Disclaimer: I came and sat with these friends for a while, listening to their stories, but I don't claim them as my own.
Beta'd by trustingHim17, with my thanks.
"they say lavender softens anxiety
and i wonder whether i can plant a garden
so dense in your mind
that the knots in your chest unravel
and never tighten again"
~ Jasmine Kaur
Susan leaned against the rough tree trunk and sighed. The little garden inside the waist-high stone wall was far too quiet, but better than inside. Within an hour at the Professor's Susan had felt that familiar growing ache, the need to go outside; just like she felt at home. The stifling rooms were filled to overflowing with judgemental opinions. Ever since her conversation with Peter, none of the three had mentioned anything to do with their game, not to her. But she felt it emanating from their minds. It was in the way the three of them stood near each other, turned their heads together, drew closer and closer in mind and heart. They were hardly three, now; they were some bizarre unit that thought and felt as one. Coming here, they'd pulled the Professor in as well. They would encircle Eustace, Jill, and Aunt Polly in when the three arrived later tonight; all seven friends would become something so in tune that the thunder of cannons and guns could not drown out their harmony.
Susan was left outside.
By your choice, her mind reminded her.
But this wasn't what I wanted; I wanted them to enter my world. To sing and dance, to harmonise there. Or to value it, at least; to see that it is valuable. I'm only here till four! I wanted them to… to let me in. To stop those grieving glances and bitten off words. To stop the regret that weighs like their bodies on my back. Even the Professor's old mansion would not have been large enough to hold the accusing pain of her three siblings.
Outside, all was deathly quiet. The grass and bark felt cold, the lavender wet with glistening dewdrops, and yet it was still better than inside. She felt quite sure they were reassuring her, telling her that here, nothing ever happened. Life was tedious and reliable in this garden. Unchanging and cold though it was, it was still more welcoming than the present human company.
"Might I join you?"
Susan opened her eyes, resting them on the green grass to keep from glaring. Of course she wasn't to have any peace. "You are welcome to go anywhere in your own home," she said with the bright laugh that turned at least three heads wherever it rang. But she did not look at the Professor.
Heavy footsteps ambled across the grass, then bark scraped softly against clothing as the Professor leaned against the tree on her left. She smelled the strong spice of tobacco and heard him puffing quietly at his pipe. She braced her heart and mind, readying that bright laughter again, her best defence against the condemnation that followed her inside and out.
The Professor said nothing. She waited, ready for it, irritation building, till she glanced over at the old man. He was leaning with his head back against the tree, puffing smoke rings and smiling between each one.
He had the smile of a little boy. And she remembered, suddenly, sitting in front of him, Peter at her side, the both of them deeply worried about Lucy. They had been uncertain that the Professor would listen. And oh, the relief when he had listened, but then he had given them what seemed such useless advice. To mind their own business!
Yet it had worked. And it is what I want now, she admitted to herself. For her siblings to mind their own business, and let her mind hers. And to be together sometimes, but not in each other's business.
He had always been good with advice, when asked. Anytime they'd needed it—though her mind flinched from the vivid memory of going to him about four missing coats, left… left behind. He had been all too glad to join their game. She felt that irritation rising again, and she pressed her lips together.
"Why are you out here?" she asked abruptly, then remembered to temper her tone. "My apologies, what I meant was, isn't it a bit cold for you in the garden?"
"My creaking joints thank you for the consideration, but I don't think a little chill will bother them. No, I came out because you are my guest, and while you do not want to be inside with your siblings, I don't think you're quite content out here either. If my memory serves, you do not like to be alone. I thought I might offer you the comfort of a quiet companion. I offered the same to Edmund once, in one of his brief stays here. Only I offered him my pipe as well, and I was most satisfied when he choked on it."
Susan couldn't help it; she smiled. Edmund had told them that story, of how he'd been stewing over some bullying he'd discovered, bullying encouraged by the Head. The Professor had calmly listened to him, then offered him a freshly lit pipe. Edmund had tried it, and had indeed choked, and the Professor had pointed out that breathing in something foul and letting it stew inside one didn't make dealing with the smoking tobacco ("the root of the problem, pardon the pun") any easier.
Edmund had been smiling when he told the story to the three of them. Ruefully, but still—smiling.
"I do not have any wish to try your pipe," Susan assured the Professor.
"Then I shall puff away at it in peace. Unless it bothers you, of course."
Susan shook her head. Three very tall, very thin figures, in strange hats, stood suddenly at the front of her brain. They had been using pipes, though the tobacco was something peculiar—the smoke fell to the ground instead of rising through the air. How odd of me to imagine that, she told herself.
She knew, somewhere in the darker nooks of her mind where she shoved the things she didn't want to think about, that one of those three had died.
"I rather enjoy the smell of tobacco."
"Then I shall enjoy my pipe, and let you enjoy your peace."
Peace.
"There hasn't been any peace recently." The bitterness of her own tone surprised her. Surely she had matured past letting others—except her siblings, who did read her well—see her resentment.
"Not for any of the four of you," the Professor agreed calmly. Susan looked sidewise in surprise, and saw him watching her. But not as Edmund did, weighing her, or Peter, asking something of her, or Lucy with that hurt in her eyes—the Professor watched in a way that was merely listening. Still, he had to be thinking what the others thought. He still played their game.
"You're not going to tell me I should go and make peace with them?"
"A peace based on lies is never one that lasts." He took another puff of his pipe and blew out a thin smoke ring.
Susan watched the smoke dissipate, thinking. His statement—and wasn't he clever for it—could have two meanings. Still, he'd proved correct before, so—"What advice would you offer?"
"Find a ground where what you value and what they value can meet. Your siblings have not sworn off laughter, beauty, and music. Bless me, just because they don't look for those the same places you do, doesn't mean you can't both find them together."
"They're at their best at the parties." She let just a hint of complaint fill her tone. Somehow it was easier to be honest with him than with Peter, Edmund, or Lucy. He saw both points of view.
"Perhaps they are."
Susan thought back to that last party, the night before they left. Robert had spun Nancy around and around, her blue skirt flaring, then brought her in for a kiss. He'd knelt and proposed right after, with a beautiful, beaming smile and kind words. Yet…the ring seemed so small from Susan's perspective, Not as vivid as the memories that kept returning.
Somehow Nancy's glee and Robert's ardent words hadn't caught her heart like the beauty of Peter's imaginary crown. They were pretty things to make her smile, not beautiful things to haunt her heart.
Though perhaps that was only because Robert had flirted with Susan not an hour later, even pretending to lean in and kiss her.
"I keep remembering things," she said suddenly. "More than I have in years. I'd thought my imagination long gone. Professor, I don't like it. I don't believe those things were real. I don't like the way they appear, like—like the hallucinations I've heard soldiers describe. They feel like warnings."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," the Professor quoted. "I imagine such things are very uncomfortable. But I find uncomfortable things happen whether I like them or not, and I've never found that fussing about them stopped them from happening. Mrs. Macready, bless her soul, was a lesson in that."
Susan laughed again, at the memory of the strict and easily-upset housekeeper. Her own laugh echoed in her ears, a different sound than she had heard of late. It seemed to belong in this garden—restful, easy, with that shade of sadness that often comes with nostalgia. "I wish I could stop them from happening."
"Much of your generation has that same wish, I think. Young people almost always try to remake the rules of the world."
Those words hinted at that same judgement her siblings held—though not, surprisingly, condescension. He said it as if it were fact, and Susan knew it was. "Isn't that our right?"
"Of course," the Professor answered, surprised. "But it is always good to question whether you remake it for better, or for worse—or just because you want change." He sighed. "After one world war, and another being fought, it's certain change is needed. It's my hope that the changes your generation makes will be mostly for the better. Perhaps even enough to stop extremely uncomfortable things like world wars from happening."
It was...odd, to hear an older person speak of her generation with hope, rather than cynicism. Something in her heart eased, the trust inherent in that hope an uplifting thing. "Only mostly for the better?" she asked, teasing.
"I've never known a generation, in all the history of the world, that didn't have its faults."
The smile fell from Susan's lips. "Why is it that the faults of the young are always the ones pointed out?" she asked, looking towards the house. Towards her siblings.
"Perhaps because they can so easily be blamed on inexperience and then dismissed," the Professor responded.
Both points of view. He judges his own generation as he judges mine. He did say every generation has its faults.
"Where do you suggest we find that common ground? If it isn't found soon, I may suffocate." She kept her voice light. But, like Edmund, the Professor heard the truth behind jokes.
"Perhaps in this very garden." He reached out, plucking a spear of lavender and holding it out to her. He leaned forward and bowed when she took it, with the same courtesy Peter and Edmund showed. Old-fashioned gestures suited him, though—he had no need to fit into her generation. "I always find the scent of lavender soothes the mind. And if we were to add some voices to it—all four of you, perhaps? Then it would be a common ground of beauty and music. And enjoyed by all my neighbours."
Susan frowned, twisting the lavender absently in her fingers. She knew her siblings would want to sing the songs they'd made up for their game—flutes and drums filling the air, decorating time as art decorated space*, or piercing voices raised above the waves—and she listened to other music now.
But, as she recalled what the Professor had said, there are surely songs we both know and enjoy singing. And I would like to spend some time with them before I leave on the last train. Perhaps—they might miss me, then. When it's just them. She drew in a deep breath. The flower's strong fragrance came with the air she inhaled, strong enough to keep her here and now, and not recalling … other things. In that moment, she experienced the beauty of the real world.
It felt a little like peace.
"I will go and ask them," she offered, rising. The Professor smiled, content.
Their agreement led to an afternoon of beauty and harmony.
*There was a Shakespeare quote from Hamlet that the professor says ("more things in earth and heaven, Horatio…") famous enough that I didn't bother citing it. The starred quote is a paraphrase of an internet quote that I vaguely remember as "if art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time," and I'm not sure how to credit it more than that, sorry!