Sisterchicks Go Brit! (9 page)

He was right, and it was funny. But neither of us was ready to laugh about it. Not right then.

Kellie reached for his phone. Her cancellation call took only a few minutes.

I asked the driver, “What hotel do you recommend here in Oxford?”

“I have just the one. I’ll take you there directly.” He pulled into the traffic, and we inched our way down a street that obviously was designed centuries before the first automobile puttered through Oxford. The stone walls and brick buildings were as charming, if not more so, than the simple cottages in Olney.

“Oxford seems much older than I expected.” I tried to steer the mood away from the gloom that had settled on Kellie.

“That we are, mum. We’re a college town, you know. Sixty colleges.”

“Sixty?”

“That’s right. Students have come here for hundreds of years. Have you heard of the poet Byron?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He called Oxford the town with the ‘dreaming spires.’ Many greats—poets, authors, statesmen, England’s finest—have
called Oxford home at one time or another in their noteworthy lives. You might find you’ll want to stay longer than a day or two.”

“I’ve read a lot of books by British authors,” I told the driver.

“Have you a favorite?”

“C. S. Lewis,” I said. “The Narnia tales are wonderful, of course, but I think my favorites are the space trilogy.
Perelandra
is my all-time favorite.”

“Ah! Then you’ve come to the right town, and you’ve found the right cabby. I can drive you past Magdalen College where Lewis taught.” The way he pronounced the word
Magdalen
, it sounded like Mawd-lynn.

“Is the college far from here?” I asked.

“Not at all. Would you like me to take you?” He put on the turn signal.

“No,” Kellie answered for both of us. “I think we should go to the hotel first.”

“Right, then.” He kept driving and caught my gaze in his rearview mirror. “You’ve heard of the Inklings, now haven’t you?”

“Yes.” I knew that was the name of a writers’ group Lewis and Tolkien belonged to for many years. This, however, didn’t seem like the best time to show off my interest in Lewis lore since Kellie was in a gulley.

Secretly, I was pretty excited about ending up in Oxford. I hoped I could talk Kellie into some touring in the morning before going to London.

I couldn’t believe I now was willing to delay our arrival in London, but here we were, right in the middle of Oxford. Many of my favorite British authors had lived here.

Our driver was explaining a bit about the Inklings—bits I already knew—but then he added, “They met at the Eagle and Child Pub, in the Rabbit Room. You can have a look at the pub whenever you like. Of course, the Rabbit Room sounds more in keeping with the literary themes of the other Lewis.”

“Lewis Carroll?” I ventured.
“Alice in Wonderland
? The White Rabbit?”

The driver grinned. “You do know your British literature, don’t you?”

“I read a lot when I was younger.”

“Do you know his real name?” the driver asked.

“Who? Lewis Carroll? No, I don’t.”

“Ah! So I can teach you something. It was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He taught mathematics right here at Christ Church. He passed on just about the time C. S. Lewis was born.”

“What about Tolkien?” I asked. “Didn’t he live here in Oxford too?”

“That he did. He was a professor at Exeter.”

“Was he really?” Now Kellie was leaning forward. “When my youngest son was growing up, he was crazy about Tolkien’s books. He didn’t like to read until I bought him a copy of
The Hobbit
. After that, he read like crazy. Is it possible to see where Tolkien lived or taught? I’d love to take some pictures.”

“We have a few hours of daylight left. I could take you on that unofficial tour I mentioned, if you like.”

Kellie looked at me with a chin-dip nod. I was glad to see her popping back. She was a quicker pouter than I.

“What is the cost of the tour?” I asked.

“We can work out a suitable arrangement.”

“We need an estimate,” Kellie said.

“That depends. Will you be wanting to see the Kilns as well?”

Neither of us was sure what he was asking.

“I can see by my question that you’re not professional pilgrims of all the Lewis sites. If you were, you would be asking for the Kilns, which is the home where Jack and his brother, Warnie, lived. To make it worth your time, I would advise a stop by the Holy Trinity Church and the churchyard in Headington where the two of them are buried.”

“Okay,” I said. “How much will you charge us for all that?”

“I would say right around fifty pounds.”

Neither of us had the exchange rate figured out, so in a way it didn’t matter what he said. We wouldn’t know what the equivalent was in dollars unless we had a calculator handy.

“Let’s do it,” I said to Kellie. “Why not? When are we going to be here again?”

“You’re right.” To the cab driver she said, “We’ll take the tour.”

The driver put on his blinker and gazed at us in his rearview mirror. “All right then. Tell me this: are you like the couple I had
a week ago from California who saw a film and thought they were experts on Jack?”

“Who is Jack?” Kellie asked, more to me than to our driver.

He gave a low whistle. “There’s my answer right there. We’ll take it back to the top for the two of you.”

Switching into a tour guide–sounding voice, our driver said, “Clive Staples Lewis went by the name Jack with his friends because he liked the name, clean and simple. He married an American by the name of Joy Davidman when he was fifty-eight years old. She already had two sons. Jack and his brother, Warnie, adopted the boys after Joy died of cancer. I can take you by the hospital if you like. Or I can even take you to the crematorium where Joy was—”

“No,” Kellie and I said in unison.

“Just the Eagle and Child Pub, where you said he met with Tolkien, his house, and the church,” Kellie said.

“Got it. The Bird and Babe and perhaps the Kilns.”

“I thought you said it was the Eagle and Child?” Kellie asked.

“The Bird and Babe is what those of us who have a familiarity with the Eagle and Child call it. Do you see? Makes sense, doesn’t it? Right. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. You wanted to see Tolkien’s home as well.”

“Yes.” Kellie seemed to warm up to the plan and leaned back in the comfortable, wide seat. She pulled her camera out of her bag, and I did the same, ready to take aim and shoot from the vehicle on our Oxford literary safari.

First stop was at the front of the unassuming, whitewashed pub. Our driver snapped a picture of us standing under the round, hanging blue sign that said “The Eagle and Child.” The pub sign had the image of an eagle flying in stork fashion, toting a redheaded child wrapped up in a delivery sling and suspended from the eagle’s claw.

“Have a look inside at the Rabbit Room. It’s in the back to the left. You can’t miss it.”

An afternoon gathering of customers was tucked in the corners of the compact pub. Our driver was right about it not being difficult to find the Rabbit Room. It was directly in the back of the pub. A small, black sign hung crookedly over the entrance to the separate back room. In the cab our guide had rattled off facts about Tolkien and Lewis being only two of the regular members of the Inklings who met here to discuss their writing between the 1930s and 1950s. A picture of Lewis hung on the back wall above the dark wood paneling. I couldn’t imagine comfortably fitting more than eight people in this room. The Inklings must have been a close-knit group when they met here!

Kellie and I snapped a few pictures and slipped out the front door where our carriage awaited us. Next on the circuit was Tolkien’s home. To our surprise the street we drove down was a normal residential street with homes that looked as if they were no more than eighty years old. They were nice homes but not fancy or impressive. I made a comment about the ordinariness of the neighborhood, and our driver reminded me that Tolkien received
an average college professor’s wage until he retired in 1959. He passed away in 1973.

“The room you will see above the garage was Tolkien’s study. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was published while he lived in this house with his wife and four children. He had to move, though, due to a rash of hobbit fans who kept showing up on his doorstep.”

“I wonder how he would feel about the success of The Lord of the Rings if he were still alive,” Kellie said.

Before we could enter into a discussion of the topic, we were in front of the house on Sandfield Road. Our driver didn’t park the car in front of the house, even though a wide space was available beside the curb. Instead, he double-parked two doors down. “If you would like to take a quick hop out and stand under the sign over the garage, it makes for a good photo.”

Kellie and I scooted up the road and followed his instructions while he sat in the cab with the engine idling. We took turns striking poses next to a trash can in front of the garage. Our conduct on such an unpretentious street in front of such an ordinary garage would have seemed ridiculous if it weren’t for the sign affixed to the front of the garage. The commemorative inscription stated, “J. R. R. Tolkien lived here 1953–1968.”

“On we go,” the driver called to us.

I started for the street, feeling awkward about having just taken pictures in the driveway of what was a private residence. What did the people who lived here think of our trespassing on their property?

“Lizzie, look.” Kellie paused by the small front yard. The space was more like an overgrown garden with several trees and ivy climbing up the trunk of the largest one. “Lawn gnomes. Do you see them?”

Kellie was right. Tucked in and under the spreading greenery were several antique-looking lawn gnomes. The chipped paint on their once-red hats and fixed grins made it clear these camouflaged fellows were victims of time and the elements.

Kellie snapped a picture of the garden and the concealed gnomes. Just then we heard a window opening upstairs. Our driver called out, “Come along!”

Hurrying to the cab and sliding into the backseat, I felt the same sort of stealthy rush I had as a teenager when my girlfriends and I would go out at night and string toilet paper in the trees in front of the homes of guys we liked. Then we would run off before getting caught.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Kellie’s cheeks looked as rosy as mine felt after the dash.

“I know. None of the tour books promote this sort of snap-and-dash tour.”

“There’s a reason for that.” The cabby caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “None of them is under a court order to keep a twenty-meter radius away from the place of interest.”

Kellie and I laughed uproariously at his joke. Off we drove past Magdalen College.

All the way the cab driver kept glancing at us in the mirror.

W
here to next
”
Kellie asked.

“We’re off to the Kilns now.” The taxi driver ran down a list of dates and facts about Lewis and his brother, Warnie, and how the two of them had bought the house in 1930 and lived there more than thirty years. He went on to explain how the acreage around the Kilns had been undeveloped when Lewis lived there. “If you can be nimble about it, a nature trail at the end of the road will lead you out to a small lake.”

My blood still was pumping from all the dashing around at Tolkien’s former residence. This was a fun way to see a lot in a short space of time. I was up for sprinting down a nature trail to see a lake. How much more Narnian could this adventure become?

Turning the cab down a private road and into a residential area with several newer homes, our driver slowed down. He spoke rapidly. “You can just about see the Kilns there now, can’t you? Brick house on the right side.”

Instead of continuing down the lane to Lewis’s home, our driver abruptly turned the cab around. In the spin of a moment, I noticed another car parked across the street from the brick house. Someone in the front seat was taking a picture. Not a picture of Lewis’s home but of us, of the taxi.

Checking his rearview mirror, our driver said, “I’ve decided it will be faster if I take you to the church first.” He picked up speed and made a sharp turn.