I walked through the front door and into the square living area with high molded plaster ceilings, a room the same size as our living room in Staatsburg. And it was furnished! There was a woman, short and bundled in a coat, her hat pulled low over a weary face with a broad smile, standing at the far end of the room. I startled and jumped back before I ripped into laughter. I pointed. “I thought that was someone in the house.” The image pointed back at me from a floor-to-ceiling built-in mirror surrounded by ornate trim.
Mrs. Bagley laughed also. “Yes, that has happened before.”
“This is a beautiful duplex.” I exhaled in relief.
“Well, let’s show you around.”
We walked to the far side of the room, and my attention shifted as my hand flew over my mouth, stifling my cry. “A grand piano.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bagley said. “We can have it removed if you’d like.”
I didn’t answer but went straight to it, lifted its cover, and ran a quick scale, the out-of-tune instrument rising to life beneath my hands. “No,” I said. “Please leave it here.”
“We will have music,” Davy said to Douglas, serious and sure.
Mrs. Bagley smiled. As we walked down the hall she told us, “It’s heated by gas. No shoveling coal here.”
“What a relief that will be,” I said quietly.
“There is daily housekeeping from the inn with linens and bed making. Breakfast and lunch are across the street at the main, and you have a small kitchen, which you share with the other residents.” She pointed to a door. “Down there—that’s where the shared bathrooms are as well.”
Off the side of the living room sat a small table and a counter with a gas ring for light cooking if I didn’t want to venture to the kitchen. There were two bedrooms, one for the boys at the front of the house and mine in the back. Davy walked into their room first, running to the high bed and turning to me with laughter. “How does a boy get into this bed?”
“Why, I think he has to jump.” I feigned a crouched position.
With a laugh, Davy jumped onto one of the wooden four-poster single beds with its cream bedspread and single pillow.
In one fell swoop, I imagined our life in that house. I saw the boys’ clothes and books scattered around the bedroom with its high ceilings and windows facing out to the street. I heard the piano music and laughter. I saw us cuddled together reading and talking.
“This way to your room,” Mrs. Bagley said.
Davy jumped from the bed and Douglas followed, down the hallway with its white paint and detailed moldings. I walked into a bedroom where a queen-size bed dominated the center of the room. A brass chandelier surrounded by an ornate and gilded medallion was lit by only one bulb; the other four were out. There was a dark wooden dresser with six drawers and a cracked mirror hanging over it. I imagined framed photos of our new little family, of London and Oxford, sitting on it along with my hairbrush and bottles of cosmetics. I was already living in the bedroom I hadn’t yet moved into.
Back in the main room, I spied the French doors that opened to the backyard, or what might pass for a backyard but was merely a courtyard of dried and deadened plants. But that didn’t matter. I knew how to plant a garden; I knew how to make it more than it appeared. I turned around to face Mrs. Bagley with tears puddling in my eyes. I reached to take a swipe, knocking my tortoiseshell glasses off my face and onto the floor. Davy picked them up and handed them to me.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “This is a home. And we three most desperately need a home.”
She took both my hands and held them in hers. “You are welcome,” she said. “I once needed the same, and we must all help one another.”
The boys and I moved in the next morning. We unpacked our things and then settled into our bedrooms for naps. We all fell into a sleep so deep and dreamless it was as if we’d been waiting for it. When I awoke, the boys were still facedown in their clothes with the roar and honk of London traffic outside their windows.
I let them be and settled down at the tiny kitchen table, where I started a letter to Bill. I had agreed to rent this annex, but I also knew the facts: I didn’t have enough money to make it if he didn’t send money or I didn’t make some myself. We’d made it this far: the house sold, the divorce moving forward, the ocean crossing with my boys, and now a place to live. One step and then another and then another.
I would be brave enough; I must.
Dear Bill,
You cannot do this to your boys. You must not deprive them of your money to punish me. I’ve decided that they must go to public school here . . .
I lifted my pen as a rustling came from the front room.
“Mommy?” Davy’s voice called out.
As I jumped up, a shot of pain from my left hip sent me crashing into the table. I shook it off and ran to his voice.
“Yes, my dear?” I asked as I entered, the late-afternoon sun rushing into the room in the evening of foggy London, all muted and gray flannel.
“Where am I?” He sat in his little bed, rubbing at his face.
Douglas, in the bed next to him, stirred also and sat, looking around. “We’re in our new room in London.”
“Yes.” Davy dropped back onto his pillow. “I just forgot.”
I hopped onto Davy’s bed. He snuggled into my softness. How had I left them for even a moment? The curdling conscience and anxiety I’d had last year had not been for missing Bill. It was for my children.
Douglas thumped down from his bed and wandered to the window, pulling aside the damask curtain to stare out at the streetscape. “Does it stay foggy all the time?”
The disappointment in his voice made my heart squeeze tight.
“No, darling. In fact, I only saw it once when I was here last time. When it clears, and spring arrives, you will think you are in a land of fairies. It is the most beautiful country in all the world.”
“You can’t know that,” Douglas said and turned to me, dropping the curtain to fall back over the window.
“Oh yes, I can.” I laughed and jumped from the bed to hug him close. “Just you wait and see.”
“Mr. Lewis’s house will be like that too,” Davy said.
“Yes, yes, it will,” I agreed.
Douglas walked toward us and rubbed his stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“Well then, I have some mulligatawny soup. We can heat it on our new gas circle.”
“I don’t like that stuff,” Davy said in a defiant voice. “I heard you tell Mrs. Bagley that we don’t have money and you can’t get a job yet. Do we have enough money for something else?”
“The money will come, Davy. We will find a way. We always find a way. God is with us; I know that.”
“How can you know that?” His face tightened.
I closed my eyes; I reached inside for the calm, centered space—around the corner from my ego, bypassing my grasping need and fear, and then opened my eyes to look directly at my son. “I can’t know, not like that. But I trust.”
CHAPTER 33
Saying I must not love him any more;
But now at last I learn to disobey
“SONNET VIII” (PREVIOUSLY TITLED “SONNET OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS”), JOY DAVIDMAN
December 17, 1953
The small courtyard at Avoco House was but a miniature and dirty replacement for the gardens and land outside our Staatsburg house, but it was better than concrete. That December morning my sons played a game of their own making outside the open door while I packed for our first outing to visit Jack. I placed sandwiches in a basket, a thermos of hot tea, and blankets.
It had been a year since I’d seen Jack and Warnie; anticipation swooped in my chest, down and under, up again. A year since I’d written the “Sonnet of Misunderstanding” on the RMS Franconia as I returned to America—all about leaving Jack and what he must believe about my feelings, how he seemed to send me away with an indirect command not to love him in any other way but philia.
“Bo
ys,” I called out to the courtyard, “I’m getting dressed, and to catch the train we must leave in an hour. Please don’t destroy your outfits.”
“Okay, Mommy.” Davy didn’t glance toward me at all but continued in his invisible sword fight with Douglas.
My heart swelled. I was in London with my sons. Starting a new life was never easy, I reminded myself. There would be bumps along the way.
I’d decided on Dane Court school for the boys—only a half hour away by train, and it allowed parents to visit as much as possible. As soon as the boys settled there in January, I would find a job and start writing again. A life could and would be built.
My courage couldn’t flag now.
“It’s odd,” I’d told Michal over drinks the previous night. “One would believe that being a Christian would keep me in my marriage, but it is the trust in God that allowed me to start a new life.”
She’d laughed and shaken those soft curls. “Being a Christian isn’t what most think it is—all rules and regulations.” She clinked her glass with the red lipstick stain on the rim against mine. “It is all trust and surrender and transformation, at its best.”
In my bedroom, three outfits were spread across my bed. The tweed dress with the cinched waist that showed off my best assets. The flannel trousers with a wool jacket and a white collar. And a gray wool skirt with a matching jacket. I shivered in the cold and snatched up the dress, packing the remaining two outfits in the valise.
I slipped on my girdle and rolled the parts of myself I wished I could hide into the thick fabric. I fastened my bra and slid the dress over my body, letting it fall around me, and then turned to the mirror. I added a blue chiffon scarf I’d splurged on during my last journey to England. What woman would Jack see now?
The three of us locked the doors, and soon we arrived at Paddington Station, each carrying our own bag and me one long box with a Christmas gift inside for Jack. Although we weren’t staying Christmas Day, I wanted it to rest under his tree.
I held my sons’ hands under the grotto of smog-stained steel and glass towering over us. Douglas leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s so dirty,” he said.
I pointed up with my gloved hand. “If you squint away the smoke, you’ll see it’s beautiful. Look at the intricate scrollwork and arched windows.”
The sun filtered through the Victorian filigree decorations and glinted against the metal and open iron in snowflake patterns onto the concrete floor. Men and women, children and crying babies in arms, swarmed like fish in a closed pond, moving in circles and vying for position.
Douglas straightened his head and stared at me but didn’t reply, and even if he had it would have been drowned out by the tinny, high-pitched voice over the loudspeakers announcing train arrivals. Baggage trolleys wheeled by with frantic travelers while other passengers sat reading or chatting on the S-shaped benches as if they had all the time in the world. The police with their bright-red hats hovered over the crowd, eyeing everyone with suspicion. This was my new world.
“The 144 to Reading and Oxford, now on platform 6,” a voice bellowed over the speakers, and together, a little bundle of three, we hustled across the concrete floor to the double-sided platform.
Our one and two halves third-class tickets in my hand, I shepherded the boys onto the train.
“I’m a half,” Davy joked as I placed our suitcases on the leather luggage netting overhead. It didn’t look strong enough to hold the bags.
I settled into a seat, the boys on either side of me, and Douglas took my hand.
“Mommy?” he asked in a quieter voice than usual.
“Yes?” I brushed his hair from his forehead.
“What if they don’t like us?” he asked. “They don’t have little boys, and they are so famous. And what if they don’t want to talk about Lucy and Peter with me, and they get mad that we’re there?”
The memory of Bill rose like bile in these moments, a raging ghost. My son had known years of ire, and he was expecting more of the same.
“The Lewis brothers aren’t like that, Douglas,” I reassured him. “They are kind men. And even if they didn’t like us, which isn’t possible because you are the most lovable boys in all the world, they would never be angry or mean. You’ll see. Everything is different now.”
He settled closer to me and folded his hand into mine, our fingers winding together, while Davy drew small circles on the window with his palm, as if he could wipe the outside fog away. In a moment Douglas was sound asleep as only young boys can be, completely and instantly. Davy dug into his pack until he retrieved his tattered copy of Prince Caspian and opened it to a random page.
“What part are you on?” I asked as the train chugged forward, hesitating and then picking up speed as we hurdled toward Oxford.
“Peter just challenged Miraz to fight.” Davy placed his little finger on the page and looked to me. “Do you think Mr. Lewis just imagined them out of nothing or did he know someone like them?”
“Why don’t you ask him about it? He’ll tell you. He’s kind that way.”
I shifted to allow Douglas’s head to fall onto my shoulder, and I watched the passing countryside fly by. The industrial scenes gave way to fields of heather with stone churches reaching for the foggy sky and villages huddled under the smoke of chimneys. When we stopped in Reading, I pointed out the Huntley and Palmer Biscuit Factory outside our window and explained that they would soon know exactly what those biscuits were, and for all their life they’d have their fill of them. The boys nodded lazily and fell back to sleep.
When the train finally drew near to Oxford, it halted with a shuddering grind and they both awoke.
“Where are we?” Douglas rubbed his eyes and pointed at a cemetery out the window.
“The train always stops at this cemetery for about ten minutes,” I said to him. “I don’t know why. No one seems to know why.”
“Maybe the conductor’s mommy is in there,” Davy said very seriously.
“Maybe.” I kissed the top of his sweet head.
Once in Oxford, we stepped onto the platform and blinked in the sunlight. It was a simple country train station compared to Paddington, and I adored it all the more. I straightened the boys’ ties and smoothed their trousers, fiddled with their wool hats until they sat upright. We boarded the bus and rode on the top deck to the Green Road roundabout, along High Street, and then out to Headington.
Rested now, the boys were rambunctious, wiggling and switching seats, gaining annoyed stares from other passengers. Finally we tumbled out together onto Green Road to walk to Netherwoods Road and then Kilns Lane—it was a path I knew well in both memory and dreams. The white birch trees and naked branches sang of winter, but as the Kilns appeared in front of us, it told of renewed life. The story I’d told of wandering in the woods, boys lost and finding a shepherd’s warm cottage, was silently between us.
“Look,” I said, kissing them on the cheeks, then wiping off the red lipstick marks I’d left on their faces. “We’re here.”
CHAPTER 34
My love, who does not love me but is kind,
Lately apologized for lack of love
“SONNET XX,” JOY DAVIDMAN
We stood, a bedraggled group, in front of the Kilns, its thatched roof a russet-colored welcome mat rolled out for our return. Smoke curled from the chimney, as if imitating Jack’s pipe. Ivy, even in winter, grew along the brick walls, and the front door, green and cheerful, was closed to us. But inside I knew what waited.
“I’m hungry, Mommy,” Davy said. We’d eaten our sandwiches on the train.
“Mrs. Miller will cook us something warm and wonderful,” I told them.
“Then why are we standing outside?” Douglas, always pragmatic, pulled at the hem of my sleeve and we moved forward, under the arbor and along the gravel walkway where stones crunched under our feet. As we reached the door, the boys lagged behind me, suddenly shy.
I rang the bell, the one that appeared in my
dreams and placed that smile on my face, and waited. Mrs. Miller opened the door. Her stolid figure covered by her work dress and apron made her look all the part that she was: guardian of the house.
“Well, look who’s finally returned.” She bustled us inside, and the boys looked at her and then at me with expressions that seemed to ask if we had arrived at the wrong house.
The entryway felt warm and familiar, with its dark wood filigreed bench and coat hooks on the wall. Mrs. Miller took our coats and hung them on the hooks and informed us that she would chivvy along and prepare lunch.
“You’re here!” Jack’s voice bellowed from the back of the house, and then suddenly he stood before us.
His accent, easily forgotten in letters, returned to my heart. He smelled of pipe smoke and dusty books as he greeted me with a hug and then bent down to introduce himself to Davy and Douglas, not waiting for me to do the honors.
“Well, what do we have here? Two American boys in England. Welcome,” he said.
Davy held out his hand and shook Jack’s, but Douglas stared at him with an open mouth, dumbfounded. “You can’t be Mr. C. S. Lewis,” he said in a small voice.
“My boy.” Jack stood straight with his hands on his waist. “You expected Aslan, perhaps, and for that I must apologize. I’m merely a short, balding man with tattered clothes.”
I looked at Jack through Douglas’s eyes and laughed: a bed-rumpled man wearing gray flannel trousers with worn holes at the knees. A wrinkled collared shirt once white, now almost gray, and house shoes bent at the heel from walking without slipping them all the way on. Small flecks of tobacco had fallen onto his collar, and his glasses were crooked on his face. For me, this was a man of such warmth and charisma, such light and tenderness . . . but to Douglas, this was not the man who could write of Aslan, of Edmund and the White Witch. This was . . . well, just a balding man with yellowed teeth and a bellowing voice.
Becoming Mrs. Lewis Page 23