Mary Reed goes to Narnia

Mary Reed, with husband Eric Mayer, writes the John the Eunuch mystery series, set in 6th Century Constantinople. She is a fellow Brit and is sharing a fabulous memory of a British childhood:

My parents owned one of those enormous wardrobes made of dark wood --

perhaps mahogany -- and fitted with a mirror on the door taking up the

middle third of its vast frontage. As a youngster, more than once I poked my

head into the wardrobe's dark cavern of garments, leaned in, and groped past

its mothball-scented hanging population. And once or twice it really felt,

just before the tips of my fingers met smooth wood, they would go further

than they should and I would be poking them into Narnia.

Years later, when I lived in Oxford, I finally got there.

Let me take readers on a journey back to that day.

It was approaching the close of the academic year. Along the curve of the

High Street undergraduates, giddy with relief at completing their end of

term exams, popped bottles of champagne, soaking the black and white

academical garb required when taking said exams -- and a fair bit of the

pavement as well. Many would soon be packing to leave Oxford's

honey-coloured walls to go home for the Long Vacation, but there was still

time to spend a few golden days punting up and down the Isis past the

Botanical Gardens and the college barges or lingering at the river bank to

canoodle under the drooping concealment of friendly willow trees.

Some students, however, were also keeping up the tradition of presenting

amateur theatrical or musical productions to hail the end of the summer term.

Thus it was, early on a somnolent, bee-buzzing evening, I arrived at

Magdalen College as shadows were just starting to touch the thickets of a

grove behind its main buildings. Here, on the edge of the river, deer have

lived for many a decade in a herd T. E. Lawrence proposed be claimed by All

Souls College on the grounds they belonged to them but had been pastured at

Magdalen since time immemorial.

On this occasion visitors, unusually, were allowed to enter the grove to

take their places in several rows of seats facing a cluster of trees in full

dusty leaf. For we had come to see an undergraduate presentation of The

Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in this impromptu open air theatre,

performed against a back drop of impossibly green foliage and lush grass,

glimpses of old stone buildings, and, deeper in the grove, a number of brown

deer grazing with a shy glance now and then at the human invaders.

It seemed a particularly appropriate venue, given C. S. Lewis was an English

tutor at, and Fellow of, Magdalen College for a quarter century or so.

This particular evening was warm, almost sultry, the audience's chatter

fading away at intervals so that strange hush commonly heard between teatime

and the period when people start go out for the evening came creeping into

the grove. They did not know it on arrival, but the audience will be

surprised by strawberries and wine during the short interval between acts.

And now the student company appears, most dressed in ordinary clothing, to

present an adaptation of the beloved story. Mr. Tumnus, the faun, in sedate

contrast to his cousins, those leering satyrs gallivanting about in

classical paintings, plays his recorder, its reedy notes lingering in the

hot air. The White Witch, her evil initially wrapped in sweetness, spins her

enchantments with a nasty look in the eyes. Aslan, that beautiful lion,

undergoes the most dreadful humiliation, bringing tears to the eyes of

onlookers, while the Pevensie siblings -- Peter, Lucy, Susan, and Edmund --

struggle valiantly to restore order -- and summer weather -- to the snowy

land beyond the lamp post marking the border between that world and ours.

Actors' voices float across limpid air under a Wedgwood sky as now and then

the muted thunder of traffic passing over Magdalen Bridge penetrates the

sylvan setting. The young thespians do a terrific job: I wonder where they

are all now and if any of them ever think about that magical evening?

And in the final battle scene several curious deer, which had ventured ever

closer, were suddenly spooked by the clamour and began to race back and

forth in the background of the conflict.

There was a standing ovation. The audience spilled out into the hot, busy

High Street and the deer reclaimed their leafy living quarters.

But for a little time we had all visited Narnia.

check out their website at www.ericmayer.com

Comments

[Jane Finnis]

What a lovely evocation of open-air theatre on a summer night! At my boarding-school, we used to peerform plays in an open-air setting for summer half-term (when the parents came.) There were usually three performances, and they were quite chaotic to organise from the backstage point of view, but terrific to watch. I remember being in a peerformance of "Toad of Toad Hall" in which Toad rode off on a real horse at one point; the best applause of the afternoon erupted when the animal delayed his exit to drop a pile of manure!