to Dance and other Poems.”
“What about The Allegory of Love?” asked Tom.
“Allegory of Love?” said the young man quizzically. That’s by that other Lewis, the Christian, not the Communist.”
“Yes, C. S. Lewis,” explained Tom, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.
“I thought you said, ‘C. Day Lewis,’” explained the young man curtly. “I haven’t quite developed an ear for the American drawl.” He flipped back a few cards and then found what he was looking for. “Yes, here it is. C. S. Lewis. Allegory of Love. Literary criticism. That’s near the back on the left, aisle seven, I believe.”
“Yes, it is,” said Tom. “I was just back there looking at it. I wanted to know about other titles by C. S. Lewis.”
The young man gave a little shrug, as if to say there was no pleasing certain customers. Then he read off several more titles. “Dymer. A narrative poem. Out of the Silent Planet. Fantasy. The Personal Heresy. Literary criticism. The Pilgrim’s Regress. Christian allegory. Rehabilitations …”
“That’s fine,” said Tom. “I get the idea. The man sounds positively prolific. I wonder if he has any time left over for teaching.”
“You’re not a student here, I assume?” asked the young clerk.
“No, just visiting from America. Why do you ask?”
“Actually, C. S. Lewis is more well-known around here as a lecturer than as an author. Quite possibly the most popular speaker in Oxford. Even when he lectures on a Saturday morning, about some seventeenth-century poet no one has ever heard of, the hall will be packed, with people perched on windowsills.”
“Maybe they come to hear the man who’s written all those books?” Tom wondered aloud.
“Not likely,” sniffed the young clerk. “He’s earned his place among the literary critics. But science fiction novels? Christian allegory? A popularizer and a proselytizer. It’s such wretched bad taste. How could one of the most promising scholars of his generation turn out to be a bullyragging Bible-thumper?”
“Good question,” said Tom. “I’m having lunch with Professor Lewis right now, and I’ll ask him.” With that, Tom turned on his heels and headed for the front door. He didn’t look back to take in the clerk’s expression. He preferred his own mental picture, a young man with mouth agape and eyes wide behind those spectacles, his face a mixture of surprise, wonder, and probably envy.
Tom pushed open the door and went out onto Broad Street, enjoying not only his well-staged exit, but also the crystalline April sky above and classic elegance of the Sheldonian Theater, just across the street. Stepping briskly through traffic of bicycles and black sedans, Tom crossed over to the Clarendon Building, originally the home of Oxford University Press. He looked up momentarily as he walked by. There were nine gigantic lead statues posted around the rim of its roof, each representing one of the muses. Rumor had it that some of them were coming loose from their base, so passersby had developed a habit of glancing up, just in case one of the immortal sisters chose that moment to come crashing to earth like a Luftwaffe bomb.
Tom continued east down Broad Street, crossed Catte Street, “street of the mouse catchers,” and continued on to Holywell. Taking a right at Bath Place, which seemed hardly more than an alley, Tom wondered if he made a wrong turn when the lane ended abruptly after half a block. But then he saw a low door there, framed in black timbers, and the words “Turf Tavern” half hidden behind a burst of blossoms from hanging flowerboxes. Tom stepped inside and found a low-ceilinged room with rough-hewn rock walls and a scuffed wooden floor. He had no trouble believing that this was the oldest pub in Oxford, going back to Chaucer’s time. It was full of young people, though, mostly fashionably dressed men with pomaded hair.
Tom scanned the crowded room until he saw a slender, silver-haired gentleman sitting alone at a table, reading a leather-bound book. He made his way over to the table and asked diffidently, “Excuse me. Professor Lewis?” The older man looked up with momentary bewilderment, then pointed without a word to a back corner of the room. Tom looked over and saw another man sitting alone, a portly, ruddy-cheeked man with thinning hair, wrinkled baggy pants and an ill-fitting coat. He looked more like a country farmer who’d stopped in for a ploughman’s lunch than a celebrated man of letters. Tom glanced down again at the distinguished-looking gentleman to see if there was some mistake, but the other man just offered a thin-lipped smile and nodded his head in confirmation.
Tom worked his way past several more tables and approached the second man, who was holding a book called Diary of an Old Soul in one hand and a pint of cider in the other. “Excuse me. Professor Lewis?” he tried again. “Yes, yes,” said the other genially, rising to shake hands. “And you must be McCord,” he added in a deep resonant voice, gesturing at the empty chair across the table. Tom took a seat, stared across the table at that round, friendly face, the broad forehead and the big, liquid eyes. Suddenly Tom discovered that he had completely forgotten how to make words come out of his mouth.
“So, you’ve come over from America, I understand?” said Lewis.
All the words in the English language suddenly vied for Tom’s tongue, and he wanted to say, “California” and “research grant” and “Arthurian romance” and “great admirer of your work” all at once. Finally, he mustered all his verbal powers and answered, “Yes, that’s right.” He paused for several seconds, until subjects and verbs started finding each other in his brain, and then he continued: “I’m over here working on a book. I don’t know if you recall my letter, but I did my master’s thesis on Arthurian literature and now I’m doing some follow-up research.”
“Yes,” answered Lewis, “I recall the letter. Reality and romance. From history to legend to literature. That sort of thing. I think I recommended Collingwood? And perhaps Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf?
“Yes, sir. Both very helpful. I’m over here visiting the traditional Arthur sites. I’m looking for evidence of actual historical figure, a Romanized Celt who kept the Saxons out of the west country.”
The two men ordered lunch, a plate of fish and chips for each, with a pint of bitter for Tom and another cider for Lewis. Lewis briefly bowed his head before taking a bite, then returned to their topic: “So you’ve been studying King Arthur at university, have you?”
“Yes, sir. I just finished my master’s at UCLA.”
Lewis had a puzzled look, so Tom went on: “That’s the University of California. In Los Angeles.”
“Ah,” said Lewis, with a sudden look of recognition. “California. Where they have all the sunshine.”
Tom nodded.
“I’m more of a polar bear myself. I prefer a fine winter’s day to the blaze of summer.”
“In the States, people move clear across the country for our balmy skies,” said Tom.
Lewis pondered this a moment. “I wouldn’t think of moving somewhere just for the climate,” he said. “Unless I were a vegetable. Before I moved house to a new city, I’d want to know about the sort of people I’d meet there. And the beauty of the landscape.”
“You’d
