A/N: Ties in a very little bit with my Walker of Worlds series.
Alberta never looked at the painting, after It. Eustace's bedroom was empty, empty, empty—she'd removed any pinned dead bugs or other things that might crumble or decay—not the ones in glass cases—and then she had not gone into the bedroom again. That's where the painting hung; Eustace had asked for it, once he'd changed. She didn't want to alter his room. But she didn't go in there again.
Avoiding any places in the house that were not necessary—that became her life. Their bedroom, the hallway, the sitting room, the kitchen—those were spotlessly clean, well-aired…
They were empty too.
And filling them with guests felt worse than leaving them empty.
After a year, Harold tried to get her to clean out the bedroom, to go through his things—one would think Eustace had not even been his son. But she won the argument; she kept the room, the room she didn't go into, as it was. It was Eustace's. It would stay.
Untouched, preserved, it would be in the house, that empty house—
She won the argument when Harold wanted to move.
She did not win the argument when Harold told her to meet with a kind counsellor, and she didn't like what the counsellor said about preserving the past but hating the future.
Still—the room stayed as it was.
Even if she started buying other things and putting them in other rooms.
May Harold's smile, the first time she bought a new painting, had something to do with it. Maybe how gently he held her and praised her did something, even if she didn't normally like it.
But she still had no plans to change Eustace's room.
So when she heard a knock on the door, and opened it to find a little schoolboy with his cap there, she assumed he was asking for a collection, of one type or other. For Eustace's sake she was prepared to be civil, even if she wouldn't give anything. But before she could speak—
"Can I see the painting?" he asked eagerly.
"What?" Her newest painting? The one by the up-and-coming artist, Harold Williamson—she might have gotten it because she liked the first name, but she'd never admit that—
"The painting of the ship." The boy glanced down at the sheaf of papers in his hand. "This is the Scrubbs, right? This is the right place?"
"I am Alberta Scrubb," she answered, trying to put as much dignity as she could in that answer. For some reason she felt very off balance, and a little angry. She had not expected this—whatever this was—to happen.
"Oh, good," he said in relief. "I thought I might have it wrong. I haven't got long, I've got to be back before the lunch bus, but I wanted to ask to see the painting. Of the ship," he added quickly, as if Alberta might have forgotten.
"I do not have a painting of a ship." She'd bought one of a woman in a white dress leaning on the side of a couch, the windows with their white curtains filled with light behind her, and another of a car going down a country road.
"Oh, I though—Miss Pevensie wrote about Eustace—"
"Stop," Alberta commanded fiercely. Without realising it, her hand rose to press her heart, pressing, pressing, trying to stop the pain by pressure. "Who are you?"
"I'm Jack. I'm—I was at the same school as Eustace, and I was there when—when things happened there. When the Lion came. I saw Him. And then Miss Pevensie has been writing to me," and the boy waved the papers in his hand, "more, you know, about the things Eustace saw, and since I was near here, I wanted to see what the ship was like."
Sharp, angry words rushed to her lips, because Alberta didn't talk about this, didn't talk about this at all—but suddenly she could remember that painting, hanging above the side of Eustace's bed, rich purple sails and a rising prow, the water shining blue-green beneath it.
"I do not let anyone into that room," she answered stiffly.
"Oh, I'm sorry." There was an awkward silence, and the boy's hands lowered to his sides, the papers hanging a little limp. "Could you—could you maybe bring it into a different room?" he asked, hope still in his voice.
Alberta wanted to say no. She wanted to take a step back and close the door.
But she didn't just remember the picture, now; she remembered Eustace Clarence sitting and staring at it, longing in his face, his shoulders bent forward, as if he was ready for it to fall or move, and he'd catch it, or jump in it—
She hadn't seen her son so clearly in a long, long time. It took all her words away.
So she turned, walking down the hall, leaving the door open. When she glanced back, Jack—that was the boy's name, if she remembered correctly—had come inside, but not far. He stayed near the open door, waiting, and so she turned and went to the right door.
Eustace's door.
Her fingers were trembling in the air as she reached for the knob, and she clenched them, she would be in control of herself, she would.
She opened the door.
The painting dominated the room this time, though she'd scarcely noticed it before. The vivid colours, the ship, the promise of movement in the waves…
Without looking at the rest of the room—not with a dratted boy in the hall who was waiting on her, and she was a little angry once again that she was doing this.
But she always finished what she meant to do, so she took the painting off the wall and carried it—a small size, almost insignificant, really, it was never meant to be a main piece—out into the hall. She held it out to the boy.
He took it with wonder on his face, and suddenly his shoulders were bent forward, his eyes wide, and it was Eustace standing before her, loving something she didn't understand, couldn't value, but it was Eustace, and she'd take back all the harsh words for his own good if only he would be there—
He wouldn't be.
The room was empty.
"Jolly good," the boy in front of her breathed in a hushed tone. "It's Narnian, all right. Just what I pictured."
That word, Narnia, she knew she'd heard Eustace use it too. But she was not going to be crying in front of a schoolboy, and so she didn't ask. "You will miss your bus," she said instead, voice cold.
"Oh." Wordlessly, the boy offered her the painting back. But as her hands closed around the frame, he hesitated, his own hands still holding it. "Could I maybe see it again sometime?"
The wonder had left his face. He was looking at the painting now with an achingly familiar longing, eyes fixed on it, lips closed.
She let go. She hadn't meant to, but perhaps, just perhaps…the painting should go to someone who would look at it like Eustace would have. She certainly would not. "Take it with you." She cleared her throat. "You needn't come back."
"Really?" A quick look at her face confirmed something for the boy, for he nodded his head. "Thanks much!" he called.
"Go. Get on your bus."
"Right. I'm sorry about your son. He sounded—he sounded like one of the good chaps." The boy was gone before she had to respond, the door shutting behind him with a click.
The house was empty again.
For a moment that overwhelmed her, but she steadied herself. She wouldn't have wanted Jack to stay, he wasn't Eustace. Instead—
She turned towards the door, the door to Eustace's room.
When Harold came home, hours later, she was sitting on Eustace's bed, a glass case with a beetle in her lap, finally crying the tears of the past months.
A Short Part II:
Jack took the painting back to school, but there wasn't really a place for it, and he couldn't express it to Ireland. So the next time he came to London, he went hunting for another address, the one on Miss Pevensie's letters.
When he knocked on that door, he got a much better welcome. Fortunately for him, Susan was home. She cried, too, when she saw the painting, but then she sat and told him more stories, stories she hadn't put in the letters, about the nightmare island and the albatross, about the golden bracelet from a dragon's hoard hanging on a rock till the end of the world, and about the way Lucy tried to put into words the music of the birds from the mountains of the sun.
He went back very satisfied, full of stories and imagination and another world, but Susan quietly hung the painting in her room, and instead of going to bed that night, she curled up on top of the blankets and watched it. Caspian walked on that deck, older than she'd ever known him, and Reepicheep, unchanged from who he'd been, so quick to spring to the defence of the weak.
Just as she started falling asleep, it seemed to her that she saw the waves move. Once, twice, rising and falling, the ship sailing, the spray glistening in the sunlight, even when her room was dark—and a breeze filled with water and salt swept over her.
Then it was as before, a ship on the waves, but in another world, the High King had just shut a door between Aslan's country and a dark Narnia. Narnia sent its last farewell to its Gentle Queen.
Prompt 11: What happens to the painting of the Dawn Treader after The Last Battle?
Credit where credit is due, trustingHim17 came up with part II/the idea of Susan seeing the waves move.