Many years after The Last Battle, Susan searches for the wardrobe.
The stop came, and Susan disembarked. The apartment building, clearly visible from the platform, was indeed not far. Susan left the platform; here she could walk. It was another quiet town – an actual town, buildings in every direction – but mostly small, old, and still with dirt streets. A compromise of city and country.
Susan took in a breath, lifted her head again, and strode forward. She’d faced her memories; surely she could face a strict housekeeper?
She’d faced strict housekeepers before; granted, she’d usually been on their side, but not always. If facing another meant getting her past life back, then it was something she’d gladly do.
She’d arrived. She walked up to the door, read the names listed by the apartment numbers (this must be a newer building, she realised). Was it her imagination, or were the letters for “Macready” just slightly more orderly and straight?
Apartment 3B. She let herself in, walked the straight, narrow hall, and arrived at the wooden door with a golden 3B hanging on it. She straightened her posture, raised her hand, and gently knocked.
A few even, swift footsteps sounded inside, coming closer; then the door opened. A very old woman, still with her hair pulled back into a precise bun, but more comfortably clad, stood looking at the sad, beautiful woman.
“I know your face,” the crisp voice noted, Mrs. Macready’s eyes darting up and down Susan as a frown puckered her forehead. “But I do not recall someone of such looks among my acquaintances.”
Susan swallowed. Mrs. Richards had been quite right. “You knew me when I was younger,” she explained. “I’m-”
“Susan Pevensie, one of the four war orphans.” Susan almost closed her eyes; that word, that haunting word – there had to be a word for losing both parents, because that kind of grief could not go unexpressed. She hadn’t been an orphan then, but she was now. “Second oldest, and most sensible, if I remember correctly, which I’m sure I do. Well, come in then. The hallway is no place for a young lady to remain.” Susan entered the small home, noting the decorations – sparse, plain, generally white, but in good taste – and the two chairs in the living area.
“Tea?” Mrs. Macready asked shortly, and Susan shook her head, sitting down when Mrs. Macready motioned.
“I’m here to ask a question, if you would be so kind,” Susan started. She folded her hands in her lap again – the better to hide their trembling – “I visited the old mansion today, and Mrs. Richards was kind enough to show me around.” Mrs. Macready said nothing, still regarding Susan with those uncomfortably sharp eyes. “We went up to that room that had once been empty, but for a very large wardrobe, and the wardrobe was missing. I know it is a most unusual question, but please – do you remember where the wardrobe went?” Do you? Do you? Do you? thudded Susan’s heart.
Mrs. Macready folded her own hands in her lap. “I remember that wardrobe. All four of you – five of you, after you spent some time with the Professor – had the oddest habit of visiting it. When your sister looked like she felt like crying, she’d fold herself up into a corner of it. Since she, quite sensibly, left the door open and did not shut herself in, I never interfered.” Susan’s throat caught again; she hadn’t known that about Lucy, but it was such a Lucy thing to do. “Your brothers went there, sometimes, just to touch it. And the Professor went knocking on the back of it once, as if testing to see if it was hollow.” Her tone implied “such a silly man, but I am much too well-bred to say so.” She kept going. “The wardrobe was a treasure to him, but it hadn’t first belonged to the house, and the new owners thought it too big; a waste of space.” Too big – an entire country inside it, Susan thought, and wondered what the new owners would have done if they’d known. “They sold it, along with a great deal of other furniture to Mssers. Paddington and Henry, on Grace Church Street in London. They should have the wardrobe, or at least a record of its sale.” Susan’s sigh was all of relief. Mrs. Macready had remembered; Susan had a direction to follow. “You never went near it, I noticed,” and though it was said as a statement, Susan could hear the well-bred question.
“I did not care to, then,” Susan admitted. “I was trying to – to see the world for what it was, outside the wardrobe.” She rose, smoothing her dress. “I cannot thank you enough, Mrs. Macready, for remembering this, and allowing me my questions,” she said quietly. Mrs. Macready nodded, and tilted her head towards the door, a clear goodbye, and Susan went.
“I was sorry to hear of his train accident.” Susan paused, turning just before she reached the door. Mrs. Macready hadn’t risen, but she wasn’t looking at Susan now; she was looking down, remembering.
“I beg your pardon?” Susan asked. Surely she couldn’t mean-
Mrs. Macready raised her head, and Susan, with all the insight her own sorrow had given, saw the pain felt, repressed, and yet still so heart-aching clear in that strict face. “The Professor was, for all his eccentricities, one of the best and most generous men I have known in a very long life, Ms. Pevensie. He was rarely on time for dinner, but he was always in the right place for a hurting soul. There was not a thing he owned he would not give away, if a person needed it – and he had the wisdom to see the true needs, and not be taken in by false ones.” Her hands clenched on her lap, white and wrinkled and old. “I meant to visit him, sometime – only I never found the time, and one day the morning newspaper informed me there was no more time.” She paused. “I read your siblings’ names there too, and two names above them that were likely your parents.”
“And my cousin,” Susan whispered, “and my friend, and the Professor’s friend. Everyone – everyone who ever cared about Nar- about the wardrobe.”
“Polly Plummer. Her name was Polly Plummer,” Mrs. Macready corrected. Her eyes were on Susan again. “I do hope you find the wardrobe, Ms. Pevensie. And whatever else you are looking for in it now.”
Susan, again nearly blind with tears, whispered a thank you, and slipped out.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
Susan wanted, as badly as she had wanted to find the wardrobe at the Professor’s old house, to go to Grace Church Street that very evening, but she knew it would be foolish. It would be closed by the time the train got in, and if she hoped to buy the wardrobe – which she did – she would need more money than she had with her.
So she went home, set aside her hat, changed her dress, and tried to sleep.
She lay, eyes open in the dark, watching memories instead. She could remember it, the wood under her fingers, the unexpectedness of snow underfoot, the way Lucy’s voice had truly lightened since they’d first feared she’d gone mad, the air – there was nothing like the air of Narnia.
Aslan, You said I was too old to go back – but can’t You see, I have nothing left now? Please, please, do not tell me no, not to this. Let me have the one desire I have left. I will be a woman living as no one important in Narnia, I will be silent on the past, I will do anything You require – but please give me this.
Morning was hours away, but hours eventually passed. Susan dressed, checked her directions, and took a cab to the store. Perhaps “store” was misnamed; it was rather a very large building full of mismatched furniture, all being sold for various prices. The clerk was busy when Susan entered – busy talking to a very pretty, lively girl about mirrors, and Susan turned away, seeing an echo of the person she had been, those six long years ago.
But that wasn’t her now. She was different, with the hopes and memories of a child, the purse of an adult, and the quest of a queen. She walked round, past a bed, a horrid scarlet dresser, a rug draped over a pole so it could be displayed. Round and round she went, in larger circles, past item after item of furniture, till finally, there on the back wall, she saw it.
She knew it as she had known the smell and sunlight in the front room of the Professor’s house (always the Professor’s house, to her). Older, and Susan smiled through tears as she ran her fingers down the side, over a new dent that had not been there before. She opened it; the fur coats were gone, but the smell of moth-balls was still faintly present. She glanced at the price tag; it was well within her means. She would buy it; it would be hers.
But not yet. Not quite yet; she wasn’t ready to leave it yet. She opened both doors, opened them wide, and cried again at the sight of the wood. She stepped inside; the back was in shadow. Further, further, further in, hand outstretched – and she touched the back. The door was not open yet.
It didn’t matter. It would be. It had to be. Susan wiped her eyes and her face (she had done that much, recently), walked out of this home, went up to the front desk, calmly explained her demand, arranged for both purchase and delivery, and went home to wait, resisting the urge to go back and view it one more time before she left.
It was coming to her. She would wait.
She waited a few hours, unable to pray anything besides:
Aslan. Aslan. Aslan. Aslan. Please. Aslan.
It arrived. Susan had moved into a new flat six years ago and had not bought much furniture since, and the wardrobe had plenty of space. The movers set it down, she paid them, and they left, leaving her standing in front of the wardrobe. She reached out, her hands trembling. She tried to clench them, still them, and take deep breaths to calm herself, but it did not work. Her hope stood in front of her, and now she would know-
Now she would know. She reached suddenly, before she could lose her courage, or listen to fears, and swept the doors open, almost running inside, arms outstretched.
Two steps, three, four-
She bruised her hands on the back of the wardrobe. She backed up, shut the doors, opened them again, more slowly this time. One step, two steps, three, four – the back of the wardrobe against her fingertips. She went out, shut the doors, and tried it again.
Nothing. There was no Narnia.
By the time she had tried seven times, she was crying. By the twelfth, she was sobbing, and she sank down in front of the doors, buried her head in her knees, and wept like a child.
She tried again, that night after supper. Only three tries then, just to be sure.
It was three tries the next morning, but two the next afternoon.
Eventually it was one, always one – but for those three days, she could not stop trying. And praying:
Please, Aslan, please.
The third day she heard an answer as she rested her head on the wardrobe’s closed door, but the answer was a deep, golden sigh, breath stirring her hair.
Oh, child.
Aslan?
Open the doors, child. But do not enter.
Susan yanked on the doors, flinging them aside – and took a shuddering step back.
It was black. Utterly, completely black, the black of a nothingness so absolute it was nightmarish; the emptiness of the White Witch’s eyes, of Miraz’s greed, of the darkest night without sun or stars.
What is this? Susan asked in horror.
It is your Narnia, child. That Narnia ended.
No. Susan stared into the darkness, reeling. No, no, no, no, nonononono. Please!
His breath stirred her hair again, that wild, strong smell that was better than Narnia, and the doors swung closed.
She was in England, empty England, difficult England, and Narnia – Narnia was forever gone. Susan crumpled to the floor. She had been given what she wanted, and it made her heart sick.
It’s gone. Everything’s gone.
I am not. Again that smell, that gentle breath. I am not.
I am enough.
Susan could not stop crying. You’re not here. I cannot touch You, cannot live with You; You’re as much of a ghost as they are!
Am I?
Susan remembered the past six years, the time she’d started seeking Him again – the way she’d found Him. The way He’d found her. He was not a ghost, and she knew it.
I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, and nothing is lost that is mine.
Nothing. Oh, how she needed that. Nothing was lost–not even Narnia?
Even if it was lost to her.
He was not lost to her.
But His presence was not hers to command either, and she craved it, needed it, wanted it there daily. And it wasn’t always there; she couldn’t always feel it.
He didn’t answer that.
Susan cried herself out on the floor, crying for all she could not have, for a Narnia that no longer existed. When she had wept herself empty, she stayed there till she started to shiver from the cold. Finally, she got up, slowly, and made her way to the kitchen with weary steps, without a backwards glance at the wardrobe. That door would stay forever shut. She made herself tea and sat.
She didn’t want to think, but in the quiet she had no choice. He wasn’t a tame Lion. She had known that as long as she had known Him. She had needed Him before, even in – that other place (was Narnia a word she could not use now, just like her siblings’ names? A name that only meant something lost?), and He had not come right when she had cried. The night they discovered Cair Paravel was in ruins, they realised how long they had been gone. Later, alone, she had cried for Him and He had not come. She had refused to believe He’d come to Lucy afterwards. The night He’d died, she had not known to call to Him then, but her heart had been – and He had made her wait, her and Lucy both. The night they fled from Tashbaan, she had begged Him to help them, to make sure no others paid for her folly, and He had not come.
But they had escaped. Susan set down her tea and rested her head on her hands. Each time, He had come – in His timing. He had corrected their wandering way with the D.L.F., risen the next morning, secured their flight from Tashbaan, even saved Archenland by their hands. He was always there; she just had not always seen and heard Him.
Aslan?
She called Him by the name she knew better, even after six years. Nothing. But Lucy would have said to have faith He was listening.
I don’t think I can do this alone anymore. She waited. I know I’m not alone, in reality, but, she swallowed, that doesn’t change that I feel alone. And now Narnia – Narnia is gone. I have no other hope to cling to.
She waited. There was no answer; but she thought He might be waiting too.
There’s that thing You wrote in this world – our hope will not put us to shame. That means it’s certain. Breathe in, calming the sounds. But it was Narnia, it was my siblings, it was everything good You gave me to love, and now it’s gone. Why would You take it all and leave me? Why would You want me to keep going when there is nothing left?
Only there was something left, a thing that came and went, that somehow stayed even when she didn’t feel it.
You’re not gone. She closed her eyes. You’re not gone. You’re enough? You said You were.
She hoped He meant enough for the depth of the brokenness within her, for someone so utterly destroyed.
But she had no land to return to now, nothing left but grey London and a life she didn’t want. The hopelessness…
Was something she had seen recently. Susan could see it again, the pain breaking through the reserve in Mrs. Macready’s stern, old face. She would have made a good Centaur, Susan suddenly realised, and choked on a laugh. Laying that thought aside, though the humor brought her strength, she thought back to that moment. Mrs. Macready’s pain would become another of her ghosts, Susan could feel it, if nothing were done to lift it. Another wound, a reinforcing of her own pain. Susan huddled closer to the table, to her arms. Mrs. Macready? She was not someone who would readily accept any help. And Susan was not sure, as thoroughly as she had been broken, that she had enough in her to help anyone.
One thing at a time, Susan thought. It had been how she had gotten hard things done there too. She’d start tomorrow; she’d send a letter, now that she had the address. And maybe to Aunt Alberta, too, who would be even more prickly. It would – it would be something to do, and that, at least, would take some of the unwelcome time.
And it would be someone to grieve with, eventually. Someone else who remembered a summer where everything changed.
Maybe even someone to tell the stories of it to. And those – those always made Aslan and her siblings almost live for a moment.
But it’s still so hard, she whispered to the Lion. Everything is so hard.
So was the Stone Table. So was the cross. It was the Lion’s voice; He had been listening. Courage, dear and broken heart. I do not lose even one of My own, no matter how hard the way.
Tomorrow – tomorrow Susan would write her letters. Today was to grieve everything she had lost.
One more reminder in the Lion’s voice sounded in her ears, her heart – I have not lost anything. Not Narnia, not your siblings, and not a single tear you have cried. The way is hard, but nothing on it is lost.
Take up your cross and follow me.
“…but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
Susan’s story did not end there.
It didn’t get easier, not for years. Long, long years.
But she learned to love when things were hard, and that was enough reason to keep going.
Till she lost Mrs. Macready too, and she fell again. But He was there, and she knew Him better. She knew how much she needed Him, and she knew His Word better. There she found her hope, and stayed her hope on it, till at last hope was fulfilled. Her last beginning came, finally, when she had learned to stand fast in all circumstances, and there she found the true England, the true Narnia, and everything she had lost, and she was very welcome there. But that is a story I have not been told yet; I only know it happened.
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