst into laughter.
I grasped Davy’s hand. “Look. I’ll take Davy back, and you two follow along when you’re ready.”
Davy and I began to walk back, skirting fallen branches and patches of ice. Far off a loud crash sounded. Davy looked skyward. “There’s not really giants here, are there?”
“Only if you want there to be,” I said.
“I don’t want there to be.” He drew closer, and his head banged against my ribs. “Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“There’s a really awful noise in the wall where me and Douglas sleep. What if the giant is in there instead of out here?”
“The giant, if there is one, is not in the walls.”
“Well, there was a terrible banging.”
“Maybe the sun bangs for you before it wakes.” I tried to joke with my son, to lighten his somber mood.
“No, Mommy. That can’t be true or I would have heard it before.”
“I’m being silly, sweetie.” I squeezed his hand. “I heard the same noise when I stayed in there. It’s the water in the pipes. It’s an old house, and they haven’t done much to fix it.”
“And it’s very cold,” Davy said. “Except by the fire.”
“You don’t like it here?” I asked.
“I do like it.” Davy stopped before the green door and lifted his thumb to obey the sign PRESS.
“We can just go in,” I said and opened the door.
Mrs. Miller must have heard us approaching because there she was, kerfuffling around us, taking our coats and brushing ice off Davy’s cap. “I have tea for you,” she said.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Miller. I know that three extra guests right before the holidays is not something you much looked forward to. And two little boys to boot.”
“It’s lovely,” she said in her thick brogue. “Absolutely luvvly-jubbly. The house seems to wake when you arrive, Mrs. Gresham.”
I took this admission and let it warm all the cold doubt about my place in this new world.
That night, as Warnie taught Davy chess as promised, and Jack and I read by the fire, Douglas came bursting through the door carrying an armload of wood.
“I cut all of this with Paxford,” he called out and dumped it on the hearth. “Mommy, there are real kilns. That is why this house is called ‘the Kilns.’ There is even an air raid shelter by the pond.”
“I’ve seen it, Douglas. Isn’t it marvelous? Except if you’d had to go there during the war, of course.”
“Except that,” he said and fell, covered in wood chippings, into a chair. It was only moments later that he fell asleep, all that energy expended, his mouth slack. He was as spent as were we. I imagined Jack and Warnie had not had this much activity since the war itself.
“Boys,” I said, “it’s time to hustle off to bed.”
Davy groaned. “But I’m almost done winning.”
“And that he is,” Warnie said. “But you have saved me from the disaster of losing to a ten-year-old who has never played before. So off to bed with you.”
I gently shook Douglas. “Bedtime, son.”
He roused himself, and both boys stumbled to the back bedroom where they’d been sleeping with the framed steamships above their heads. They settled into their little room off the kitchen, warm water bottles tucked into the beds to stave off the cold. Piles of blankets covered their little bodies as I tucked them in.