We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 9

Nicholas set the letter – Jo's most recent letter to him – down beside the butter dish. "She is very lonely, I think."

Peter – who had been perusing an open book, one Professor Kirke advised him to familiarise himself with before the week was out, next to his plate of toast and brown eggs – glanced up. "She's got Susan with her."

"Yes – well, concerning that – they don't seem to be getting on," he said with strained diplomacy in his tone. "Not especially."

Distractedly, Peter asked what made him say that. His elder sisters had always been close, despite being two very different girls, almost as close as the twins were. As close as if they themselves were also a set of twins.

Nicholas reached into the pocket of his suit jacket. "This is why I say that." He set a scrap of paper beside the letter. "Among other reasons. It was in the envelope along with Jo's letter."

The paper turned out to be a torn and halved page from a book. Some copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Underlined in black ink from a fountain pen with a nub so sharp it nearly had cut through the paper at several points, was the passage:

These clothes are what S he's put upon me: I didn't care what S he did wi' me .

In front of both occurrences of the pronoun he, someone – presumably Jo – had written in an S with the same pen used to underline the passage.

Peter chuckled. Underneath the table, the cat walked over his foot to rub his tawny muzzle against the opposite leg. "Poor old Josephine and her dramatics! Yes, it seems just the sort of witty thing she would do! Even if it doesn't fit. Never mind; I expect she's only gloomy because of the delayed passage – she'll be right as anything once she's let herself get used to the idea. Nothing ever does keep her unhappy for long." He smiled kindly across the table at Nicholas, who was unconvinced. "Buck up. Ten to one, there isn't any real reason for alarm."

But Nicholas remained alarmed. He knew Jo the way he knew himself. She could become gloomy and moody, and when she did, she required someone of the same temperament to take her out of it again.

Susan – especially Susan as Jo's letters described her since they'd arrived in America – might not be capable of it.

Susan took herself much too seriously to understand Jo when she was in the thralls of melancholia. Her kind of logic didn't fit with her sister's artistic temperament which could come in and out like a seashore's tide.

Right now, each pushed past their personal endurance, neither was capable of understanding – of seeing – the invisible fetters which bound the other.

Susan and Jo didn't exactly forgive one another, but both finally arrived at a cease fire – they could be put in the same room and not snap at one another, and Jo had stopped bucking at having to wear her clothes and share a room with her. It was less crowded sharing with one sister than with two parents. She did insist upon wearing one of Mr. Pevensie's greatcoats over the dresses she borrowed from Susan nearly all the time, but Susan didn't grudge her as she would have before their quarrel; she felt guilty for slapping her.

"I didn't tell Nicholas what you said," Jo mumbled, when they were walking together to post the newest batch of letters to England. "I'm sorry I threatened to." This was the only thing Jo would bring herself to apologise for.

"What I said when?" asked Susan obtusely – her tone was cool, but her face and ears were hot.

"Never mind." She sighed and pulled up the lapel of their father's coat around her throat.

In a smaller voice, Susan asked, "Did you tell him I struck you?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Why do you sound surprised?"

"You usually tell him everything, that's all."

"What, is there any reason I shouldn't?" Jo's tone was growing defensive.

Susan shrugged. "He isn't really our brother, you know."

Jo stopped mid-step and looked at her like she was crazy. "He isn't my brother, real or otherwise." He was brother-in-law to Susan, though. So what in God's name was she getting at? What sort of thing was that to say?

But Susan wouldn't elaborate. Faced with Jo's deepening frown, she shrugged again and muttered some airy nonsense about how her sister was always being piqued these days no matter what she said or did.

Things were a little better – at first – when they were finally able to return home. There were fewer social engagements, and Jo could wear her own clothes again – she didn't have to feel like a dress-up doll every morning, obliged to put on whatever flowery dress Susan laid out for her on the bed. She'd also enjoyed the passage back more than the journey over. They'd seen dolphins twice – she'd leaned so far over the rails to get a better look at them she nearly went overboard, and Mr. Pevensie had had to haul her back onto the deck by the waist – and the food served on the liner tasted better than she expected. Much better than she remembered. Perhaps, though, it was really the thought of seeing Nicholas (as well as the others, of course) again which made her happier and sharpened her appetite for food and merrymaking.

The twins and Edmund had a surprise for them – something too wonderful, they explained breathlessly, when they were all together in the Finchley house again, to say in a letter.

They'd been back to Narnia – well, to the Narnian world, at any rate, out at sea – through a picture which their aunt hated but was obliged to keep because it had been a wedding present.

Eustace had gone with them and was quite a different boy now.

"Truly, Jo," said Edmund, knowing she in particular had gotten a bad batch of his teasing in the past, when Eustace had visited, for no better reason than her being adopted; "you wouldn't know him. He's changed – he's mended. He's nothing like the ass he used to be."

"He's like a friend," Lucy told them, grinning.

Royce said, "And we can talk about Narnia with him now – never mind just in front of him."

"And to think," laughed Peter, "he used to make such fun of us. And here he is one of us now. It just goes to show!"

Jo, Peter, and Nicholas were eager listeners to what the younger ones had to tell them, but Susan only sat ramrod straight in a chair with her hands clasped and a taut smile on her lips and a look of dull resignation in her eyes.

There was a flicker of...of something...when Edmund said Caspian had been with them. Jo thought Susan was going to ask if he mentioned her, but she did not. The tragedy – for Susan, though she waited for it, for the blow that must surely fell her, with white, white knuckles on splayed, tense hands – did not strike then.

Not that night.

Even Royce apparently knew better than to mention Caspian meeting the daughter of the – temporarily grounded – star Ramandu and his obviously fancying her.

Unfortunately, no one warned Eustace not to mention her. And so of course – when he visited the Pevensies (a visit not long in coming because his mother did not get on with him half so well now as she had when he had been priggish and insufferable to other persons) – he did exactly that.

"Do you think Caspian took that starry girl back with him to Narnia, Edmund?"

Lucy turned rather green; Royce winced.

Susan, whose face was stony, only asked which starry girl this was.

Edmund tried to change the subject, but Eustace was not quick enough to catch on. "Oh, you know, Lilliandil, she's the daughter of..." He stopped. Eustace had a recurrent difficultly remembering Ramandu's name, an affliction rather reminiscent of how Caspian used always to forget what it was the Lord Rhoop was called. "That star. Ram... Ram..." He snapped his fingers, becoming frustrated with himself – really, the name was not that hard to recall, was it? "Raman-doo-doo!"

Royce laughed involuntarily because his cousin had said 'doo-doo'; he was of the sort who react to such things the way ticklish people break out into fits if someone wiggles a finger too near them.

Lucy and Edmund, however, kept their worried eyes on Susan, unfazed by the mistake.

It couldn't be taken back now.

Susan was very pale as she stood up without a word, clearly understanding what it was the others had omitted from their story and her cousin had not, but she did nothing to indicate how deep the blow dealt her had gone, how it had wounded.

When asked, she claimed a headache as the cause of her increased tension and decreased conversation.

And when Eustace had gone, she herself went to bed without saying goodnight to the others.

She had a room to herself at the moment, for Jo had opted – almost the minute they got back from America – to move all her things into Lucy's room and boot Royce in with the boys. This coup had been achieved soundlessly and bloodlessly; Jo'd simply picked up all of Royce's model trains and such and put them in the boys' room, replacing the newly emptied space on his shelf with her own pictures and books and drawing-cases.

Then she'd put her favourite patchwork daisy quilt over the bed and sat down in the middle of it, cross-legged like an Indian, and the thing was done.

Susan's feelings were hurt over this, though she didn't tell her sister so. They both loved Lucy dearly, but Lucy had always been one of the twins, as well as Peter's personal pet, not one of the big set like themselves. Lucy was not Jo's confident, at least not very often – that honour had always belonged to Susan and Edmund. But here, without a word, Jo was declaring she would rather be with Lucy than her.

Nonetheless, she discovered she was glad to have the room to herself after finding out Caspian had moved on.

She knew it must happen sooner or later, that he would find himself a queen, but she'd hoped never to learn who it would be.

His queen consort was to be a star – or as good as, the daughter of one, at any rate – and he'd told her, the night outside the How, he loved them. It was fitting. This star-girl would be the one to sail with him, as they had talked about. On the way back to Narnia, they might already have visited the Lone Islands, the visit Susan had envisioned herself being at his side for, before learning she was to leave Narnia and never return.

Caspian would be happy with his choice; Susan was glad for him, but bitterly sorry for herself. She felt, as she lay in bed with the linens pulled over her head, transported back to the day she'd watched Prince Alexis, her first real and proper fancy, marry her sister.

Jo won you, back in Narnia, and she got to keep you, thought Susan. It isn't fair.

If she was so beautiful, the way everybody said she was, why was it whenever she was struck by love or fancy, the return affection was always given away to somebody else?

Why was she cursed to love and lose?

Even the prince she'd loved in a purely maternal fashion – her sweet Corin – had died centuries before she was allowed to return to Narnia for her second trip.

How many nights had she repeated her personal mantra?

Be a big girl – there are other princes.

Those words were meant to console and reassure, and as a charm, almost a magic spell of sorts.

It was only this very moment – teeth clenched and fists balled, her long black hair coming undone from pins she'd forgotten to remove – she realised the ugly truth.

Both things could not be true.

She could be a big girl, but as a big girl she must accept there was no prince for her.

The men she had to choose from were of this world. She was seventeen and she lived in Finchley. Not as a queen in some other universe where knights and nobles ruled the day. Somewhere deep down in her heart, as much pleasure as she'd taken flirting with them, the men of society in America had been only temporary in her mind. Just as well. America was awfully far away. But if she was to be a lady here in London, she must take her relationships rather more seriously.

It was time to stop playing and daydreaming.

Time to match her ambitions, such as they were, to the life she'd been given.

In the morning, concealed in a discarded sweet-wrapper and pushed to the bottom, Jo discovered Susan's gold chess knight in the kitchen rubbish bin.

If Susan had reacted passionately – with open grief – to Caspian's moving on, Jo might have been able to comfort her. They might even have reconciled properly.

Jo waited for sobbing and red eyes and for something to be thrown against the wall and broken. Waited for the moment she, in turn, would say it was going to be all right and slip her arms around her sister.

The moment she could soothe Susan as she had when she'd realised and accepted at last what Rabadash really was.

But apart from silently binning the chessman, Susan had done nothing dramatic at all, nothing Jo could latch onto.

Jo thought – if it had been Nicholas – she would have cried and been angry, and – as she was sure Susan had cared for Caspian, perhaps even truly loved him – she couldn't comprehend why her sister was dry-eyed and obtuse at his loss.

She placed the rescued chess knight on the bookshelf in the room she shared with Lucy, right between battered copies of Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island, and waited in vain for some sign Susan needed her as badly as their mother claimed.

She waited in vain.

If Susan cared anything for Caspian any longer, she never showed it. She never showed interested in Narnia at all anymore. It was easier to talk to any of the others, because if Narnia came up, they wouldn't pretend not to hear and then hurriedly insist on telling a grating anecdote about something 'simply hilarious' (it rarely was, in Jo's opinion) that had occurred at some party or other.

Susan went to such a great many parties. Everyone seemed to want her, so invitations flooded in.

She nearly always had one in her hand and was – if their mother should dare suggest she might this once decline, be it because of distance or weather impediments – adamant life would not be worth living if she couldn't attend whichever event was in question.

Jo taught herself to hum with her mouth full during mealtimes in order to drone out Susan's constant arguing with Helen about why it wasn't fair she wasn't allowed to wear lipstick like she wanted, or that she couldn't have new nylons in time for this or that party.

The war was over, wasn't it? Why couldn't they have nice things now? Why, why, why?

It was hard to believe this was the same girl, less than a year earlier, who had understood so absolutely – when Jo had not – why only two of them could go to America.

Peter found Jo's humming annoying, but – when he brought it up to her – she planted her hands on her hips and asked if he'd rather hear Susan whinge, and he had to pause and reconsider.

"It's a nasty habit, anyway, Jo," he said finally. "You shouldn't do it with food in your mouth."

But for all the drama which proceeded every event, Susan did get to attend most of them, usually dressed more or less to her own satisfaction and coming home with her cheeks aglow and eyes sparkling.

The trouble was the Pevensie parents didn't like her to go alone. Peter was busy; Jo refused; Royce and Lucy were both too young; Edmund was just old enough he could go, as well as willing, but he also young enough Susan felt silly appearing on his arm in public and burst into tears at the suggestion she take him.

So Nicholas got roped into squiring her around London.

Jo's being so burnt out from America provided a shield against the first pangs of jealousy this arrangement might otherwise have inspired – better him than her. It kept Susan quiet – Nicholas was a socially acceptable companion, graceful and conversational, and he wasn't her younger brother, which was even better – so that was something to be grateful for.

Yet as the number of must-attend events increased and Jo inevitably was obliged to part with Nicholas's company more and more often, she began to feel stabs of frustration. She resented Susan's endless parties cutting into what limited time she had with her husband. Some of them were going back to school next term. Some of them had better things to do with their lives.

"Tell her you don't like it," Edmund suggested one night when he found Jo waiting up, looking cross.

She was pacing in front of the pantry in her dressing-gown, occasionally thrumming her fingertips on the wooden cabinet. "What's the point? She won't listen to me."

"Susan's not unreasonable, Jo."

Jo shrugged. She wasn't so sure about that, whatever he said. "To reason with her, you'd have to get her to shut up for five minutes."

"I get it, you know – I miss spending time with him, too," Edmund admitted with a sad half-smile.

"Look, Ed, you've seen her nearly bite off Mum's head about these stupid parties," Jo pointed out. "What d'you think she'd say to me if I suggested she stop going to them?"

"Do you think maybe she'd really be hurt because she knows it's Nick we miss?" Edmund could be very perceptive.

"I dunno." But she felt guilty, nonetheless. Perhaps Edmund was right and this dramatic change in Susan was indeed a cry for help. It just wasn't a cry Jo knew how to answer, and – frankly – with Susan being so difficult and unlikable lately it was Nicholas she wanted back more than her sister.

She'd gotten more than enough time alone with Susan in America.

If it was safe for Susan to gad about all night by herself, if she'd leave Nicholas out of it, Jo probably – sick as it might make her to admit it to herself – would have been fine.

Those were not comfortable thoughts. She hated facing her own selfishness head on, especially in mixed-up situations like this one. Instead, Jo forced herself to recall her former indignation, to not feel so sorry for Susan.

"He doesn't even like her stupid friends," Jo grumbled. "He's told me so. Who does she think she is, anyway? Dragging him around like he's an accessory. And I'll bet she doesn't tell any of those giggling morons he's a haemophiliac, either. Does matter if he's in danger, as long as she's got herself a handsome escort and our parents let her leave the house."

"It's fine telling me all this," said Edmund.

"It's like I said, she doesn't want to know," Jo huffed. "What'm I supposed to say? I'd like to spend some time with my husband, please?"

"Doesn't sound like a bad start, actually." Then he added, "But if you're so worried, why don't you skip the dramatics and just go out with them?" He knew she hadn't enjoyed going to parties with Susan in America, but surely she would find them more pleasant here, with Nicholas in their group. "She's embarrassed of me, because she thinks I'm just a kid" – as if he hadn't been a king and an army leader – "but she'd let you go along in a heartbeat."

Her face crumpled into an expression of pure misery. "I know. I know she would."

Edmund's dark eyes widened with gentle concern. "You're not jealous of them after all, are you, Jo? I'm sorry if I struck a nerve. I just never thought you would be. If anything, I thought Susan might envy you. She always has, a little."

"N-no," blustered Jo, scrambling to explain. "It's not... It's not jealousy. Well, right, it is jealousy, kind of, but not the way you're thinking. I know Nicholas; he's not... He's never been interested in her." How could she feel envy if there was nothing to envy? When she knew absolutely and unshakably he didn't want Susan? "I should feel pity – it's terrible – but seeing her with him... When they go out... She told me she wasn't in love with him, she let me marry him in Narnia, but – since she's started spending so much time with him – she sure acts like she is. I feel like she lied to me."

"But what if she didn't? What if she told the truth in Narnia?" Edmund suggested, putting a hand on his sister's arm. "What if it's herself she's lying to now? What if this whole grownup charade – all this loving parties and flirting with Nick... What if that's her real great pretend in all this?"

A lump set in Jo's throat. It was hard and it hurt like the dickens when she tried to swallow.

"Then she should care about not hurting me." She brought her hands up to cover her face and groaned. "The way I cared about not hurting her."

"I simply must thank you." Susan looped her arm through Nicholas's and leaned on him – her shoes, fashionable but rather too tight were beginning to cut off her circulation and hurt her feet. Tomorrow she would have blisters, one or two at the very least, but they'd be worth it; the party had been glorious.

"Whatever for?" Nicholas stopped walking; they were nearly to the house, and he was noticing, for the first time, how severely she was limping.

"For being my knight in shining armour, naturally." Susan beamed at him, smiling winsomely. "You've been wonderful. If I haven't said it yet, I am grateful."

"If it makes you happy, I'm pleased for you," he said, feeling a rising warmth of brotherly affection for her. He only wished she did not seem to be at such odds with her siblings – especially Jo – as of late. Nicholas had been hoping to breach the gap between them, somehow, perhaps to be a sort of peacemaker through going to all these events in Jo's stead, hating to see them this way, but the girls only seemed to be drifting further apart. "But do you... Do you truly like all this? It does not strike me as a sustainable source of pleasure."

"Oh, you mean because I'm only seventeen." She sighed airily.

That was not what he meant, but he waited politely for her to go on.

"Yes." She pouted prettily. "Seventeen is young for socialising, and there are ever so many rules, restrictions and all that, almost like being at school; it's very bothersome! But I learned such a lot in America – I shall be extremely sophisticated by the time I am in my twenties, of course."

Puzzled, Nicholas tried to tell her it was not her age which concerned him, after all seventeen was not that young. He had, though he did not mention it then, married Jo the first time she turned seventeen, back in Narnia. In his mind, seventeen was not a child but a woman quite grown. His fretting was for her happiness. She had always enjoyed being around people, dancing and merrymaking, especially as a queen, but these sort of parties, which he was seeing so much of, seemed different, less fulfilling. It was difficult to think of her tossing aside any and all future plans for a life such as this.

Either Susan did not catch his meaning or else she did not wish to catch his meaning. She took her arm from his and faced him straight on, rising onto the balls of her feet and ignoring the places those wretched shoes of hers rubbed.

Telling him he was a dear to trouble himself over her so, she kissed him.

Under different circumstances, it might have been an innocent enough kiss. It was certainly over very quickly. But Nicholas, who'd done nothing he could think of – he was quite certain – to encourage her, was visibly uncomfortable. He had a look far more suited to someone who'd been stung by a wasp he hadn't any clue was in the room until the last moment than to a young man receiving a gentle peck of affection on the corner of his mouth at the end of a pleasurable evening.

Susan was seized with the unhappy conviction she ought to apologise to him, because he seemed rather put out. She was about to speak to him, unsure – as yet – what she meant to say, but noticed his eyes weren't on her.

His steely blue gaze was riveted to an upstairs window. The window to Lucy's room, if Susan's guess was correct.

Casting her own gaze back down to her sore feet and nudging a small rolling pebble aside, she didn't ask what he'd seen, and he wouldn't have bothered telling her if she had.

Nicholas had seen the curtain twitch and – for an instant – Jo scowling.