The classic architecture and the opulence of the fittings suggested that I was now in the bedroom of a grand house. It had the mustiness of a room long unused, and the exposed antique oak floorboards were covered in a layer of dull grey dust. Diligent maids must have polished the wood to the grain over centuries, and I scraped a small section clear to show the beauty of the ancient oak shining through undiminished.
A bay window draped with faded red damask curtains was to my left, and directly facing it was a large open stone fireplace. There was no bed in the room, and apart from a large piece of furniture covered with a white dust sheet, it was otherwise empty. I approached and, with some hesitation, grasped a corner of the sheet and pulled it down.
There before me was a large double wardrobe with ornately carved mahogany doors, and I instinctively knew where I was, my heart pounding as I rested my palm flat against the varnished surface, naively expecting the most famous portal in literary history to resonate beneath 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 purposeless; it marked the beginning of my realisation of the nature of fiction.
I had not entered the original novel, only 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 everyday life. I experienced a surge of emotion as I recalled the unhappiness of those days when I had no friends and trusted nobody. Even now, I could never quite believe that what I was seeing was an alternative reality. It might be a scene in a film or play, or simply an illusion created by my mind. This brought me down for a moment, but I knew I had to find out the truth.
The room and wardrobe matched the story perfectly, and the bare wooden floor bore the marks of wear and age, fitting the house's history. The floorboards creaked under my steps, and the atmosphere in the room carried a sense of times gone by.
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 looked real 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 spent valuable time and effort creating 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, a cobbled yard with stables, a marquee on the lawn, or a fundraising garden party for the war effort—any plausible view from an English country house at the start of the Second World War, when the story was set.
I rated the likelihood of my conscious appraisal alone causing an outlook to appear as nearly 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. Still, there may be a brief moment of transition from old to new when I could catch a glimpse of what exists 'backstage', so to speak.
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 couldn't even see through the dirty window and had to frantically wipe a small patch clean. That's done. I pressed my face against the window and gazed out.
Below was a large, well-maintained lawn, bordered by flower beds alongside a driveway lined with elm trees. A light drizzle had begun to fall, and the sky looked cloudy and heavy with rain. Twenty yards away, I could see a gardener pruning a row of bushes, but he looked up at the sky and quickly gathered 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 on the handle that kept the window shut, but it wouldn't shift. Using the heel of my hand, I repeatedly struck the underside of the lever, trying to loosen it from the caked dirt and paint. Gradually, it started to lift upwards and then finally gave way. My hand slipped and struck 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 appraised me with a measured look, no longer merely a hired gardener but embodying the quintessential father figure, listening to young men speak recklessly of war, and paying as little heed to the old men as he did to himself in his own days.
"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!"