SUSAN of NARNIA

Chapter 4: Memories

Upon awaking the next morning Susan arose and prepared herself for the day. Part of her still expected to find her family in the little kitchen as she exited the spare room. But ... no. Susan new that they were gone. They were not coming back. She was old enough to handle it, (or at least she wanted to make herself believe that).

Susan thought back over her life up to that point. She had been born in 1928. Edmund had been born in 1930 and Lucy in 1932. Susan couldn't remember much of her younger childhood until she was twelve, except that it must have been fairly pleasant. In 1940 World War II had begun, and their father had been drafted. Susan knew that her brother Peter had assumed the fatherly mantle of responsibility from that point on and when their mother had finally sent the four of them away from their home in London to Professor Kirke's country house to escape the bombing of the city, Susan had taken the role of her mother. It had all been quite sudden. At the age of twelve she had gone from being a child to an adult who had to think for others and serve others, and above all she had to learn to be more gentle with her younger siblings.

Later the four had all gone their own separate ways. Peter had gone back to school and then spent his holidays with Professor Kirke, Edmund and Lucy had been sent to stay with their cousin Eustace Scrubb and his parents for the summer, and of course Susan had accompanied her parents, as her father had recently gotten a summer job lecturing in America in 1942.

After that, there hadn't been that much contact with her brothers and sister, for though Susan had come back with her parents after the Summer, her siblings were all attending school. She was no good at schoolwork, and therefore, didn't put forth the effort to improve at all. Susan therefore had spent a great deal of her time at home helping her parents and going to parties with them.

And then she had left for America to pursue her acting career.

Susan was just finishing brushing her long black hair as she thought about this. Speaking of her hair she remembered how she used to keep it much longer while she was ... suddenly Susan arose and threw her brush across the room and it knocked over a vase which shattered on the floor.

Initially Susan was about to think, "while she was Queen in Narnia", but she had worked so hard now to forget that. Now she was ashamed for throwing the brush and knocking over the vase. "Not very gentle of Queen Susan the Gentle", her conscience told her.

She sat down in front of the mirror and looked at herself. As her mother had always said, she was beautiful, but over the years her face had changed with the growing tension of trying so hard to forget that fantasy. She couldn't remember the last time that she had smiled. Perhaps back when she thought that she might be able to get a part in one of those movies. But that wasn't a real smile, rather it was a tantalizing grin for the ravenous cameras of stardom. Not that she had really been a star, she had only been in two films as a background character, though several newspapers had generously mentioned her as an "up & coming star", (too bad they hadn't first talked to the directors and producers who had turned her down).

Susan arose and fixed herself some whole wheat mush for breakfast and ate it with milk and an orange.

Susan had passed the bags several times that morning. It seamed wrong somehow for her to want to look in them, but she told herself that her family was now gone. There wasn't much, just her mother's purse, and Peter and Lucy's knapsacks.

Susan opened her mother's purse first

Only three things stood out. The first was her mother's makeup bag, then a small notebook and finally a small Bible. She opened the makeup bag first and took out her mother's lipstick. She remembered how her mother had so often told her how beautiful that she was and taught her how to apply makeup so that it removed even the slightest imperfections from the face. The funny thing was that Susan couldn't remember her mother wearing any makeup for the last couple of years that she had known her.

Susan applied her mother's makeup and carefully placed the three items into her own bag and went on to Lucy's knapsack.