Warnie quotes from Shadowlands (1993)

Warnie

Why is the beer in this pub always cold? Cold beer. Chills the stomach. Has no taste.

I have a complaint about the wardrobe.

Complaint ? Our children love it.

I will not have another blasted conversation about Jack’s blasted nursery.

No. No, listen. Listen. In the book you describe the house as belonging to an old professor who has no wife and yet… You say when the little girl enters the magic wardrobe she finds it full of fur coats.

Very good, Eddie. Not bad.

It’s simple. Simple. It belongs to the professor's old mother. Simple.

So to reach the magic world the child must push through the mother’s fur?

No, John, it’s not like that hand-me down Freudianism.

Harry

But the imagery is Christian surely.

No, Harry it’s what it is. It’s just itself. It’s…. It’s just magic: Magic. Look. Let me show you. The child steps into the wardrobe. The coats are thick and heavy.

What about the fur?

Fur’s not important, John. The child must push through. They’re pressing close, almost suffocating and suddenly there’s white light. Crisp cold air. Trees. Snow. Total contrast you see. It’s a gateway to a magical world.

Another letter form Mrs. Gresham.

Warnie

I can’t remember any of it.

Jewish Communist Christian American.

Warnie

You may ask me how I know it was strange if I’ve forgotten it. Can’t answer that one.

I like her letters she can be quite sharp sometimes. Listen to this, Warnie. She says :”I can’t decide whether you’d rather be the child caught in the spell or the magician casting it.” Her letters are rather unusual. She writes as if she knows me somehow. And, I suppose there is something of me in my books, isn’t there?

Warnie

I expect it’s just the American style. Americans don’t understand about inhibitions.

Oh she is coming to England. And she’s coming to Oxford. She wants to meet us.

Warnie

Well she can’t come here.

No of course not, but she does suggest tea in a hotel.

Warnie

Tea is safe. A hotel is safe. Though she might be mad.

No I don’t think so. She does write poems.

Warnie

Poems ??? She‘ll be barking.

Warnie

You won’t be too agreeable, will you Jack?

Don’t worry, Warnie. I won’t.

Warnie

She’ll turn out to be writing a dissertation on wardrobes. She’ll ask you whether she can come and watch you ”create”. She’ll say ”I’ll sit in the corner. You’ll never know I’m there.”

It’s only tea, Warnie. An hour or so with polite conversation and then we go home and everything goes on just as it always has.

What’s happening to me, Warnie? I can’t see her anymore. I can’t remember her face.

Warnie

I expect it's shock.

I’m so afraid of never seeing her again--thinking that suffering is just suffering after all. No cause, no purpose, no pattern.

Warnie

I…I don’t know what to tell you, Jack.

Nothing, there is nothing to say. I know that now. I’ve just come up against experience, Warnie. Experience is a brutal teacher…but you learn. My God you learn.