The Tea Club
a conglomerate fan fiction novel by Mya Sanders
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There is a secret society in London called the Tea Club. The mission; to find magic in the real world and harness power to return to lands visited only by magic, and if that is impossible, find solidarity among others who have experienced magic and know it to be real. The members are Dorothy Gale, Alice Whitmore, Wendy Darling, and many more. Reeling from the death of her family in a railway accident, Susan Pevensie is the logical choice for the club's newest member.
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Chapter One
Till Your Glory
Funerals do not make for cheerful affairs in a world turned dark. It was fitting that it should rain, and Susan Pevensie, age twenty-one, accepted the additional misery with the grace of a queen.
There were five graves altogether; Mum, Dad, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy. Parents and three siblings gone in a single tragedy. The dirt was mounded and smelled of rich earth, but not so rich as another earth she's smelled before.
She reckoned Edmund would've compared it to chocolate. Lucy might have dared him to taste it. He would have, too. Then Peter would slip Lucy a bill from his pocket.
Susan would have scolded Edmund till his ears bled with it. You've soiled your shirt, she'd say, And lord knows what sort of sicknesses you could get. There's baking soda in the loo, go clean your teeth immediately! When a disgruntled Ed would leave, she'd say to Peter and Lu, don't you dare encourage him! Fancy you all still acting like children! It's positively horrific!
It almost smelled like a real memory. Which, like an addiction, only made her remember more.
"We're trying to go back to Narnia," Lucy had said, delicate arms folded around her knees, perched at the end of Susan's bed in her London flat, a boarding house that she shared with the other working girls. Susan was getting ready for a late shift at the hotel, where she was a switchboard operator. The room was warm with sunlight from the window, the usual dead air of midsummer relieved by an infantile breeze, stirring the white curtains from the open sash.
"Narnia?" Susan asked absently, staring at her figure in the mirror. She wasn't telling Lucy, but she was preparing for a seduction. A young man that worked in the offices next door. They'd been meeting for lunch for weeks now. She noticed that now, when he saw her approaching in the plaza, he would take off his wedding ring and put it into his breast pocket. For her comfort.
She thought it was sweet of him.
"You know, Narnia," Jill Pole said brashly, "That place where you were Queen."
Susan felt the deep ache that she always felt every time they brought up Narnia. Why Lucy and the rest were so obsessed with the games they used to play as children, she would never understand. But it always caused the same ache, as if she wished she could play along too. But she couldn't. It didn't matter to her anymore.
"Pole," Susan said briskly, "We mustn't touch what isn't ours."
Jill quickly replaced the bottle of perfume she'd been examining at Susan's vanity. "Ghastly stuff," she replied.
"Then don't wear it," Susan said sharply.
Lucy sighed. "Stop fussing at yourself. You look beautiful."
"I know," Susan said softly. "But there's something missing."
"Lipstick?" Jill offered sarcastically.
"You'll be a woman yet, Pole," Susan laughed, applying bright red lipstick. She was a knock out. "It's important to look your best for work."
"Or for whatever happens after," Jill replied with a sneer.
"Forget about the date," Lucy pleaded, knowing without Susan having to explain. "Meet us after your shift. We're having dinner at Kirk's."
Susan shook her head. "I do not break engagements after I've already made them."
"Professor Kirk believes in Narnia," Lucy said abruptly. "So does Peter, Aunt Polly, Ed, Jill, Scrubb, me..."
"Narnia was a story we made up when we were bored from the rain," Susan said patiently. "You've always had an overactive imagination."
"You can't say we are all mad," Lucy argued. "Maybe me. But all of us? Look at the majority, Susan."
"Majority put Hitler in power, I wouldn't use that in an argument," Susan said plaintively. "Professor Kirk believes because he is an elderly, impressionable man, who's lost all his money. He can't function, so he uses your fairy stories to build himself a wall of comfort to help him cope. He's losing his memory and coordination. That's what happens when people age, Lu."
"What about Ed and Peter?"
"They believe because the professor believes. You know they worship the ground he walks on." Susan adjusted her dress once more. It shaped her waist so nicely. The lipstick was a nice touch. "Darling," she said, turning to Lucy, "Don't you have anything better to do that to continue trying to rope me in to your fantasies? Lies don't suit you, Lucy, they never have. I wish you'd grow up."
"What, like you?" Jill said, her elbow bumping the vanity. Glass bottles clattered together.
"Careful!" Susan darted over to the table and righted the bottles. "These are very expensive. Now I can't have you two ninnies mucking about and arguing about your old games when I have a real job and real people out there waiting for me. See yourselves home, please."
She picked up her handbag and coat, buttoning the sailor's lapels with professional speed. She turned a critical eye towards her sister and her old friend. "I wish you'd let me do your hair," she said earnestly. "You're nearly eighteen, Lucy, and you, Pole... you'd be so pretty if you'd at least make some effort. These times won't last forever, you know. You should be planning for a future before it slips away from you."
"There's more to life than wearing the right clothes to snag a husband," Jill scoffed.
Susan stared at her levelly. "Not for women, darling. Not in this life or the next." When she left, she stopped again at the hall mirror to check her appearance, setting a wayward curl to rights. By the time she had arrived at work, she had stopped at half a dozen window reflections to obsessively check again.
Her coworkers, eight other women from a variety of classes and stages of life, greeted her with nods and waves. She settled into her seat and put on her headset. The lines were already beginning to light up and buzz. It was going to be a busy day...
Her lunch period was spent in his office.
"You are... unlike anyone I've met before," he had whispered, "But my, my wife... I mean, I shouldn't..."
She gave him a long kiss to say goodbye, and he begged her to call in sick for the rest of the day, to complain of a headache... anything. They could get a room. After all, she worked at the hotel. She had a fresh pair of nylons, without snags or tears, tucked in her purse, for such occasions as this.
"I couldn't possibly," she smiled, "I wouldn't want to bore you. You must learn to miss me."
When she walked back to her switchboard, she felt that same, watery feeling in the pit of her stomach. An emptiness that could never be explained away, one that another man might be able to fill. Clearly this wasn't the one. She'd have to try someone else. She would keep destroying as many men as possible until she found one that did not make her feel destroyed.
She checked her reflection obsessively.
"Nice lunch?" replied Betty, who always sat beside her.
"Oh, he was scrumptious," Susan winked.
Betty sighed. "Oh, I wish I were brave like you, having boyfriends and going to parties and the like."
Susan laughed, and tugged Betty's lank hair. "Let me do your hair sometime, and you can borrow some of my old make up. I really think you could shape your waist if you used a belt, just like they do in the catalogues."
"You're such a wicked girl!"
"I could make a wicked one out of you."
"No, no," Betty giggled, "I couldn't possibly. My parents would just die!"
"So would mine," Susan said, and she had laughed so gaily, then she went out to have a smoke. Betty followed, and Susan made her try cigarettes until she stopped coughing. Betty was very brave, keeping at it until she could light up without any help. Susan explained to her that smoking was the new sexy.
The dirt made thickening clumps on the coffins, a thump every time more was shoveled in. Soon there would be no sight of it, and their bodies would be trapped underground, forever.
Susan had a horrible thought... what if one of them woke up? Pounded on the coffin lid until their hands were broken? No one would hear them. Then they would die all over again.
The night she declined the dinner invitation at Professor Kirk's, there was a party. Boys on leave, relieved that the war was over and they had made it out alive, seemed to be making up for lost time. In the dark, smoky rooms of the private apartments of the Branson boys, Susan had soda and whiskey to loosen up. She graduated to scotch before long, savoring the crisp, golden liquid lighting her limbs and hormones on fire.
Like a bird of prey, she searched until she spotted a lonely one in a corner. She put a glass to his lips and said, "Drink, soldier. You look like you could use some courage."
Stunned at her beauty, he drank quickly. They always did.
He swelled with self-importance as they conversed. She used her words to worship his entire sad, self-made-man story. These war survivor types seemed all the same to her. Needy. Needing approval, needing her gaze, needing her everything. She acted as if she had never met a soldier before. As if he single-handedly won the war for her.
Before he knew what was happening, they were snogging in an unoccupied corner.
For her, it was another victory. For him, it was a temptation now satisfied. The only thing he would have to deal with now is the consequences. If there were any.
She got home that night at three in the morning. She stopped by the bathroom, hearing Mary-Ann, one of the flatmates, crying behind the closed door. "Is that you, Mary Ann?" she asked quietly. "Anything I can do for you?"
Mary Ann cried back, rather harshly, "There is nothing you can do, Susan Pevensie! Unless your fashion-sense and hair products can save my brother from dying!"
Susan balked from the door. "Don't blame me for your brother's poor health," she replied snappishly. "Come to my room when you're ready to apologize and need some lotion to fix the red puffiness around your eyes."
"Sod off!"
"Suit yourself," Susan said regally. Mary Ann refused to look her best most of the time, and tonight wouldn't be any different. If only she'd let Susan have a go at her, but she probably didn't have enough self-respect for it. Mary Ann thought it was better to be homely and proud than beautiful and vain, which Susan saw as the lesser evil.
The next morning, the communal telephone rang in the hall. "It's for you, Su," Molly handed the earpiece to Susan. She accepted and leaned casually against the door frame into the parlor.
"Hello?" she said.
"Susan, it's me," it was Lucy's voice. "Something amazing happened last night. Something... just mad!"
Susan laughed. "I thought you were having dinner at the old Professor's, you little tease. You went out, didn't you? You finally met someone."
"Uh, no, nothing like that," Lucy stumbled, unsure. "Something magical happened."
"Then tell me all about it, you silly goose!"
"Well, I can't now. Can we get brunch this week?"
Susan examined her fingernails. They were chipped, in need of a polish. "Can't today," she said carelessly.
"Tuesday?"
"Hair appointment."
"Wednesday?"
"I go out with Laurel every Wednesday, you know that."
"Thursday."
"I have a date."
"All right, Friday, then," Lucy huffed, frustrated.
"Certainly, Friday... wait, no, not Friday," Susan said quickly. "Going dancing that night."
"Saturday morning, then."
"Not too early," Susan replied.
"No," Lucy smiled slightly, "Not too early. But Saturday, for certain?"
"Saturday will be just fine. See you then, Lucy."
But she didn't see Lucy on Saturday, either.
She left the funeral early, clutching a handbag from Selfridge's, lowering a black veil over her face so that no one would see the puckered mouth of displeasure and the tears of grief trying to escape.
As much as this tore her apart, as much as she wanted to break down... she refused. She wanted to fall to her knees and scream, and cry until she killed herself, but she just couldn't. She could not destroy the image she had worked so hard for... it wasn't fair.
It wasn't polite to grieve in public, everyone knew that!
Susan believed it was a sign of her resilience, her inner strength, that no tragedy could smear her mascara. But it was really a sign of profound weakness. Even in the darkness of the worst moment of her life, she still cared more about what other's thought of her, than the loss she had endured. For the past six years, there was a battle waging between her superficiality and her soul. Her armor was made of material goods, her body was her weapon. Her soul had gone to sleep a long time ago, and she liked the idea that it might never wake up.
Who needs goodness? Who needs light in the darkness? Who needs love?
Not Susan Pevensie. Not if she believed love cast her out long ago. She was banished, and decided to replace love with whatever else she could find... good looks. A full closet. Make up. Alcohol. Lovers. If she could only find the right combination of them all to create herself anew, till she could no longer recognize herself.
She wanted to be lost. See, she seemed to say, This is what you've done to me. I hope you're happy. This is all YOUR fault.
Take away my crown. Take away my home. I will take away all the righteousness you once gave me, till there is none of you left. Till your glory doesn't exist anymore. Till by my own making, I will forget. I have forgotten.
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Please review! :) It would mean so much to me. I was simply struck by the idea that Susan's story needed to be told and that there was a lot more to it than believed...