There is, or so I believe, no such thing as a parent who isn't an over protective one but- having lost my entire family in a rail accident when I was twenty-one-years-old, I believe I may have left protective far behind. I've got a daughter, my only way out of the horrors of the human mind. Being Lucy's only parent I know there was better for her. She could have had my own childhood. She could have run and played in a world so surreal and magical, but she is stuck. Just as I am stuck.
I see the clinical room, pristine to the point an innocent and pure baby would be too dirty for it. Rows and rows of tables, haunted by white sheets were there before my eyes. The victims of the train crash at a distant station, I didn't belong in that village no one knew me, no one cared. Doctors and nurses with an army of volunteers were bustling around taking people's names and helping them find the correct body. A large woman, who was easily over six-foot tall with arms like a soldier, came charging towards me. She grunted and pulled at a label around my neck. The label first read Susan Pevensie, 6L, Dorset Avenue, Finchley; my childhood address. I then looked back at it only to discover it now read: High Queen Susan, Cair Paravel, Seafront, Eastern Narnia. The woman just grunted again, her manners were ghastly, and pulled me over to a table.
She ripped off the sheet to reveal my little sister. The skin on her face had turned patchy yellow in some places like the jaundice she had as a baby, the rest was charred black. Her eyes sockets lay empty, burst blood vessels with no eyeball to attach with. Bone showed through her sweet face, so young. The skin began to break, drying like old leather and I watched as blood began to pour out. Her white lips opened and she began to scream in agony. I tried to cover my ears, tried to look away but I couldn't I was stuck watching her burn, watching the agonizing end to her life, the pain inflicted on them all; Aunt Alberta, Uncle Harold, my cousin Eustace, my parents, Peter, Edmund and Lucy. I screamed with them, so many voices, so much death, I tried to block it all out, scream louder than them and keep on screaming and screaming until tears streamed from my eyes.
"Mummy, mummy don't cry." Tiny hands grab my arm and shake me gently. I saw darkness, the light from outside outlined the tp corner of the wardrobe , the metal edge on the counter tops shone through the cracked doorway. Home, safety; seven years later.
"Mummy," Lucy cries again, she shuffles around beside me exposing herself to the bitterly cold air.
She may have been only six years old but she was accustom to my tears, she'd known all her life I had nightmares, horrible reminders that I wasn't there . I knew it was too much for a child so young to know the truth, I never knew how much truth to tell. A child shouldn't be allowed to believe the impossible, it will eventually cause more harm than good. That I knew from my experiences as a fourteen year old. However, she would never live up to her namesake if she did not know the stories. I would do all I could to protect her and all I could to make her happy; as long as she learned to move on.
Lucy tumbled over the top of me, her straw blonde hair tangling around her face, one strand lingering on the end of her smile. Lucinda Eddie Paige Pevensie, she was well named , she holds a part of them all. She has Peter's fluffy mop of blonde hair, Edmund's dark chocolate eyes and she has Lucy's beautiful smile. I had no idea what part of my daughter was actually like me, or like her Father. It was almost as though she had been made to be an exact likeness of each of us. The princess who belonged to both kings and both queens.
"It's ok you were just having a bad dream." my little girl insisted, her icy hand stroking my cheek to comfort me.
I had experienced nothing but bad dreams since the train crash. My parents estate was signed first in Peter's name, then in the name of a distant relative. The will my parents wrote had allowed Peter to distribute money to finish Lucy and Edmund's education and then money, best described as an old-fashioned dowry, for Lucy and I. The rest was kept in case of emergency health care- no longer needed because of the National Health Service- or anything else we might need. Because the amounts were unspecified and we barely knew this elderly gentleman he did pay me but he gave me what he considered appropriate. Times have, of course change a lot over the past few decades so he considered a dowry of fifty pounds suitable.
I was forced to take whatever action I could, I did all a girl could do- no office would take me on since my education was better than that of many owners they simply could not cope with girl being as clever as them. Not even a cleaning firm would take me, though I personally think she was just far too picky. I had only one choice, something people cared for more on the outside than on the inside; beauty. I did not choose my husband because he was caring or handsome he was certainly no prince Caspian. I told myself I would learn to love the ex-soldier but I never had to.
Around the time August Hastings, then my fiancé, died I didn't know what I let myself in for. I took a page out of Lucy and Peter's book, I gave up all reason and logic to do another stupid thing. I had never even known he was ill and then I did something so inappropriate and so indecent then he was a cold, dead body with his arm around my naked shoulder. More deaths in my path.
I may have never loved the man but of course I cared for him. He may have been stubborn and set in his ways. He may still have struggled with sexual equality and he may have been eight years older than me but he was soft and chivalrous, the sort of man to offer his coat and open a ladies door. He was the first and only man to treat me wholly as and adult even if his doing so landed me-landed us- in a far worse situation than before. Of all the bad in August he did give me a gift which I discovered the day of his funeral, or, to word it better, what I didn't discover. We had Lucy.
At first I was very lucky, it was nineteen fifty so rationing was still in place, meaning I got the weekly food of every other pregnant woman in the country, one and half that of an average adult- but one and a half ounces of cheese isnt that different from one once. Still the addition of milk and orange juice must have contributed somehow. This was where my luck ended. I was homeless, jobless and expecting an illegitimate baby. It stung so hard and fully destroyed my last faith in the father of our childhood games. If Aslan could see the world I lived in then why wouldn't he save me, why wouldn't he care that I'd slept in the doorway of a shop, that I had shoved off a drunken man trying to have his way with me. For years my disbelief had purely been to make me cope. I had told myself Narnia was a fantasy story, a game we had played but at that point in my story I knew the game was the total truth. Walking around the freezing streets of London all night snow setting on my shoulders and in my hair, I cried. I cried for my childhood and my innocence. I cried for the days when a world of make believe was my truth, for a time I expected a talking lion to come to my aid. Now it was time to give up and grow up.
"Mummy tell me a story, about Narnia," as much as I tried these were still the only suitable stories I could find for my little girl. She flopped off of me and almost right off the edge of our bed,
"Lucy!" I grabbed the tiny child and pulled her back up by her pyjama collar, she giggled, flashing her aunt's bright smile around the dark room. I could feel the warmth glowing from her, it lit the fire inside me which warmed away my fears and stupid nightmares. She could light anything, bring warmth to the heart of a dead man.
"Please Mummy, tell me a story." I could never deny her anything, I had denied her enough when we almost starved during her toddlerhood.
"There was once a magical land very far yet very close to England called Narnia, which was ruled by-"
"Two kings and two queens; High King Peter, the magnificent, High Queen Susan that's you Mummy- the gentle, King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the valiant,"
"I don't need to tell you anything Lucy, you already know it all,"
"And I know the prophecy too, When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone sit at Cair Paravel in throne the evil time will be over and done"
The words always brought a strange saddness, a longing for something that wasn't real, had never been real. It didn't stop me thinking however, I didn't stop me from half wishing I really was the high queen of a magical, mysterious land far away from here. I loved Lucy, of course I did, she was my entire world but maybe if that was my life things would have been better, safe and secure. To be certain of three meals a day, to know nobody would come through our door at night, to give Lucy the schooling I had at St Finnbar's and all the latest toys; and her own bed.
There was no proof, that world was all in our heads when we were kids, I'd thought about it and nothing ever changed for us when we got back. The clothes we wore, our gifts from Father Christmas, the months and years that passed on the inside of a wardrobe for us to go back to the very same moment. We fought a war while waiting for a train back to school. I had killed people, not just hurt them but actually shot them with red plumed arrows and an ivory tipped recurve bow. I was someone to be reckoned with and yet I sat alone at school before I had my sister for company. There was no way the stories could be true at all. My feelings had to be sadness for only one thing, nostalgia for my childhood, for being so naïve, I was no Joan of Arc.
I did tell Lucy her stories, half a dozen before London began to wake up and lights shone through the thin dusty curtains hanging limp over one of the two windows in our home. The cold three roomed house, a bedroom, a bathroom and a room to house everything else. The old bungalow was far below the place I lived in as a child. I'd never knew what poverty was. I didn't know what poverty was until I found the charity to save me in the form of a proper home.
I didn't have anywhere to go, not anywhere proper after August died. I spent every night in whichever hostel or shelter I could get into, spent the day searching for any type of work. My problem hand changed from intelligence to Lucy. I knew the shame I was to society, an unmarried young mother. I was a total disgrace and nobody would take me on, nobody cared that I just needed help. I needed my Mum, someone to care for me and keep me safe. Though help came it did come in a very unexpected way, to show there was still some good people, people who didn't judge. People who were just.
An old gentleman stood in his doorway in January 1951, I remember it very well as it was seven days before Lucy was born. He was leaning heavy on the battered wooden door frame as I walked past. The old man wore a long white beard and a bad spluttering cough but the moment he caught sight of me his eyes widened and he whistled to me. I looked around, searching for the person he was really trying to call. Nobody else was near me. I felt automatic pity for the old man, he clearly thought I was someone else, perhaps he was mad, many people who lived alone turned mad.
Before I could get to him and explain that I wasnt whoever he thought I was, he began to shake and grip the frame with white fingers. His eyes, dark for the most part, began to turn darker and then his fingers gave out and he slid on the ice. I ran as best I could to catch him, just missing by an inch to where his head smacked down. He shook for another moment or so, his skin snowy white but sweaty. I didn't know what was happening to him but I knew it was bad- he was very sick.
I managed to half drag him inside the doorway he'd stood at. He kept shaking his head, he didn't want my help but he was going to get it. I led him to a very lumpy, shabby sofa so old I could imagine things lived below he fabric. He flopped down hard onto the patterned grey sofa, a cloud of soot almost choking his damaged lungs. He breathed barley and clutched at his left shoulder. His eyes remained wide in wonder as if he'd just met the Queen.
"Where is the nearest telephone?"
The old gentleman panted and coughed, he pointed towards the door then shook his lead in frustration before gathering the energy to try again.
"Mrs, mi, Mrs Joha, Johanna," he was wheezing like a copper kettle. His fingers, like gnarled tree roots gripped and released the fabric on his left side. He was in serious pain. I believed it would be strong enough to bring him to an uncomfortable end. I didn't bother waiting for further instructions. I ran along the street once, twice, till finding the home I felt was most fitting to own a telephone. I wa in luck and Mrs Johanna phoned for an ambulance, sending me back to the old man. He was in the same state as when I'd left. I found a blue fleece blanket in a battered bedroom cupboard and tucked it round him. I saw him watch me, looking away each time he was caught. He had seen my carefully hidden secret, Lucy was becoming easily seen by any outsider. After a while, when I'd given up collecting an overcoat , slippers, his walking stick and anything else the old man could need I settled on my knees beside him.
He did several goldfish impressions, mouth open shut, open shut, before he eventually began to speak. His breathing was a little more settled and much easier than before but that didn't make the words he croaked any easier to say.
"Susan, forgive me would I be right in saying. May I suggest you may be." Everytime he tried to say the scary word or phrase he could not, the gentleman refused for his good Samaritan to be condemned as an unmarried parent. It also played on my mind that I didn't think I had given him my name but I must have, I'd never met him before and I wasn't exactly the most well recognised person in London. Suddenly he grabbed my hand in both of his, overbalancing me a little. He didn't seem to notice me pushing myself back again so my swollen stomach could rest on my knees.
"I won't be coming back to this house, and I know that you have nowhere to stay. Stay here, please, don't let that blessed child be born to concrete and tar,"
"Oh sir, don't speak in such an awful way, the ambulance is coming you'll go to hospital and get better." He wouldn't listen to me, he begged and bargained and haggled with me, wasting his limited breath, even when the ambulance did arrive he had one last try.
"For the sake of the child, as a dying man's wish, stay here. And may God bless you, your majesty."
To this day the lumpy sofa in our everything-else room reminds me of him and his last words. All I knew for certain was that he had called me royalty, I wasn't likely to have been mistaken for-then princess- Elizabeth, and he had called me Susan, he did know me. My mind was troubled like that for many days, was he just mad or was it really possible that Narnia was real.
That idea was sharply torn out of my head when I screamed alone at seven thirty AM on the 16th of January. I should have had my Mother by my side as I went through the terrible pain of childbirth. She should have been beside me, encouraging me, helping me and grinning with pride when she handed me my beautiful baby. I wondered if Lucy would have been there, she'd seen more blood on dead and dying soldiers than she would have on her niece but the pain was so great it would have put her off children for a while. I imagined returning her to the ruins of Cair Paravel, the huge celebration over the first Narnian Princess, the gifts for the animals, the fawns, nymphs and dryads. The astronomy readings from the centaurs of her prosperous future.
As it was there was only me, crying and screaming in a candle-lit kitchen. The floor was freezing cold, the only thing keeping me awake. It would be a ridiculous understatement to say it hurt, I didn't know the meaning of pain until Lucy was born. When she was, howvever, I felt nothing at all, every bit of pain was healed, the cold was neutralized and my fatigue energised. The pink thing, in skin that looked too big for her. The little pink thing with sea-blue, deep eyes. The tiny little pink thing was with ivory coloured fluffy hair. Just us in the darkness, just me and my daughter. She didn' cry, not so much as one complaint, she just lay as sweet and quiet as a lamb, like the baby Jesus in female form.
Over time that changed very little, she was tough, brave and innocent; she was Lucy. She put up with our unorthodox lifestyle , she wore clothes I made from all I could get, often I downsized adults clothes. She didn't complain when she wasn't invited to birthday parties of other children. She wasn't scared when I had to leave her home alone til nine or ten O'Clock at night if I had to work late at the hotel. She lived for my days off. She was happy to just have my company. I gave her what I could even though I knew I could never give her enough. I couldn't give her a brand new Silver Cross dolls pram- she had never even had a pram as a baby. I could never make people like Lucy even though she was a lovely girl because it was me they hated, me that had parents of other little girls running for cover.
The abuse we suffered from society was what I had in mind the moment we heard a loud bang on the front door that morning. Lucy froze half way through buttoning her school blouse, her dark eyes fixed on mine, the doe in the headlights. I put down the milk bottle, holding a finger to my lips when I spotted Lucy's trembling lip. My heartbeat became the loudest noise in the room. The sound wasn't a stone or a brick, whatever had been thrown had stayed stuck in the door, a knife perhaps. Lucy pulled her feet from the wood on the floor and she ran to me, her feet banging on the boards so loud. She didn't stop running till her face was thrust into my stomach, her arms tight as a bow string round my waist. I was frozen with fear, stuck to the spot, this was our home. Were we going to be killed? An innocent five-year-old girl killed for being born?
I couldn't let them hurt Lucy.
"Stay here," I said firmly, prizing my daughter away from me. She looked so scared the same as her aunt when I'd faced a group of soldiers alone in order to buy her time. The look that showed she loved me, the love surrounded by doubt, a tiny bit of doubt, a tiny bit of doubt that had to be set right.
"Lucy, promise me, stay here." Stubborness- my trait-built up silence, a wall only there for a second before she cracked it with a nod and banished it with a hug.
I didn't let cling on for long before I gave her a shy smile and left, hiding the fire poker behind my back.
I was prepared for almost anyone at the door, almost any scene before me. An entire mob of townspeople, an old lady with a meat cleaver, even a walking garden gnome but there was no sign of people, no sound of them either. No sharp object had came through the door and there was no crack to suggest it had come half way through. I opened the door to feel an electric surge of relief. There was no one outside, not a soul up or down the street, either direction. It had been a cat knocking over a bin . I turned to go back in, something pricked the corner of my eye. There was something in the door. I pushed it closed and began to feel scared , very scared.
In the door was an arrow, a short shaft to fit a recurve bow, neat red fletching and gold in colour. The head was in the shape of a lions head. This wasn't just an arrow in my door . I knew the shape, colour, fletching straight away. This arrow was part of a twelve part quiver and there was one more specific; it was mine.