It was only a moment, but as Alberta plunged into her next breath, it felt as though the ebb and tide had stilled, frozen like the ever un-crashing wave on the painting on the wall. Face buried (yet again) against Harold's collar, she felt the slight expansion of his collarbone as he inhaled once; exhaled.
The doorbell rang, irrevocable chime.
She pulled away from Harold.
What weakness, a voice whispered in her ear, depending on Harold like a common weak woman!
But strangely, this new weakness could brush away that old voice, brush it away as easily as one might swipe at an inconveniently placed cobweb.
"Susan's very punctual," Harold remarked, an arm lingering just a moment around her shoulders before moving back in place. "It's almost seven to the second."
He stood up to open the door, but at the last moment, Alberta raised a hand.
"I think I should go, Harold," she said, realising the truth of her words even as she spoke. (She's Victor's daughter.) The words hung suspended between them, and when Harold nodded, there was a heaviness about him that rubbed ceaselessly against the shards scattered across her memory.
Alberta stood up to walk to the door. It felt oddly ritualistic. ("Are you Mrs Alberta Scrubb?") When she opened the door, large, dark eyes raised to meet hers.
Harold you're right, she wanted to say, Susan looks a little like me.
She had the same high forehead (widow's peak), the same distinct cheekbones, the straight nose that neither snubbed (as little Lucy's had) nor drooped (as Peter's, like Victor's, had been wont to). Her frame was smaller, though that was to be expected, and her hair was twisted up in an elegant bun that Alberta would never have wasted her time attempting to achieve. Most likely Susan was wearing one of those ridiculous "waspies", too- but she angrily brushed the thought away.
But more than that, it was Susan's eyes; those large dark haunted eyes that stilled Alberta's breath. They were almost (empty) lacking even the light of Vermeer's lonely women.
"Good evening Aunt Alberta," Susan said evenly, smoothly, and she ran a hand across her perfectly ironed skirt. "Thank you for inviting me to dine with you. It was very kind."
The pleasantries coiled themselves around Alberta's insides like sandpaper. She smiled ("Your papery thin entertaining smile", Victor had once called it, scoffing).
"It is good to see you, Susan," she said, stepping to the side. "Please, come in."
As Susan stepped through the door Alberta saw a hint of the coquette she had last glimpsed- a lifetime ago before that wretched train. But perhaps it had been her imagination, for Susan had half-turned away, obscuring Alberta's (judging) eyes as she rolled away her gloves.
"Could I get you something to drink?" she asked, taking Susan's coat and placing it upon a hook. "It is- warmer than would expect in spring this year."
"Oh," said Susan briefly, flatly, "yes, thank you; a small white would be lovely."
"Oh," said Alberta, and her lips thinned a little. "We do not drink."
The discomfort was almost palpable in the hall, as sharp as the umbrella resting against the stand; as sharp as Susan's figure, still positioned at that half angle in the door.
"Of course," Susan said, after the beat, "Lucy-" but her face crumpled up and she bit upon her lower lip, eyes clenched tightly together. Alberta saw her take her unsteady breaths. "Of course, I do recall. Just- just some ice water would be lovely, Aunt Alberta."
Not my flesh but my blood.
But blood was distant and weak as water, differentiated only by shade, and as Alberta turned to the kitchen, she couldn't help but wonder whether things might have been ever so slightly different if she had and Harold were not- oh, what term had Victor had so jokingly teased them about before? Oh yes- teetotallers.
"That dinner was lovely, thank you," said Susan quietly, daintily dabbing the imagined sauce at the corner of her mouth.
"I am glad you could come," Alberta said, wishing she could be as sincere as her words, and, indeed, her tone suggested.
For Susan had been the strangest guest all evening. She had not offered to say grace, as Victor and Edmund and Lucy and Peter had previously done; she had not simply launched into a strange thanksgiving, as Eustace Clarence had been wont to (that was, until she had complained and Harold had had a quiet word with him). She had not smiled and asked who would give thanks, as Helen used to (how easy it had been to quell her pleas with an iron glance); she had merely nodded, picked up her fork, and begun eating her salad so quietly that Alberta was not sure she was even capable of chewing.
Attempts to converse with her had been more stilted yet. Susan had no interest in art, and that had killed half of Alberta's conversation starters. She had no interest in the media, and did not follow the Daily Mail, so her own questions regarding Alberta's job had quickly ground to a halt. She had no interest in economics, and had stared politely but blankly as Harold had discussed the debate regarding the dangers of capitalism and the probable benefits of socialism that were being overcome by irrational fears of Communism. She had no interest in poetry- "I used to read a little Tennyson," she had said, but swallowed thickly, as though inhaling through a cotton bud, and Alberta knew that it was not especially a topic she should pursue. When Alberta had asked about Stein and Eliot, she had been treated to a half confused stare. When Alberta had finally asked what Susan actually liked, Susan had given a bitter half laugh.
"Being foolish and playing with boys and lipsticks," she had said, disgust and hurt flickering dimly in her eyes. "I thought that Peter and Edmund spent a lot of time here in the past few weeks, surely you heard them say so."
Alberta had indeed heard nothing of the sort, and she had looked almost helplessly at Harold, hoping he would say something. But he had only given a minute shake of his head, a tiny upwards quirk of his left eyebrow the only suggestion that he, too, had nothing to say.
The meal had thus continued in the heavy quiet, knives and forks scraping against the wall of silence that mounted and swelled in the room.
"Perhaps you'd like to have a coffee?" said Harold, breaking through the cooling silence. "Alberta, why don't you show Susan the sitting room?"
As Susan quietly nodded her assent, Alberta looked at Harold, unsure of whether she wished to thank him or thump him for the suggestion.
"Come, Susan, it's this way," she said instead, walking smartly to the hallway and turning to the right. She flicked on the switch, and the bright light that came hurtling to meet them stilled her in her steps. She blinked, and as she did so, she felt, rather than heard, a strange half breath behind her.
"Where did you find that?"
Still half dazed by the light, she turned around to look at her niece, questioningly.
"Find what, Susan?"
For Susan's eyes had grown wide, and in place of the frightening dreariness, there was a strange, almost wild (hunger) light to her face. Her hands were tightly clenched by her side; Alberta saw her open her fists, clench them, re-open them, re-clench them.
"That painting," Susan said, and her voice rose by half an octave. She blinked rapidly, and for a moment it looked as though she might have cried. "That boat."
In the spare room.
"It was a gift," she said slowly, "from your parents. Why do you ask, Susan?"
But Susan shook her head, her mouth ever so slightly open; her eyes oddly fearful and filled with some other emotion Alberta could not discern. Was it anger? Or was it longing?
"Aslan?"she whispered, so quickly, so softly and so thickly that Alberta almost missed it. But she didn't miss it, she heard it, and she heard Eustace Clarence, all those years ago-
"Alberta, I haven't told you about Aslan!"
"What did you just say, Susan?" she said, only half aware that she was speaking quickly. "Did you-"
But Susan shook her head, looking to the front door and pursing her lips together.
"It was a game," she said fiercely, as though convincing someone. "A game for children. And we grew up- I grew up. I had to grow up."
Although she did not quite know what Susan was talking about, Alberta thought her niece's words sounded something like a mantra, like a press release a politician might give when the issues were falling completely beyond their grasp.
"Why don't you take a seat-" she began pleasantly, but Susan quickly backed into the hall, picked up her gloves and hat, and shook her head.
"Thank you for tonight, Aunt Alberta, but I really must be off," she said, sounding so smooth that if Alberta had not been with her in the living room, she would not have suspected anything had happened. "Please give my regards to Uncle Harold. You have been most kind- both of you. He told me that you were the one who asked them to- who asked- at St Bart's-" she shivered visibly, and Alberta found herself shaking, too.
"I had to, you couldn't-" she began helplessly, but could not finish. I lost my brother and my son, and you lost your entire family.
Susan nodded, her gaze fixed upon the timber panels of the hallway.
"- thank you," she said, quietly, with the slightest of tremors in her voice. "You have been very kind. Goodnight."
And with that, she turned the lock, opened the door, and left.
A/N: OK here is where I offer my prolific apologies for my tardiness. The build up to Easter and the beginning of Eastertide has been very busy in terms of music, and once I got out of that I hit the Assessment Weeks From Hell. Literally. But I have not abandoned this piece, and I have no intention of abandoning it, and to anyone who is still following this, you are a gem and I owe you!