THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE BBC
PART 5
BACK ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR
PREVIOUSLY: While Lucy is been visiting at Mr. Tumnus, Edmund ran into a horse-drawn sleigh, on which was sitting a Dwarf, snow owl and a tall lady, who addresses herself as the Queen of Narnia. After a harsh interrogation, the Queen acts sweetly towards Edmund and offers him a steamy sweet drink and Turkish Delight after which she began to gently question Edmund. After learning that he had a brother and two sisters, including that Lucy has been in Narnia before and has met Mr. Tumnus, the Queen requests Edmund to bring his brother and sisters to her house in between of two hills with the promises to make Edmund the prince and King of Narnia and so much of Turkish Delight as he wants, but tells him not to tell them anything about her, claiming it to be a surprise. After the Queen has gone, Edmund meets Lucy at the Lamppost, which leaves Lucy delighted that Edmund got in Narnia too and is in hurry to tell the others, hoping they would believe her now, not knowing that Edmund might have met the White Witch herself, who has made Edmund to believe that all nasty things said about her aren't true
Lucy and Edmund returned to the study room where they had been hanging before they had gone to their deparative ways after Peter's suggestion of the hide-and-seek game, with the former believing that Peter and Susan were still in there. But to her surprise, they weren't.
But she wasn't surprised or disappointed either because of this.
"They're still playing hide-and-seek. They could be anywhere." Lucy said and rushed out of the room.
"Hey, don't go too fast!" Edmund said and ran after her.
Because it was the big house, it would take Lucy and Edmund some time to find their eldest siblings.
Susan was meanwhile walking along the passages, peeking behind every door, inside, behind and under every piece of furniture and around every corner looking for others.
"Ah, ha! Found you!" Susan exclaimed after she opened the next door she was passing by, finding Peter hiding behind of it.
Peter laughed and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
"Next time it will be your turn." Susan said as she and Peter began to walk down the passages together.
"Did you find the others yet?" Peter asked, but Susan only said she hasn't.
However, the two of them were left surprised to see Lucy and Edmund running towards them through the other passage.
"Peter! Susan!" Lucy cried as he and Edmund came to their eldest siblings, until each party was facing each other.
"What's the matter with you two?" Peter asked, puzzled by their behavior in middle of the Hide-And-Seek game.
"It's true! It's there! It's really there!" Lucy said excitedly.
"What? What is there? What are you talking about?" Peter asked, not really understanding what Lucy was ranting about.
"Narnia! It's all true! There is a country you can get to through the wardrobe, just like I told you!" Lucy said.
Peter and Susan frowned and looked at one another before they both let out the sigh, a little annoyed that Lucy was talking about this "country in the wardrobe" stuff again.
"Lucy. We've been there, in the wardrobe, and saw nothing but the back of it." Susan said. "There's nothing there."
This time, Lucy wasn't going to let their disbelief discourage her. "Yes there is! I went in and saw Mr. Tumnus again. And this time Edmund went in too."
Peter and Susan immediately turned to Edmund, surprised to hear Lucy claim that Edmund had been in this country in the wardrobe that Lucy so-called found. Edmund felt a little awkward being the center of all the attention and looked down, still looking sick and awful.
"You've seen it too?" Peter questioned.
But before Edmund could say anything, Lucy spoke over his words.
"Yes! Edmund has seen it too! He and I got both in together! It's all true!" Lucy insisted, before turning to Edmund. "Go on, Edmund! Tell them!"
Edmund didn't say anything for a minute.
"Well, Ed?" Peter said, urging his brother to say something. "What's all this about?"
"Tell us, Edmund." Susan said.
Edmund didn't yet say anything, but it was far from struggling to find the words to describe what he had seen.
Ever since leaving the wardrobe, Edmund has indeed felt very sick, sulky and outright annoyed with the fact that Lucy had been right all along that there was indeed a magical country in the wardrobe and that he - and the others had he counted them in - had been wrong to doubt Lucy's story.
Up to this point, Edmund hadn't yet made up his mind what to do or what to say. But when Peter and Susan were asking him to tell what this was all about, Edmund decided to do the most meanest and spiteful thing he couldn think of.
He decided to let Lucy down in front of the others... thinking that as long as Peter and Susan didn't know the truth, it would give him time to plan how to get them all to Narnia without arousing suspicion and then to the Queen's house so he could have all the Turkish Delights for himself and become King of Narnia.
With that in mind, Edmund lifted his face up and looked right at Peter and Susan. His lips curved up into the smile as this sense of superiority over Lucy surged through him.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes. Lucy and I have been playing a silly game - pretending that her story about a country in the wardrobe was all true. Nonsense of course. There's nothing there at all, really." Edmund said, and to add insult to injury, he gave Lucy a nasty grin as if having caught her up for lying.
Lucy gaped at Edmund in wide-eyed horror and shock of his words, hurt beyond of imagination, and in disbelief how Edmund could betray her like this in front of everybody else.
Seeing the look on Lucy's face, Peter and Susan gaped at Edmund as well.
Staring at Edmund's spitefully and remorsefully grinning face, Lucy's eyes became immediately watery with tears and her face crumbled. Unable to hold herself back, poor Lucy soon broke into tears and ran away from the others.
"What's the matter with her?" Edmund asked as he watched Lucy go with the others, not feeling even a single tingle of remorse for his words.
Edmund then turned to the elder two, still wearing that spiteful grin on his face. "That's the worst of young kids. They just don't know when to quit."
Thet was the last drop for Peter, who had had enough with Edmund and his awful attitude towards Lucy
"LOOK HERE, SHUT UP!" he roared, his burning savagely from fury. "I have been fairly patient with you up to this point, Ed, but no more! First you're perfectly beastly to Lucy for her wardrobe nonsense, but now you go playing games and set it in a rougher game! Just leave Lucy alone!"
"But it's all rubbish!" Edmund defented, not liking of being yelled at.
"Of course it is! That's just the point!" Peter said, before he calmed down a bit but maintained his stern voice. "Lucy was perfectly all right when we left home, but down here she seems to be going off her head or else turning into a most frightful liar."
Susan couldn't agree more before she too turned to stare hard at Edmund. "Whichever it is, what good do you think you'll do by jeering and nagging at her one minute and then encouraging her the next?" she asked sternly.
"But I thought..." Edmund said but was cut off by Peter, who stared at him icily.
"NO! You didn't think at all! It's just spite." Peter spat angrily.
Edmund was going to say something against it but Peter cut him off again.
"You've always been so beastly to everyone smaller than you, and you never think of anybody but yourself. We've seen that at school before now!" Peter listed.
"DO STOP IT!" Susan pleaded, getting in betweem of them. "It won't make things any better having a row between you two. Let's go and find Lucy."
Peter nodded in agreement, feeling that it was time to put an end to all of this. As he went first in to the passage to go after Lucy, Susan shoved Edmund onward to make him come along.
"And you have a lot to apologize to Lucy once we find her, Ed!" Susan said strictly.
Edmund snorted. "It's always the same song again: you're always on her side." Edmund spat with the nasty frown on his face and very begrudgingly followed the others.
###
They found Lucy from the girls bedroom, sitting on the chair in the end of her bed, head hanging on her shoulder and crying miserably. Even if she heard the door of the room opening and her siblings entering in and standing right behind her, Lucy refused to acknowledge them, nor even to look at them.
After both Peter and Susan had made Edmund to sit on the chair in the room's corner and wait there, with Peter threatening that he will make Edmund very sorry if he said anything or do anything, he and Susan went to Lucy.
However, no matter how much they tried to reason with her about the matter as gently as they could, nothing seemed to make any difference. Most of the time Lucy refused to even speak to them, but when she did, she stuck to her story firmly.
"I don't care what you think, and I don't care what you say!" Lucy sobbed, before she suddenly spun around and glared at her elder siblings hard with her red eyes. "You can tell the Professor or you can write to Mother or you can do anything you like."
Lucy then jumped up from the chair and raised her voice to cry from the top of her lungs. "I know I've been there! I know I've met a Faun! And... And... and I wish I'd stayed there! It was much nicer to be there with him than what it is being here with you!"
Peter and Susan were taken aback by Lucy's outburst. But before they could say anything else, Lucy rushed past them for the door.
"Lucy!" Susan called after her, but Lucy was not in mood to listen.
"YOU'RE BEASTS! ALL OF YOU! BEASTS!" Lucy cried as she slammed the door shut behind her.
Once Lucy was gone, Peter and Susan turned to each other, completely lost of what to do.
"I don't think we should write to mother." Peter said.
"Certainly not." Susan agreed.
The elder siblings were worried. Not only they were really beginning to think that Lucy was out of her mind, but the things were really starting to get out of their hand.
However, Edmund did not share their worry of Lucy at all. The only thing that bothered him about this was that his plan didn't seem to be working as well as he had expected because now he was in the bad side of both Peter and Susan. But at least this had given him time to think of some other way to get them all into the wardrobe and into Narnia without any suspicion.
As the two elder siblings were wondering what to do next about this matter, Susan quickly came up with an idea and turned to Peter.
"Peter? I think we better go and tell the whole thing to the professor. Hopefully he could help us." Susan suggested.
Peter blinked his eyes, not sure if he had heard his sister right. "Are you sure we should? Mrs. Macready said it loud and clear that he is not to be disturbed." Peter reminded.
"Yes, unless absolutely necessary." Susan reminded, ironically and cleverly finding the loop hole in the said rule. "And since this is getting beyond us, this is already such a situation we really need some help. Lucy definitely needs some help."
Peter considered about that for a moment, realizing Susan's point and acknowledging their desperate need of help about the matter, but wasn't still sure if it was a very good idea.
"I don't know, Susan. Maybe we should try to work this out between the family." Peter suggested.
Susan was quick to dismiss the idea. "We've already tried that, Peter, and how did that work out?"
Hearing his sister, Peter let out a sigh of defeat, knowing that their attempts to resolve this matter on their own have resulted in nothing but bad blood between them, so Peter agreed to go with Susan to seek help from the professor in the matter.
###
Later tonight, Peter and Susan heading to the door that led into professor's study and knocked to the door.
A professor who was in his study - which was also crammed full of all kinds of historical artifacts, way more than in the any other room in the whole house - at the very moment and at his desk writing some archives in the light of lamps and chandelier candles, heard the knocking on his door, but didn't let it to disturb his current work.
"Come." he called to whoever was the door.
Hearing the professor giving them a permission to come in, Peter opened the door and allowed Susan to go in first before he followed after, closing the door behind him. Then they both stood side by side at the door, looking at the professor.
When the professor glanced up from his work at the door, he was surprised that his visitors were none of his servants but Peter and Susan.
"Well... how nice." the professor said, pausing his work for a moment. The professor took a moment to remember who each of the children was before raising his finger to point first at Peter and then at Susan. "Peter... and Susan...?"
The children responded with the confirming nod, before stepping forward in front of the professor's desk.
"We don't mean to interrupt..." Susan began, seeing the professor in the work and fearing that they might have come most improper time.
However, professor calmly interrupted her. "Oh, I'm always, I'm afraid, absolutely delighted to be interrupted. If one were never interrupted, life would be nothing but work and study. Not fun at all." he told them, making both Peter and Susan smile from relief... and slight amusement.
"I am at your disposal." the professor added with the bow-like nod, before he gestured at two chairs in front of his desk.
"Pull up some chairs, please." he said, before taking off his spectacles and putting them on the table.
Peter and Susan nodded, before they pulled up the chairs and sat on them.
"Now... how can I help you?" the professor asked.
Susan was the first to get straight to the point. "We are here because we are worried about our sister, sir, Lucy."
"What about her?" the professor asked with quirked eyebrow. "Has something happened?"
"She's just upset, sir." Peter explained.
"Well then shouldn't you do something about it?" the professor asked, confused that why they hadn't done anything for their little sister when she was upset.
"Actually, we've tried already, sir, but things have just gone beyond us." Peter explained.
"And how so? Do tell me." the professor asked.
###
Elsewhere, in the study room, Lucy was sitting alone at a table, venting her sadness and misery by drawing on paper about her experiences in Narnia: The very first thing she drew on the paper was Mr. Tumnus, the Faun with the man's upper body with reddish curled hair and beard, goat's white-haired legs, hooves tail and horns, a red scarf wrapped around his neck, wearing a coat over and holding the umbrella over his head. Thinking about that kind Faun made her feel somewhat happy.
However, the opening door caught her attention from her drawing and she briefly looked over her shoulder to see who it was.
But when she realized that it was Edmund, she sighed and turned away, retuning to her drawing, and hoping that Edmund would just leave her be.
However, much to her annoyance, it was a vain hope.
With Peter and Susan away, Edmund of course seized the opportunity and went over to Lucy, spiteful grin on his face, and peered over her shoulder to see what she was up to.
Lucy tried to ignore him, but Edmund didn't let her get away so easily and rudely snatched her drawing off from the table and looked at it, seeing it describing the Faun Lucy has been babbling about.
Lucy glared up at him, but felt too miserable to even ask Edmund to stop picking on her and give her drawing back.
Edmund scoffed at Lucy's drawing with mean-spirited amusement, finding it ridiculous, before he disrespectfully and indifferently tossed it in front of Lucy and walked away.
Lucy looked after him over her shoulder. "I did see him." she said sadly, which made Edmund to stop briefly.
"You know I did." Lucy added.
Edmund didn't say anything but kept walking, leaving Lucy with her own misery he felt no remorse at all.
###
Meanwhile, back in the professor's study, Peter and Susan had told the professor the whole story of their sister, finding the wardrobe in the upstairs, and the magical country Lucy claimed having found from it, and the snowy woods, and the Faun Lucy had claimed to have met there and everything else related to that subject. Professor sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together, never interrupted till they had finished.
"So we wondered if you could advise us." Susan said.
"Because we don't know what to do." Peter added.
"Hmmm." the professor hummed, taking all this in and thinking about it for quite a long time, before he cleared his throat and said the last thing either Peter and Susan expected.
"How do you know that your sister's story is not true?"
Both Peter and Susan gaped at the professor, speechless and utterly baffled by such of question, and both of them could read from the old man's face that it was a very, very serious question.
Susan pulled herself together far faster than Peter did. "But... but... Edmund said they had only been pretending."
"That is a point, which certainly needs consideration; very serious consideration." the professor said. "But if you will excuse me for asking the question: does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?"
"That's just the funny thing , Sir." Peter said. "Up to now, I'd have said Lucy every time."
"Hmm." the professor hummed, pleased with the answer before he turned to Susan, wordlessly asking her the same question.
"Well, in general, I'd say the same as Peter." Susan said, before letting out the scoff. "But this couldn't be true... a magic country, and the wood and the Faun."
"That is more than I know." the professor said, looking at them with the strange wide-eyed wonderment on his old face. "But a charge of lying against somebody you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed."
These words hit both Peter and Susan deep down, making them feel ashamed for the hard time they have been giving to Lucy for indirectly accusing her for lying, even if they have never done or said so directly.
"We were afraid it mightn't even be lying." Peter confessed.
"We thought there might be something wrong with Lucy." Susan clarified.
"Madness, you mean?!" the professor said out loud in disbelief, before he began to frantically shake both his head and hands. "Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad."
"But then..." Susan stuttered, shaking her head in confusion and not believing her own eyes that some grown-up man would talk like a professor here.
Professor read Susan's thoughts from the look on her face and facepalmed himself to his left temple.
"Oh, logic!" he groaned in disbelief half to himself and half to the children. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools?"
Professor then pulled himself together to explain. "There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is "one" telling lies, or "two" she is mad, or "three" she is telling the truth. One! You said your sister never lies. Two! It is perfectly obvious that she is not mad. So For the moment until any further evidence turns up, we must assume three: that she is telling the truth."
Peter and Susan, again baffled, turned to look at each other as they took all of this in, which definitely didn't sound from the professor's mouth and the expression on his face like he was actually making fun of them.
In addition, he actually had undeniably a perfect point to theorize that their sister was none of the first two options and that she has been telling the truth, even though they still wondered that how could it even be possible.
"But... how could it be true, Sir?" Peter exclaimed, impatient for some reasonable answer.
"Why do you say that?" the professor challenged calmly.
"Well, for one thing... if it was real why doesn't everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe?" Peter questioned, remembering when he and Susan went in there when this whole mess started, they found nothing but the back of the wardrobe. "When we looked there was nothing there; even Lucy didn't pretend there was."
The professor frowned at this new information. "What doe that have to do with it?"
"Well, Sir, if things are real, they're there all the time." Peter explained.
"Are they?" the professo inquired.
Peter didn't know what to say afterwards, until Susan spoke up next, and the professor listened keenly.
"But Lucy had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than a minute, but she pretended to have been away for hours." she explained.
"That is the very thing that makes her story most likely to be true." the professor said with the nod, before he continued. "If there really is a door in this house that leads to some other world - (chuckles) and I must warn you that this is a very strange house, even I know very little about it - I would not be at all surprised if that other world had a time of its own. However long you stayed there it would never take up any of our time."
Both Peter and Susan were left speechless by this information, as it hadn't even crossed their minds all this time, and why could've it?
The Professor studied their faces before pressing on with another logical question. "Big and complicated thing, isn't? So I don't think many girls of Lucy's age would invent such an idea themselves. Not in such a short time at least as you said, young lady. She should have stayed hidden for a reasonable time before coming out to tell her story."
This was starting to make perfectly sense to both Peter and Susan.
"You mean... there really could be other worlds?" Peter asked, half in disbelief and half amazed. "All over the place just like that?"
"But nothing is more probable." the professor said before he muttered to himself with the sigh. "Oh, I do wonder what they do teach them at these schools."
"But what are we to do?" Susan said, feeling that the conversation was starting to get off the point.
"My dear young lady." the Professor began, suddenly giving them both a very sharp expression. "There is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying."
"What's that?" Susan asked.
"We might all try minding our own business." the professor said as he simply put back on his spectacles and went back to his work, signaling the end of the conversation.
Peter and Susan turned to each other again. They had somewhat got a logical and sensible answer to Lucy's recent behavior, as impossible as it sounded, but not any advice on what they should do about the matter regarding their sister, other than, as the professor said, "mind their own business", which was of little help to their dilemma.
A little disappointed, but unwilling to disturb the professor any further, the two left his study in silence and at a loss.
###
After this things were a good deal better for Lucy for most of the next day, even though she still wandered alone and sombrely around the professor's property without the need of anyone's company.
Meanwhile, Peter took it to himself to make sure Edmund left her alone. In fact, he was even now at the study getting into Edmund's face, finger pointed at his chest, making himself clear to his brother who frowned back at him in disinterest and partially not even listening to him., with Susan standing next to them.
"So, no jeering, no sneering, no teasing, no sarcasm, and we don't even say a word to Lucy about it." Peter instructed to Edmund sternly.
"And in my opinion, we should keep away from that room and that wardrobe." Susan suggested, figuring that since the wardrobe was the cause of this whole mess and dissension between of them, they should stay clear from it.
"Right." Peter agreed and turned back to Edmund. "Agreed?"
Edmund just shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "Lots of fuss about nothing."
Peter frowned darkly at Edmund.
"Alright, alright. Argeed." Edmund said reluctantly and left the room. Leaving the two elder siblings with themselves in the study.
###
For a few days none of the children, not even Lucy, has felt inclined to talk about the wardrobe at all, and like Susan had suggested, they stayed clear of the wardrobe's room.
Until one day - as Mrs. Macready had told them on the first day they had arrived - the house was visited by the party of sight-seers, whom the professor had given the permission to see the house and instructed Mrs. Macready to taken them on the tour to show them around and tell the visitors all the things she knew about the house's history and its artifacts from the paintings to the suit of armour, and the rare books in the library.
However, during of the tour, Mrs. Macready and the sight-seers ran into Susan and Lucy who lounged in the staircase, with each party looking at each other in awkward silence, until Mrs. Macready broke it.
"I have told you you're to keep out of the way and sight whenever I have people in the house. Shoo!" Mrs. Macready snapped.
Susan and Lucy immediately scrammed to upstairs, leaving the sight-seers to look at Mrs. Macready in slight confusion.
"Evacuees from London." Mrs. Macready explained, before she resumed leading the party to upstairs.
Susan and Lucy met Peter and Edmund at the top of the stairs, looking at some books they had found from the chest.
"Look out! Here comes Mrs. Macready and a whole gang of people!" Susan warned the boys.
Peter listened the moment and his eyes went wide when he heard the footsteps in the stairs, coming right towards them.
"Sharp's the word!" Peter exclaimed, before he nodded his head towards the stairs leading up to the second floor and bolted up there, his siblings following right behind him.
The children took a shortcut through the Green Room and went into the library, intenting to use the back stairs behind the next door, until they suddenly heard steps behind it and realised that Mrs. Macready was bringing her party of sight-seers up those stairs - which was strange because they were supposed to be coming up the front stairs.
They bolted back and tried to find another way to get out of Mrs. Macready and her party's way, but for some strange reason, wherever they went, they seemed to be a step ahead of them... as if they were following them everywhere.
And they ran, they asked themselves if Mrs. Macready was trying to really catch them instead of giving the tour or were they losing their minds and hearing things.
The children eventually hid behind the door that led to the third floor, hoping for Mrs. Macready to just take her party to the other way. However, they heard footsteps coming straight towards their hiding spot as if Mrs. Macready knew where they were hiding!
"It's no good!" Susan gasped, fearing they're about to get caught.
"Come on!" Peter told them and led them away from the door and up to the stairs to the third floor.
The children ran down the third floor's passage until Peter suddenly halted to the spot after the next corner, Susan behind him, then Lucy and finally Edmund. The children noticed that they were staring at the very door at the end of the passage that led to the room where that wardrobe that had caused a lot of problems lately was.
The children hesitated to go right in there, until they heard the steps coming up the stairs, including Mrs. Macready's voice.
"What's your steps here."
They turned to look at the passage behind them and then at the door of the wardrobe room. They really did not wanted to go in there (at least Peter and Susan didn't), but the steps started getting closer and closer, and with them the children's own despair and fear of being caught.
"Nothing for it!" Peter finally decided and dashed for the door with his siblings following. He opened the door and all of them hurried quickly inside before Peter shut it.
But almost right after the door was closed, they heard the steps in the passage coming right towards the door. And since there was no other way out of the room, they realized they were trapped!
Then they heard something creaking behind them and turned to look behind them to see what it was. And once they did, they gasped (or more likely Peter and Susan did) when they noticed the doors of the wardrobe opening - on their own!
It was like the wardrobe itself had magically come to life and was urging them to come inside of it.
Peter and Susan were the most hesitant of the four, not knowing what to think and even a little afraid of this wardrobe that was moving and seemingly thinking on its own, but they were snapped out of it by the steps that were right outside of the door.
Peter then let out the sigh, not knowing any other alternative option than to go hide in the wardrobe till Mrs. Macready and the party has passed. Susan realized what Peter was thinking and pleadingly shook her head slightly.
"There's nowhere else to hide." Peter pointed. "Quick!"
Peter then dashed towards the wardrobe and stepped inside, with Susan following, then Lucy - who smiled in excitement of going into the wardrobe again - and finally Edmund. Edmund turned around and was about to close the doors shut behind them, but Peter stopped him just in time before he could shut both doors. He left the door slightly open and pulled Edmund amongst the fur coats.
"Never shut yourself into the wardrobe, stupid!" Peter snapped at his brother and slapped him in top of the head, before Peter turned to the door of the wardrobe.
Peter carefully peeked through the crack of the door to the door of the room and heard the footsteps stop just behind the door. Then he saw saw the handle turning.
"Back! Back, back, back, back, back!" Peter urged and they all withdrew from the door deeper into the wardrobe, hiding amongs the hanging fur coats.
TO BE CONTINUED...