Like millions of
people the world over, I read C.S. Lewis’s THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
when I was a kid, and afterwards, dreamed of finding Narnia at the back of my
own wardrobe, even though it was barely big enough to hold all my clothes,
never mind the secret entrance to a whole other world.
It seemed I
was doomed to disappointment. But if I’d only stopped to think about it, I’d’ve
realised that portals to parallel worlds existed all around me, and that I’d
already been through them many times.
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The first was a gigantic
weeping beech tree which grew at the edge of the grounds of the environmental
studies centre where I grew up. In winter, the branches which cascaded from its
crown were bare skeletons, the ground beneath them muddy and wet, but in
summer, it underwent a transformation. The branches became leafy umbrellas,
with a circle of bare, dusty earth beneath each. For my sister and I, this was
our ‘house’, with each branch-umbrella forming a separate room – and there were
enough of them for a grand mansion. The leaves became walls, the trunk a spiral
staircase (although we never tried to climb it), the ground richly-patterned
carpets, and the sunlight filtering through the canopy around us the light from
glittering chandeliers. We took tea, ordered the maids about (and each other),
and generally had a splendid time. At least until we got called in for dinner.
My second Narnia
was on the other side of the centre grounds where, just before they gave way to
fields, there was a tiny wood of horse chestnut trees. They had grown up around
an ice house which dated from the days when the centre was a private home, and
the family who lived there needed somewhere to store ice to keep food cold. As
well as being my very own conker supply depot, each summer the wood would be
transformed into a lush green paradise as a carpet of cow parsley sprung up beneath
the trees. I remember my mum helping my sister and I to cook dinner over a
campfire there one year, listening to episodes of THE HOBBIT on the radio while
we ate, and being surrounded by a frothing sea of scented white flowers. We
each had a horse, too (two long branches that grew beside the domed roof of the
ice-house, which we’d climb onto to reach them), and would travel many miles to
distant and exotic lands.
Finally, next to a
little pond in our garden, there was a small box hedge. It was hollow inside,
so my sister and I claimed it as a den. There was just room in there to sit
upright, using an old plank of wood as a bench, but in my mind it was vast, a
giant’s cavern with a ceiling hung with stalagtites and glittering crystals
studding the walls. Once, I found a ring in there – silver, with a small blue
rabbit on it – that I’d lost several years before. I hadn’t lost it in there,
though, so how it ended up there, I was never sure. Perhaps it really was a portal to another world – one
where lost things wait to be found…
I left my Narnias
behind eventually – like the way in to the real Narnia disappears for the older characters in the series, their doors quietly closed behind me while I was busy
getting older – but being a writer means that even as an adult I get to live in
other worlds all the time: the worlds I create on the page. Each new story I
write is a doorway into another reality, and when the time comes to move on,
it’s always a wrench.
But not for long,
because there’s always another story forming somewhere. Another world waiting
for me to notice it.
All I have to do is start writing…
