Before the End
Disclaimer: Susan and Lucy Pevensie, along with Narnia, are the creation of C. S. Lewis.
Lucy was apprehensive as she rung the doorbell. She had argued about this repeatedly with her brothers, who were convinced it was pointless. Peter and Edmund did not even know she was making this visit today and Lucy knew they would not agree with her actions, but Susan was her sister and she felt she had to try
After a few seconds the door opened and Susan was standing there.
"Hello Lucy." Susan's tone was brisk. "You'd better come in."
As Susan stood back, Lucy stepped into her sister's flat and looked around her curiously. This was the first time she had been here since Susan moved out of the family home a few months ago, following yet another quarrel with her siblings.
After Susan closed the door, Lucy took a moment to study her sister. As usual Susan looked beautiful and glamorous, although she couldn't help thinking her make up was a bit excessive for that time of day. Lucy would never have made herself up that heavily unless she was going out in the evening for an important social occasion.
"We can talk in the sitting room," Susan told her, leading the way along the narrow hallway to an open door at the end.
Susan's sitting room was a large, stylishly furnished room with powder blue wallpaper emblazoned with brightly coloured oriental birds. There were comfortable looking chairs and a sofa surrounding a large coffee table. The only other items of furniture Lucy noticed were a radio-gramophone and an expensive looking drinks cabinet that took up part of the far wall. Everything looked elegant and immaculate, just what she would have expected of her sister, although the opulence of the room surprised her. Lucy wondered how Susan could afford all this on a shop assistant's wages.
Politely offering one of the chairs to Lucy, Susan sat on the sofa facing her from across the coffee table. Picking up a large mahogany box, she opened it and took out a cigarette and then offered the box to her sister. Lucy accepted a cigarette, although it was a habit she tried not to indulge in too often. Susan picked up a rather chunky looking lighter, and after the two of them had lit up she leaned back on the sofa and regarded her sister curiously.
"So what's this all about Lucy? You said on the telephone you needed to talk to me urgently."
"I do!" Lucy paused for a moment, taking a hard pull on her cigarette and exhaling slowly through her nostrils. "It's about something that happened a few days ago when all we Friends of Narnia met up."
Susan suddenly looked angry. "Oh for God's sake! You've come here on my afternoon off so you can talk about that stupid game again?"
"Susan, please you must listen!"
"No!" The older girl stood up and glared down at her sister. "You're nearly eighteen, Lucy. It's high time you grew up and put aside these childish fantasies."
"That's enough!" Lucy cut her sister off before she could get fully started on one of her rants. "I've humoured you in the past Su, but this is too important for me to tolerate this nonsense any longer."
"What the hell are you talking about, Lucy?"
The younger girl smiled tightly. "I'm you're sister, Susan. You may be able to fool all the others but you can't fool me. You keep saying Narnia was just a childhood fantasy but that look of desperate longing in your eyes whenever it's mentioned tells me a different story. You no more think Narnia was just a game than I believe the earth is flat!"
The two young women glared at each other for several seconds, then Susan shrugged in implicit surrender and sat down on the sofa again, stubbing out her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the coffee table.
"Well so what if it was real? We can't go back there again so it makes no difference. It's not our business anymore."
Lucy shook her head. "Actually that's not entirely true."
In quick concise words, she explained what had happened at the last meeting of the Friends of Narnia; the unexpected appearance of an apparition in Narnian dress, their deduction that something was wrong in Narnia and the eventual decision of recover the rings Professor Kirke and Aunt Polly had buried decades ago and use them in an attempt to get Jill and Eustace to Narnia.
Susan listened to her sister's story in silence, her face impassive. When Lucy was finished she asked one brief question.
"Only Jill and Eustace?"
Lucy shrugged and after taking a final drag on her cigarette crushed it out in the ashtray.
"Well the Professor and Aunt Polly are getting a bit old for that sort of adventure and none of the rest of us are supposed to go back. Aslan told us we weren't to return to Narnia."
Susan rose to her feet and walked over to the drinks cabinet, pouring herself a neat whisky. She swallowed it down in one gulp and then laughed, the sound harsh and bitter.
"And of course if Aslan says so it must be right!"
Lucy wasn't surprised by the obvious hostility towards Aslan. It fitted in with what she had long suspected was behind her sister's worrying change of attitude over the last few years.
"You're very bitter at not being allowed back to Narnia, aren't you?"
Susan glared at her venomously.
"Why shouldn't I be bitter? I was someone important in Narnia. I was a great Queen and there were powerful men, kings and lords and princes, who would have sacrificed whole kingdoms for my hand. Life was so wonderful there, the parties, the balls, the feasts. I had entire rooms filled with beautiful clothes. But I was forced to become an ordinary schoolgirl again, someone insignificant nobody would listen to or respect."
Lucy had to fight to keep herself composed and not show how upset she was by her sister's selfishness and sense of entitlement. Despite realising it was probably pointless she couldn't help responding.
"Su, that's the most self indulgent load of tripe I've ever heard. Narnia wasn't a holiday camp; we weren't there just for your benefit. And it wasn't quite the idyllic paradise you seem to remember."
Susan opened her mouth to reply, but Lucy gave her no chance to speak and carried on relentlessly.
"I fought in nearly fifty battles in Narnia. I was seriously injured five times and once I nearly died. And it wasn't just battles. Think of all the time we spent negotiating treaties, drafting laws and arbitrating disputes. A couple of times after poor harvests we went for months on short rations at Cair Paravel so the ordinary people could have more. Ruling Narnia was no picnic; it was bloody hard work! And yes there were a lot of wonderful times too, but that wasn't why we were there. We were there for the Narnian people, to be their servants and protectors."
"Servants?" Susan repeated the word scornfully, finally managing to get a word in. "Lucy, I was a Queen. I wasn't anyone's servant least of all a load of stupid Talking Animals. What sort of Queen is someone's servant?"
"The best sort of Queen," Lucy said quietly, and then the tone of her voice changed as she began to recite from memory.
"You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as ransom for many."
The effect of those words on Susan was astonishing and a little frightening. Her normally lovely face twisted into an expression of seething rage and Lucy found herself thinking sadly that despite how beautiful her sister was now she would probably look rather ugly once she was past middle age.
"You sanctimonious little prig!" Susan hissed. "Don't you dare quote that rubbish at me. You know what Lucy? You can all go to hell, you and all the others and that precious bloody Lion of yours. He took everything away from us but you seem happy to just roll over and let yourself be unimportant again."
"Why should we be important?" Lucy asked with a shrug. "We were only important in Narnia because of the task we were given to rule it, but now that's over there's no reason we should be particularly special or important here in England."
Susan strode over to where Lucy was still sitting in her chair and glared down at her.
"Well you might be content with that but I'm not. I'll be ruler of my own kingdom one-way or the other. I'm already the undeclared queen of the social circle I move in but that's only the beginning. By the time I'm done I'll have all the most influential men in the country crawling at my feet. I was cheated our of my rightful kingdom in Narnia but I'll build my own right here in England, in spite of Aslan."
Lucy slowly rose to her feet. Inside she felt as if she was falling apart with grief and horror but she remained outwardly composed, confronting her furious sister with icy calm.
"Best of luck building your new empire then." Lucy did not even try to restrain her sarcastic tone. "It'll be interesting to see just how secure that kingdom will be though, in thirty years time when your looks have gone and men will no longer give you anything you want. Will it turn out to be built on rock or sand?"
Turning on her heel, Lucy marched to the door. Then as her hand rested on the door handle she looked back for a moment at her sister.
"Goodbye Susan. I'll see myself out!"
Lucy managed to get halfway down the hall and out of sight of Susan before the tears started trickling down her cheeks. Wiping her face on the sleeve of her jacket, she blundered out of the door and stumbled into a nearby alley. Leaning against the wall Lucy let the tears flow freely as she finally accepted that the sister she had known all her life was gone and an unlikeable stranger had taken her place.
When her tears had subsided, Lucy started to think about what had just happened. Susan had often accused her of hanging on to 'childish fantasies' but it was obvious now that she was the one who could not let go of the past; she still longed for Narnia but hardly for the right reasons. Being a Queen in Narnia had given her a taste for power and she was unwilling to give it up. And of course she still longed for all the splendour and pageantry that being Queen had brought her. Lucy had felt much the same once, but no longer. She now realised that her deepest longings were something that nothing in this world or Narnia could ever truly satisfy; it was a longing for Aslan's Country itself, her true home. Not that she would ever consider doing anything foolish to expedite her arrival there. Aslan had charged her to live in this world and she would obey that command fully and joyfully, doing whatever good she could here for as long or short as this period of exile might be. But her time would come.
After wiping her face again Lucy rummaged in her shoulder bag, bringing out her compact and snapping it open to study her reflection. Grimacing at what she saw, Lucy made a halfhearted attempt to put her make up to rights but after a few seconds gave it up as a bad job and put the compact away. Right now she didn't really care too much what she looked like.
No doubt she would again cry over what Susan had become, but for now there were other matters to deal with. Peter and the others needed her.
Lucy started making her way home at a brisk pace, little realising that she had just spoken to her sister for the very last time.
