The classic architecture and the opulence of the fittings suggested that I was now in the bedroom of a grand house. It had the fustiness of a room long unused, and the exposed antique oak floorboards were shrouded in a layer of unbroken grey dust. Diligent maids must have polished the wood down to the grain over centuries, and I scraped a small section clear to reveal the beauty of the ancient oak shining through undiminished.
A bay window hung with faded red damask curtains lay to my left, and directly opposite was a large stone open fireplace. There was no bed in the room, and except for a large piece of furniture draped in a white dust sheet, it was otherwise empty. I walked over and, with some trepidation, grasped a corner of the sheet and pulled down the cover.
There before me was a large double wardrobe with ornately carved mahogany doors, and I intuitively knew where I was, and my heart pounded as I rested my palm flat against the varnished surface, naively expecting the most famous portal in literary history to resonate under my touch.
The tree that provided the wood for this wardrobe had come from the seed of an apple grown in Narnia, planted in his back garden by Professor Digory Kirke.
I realised that my visit to Oxford with Uncle Albert on the day C.S. Lewis presented the finished draft of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to his colleagues at Magdalene College, was not without purpose; it was the first part of my induction into the reality of fiction.
I had not entered the original novel, but an alternative narrative. The original series of books had helped me through my difficult childhood, and the characters had become more real to me than normal life. I experienced a huge surge of emotion as I recalled the unhappiness of those days when I did not have a single friend in my life and trusted nobody. Even now, I could never quite believe that what I was seeing was an alternative reality. It could be a set in a film or play, or simply an illusion created by my mind. This brought me down for a moment, but I had to find out the truth.
The room and the wardrobe were identical to the story, and the bare wooden floor bore the marks of wear and antiquity consistent with the age of the house. The floorboards creaked as I walked upon them, and the air in the room possessed the atmosphere of times past.
It seemed authentic, yet…
How could I find out for sure?
If this were a setup, whoever was behind it all would expect me to step inside the wardrobe and see where it led. But I was tired of following rules and resolved to go off-plan and test the experience.
How could I do that?
The room seemed solid enough, but what would I see if I looked through the window? If it were a hoax or deception, then surely the designers would not have expended precious time and energy to create a 'view' from the window when it was highly unlikely that any traveller would attempt to look through it.
Could I manage to get to the window before they had a chance to change anything?
'Catch them on the back foot,' as Willum might have said.
I had to think it through.
The act of conscious observation is a creative process, but it can only transform something that already has potential existence. I could theoretically create an outlook myself, but not from nothing. There would have been something already out there in a latent form.
Tennis courts, for example, or a cobbled yard and stables, or a marquee on the lawn, or a fundraising garden party for the war effort—any plausible view from an English country house at the beginning of the Second World War, when the story was set.
I rated the possibility of my conscious appraisal alone causing an outlook to appear as near zero, but if they somehow detected that I was about to look out of the window, they might be able to instantly construct a view themselves. Yet, there just might be a moment of transition from old to new when I could catch a glimpse of what existed 'backstage', as it were.
Do not make it too obvious, then…
I kept my eyes on the wardrobe as if deep in thought, and then, without warning, I lurched to the left and flung the curtains open. . .
To my intense dismay, I could not even see through the dirty window and had to frantically rub a small space clean. That done. I pressed my face against the window and stared out.
Below was a large, well-tended lawn, bordered by flower beds alongside a driveway flanked with elm trees. A drizzle had begun to fall, and the sky looked cloudy and pregnant with rain. Twenty yards away, I could see a gardener pruning a row of bushes, but he glanced up at the sky, and quickly gathered up his tools, trying to get inside before the rain started.
From my high vantage point, I had a clear view of the main road beyond the front gate and watched as a quaint-looking country bus slowly lumbered by. It was full, and I could faintly make out the faces of women clutching wicker shopping baskets, staring blankly out of windows that were rapidly misting up as the rain came down.
The scene seemed so real, but what if it was merely a three-dimensional projection?
If I jumped from the window, would I land on a grassy lawn or find myself falling through space?
And what about those people out there?
If I tried to communicate with them, would it be like shouting at the characters on a cinema screen? Or would they answer back? I had to find out.
I tugged at the handle that held the window shut, but it would not budge. With the heel of my hand, I repeatedly hit the underside of the lever, trying to free it from the encrusted dirt and paint. Gradually, it began to move upward and then gave way completely. My hand slipped and hit the glass hard, almost breaking it, but the window swung open, and a gust of wind and rain blew into the room.
I looked down at droplets of water that looked like tiny glass marbles sitting on the gloss-painted surface of the windowsill. There was a dead blue bottle among them, encrusted with dust as if it had lain there a long time, and I carelessly knocked it away.
A bee buzzed in, seeking shelter from the rain, and brushed against my face as it flew to the other side of the room, eventually landing exhausted on the roof of the wardrobe.
Leaning my head and upper body outside the window, I saw the gardener trundling a small wheelbarrow laden with tools down a narrow path that led to the back of the house. The rain had slackened off, but the gardener seemed to have finished the outside work and was returning the tools to his shed.
He was about sixty years old with a pronounced limp, simply dressed in heavy serge green trousers and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled back to reveal muscular brown arms. On his head, he wore a battered straw hat, pulled down to partly conceal a bulky, old-fashioned hearing aid behind his right ear.
The front wheel of the wheelbarrow squeaked noisily, and the frame rocked from side to side as the old man continued slowly on his way down the rough path. I waited until he was under the window, then hailed him loudly:
"Hello there!"
The gardener trundled on oblivious, but a small flock of startled wood pigeons suddenly rose in the air like a squadron of fighter planes and flew off in close formation.
They heard me!
I now positively bellowed at the man below. He stopped and lowered his wheelbarrow to the ground.
I beamed down at him:
"Hello there!"
The gardener looked up, cupping his hand to his ear.
"Eh?"
The old boy must be as deaf as a post.
"How are you?" I said," enunciating every word slowly and clearly.
"I'll be fine, Master Peter, but you won't half cop it if Mrs Tweedy catches you up there. Best come down—sharp now."
Master Peter?" Does he think he is talking to Peter from the book?
I needed to find out more.
"Coming, sir," I shouted.
Don't be smart with me, Master Peter. You call me Jenkins, and well, you know it.
Now come down."
I saw him fiddling with his hearing aid; he must have had it turned down.
"Sorry, Jenkins, I am writing a letter to my mother and came up here for a bit of peace away from the rest of them, and now I have a shocking headache and have completely forgotten the date.
"What is it, please?"
"September the fifteenth,"
"Thanks, Jenkins, and the year, of course, is…
Jenkins was losing patience now: "1940 and no more joking, come on down.".
"Thanks awfully, Jenkins, I do have a headache, you know.
"Do you think it's anything to do with my age? You know, growing pains—all that sort of rot. I don't want to fail the medical for the RAF. I am looking forward to joining up and fighting in the war like Daddy."
Jenkins looked at me sombrely.
"Don't be in too much of a hurry, Master Peter; there's nothing to look forward to in a war."
He looked down at his leg. "I got that early in the last one," he said ruefully. "It still hurts me now; they might as well have blown it all off in one go for all the use it is."
He weighed me up appraisingly, no longer a hired gardener but the archetypal father figure, listening to young men talk recklessly of war, and taking as little notice of the old men as he did himself in his own time.
"You are a fine figure of a boy, Master Peter, but fourteen is too young to be thinking of fighting in a war. Now, for the last time, get down here. I won't tell you again!"
I became aware of a low drone in the sky, and we both looked up, shading our eyes with cupped hands. It was the sound of aircraft engines, and I instantly identified them as a flight of Supermarine Spitfires. My heart quickened as they approached in an arrow formation, five aircraft in total.
Ours seemed to be flying number two on the starboard of the lead plane, but I couldn't be sure from here. Suddenly, the sun broke through the stopping rain, and I could see the RAF roundels etched on each fuselage. Number two banked off sharply, revealing his yellow underside, streaked with oil, then turned sharply, diving straight at us, levelling off at the last moment, and roaring straight overhead. Waggling his wings in salute, he flew over the roof of the house to make a pass from the other side.
"It be your father again, Master Paul," shouted Jenkins excitedly. "It be him, all right! Second time this week!"
He looked around the garden.
"Now, where are the other children? Be madder than wet hens to know they missed him."
On its second sweep, the Spitfire came in low, and, strangely, the wings reflected a luminous green glow—it must have been a reflection from the trees; the sun was extremely bright.
I could see the pilot at the controls with his face mask hanging down so that he could get a better look at us. I waved both hands and nearly fell out of the window. The pilot looked directly at me. He was young and handsome with a neat black moustache, and I saw the white of his teeth as his face broke into a wide smile and he waved back. He gave me a thumbs-up sign and pointed upward, signalling that he must rejoin the other aircraft. With one last wave, he pulled back on the stick and climbed steeply to regain his position.
"Leader One to Red Two, are you receiving me?"
Silence.
"I say again, Leader One to Red Two.
"Are you receiving me, Red Two?"
"Red Two to Leader One, receiving you loud and clear."
"Sorry for the delay, skipper; the radio must be playing up."
"Everything, O.K., John? You drifted completely out of position."
"Sorry, skipper. "I have rectified my course; I must have been daydreaming."
"Do you feel all right?"
"Fine, no problems." "I will get the radio checked when we land at Northolt."
"Leader One to Red Two." Stay alert, John. Report to me when we land. Roger, and out."
Flight Lieutenant Pevensie turned up his oxygen supply.
What happened there? I must have blacked out for a second, but I don't remember a thing. Won't mention it. I don't want them to ground me."
The planes were now out of sight, and I hurriedly caught the swinging window and closed it shut. I sat down on the floor with my mind racing. I felt elated.
I could interact with the story, but which story? I needed to think this through.
The pilot had seen his son. Jenkins had also recognised me as 'Peter,' a fourteen-year-old, wearing the clothes of the time, but I was seventeen years old, dressed in modern clothes. Jenkins seemed not to notice, but what about my language?
'Thanks awfully' and "all that rot!" Where did that come from?
The appearance of the aeroplane was very strange indeed. I knew nothing about aircraft, yet I seemed able to describe the ones that flew above us with accuracy and confidence. The character of 'Peter' and my own must have partially merged when the planes were overhead, and our separate personalities had momentarily entangled.
But even this small deviation from an established narrative would have future consequences, and not only for the people directly involved.
Take Jenkins, for example. The character of 'Jenkins the Gardener' was not from the book, but he instantly came into being to fit into the new narrative, a man able to think and reflect.
He was a man who fought in the First World War, and the effects of the wounds he received are still with him now. A man, not an automaton, who had abstract thoughts and could reflect on the futility of war. A man who had lived for sixty years or more in interaction with other people and events. The cumulative effects of his coming into being were simply incalculable.
Has Jenkins's voyage into existence carried an ancillary cast in its wake, and do these, in turn, have their associates in tow?
Is there a huge group of players now strutting the stage of an alternative universe because I said 'hello' to a gardener?
Nobody lives a life in isolation; every life touches another and creates an interdependent circuit that is inescapable, and not just from each other; everything in the universe is part of a vast web of connectivity.
Something terrible was happening.
My already fragile mind was ready to collapse, and there were enemies around me waiting to take advantage. They had me exposed and unprotected on the surface of my conscious mind.
I struggled to think straight.
I must dive down and enter the dangerous and uncharted depths of the unconscious, a region ruled by anarchic forces beyond control, where the enemy will fear to go, but I must have a mental anchor, a strong memory, which would secure me safely in my past and restore my sense of self. I must act quickly before they set me adrift with the bones of my mind picked clean.
Of all the thoughts bouncing randomly around in my mind, the one that emerged was the memory of a pencil sketch. It had been my habit as a child to prop up a book in front of my face as I lay in bed and stare at an illustration as I tried to go to sleep.
The picture was of a reindeer-drawn sleigh, loaded with brightly wrapped presents, come to a halt on a lonely country road. A table had been set up at the roadside, laden with seasonal food, and Father Christmas himself was sitting down to the feast. His guests were four familiar children who would free the land from the tyranny of a perpetual winter without Christmas.
'Merry Christmas! Long live the true king!'
The image faded, and the enemy was gone, but I could not wake myself, and in the way of idle thoughts, my mind drifted back to a dream of Christmas in my childhood.
My mother had told me that on Christmas Eve, there was magic in the air, and I thought that if ever I was going to be reconciled with my true father, a shadowy figure of my invention, this was the night he would choose to come and take me away. Running up to my bedroom, I pressed my face against the cold glass window, and the sight of the frosty night sky filled me with wonder.
Last-minute shoppers jostled along the icy pavements, carrying parcels in the High Street below. Christmas candles shone from every shop window, and in the early evening darkness, iridescent pools formed on the damp pavements, oily circles of light that mixed tints indiscriminately in a kaleidoscope of colour.
An hour later, I lay in bed, listening to the tick of the clock on the wall and counting down the minutes until my departure. A man selling hot chestnuts had passed, ringing his bell, and I pressed my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep in case it was Santa.
When I awoke in the morning, I found myself still in my pyjamas and tucked under the sheets, and I cried because my father had not come to collect me. The memory saddened me, and the loneliness returned. The enemy might have been manipulating my mood, but I felt only a deep despair that rendered my life worthless.
In the dim reflection from the window, I saw how scared I looked and felt ashamed. My head ached, and quite unexpectedly, I remembered a poster on my bedroom wall at home and smiled at the memory of the cartoon print.
It showed a huge swan about to eat a little green frog. The frog's body was already inside the gaping beak of the swan, but the frog would not accept defeat. He was determined to fight to the very end, and he had locked his tiny, webbed hands around the throat of the massive bird and was trying to throttle it.
The motto below says:
"Never, ever, give up."
"Never, ever, give up." Without thinking, I had spoken the words aloud, and to my astonishment, I heard a girl's voice from the other side of the door exclaim:
"There is somebody inside that room. I just heard a voice!"
The handle of the door began to turn; she was coming in, and my stomach tightened. This was it: first contact…