Jack and the Wardrobe

by Nicola Jemphrey

  “Didn’t Albert mind?” I interrupted. I remembered reading that Albert hadn’t been too happy about Jack being friendly with Mrs Moore.

  “Oh, Jack made sure he never found out!” Louise laughed. “When Jack got the job at Oxford, things became easier for him and the Moores. He also started to get on better with his father, because he no longer had to depend on him for money. Mrs Moore lived at The Kilns with Jack and Warnie until she became old and sick and had to go into a nursing home. Even then, Jack visited her every day until she died, keeping the promise he’d made to Paddy all those years before.”

  We saw the room where Joy had slept after she’d married Jack and was well enough to come home from hospital. It wasn’t upstairs like in the Shadowlands film because she wasn’t able to cope with the stairs. After Joy died and Jack himself became ill, he also had to move to a downstairs room and that was where he died in 1963.

  As we all stood in that room, Adrian told us of how sad he’d been when a friend, who still lived in Oxford, phoned him with the news of their old tutor’s death.

  “Most of the world didn’t pay much attention because it happened on the very same day John F Kennedy, the President of the United States, was assassinated. But those of us who’d known CSL or been helped by his writings felt a real sense of loss, as well as being glad that his sufferings were over and he was now in heaven.”

  The last thing Louise showed us was a wardrobe, which stood in the hall near the foot of the stairs. “Of course, this isn’t the wardrobe that stood here in Jack’s time – the one carved by his grandfather – which had come from Little Lea. That’s now on display in Wheaton College in the US. The story goes that one of the convent girls who were evacuated here during the Second World War, asked Jack one day if there was anything behind the wardrobe, and that gave him the idea for the Narnia books.”

  As the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are evacuees living in Professor Kirke’s house, I didn’t find this too hard to believe.

  “The last place we’re going to visit is very close by,” Adrian said, after we’d thanked Louise and got back into the car.

  In a few minutes we were standing at the gates of Holy Trinity Church, where Jack and Warnie used to go on Sundays. The Lewis brothers and Mrs Moore were all buried in the churchyard. We couldn’t find Mrs Moore’s grave but Adrian was able to take us straight to Jack and Warnie’s, which was under a tall pine tree covered in ivy. Kate and I brushed off some dead leaves from the surface of the headstone and we all stood quietly for a few moments, reading the inscriptions.

  Kate pointed to the words sandwiched between the two names. “Men must endure their going hence,” she read out. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a quotation from Shakespeare,” said Adrian. “From what I remember, it was on a calendar in Flora Lewis’s room on the day she died. I don’t think the brothers ever really got over their mother’s death.”

  It was time to head back for dinner. This time I sat in the front of the car, chatting to Adrian. As we got nearer Mum’s flat, he became very quiet.

  “I don’t want your mum thinking the real reason I came over to bring you home was to try to patch up the quarrel between us,” he said as we turned into Kingfisher Walk. “That’s why I didn’t hang around long yesterday. Caroline always questioned our motives, no matter what her mother and I did.”

  “I think you need to talk,” I said, knowing how much better my chat with Mum had made me feel.

  “I’ll suggest it,” Adrian said doubtfully, “but I’m not sure she’ll agree.”

  But in the end it was Mum who asked her dad to come into the kitchen and help her dry the dishes. We’d just finished a meal of creamy chicken and rice, which we had to eat on our knees as there was no space for a table in the room. Mum’s cooking had definitely improved since she’d left home!

  “Do you think they’ve nearly finished in there?” Billy wondered, looking at his watch. “It’s time we made tracks for the airport. You never know what the traffic’s going to be like.”

  The kitchen door opened at last and we all got our coats on, ready to say goodbye to Mum.

  “We’ll wait in the car, Jack, and give you a few minutes by yourselves,” Adrian said, steering the others towards the door.

  Mum hugged me so tight I could hardly breathe.

  “I took the plunge and phoned your dad earlier, just before you got back,” she said, letting me go at last. “We’ve arranged for you to come over here for a week, the day after you finish school. The office is closed for two days at Easter and I should be able to take a few more days off by then.”

  Knowing I would be seeing her again so soon made it much easier for me to leave. She came out with me to the car and waved us off.

  Billy was right about the traffic. We got caught up in major road works and reached the airport about ten minutes before check-in was due to close.

  After we’d handed over our luggage, we turned towards the departure lounge.

  “Look over there!” I nudged Kate.

  Andy and Sheryl were standing superglued together about ten metres away from the check-in desk.

  “I’d forgotten all about him!” Kate laughed.

  I shouted over to Andy that he was going to miss the flight and he tore himself away from Sheryl, checked in his bag just in the nick of time and sprinted after us towards Departures. He looked a bit puzzled that Kate and I seemed to have hooked up with two old men, but we didn’t feel like explaining. Not yet anyway.

  Our flight hadn’t been called yet, so Billy took Kate into the newsagents to buy her a magazine for the plane. I followed Adrian to a row of seats nearby.

  “So how did your talk with Mum go?” Their faces, when they’d come out of the kitchen, hadn’t given much away.

  “All right, I think,” Adrian replied slowly. “We were able to clear up a few misunderstandings. She said she’d think about coming to stay with us when she flies over to visit you in the summer. If she does, maybe you could come for a few days as well.”

  “That’d be great.” I wondered if Helen was the kind of granny who made homemade lemonade. From what Mum and Adrian had said about her, I suspected she might be.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” I said suddenly, keeping an eye on the newsagents, where Kate was still making up her mind.

  “Fire away.”

  “Well, you were a minister, so maybe you can tell me why, when I prayed, God didn’t answer. At first it did seem as if the prayers were being answered, but the main aim of all my praying was that Mum would come home for good and no matter what way I said the words or how often I prayed it didn’t work. Now it doesn’t look as if she’ll ever come back.”

  Adrian’s bushy white eyebrows knit together as he thought about this. At last he said, “I think, Jack, you’ve discovered what CS Lewis found out many years before you. When he was a child and his mother was ill, he prayed hard that she would get better, but, as we know, she died. Later, he realised that God isn’t a magician, simply there to answer our prayers in the way we demand and then disappear as soon as we get what we want.”

  This was exactly what I’d hoped God would do.

  “So there’s more to praying than that verse Kate told me, about asking and receiving?” I asked.

  “Well,” Adrian said, “Prayer isn’t just about asking for the things we want or think we need. First, we need to put our trust in Jesus – that gives us a direct line to God. Then we need to spend time talking to God and listening to him – just getting to know him really. When we do that, we gradually learn to trust him to answer our prayers in the way that’s best for us and for everyone else we’re praying for. The answer we receive might be an instant ‘yes’, which is wonderful, it might be a definite ‘no’ and we may never know the reason why, or it might be ‘wait’.”

  I made a face at this and Adrian laughed.

  “Yes, that can be the hardest answer of all, as your grandmother and I know only
too well from all our years of praying that we might be reconciled with your mum. Now, at long last, it looks as if we’re moving in the right direction, but I’ve a feeling we might have to wait a bit longer before our prayers are finally answered.”

  I thought about this while Adrian went to buy a paper. What he’d said was maybe like the thing in the Narnia books that had been bugging me – the idea that though Aslan isn’t safe, he is good. For the first time I thought I understood a bit about what CS Lewis might have meant by this. We want to keep the people we love close to us so we know we’re safe, but sometimes things don’t work out that way and that’s when we need to remember Aslan is good. What was I saying? Aslan was just a talking lion in a book! But deep down I was beginning to see he was a lot more than that.

  The plane was quite crowded by the time we got on. Kate and I managed to get seats together, but Billy and Adrian had to split up.

  “I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you all day,” Kate said, after the plane had taken off and she was breathing normally again. “I’m so sorry we weren’t able to bring Caroline back with us like we’d hoped. You must be really gutted.”

  “It’s OK,” I surprised myself by replying. “She’s happy there and I’m going to see her again in a couple of weeks.” I told her what Adrian had said about God not being like a magician.

  Kate thought for a moment. “That’s true, I suppose, but it’s good to know God does often answer our prayers the way we want him to, even if we have to wait for a while.”

  “Like when?” I asked.

  “Like now. Look at my dad over there. This time two days ago he hadn’t left the house in months and now he’s thousands of feet up in the air. And…” She stopped and looked at me.

  “And what?” I demanded.

  “Well, there’s you. For ages I’ve been praying you’ll want to know more about God and now you do.”

  “Do I?”

  Kate smiled and picked up her magazine.

  I leaned back in my seat and stared out the plane window into the darkness. Kate was right. I didn’t feel angry with God anymore as I was starting to realise he did care about me after all. I had a mum and dad who both loved me, though they weren’t together, and now I had two sets of grandparents. I glanced over at Kate, who was flicking through some pop star pin-ups.

  Not to mention a certain aunt, who was the best mate a guy could ever have.