Rose seemed to share the woman’s opinion. She watched her frivolous twin with her arms crossed, shaking her head in disapproval.
Regardless of how Rose or the other woman viewed the unofficial straggler, Opal was the darling of the crowd. As she scuttled around the bend at her one-foot-in-front-of-the-other trotting speed, Kellie and I joined the rest of the crowd to cheer her on. Many of the viewers waved. Some of them, including Kellie and me, laughed joyously at the determination Opal demonstrated.
Then it was over. Opal was out of view. Rose stood, and Kellie and I folded up the chairs. As Rose muttered, we followed the dispersing crowd that was making its way to the church. The disadvantage of being positioned in the middle of the raceway was that we didn’t see any of the women cross the finish line, nor did we see the final pancake flip or the scandalous “kiss of peace” from the vicar.
But we did see Virgil when we arrived in the churchyard.
And we saw Opal.
He was beaming. She was glowing. People were taking her picture as she stood beside Virgil in his floppy chef’s hat.
“What has happened to my sister?” Rose wasn’t looking at either Kellie or me, but the tone in her voice made it sound as if she was charging us personally for the untaming of her twin. “She has not behaved like this since …”
The end of her sentence went unfinished. I wanted to finish it. The ending was right on the tip of my tongue, but I held back from saying it.
Since the last time she was in love, right?
Kellie pulled me aside. “What do you think? Should we leave now?”
“Now?” I surprised myself with my sudden resistance to leaving Olney.
“I’m thinking if we stay for the church service and the pancake feed afterward, we’ll be here all day.”
“You’re right. Yes, we should slip out now. Let’s tell the twins.”
Kellie and I ushered Rose over to where Opal was posing for the last of her publicity shots. She still was flushed from her admirable trot to the churchyard. We drew her aside and explained to both of them that we needed to be on our way. Their disappointment was blatant.
“We did hope you would stay for the pancakes at least.”
“And the church service,” Rose said.
I’m sure she was convinced Kellie and I were the undoing of her sister and all three of us incorrigible women from the U.S. were in dire need of a good sermon.
“We’ll take the chairs back to the house,” I said.
“No need,” Opal said. “Virgil can take them for us. He’s taking the frying pan back for me.”
“The house is open,” Rose said. “I don’t lock my door during the daytime.”
“Well, thank you both so much for everything. We really appreciate your hospitality. Kellie and I will come back here next week as planned.”
“We will be here,” Opal said. “And do remember that in case you tire of London sooner than you expect and would like to come back early—”
“The guest room will be waiting.” Rose stood next to her sister as the two of them fell into their overlapping pattern of talking.
“We have your phone number with us, and we’ll contact you if our plans change,” I said.
“Have a lovely time in London.”
“Thank you,” Kellie and I said in unison.
The two sisters stood to the side of the pancake tent and waved at us as we turned to go. I glanced over my shoulder with one last smile. With the sunlight coming through the churchyard, the sisters reminded me of two fuzzy-haired characters in my younger daughter’s favorite movie, The Princess Bride. Without knowing it, Rose and Opal were mimicking the scene in which the elderly couple stand at the front door of their woodland cottage waving and calling out, “Have fun storming the castle!”
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Kellie asked when we were out of the crush of people.
“Definitely. If we stay …”
“I know. We’ll never—”
“Get out of here. You’re right.”
There was a short pause, and then I said, “Did you just finish my sentence?”
Kellie looked at me. “Did I? I thought you finished my sentence.”
“I think I did.”
“I probably did too.”
“Then it’s definitely time for us to take our leave of the twins.”
We linked arms and tried Opal’s trot-walk on the now-deserted streets of Olney, all the way to Rose’s cottage.
We had no trouble arranging for a cab to pick us up at Rose’s cottage and to take us to the bus station in Milton Keynes. We did have difficulty once we arrived.
I asked which bus we should take to Oxford Street in London, and the driver as well as the attendant on duty kept asking which coach we wanted. Asking for a coach gave me a mental picture of a Cinderella-style, horse-drawn carriage.
The station attendant said he couldn’t understand our accents. We were having a difficult time understanding his accent as well. He seemed amused to see two American women with luggage trying to make themselves understood at a coach station that was primarily used by those who lived in the area.
“We need to go to this hotel.” I pulled out my super-overachiever notebook and pointed to a brochure of the hotel where we had reservations. “It’s on Oxford Street.”
“Oxford.” The attendant nodded, understanding at last. He walked us over to a bus that had its engine running and was about to leave. We bought our tickets directly from the coach’s driver. He stowed our luggage in the bus’s underbelly while Kellie and I joined a small number of travelers who were leaving Milton Keynes at two thirty Tuesday afternoon.
The comfortable seats and steady rumble of the bus jogged Kellie and me into a jet-lag snooze for the next hour. With the steaming sound of the air compression brakes on the coach, we pulled into a narrow lane at a bus station where several other buses were lined up. Kellie and I were both yawning as we stepped down from the bus and waited for our luggage. We then walked away as if we knew what we were doing.
“So.” I looked around the moderately small station. “Should we ask someone how to get a taxi to take us to our hotel?”
“Good idea. Although if we go to the other side of this building, we might be able to hail a cab. You would think plenty of them would be hanging out at a bus station.”
I followed Kellie and thought how quiet the surroundings seemed for such a large city. Not that I had any idea what part of London we had landed in or how far we had to go to our hotel. I guess I expected more traffic noise. The age of the surrounding buildings and the relative lack of commotion and congestion almost made it seem as if we were back in Olney. I had expected London to be industrial and noisy like it was when we left Heathrow Airport.
“There’s a cab.” Kellie picked up her pace and raised a hand to flag the taxi driver. He was parked along the side of a cobblestone road.
“Are you free?” Kellie asked.
With a wry grin the driver said, “No, mum, I charge full price like the rest of ’em.”
“I meant, is your taxi available?”
“Of course.”
We climbed into the back with our luggage, and he started the digital meter. “Where to?”
Kellie said the name of the hotel, and he looked stumped.
“I have it written down,” she said. Unfortunately, the reservation papers were folded up in the pouch around her neck along with her passport. She had to do some tugging and wiggling to retrieve the papers. While she did her backseat cha-cha, the meter was running.
Kellie handed the reservation to the driver through the open window between the front and back seats. “The address is there at the top. Oxford Street.”
The driver let out a low whistle. “This is going to cost you, mum.”
“All right,” Kellie said cautiously.
“Are you sure this is where you want to go?”
“Yes. Why is it going to cost so much?”
“This ad
dress is in London, mum.”
“Yes,” Kellie said plainly.
“We’re in Oxford, mum.”
Kellie leaned back slowly. She didn’t look at me.
I asked the most illogical question ever. “Are you sure this is Oxford?”
“Pretty sure, mum. I was born and raised here. But I have been known to make a mistake or two along the way. At least that’s what the wife tells me.”
Kellie covered her face with both her hands. “I can’t believe this.”
“We must have gotten on the wrong bus,” I said. “We were trying to tell that guy at the station that we wanted Oxford Street, London, and he put us on the bus to Oxford.”
“Obviously,” Kellie muttered. Her happy-camper attitude had flown south.
“Where did you get on?” the cabby asked.
“Milton-something,” I said.
“Right. Well, you have several choices, then. You can go back to the station behind us and ask a stationmaster to make sure to get you on the right coach back to London. The express coach will take you to Heathrow. From there you can take the tube into the city. Straightforward enough. Unless your tube stop is off the Piccadilly Line. You’ll be jostling your luggage down a lot of stairs if you’re on the Piccadilly. In that case you would be better off taking the train into Paddington. From there you can take the tube or a cab to your hotel.”
He was speaking understandable English, but he might as well have been speaking Martian to us. At that moment his directions were too overwhelming to process.
“Any other options?” I asked.
“You can always stay in Oxford for a day or two.” He grinned. “It’s not a bad place. Or, if you really like, I can drive you to your London hotel, but I’ll have to tell my wife I won’t be home for supper.”
“What do you think we should we do now?” I asked Kellie.
“I don’t know.”
It seemed Kellie and I were taking turns having bad attitudes. Mine had dissipated during the pancake race. Kellie’s was in full bloom. I had made decisions for both of us many times in the past, just as she had made decisions for us as well. But I preferred not to do so at the moment. Staying last night at Rose’s was a mutual choice and had worked out fine. Staying in Oxford would work out better if Kellie and I agreed to do so.
“Have you made up your minds, then?” the driver asked.
“We could stay here,” I suggested.
“That means I’ll have to call the hotel in London again and cancel before six o’clock. I hate doing that.”
“Well, we can go back into the station and take the express coach. I’m fine with whatever.”
The driver stretched his hand through the separating window. He held out his cell phone. “Would you like to use my mobile?”
“No, thanks. That’s okay.” Kellie reached for the door handle. “We can find a phone booth.”
The driver kept his hand extended with the phone. His cocky grin didn’t leave his face. “I’m sure it’s not my place to mention this, but if the two of you weren’t able to find the right coach to London, what might your odds be of finding a phone booth this evening?”
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.