“Favorite trains?” I asked.
“Well, you know Jack’s very first toy was a train,” Warnie said with authority and a laugh.
“First toy? No. That I did not know.” I smiled at them both. “How nostalgic. I’m honored to share a room with them.”
“Not exactly plush, but comfortable.” Jack dropped my suitcase into the room and pointed down the hall. “Bathroom that way.”
“Now let’s get outside and show you around the grounds,” Warnie said.
“Well, Warnie, let’s allow her a little time to settle in.”
“No, I don’t need that.” I smiled. “I want to get outside. Let’s go out and see it all.”
The house sat on the outskirts of Headington Quarry, settled on rolling lowland. To the south lay a lake and a wooded area that slowly rose into Shotover Hill. The three of us set out as Warnie began his tour speech.
“The house was built in 1922,” he said as the frigid wind whipped our faces. “We fell in love with it the first time we saw it in 1930.” He stopped a few yards into our walk and pointed to two conical-shaped kilns shooting from a brick structure like overgrown funnels. “This was once where all the bricks were made for the city. Thus . . .”
“The name of the home,” I finished.
From there we ambled off, and I comprehended the extent of the property: I would need hours to search it on my own, to soak in the acres of beauty, though most was hidden under winter’s caul. We passed chestnut, mountain ash, and oak. I ran my hand along the bark of a slanted fir tree, its arched branches and needles being all the green in the landscape.
“It’s like Narnia,” I said. “I’m almost able to see the walking trees, not ambling along as we do but as you described, wading through the forest floor.”
Shivering, we eventually reached the pond and stood at its edge next to a little red punt with ice filling its center and crusting its edge.
“We should have chosen a warmer day to show you around.” Jack pointed at the frozen pond. “It’s a dirty little thing, a flooded clay pit where they once dug out the mud to make bricks in the kilns, but surprisingly you come out quite clean when you swim in it.”
“Are there fish?” I asked, peering over their shoulders.
“Perch and pike. But poor things get eaten by my two swans.”
“Swans?” I craned my neck, looked past Jack and into the reeds.
“You’ll see them surely enough,” Warnie said. “They’ll want to know who you are and why you’re here.”
“I’m Joy Davidman,” I called out over the pond, using my maiden name, my writing name, my real name. “And I’m here to celebrate Christmas with two old bachelors.”
Great bellowing laughter carried across the water, and Warnie shook his head. “Well, you may have scared them off for good.” Then he became quiet and reflective, his expression serious. “This place is more than Jack and I ever deserved. In spring the primrose and gardens burst forth. In autumn we have the windless sunny days . . . it’s a veritable Garden of Eden.”
I smiled at Warnie’s sweetness, his almost childlike admiration. We rushed through the remainder of the outdoor tour until we passed a lilting shelter, a small almost-house. “This?” I asked.
“An air raid shelter,” Jack said. “Paxford built it during the war.”
“Who is Paxford?”
“Ah, you’ll meet him soon enough. He’s our gardener and lands-keeper.”
“The war.” I pointed at the bomb shelter. “How can it all seem so far past when it just happened? Maybe because the bombs themselves never reached my shore.” I ran my hand along the concrete walls, moss growing thick along its edges.
We continued on until I paused at a dormant garden. “Oh, Jack. You have room to grow so much! I can almost see the vegetables and flowers.”
“That’s Paxford’s territory,” Jack said as a dog came loping into the garden. I dropped to my knees to greet the dark lion, a flopping pack of fur.
“Who is this?” I buried my face in its neck, memories of the midnight hours with such animals coming back to me with pangs of nostalgia: the lion at MGM, the lion of my childhood Bronx Zoo, Aslan, and this animal.
“That’s Bruce III.”
“He’s magnificent,” I said.
“You like dogs,” Warnie said. “That’s a good thing.”
“I have two at home. Four cats. A whole cast of animals.”
I rose and Bruce III followed; we walked silently for a while until we reached a gathering of crouched and freezing trees.
“Jack, Warnie!” A voice flooded with a Cotswold accent so thick that their names were scarcely recognizable.
Then there stood a great tree of a man, the cracks in his clothes caked with dirt. He dusted his hands, one against the other, and smiled at us. His teeth were yellowed and crooked, his lips chapped, and his face wrinkled like a sheet from the wash.
“Paxford,” Jack said. “Meet our American friend, Mrs. Gresham.”
He was quite rotund. His chin . . . there must have been three of them. His stomach was so round, one could place a glass on top of it. A cigarette was firmly set in the corner of his mouth, and his white hair was slicked back. It was his nose that was incongruous with his face, so large it looked as if it were a replacement.
“I knew you were coming, and it is jolly good to meet you,” he said.
“You’ve done some wonderful things on this property,” I said. “I can’t wait to see your garden unfold.”
Paxford’s eyes grew wide. “You will be here in the spring?” He pulled up his shirt sleeves to show his forearms, hairy and thick.
Silence stretched into discomfort, until far off a single bird let loose a torrent of a song. “No,” I said. “I won’t be, regretfully.”
“Well,” Warnie said, always the one to smooth the awkward moment. “Let’s get ourselves inside to warm up. You have plenty of time to explore the acreage.”
Once our coats were hung on the hooks in the back hallway, we settled into the common room, and Jack poured us all a sherry as we each settled into a chair.
“Blackout curtains.” I pointed at the windows. “You still worried about the German invasion?”
Warnie and Jack both laughed, and Warnie told me, “We’re lazy old bachelors. It might just be bloody time to take them down.”
The fire crackled, dwindling. Jack turned to Warnie as he must have done a million times during their thirty years of cohabitation and said, “Your turn to stoke.”
Warnie rose, and Jack spoke around his cigarette. “Joy, it’s difficult to believe your journey is nearly over. You had so many writing projects. Did you find the time that you needed?”
“I did. As you know with writing, it’s never enough. But”—I leaned forward—“your edits on Smoke have been invaluable.”
“As have your notes on O.H.E.L. I feel I’ve found a treasure in you.”
Warnie returned to the room with a load of firewood and dropped it into the fireplace, stoking it with a brand and jumping back from a litter of sparks that landed on the carpet. Neither Jack nor Warnie rose to put them out, and I jumped up.
“Oh, don’t bother,” Warnie said. “Not much else can be done to this rug. It’s a disaster.”
And he was right—it was dirty and full of holes, ash scattered here and there. “I wouldn’t have noticed,” I said.
“Tollers’s wife won’t even allow him to visit us anymore—says he comes home a mess and muddy.” Warnie shrugged. “Wonder if she’d be willing to come clean it up for us.”
“Well, housekeeping ain’t one of my best attributes. Just ask Bill.”
“Ah, your husband.” Warnie sat again, settling into a slouched posture of comfort.
“If one can call him that at the moment.” And the fresh pain rose again in my belly.
“And why wouldn’t you call him that?” Warnie’s question was hesitant, wary.
“I’ve just received a letter,” I said and glanced between the
two of them. “He is in love with my cousin and wants to marry her.”
Jack and Warnie exchanged a glance, both seeming to flinch as if I’d picked up the hot poker Warnie had just laid beside the fire with my bare hands.
Jack leaned forward, his hands set on his knees. “Perhaps you misinterpret his meaning. Letters can be waffling and misleading sometimes. I know that. Sometimes I’ll receive an argument against something I’ve written that I didn’t write at all.”
I stood slowly, my knees and hips aching from travel and the walk through the grounds. I limped to my purse on the side table across the room and took out the letter. “Here,” I said. “You tell me if there is anything at all to misinterpret.”
Jack was silent as he read, and Warnie sat quietly in his chair. The fireplace flames rose wildly, smoke wafting upward, fire licking the black walls.
“‘You will never be anything but a writer’?” Jack spoke Bill’s words aloud and glanced at me. “What a cruel thing to say.”
“That’s the least of it,” I told him. “Go on.”
Jack’s eyes fell to the page until finally he spoke. “‘I have never yet known determination and willpower to make a go of marriage,’” he quoted and then asked, “and you are returning home to this?”
“My ticket is booked,” I told him. “My children are there. They’re my family.” I leaned forward and pressed my fingers into the corners of my eyes.
“Bill has not given you a choice, Joy. You mustn’t stay there.”
I glanced up, ready to receive any advice he had. “But how can I desert them?”
“This is not your doing. These are his choices.” He gazed intently at me. “What did you answer in return?”
“I told him that we’d discuss the issue when I returned home.” I smiled and shrugged. “What else was there to say? I’ll be home in two weeks, and what good would another letter do? So many letters. So many words. What good?”
“Yes, what good?” Warnie mumbled.
“I try very hard to believe in God’s best for this,” I said. “It is a newly acquired habit that I sometimes forget to employ.” I laughed to alleviate the darkness I’d brought into the room.
Jack stared at me with gentleness. “Maybe you aren’t doubting that God will do the best for you, but wondering how painful the best might be.”
“You are very right, sir,” I said.
“But to return to abuse isn’t anything God would demand of you. Of any of us. His commandments aren’t meant for that. You know that as well as anyone.” He paused and the fire popped. “What you’ve tolerated at home isn’t about being a good wife or about obeying God. You must know that.”
I stood and walked to the fire, facing the flames. I rubbed my hands together. “I do know, but I forget. When I’m in the middle of all the chaos and arguing, I feel like such a failure, so demeaned, and then I blame myself for not being able to be someone else, someone better.”
“You blame yourself for not being who Bill wants you to be?” That was Warnie, blurting out the question with a frustrated voice.
I turned around to face them both again. “Yes.” The absurdity of it felt simple, a fact overlooked. “In your words it’s all so easily seen. You take a truth and boil it down to its essence.”
Jack eased to stand. “It’s easier to do when you aren’t in the middle of it. My heart isn’t blistered and mangled by his abuse. That privilege is yours, it would seem.”
I walked toward him then, wanting to reach across the space between us, to touch him, to wrap my arms around him, allow my head to rest on his shoulder the same way my heart was resting in his words. “How do I ever thank you for this kind friendship? It sustains me.”
He nodded, his cigarette ash falling to the carpet.
I exhaled and brushed my hands through the air. “But I’m here to celebrate the holidays, not to bring doom and gloom. Let’s play some Scrabble and forget this affair for now.” I pointed to a half-finished game on the table a few feet away.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Can we use Latin and Greek words too?” I inquired.
He laughed, that low rumbling sound. “Any language. If it’s been used in a book then it is fair game.”
“German? French?”
“Anything at all,” he said.
“The best way to play,” I replied. “Warnie? Will you join us?”
“Not tonight.” He rose but smiled at me.
Jack and I moved to the table and sat, bowing our heads over the board. It was a game he must have started with Warnie. I scanned my row of letters in their tray and chose five squares to spell verti against his word article, and scored a triple. Jack leaned back in his chair and bellowed loud enough to make Warnie poke his head back into the room.
“I’ve met my match.”
CHAPTER 24
How the wind
Whips all our talk and laughter out of mind,
And time, far more than Thames, has power to drown
“SONNET VII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
I awoke slowly in that cold room in Jack’s house and pulled the covers to my chin. A pounding came from inside the walls, like someone trying to escape from a stone-walled dungeon. The plumbing, ancient and groaning like one of Jack’s fictional frozen statues come to life.
The house bustled around me, doors opening and closing, Warnie’s voice calling out to Mrs. Miller. A man’s low voice, must have been Paxford, and then Jack’s reply, that rumble of familiarity.
I stretched and rolled over to glance at the clock. Already nine. They must think me lazy, but I didn’t mind. At home, this one thought—lazy—would have made me nervous, the jittery feelings overcoming me as I thought about Bill being angry that I’d slept in.
After I dressed and finished my morning routine, I entered the common room to find Jack reading the Bible, a Latin version that morning.
“Good morning,” I said quietly.
His pipe bent down from the corner of his mouth and he startled, sending it to drop onto his lap. He brushed the ashes onto the carpet as if they were crumbs from breakfast and smiled at me. “Good morning, Joy.”
He didn’t move to stand but held his finger fast to the spot in the Psalms. “Mrs. Miller has some breakfast in the kitchen if you’d like some. We were gifted a few extra eggs from the neighbor.” The war was over but egg rationing wasn’t, and Jack always managed to finagle a few extra.
“Thank you,” I said, suddenly a bit shy. We were no longer at a pub or on a hike or in his Oxford rooms. This was his home, and he had his routine.
I spent some time in the sunny warm kitchen with Mrs. Miller, satisfied with tea and a biscuit when Jack joined us.
“My correspondence is done for the day, and Warnie is off to work on his Sun King. How’s for a walk, just enough to get the blood flowing for the day’s work?”
A smile was my answer.
Once we bundled and left the house, the wind came in great gusts as if the sky were holding its breath and then exhaling. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck and moved as close to Jack as possible. We were headed to the Headington Quarry’s Holy Trinity Church, a half-mile walk on sidewalks and then down a frozen-mud lane. A high stone wall with bits of broken bottle capping the top like a crown bordered the narrow walkway to the church. Jack walked ahead of me, only room for one at a time, and I followed quietly. As we neared the churchyard he opened a wrought iron gate to enter a graveyard with a stunted forest of headstones.
I turned away from the irrefutable proof of death and instead focused on the church. It appeared as old as the land on which it sat, a limestone building with a bell cote and two bells on the west end. A slate roof sloped toward the ground and then seemed to take an abrupt halt at the building’s edge. White and stolid, the church spread east and west, its doorway hidden under a portico of stone where a cross was mounted, another engraved in a circle above the doorway.
“Anglican,” I said.
“Yes.” Jack surveyed t
he church with a proud stance. “Are you?”
“If I defined myself as anything, it would be Anglican, but I’m hard-pressed to be put into a category.”
“I don’t believe you need a category,” he said, and it sounded very much like a compliment.
“It’s very medieval looking,” I added with a shiver, closing my coat tighter, “like something out of one of MacDonald’s stories.”
“I’m quite sure that’s what the designer was after; he’d be flattered to know you think so.” He put out his cigarette in a puddle. “Let’s see if it’s any warmer inside.” He opened the doorway of the church and then stepped aside to allow me entry.
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.
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