Chapter Text
That is a long summer, long and heavy, a blazing furnace of a July, a wet shiver of an August, and Peter has forgotten how to be a child, forgotten how to revel in the long stretch of glorious freedom without books or papers or masters or bells. He doesn't sleep in, he gets a job driving a milk truck, most mornings he's up before Mother, leaving notes on the worktop beside the stove: Thank you for everything, Mother.
Benton’s is lucky to have you, Mum.
Hope you have a good day.
We love you, Mum.
Dad will be proud of you.
He knows she takes them in her box lunch.
There's a cake for his birthday, by some magic of Susan, and a crown of primroses and oak leaves Lucy places on his head (and the look in her eyes as she kisses him, telling him she knows). There's a letter from Professor Kirke, a nice copy of Le Mort d'Arthur from Ed, and a nearly-new overcoat from Mum, a proper man's coat and he has no idea where she could have gotten it, but he hugs her tight, knowing she had seen his too-tight coat, his threadbare barn jacket.
Susan's always busy, running the household with Mum, and watching various neighbour children while their mothers are working. So Ed and Lucy look out for each other, entertaining themselves with long walks in the nearest park, and long visits to the library.
In the hot afternoons, all four of them lie about the garden, speaking little, singing less.
Peter finds himself drifting, searching, always looking for something he can't seem to find. He takes to greeting the stone lion at Wood Green station, just a soft ‘hullo’, a remark on the weather. He's always watching the sky, the sun, the clouds. He turns his head at every flash of gold, the toss of girl's blonde hair, the spill of shocking colour across stone floor in the church.
He likes driving the milk truck, he's a good driver, after one or two near misses, but he goes out in the dark of the morning, looks up into a full bomber's moon, hears no sirens.
“I don't understand,” he says quietly, hands in his pockets as he walks to the tube station. “Where are You? I thought, perhaps… I thought perhaps You might be– But I suppose I'm wrong. Ed believes it. He doesn't think he's wrong. But I don't understand. What am I supposed to do? How long do I have to wait?”
He has a lot of conversations with the predawn sky.
Then the rain comes, and a chill with it, and it's sweaters in August, and even with his job, he feels cramped, hemmed in, it's hard to even read, he's so restless.
He snaps at Ed for leaving his boots in the hall for Peter to trip over when he gets home at noon, all dripping, left shoulder still throbbing from getting hit with Mrs. Tortellini's front door again. (How does such a small woman push open a door so fast and so hard??)
“Ed! Why can't you pick up your things? For pity's sake, grow up!”
“Grow up yourself!” Ed snaps back, nettled, coming to move the offending footwear.
“Boys!” comes Susan's exasperated sigh from the living room, and Peter has to bite his tongue, close his eyes, exhale slow.
“Ed. I'm sorry.” He turns to see dark eyes soften, hands already reaching for the glass bottles slipping in his uncertain grip.
“I'll put them in the refrigerator,” is all Ed says, but it's kindness, and Peter can only nod thanks.
At one time, Peter had written down every memory of Narnia he could, terrified of forgetting that glorious life, as they had forgotten this ordinary one whilst there. But as time passes, it seems not that he recalls more or less of their time there, but simply that he misses it more, aches in a sharp way, like a not-healed knee stabs through with heat when you step just wrong.
How long? It beats at the inside of his ribcage, sits bitter on the back of his tongue. How long? How long?
Walking home in a drizzle with Ed, mended shoes on their feet (shoes didn't feel this heavy in Narnia, he's quite sure), they see a small gang of boys knock hard into a man limping down the street, all hobbling crutch and one knotted-off trouser-leg tumbling into puddled mud, and the two kings move without hesitation—Edmund to the fallen, Peter after the offenders.
He catches them easily—slipping up behind, with them not even looking back—snatches at a couple elbows. “Hallo, you lot! Where do you think you're going?”
The uncaught boy holds his ground. “What do you care?”
They're Ed’s age, Peter thinks, and he doesn’t try to hide the steel in his voice. “I saw how you knocked down that man. You owe him an apology.” He grips wriggling limbs tighter with a little pinch, and they still. “Now will you walk? Or must I carry you?”
“What if we won't?” the boy he's not holding says, green eyes taunting.
“Then I'll knock all your heads together and send you home crying.”
It's so sharp, so decided, there is no more argument, and they come meekly back to the man, now leaning on his crutch, talking quietly with Ed.
When he looks up, Peter stiffens. It’s a young face, not more than three or four years older than Peter, but not too young for the wings sewn on his cap. Soldier eyes meet his, and Peter feels a hot flush come up the back of his neck, tries to stand even taller.
“Apologise now,” he orders the abashed boys, louder and harsher than he means to. “That's no way to treat your elders, never mind a defender of your country.
“Sir.” He finishes with a short nod, not quite a salute, and the man's eyes narrow, assessing, judging, and Peter holds himself steady, holds that haunting gaze, until the murmured chorus of boy voices pulls the man's attention away.
He's embarrassed, uncomfortable at the attention, Peter sees suddenly, and he cringes inside, wondering if he's got it all wrong.
The soldier says little, but enough for Peter to hear his accent, and judge it to be American. He never gives his name, only takes the boys’ apology with a word of thanks, and then boys scuttle one way, soldier stumps off in another, swinging on his crutch with ease. Oddly shaken, Peter watches until he turns a corner, disappears from sight.
“He's Canadian,” Ed says, as they walk on, and Peter watches grey water splash up around his feet. “RAF. Downed over the Channel after Christmas. Saved by a fisherman.”
“Why is he still in England?”
Ed shrugs. “No family to go home to. So he married a nice girl, and settled here. Found a new family. Built a new life.”
A new life.
Starting over.
Peter swallows hard. We'll get back.
“Professor Kirke and Aunt Polly didn't.”
Peter misses a step, narrowly avoiding a lamppost as he stares at Ed.
“Professor Kirke and Aunt Polly never got back.” Ed’s not looking at him, but ahead, away down the street. “Not in over fifty years.”
Peter feels as if he's been socked in the gut, lungs suddenly cramped, and he walks blind, until his shoulder strikes metal and he stumbles, glances up and back at another street lamp, high on its post. Oh.
He feels the cold rain running down his face. “They were sent back. We weren't. We just… stumbled through.”
“So you think it was an accident then?”
“Of course it was!” Peter exclaims. “If we'd known, we never would have gone through!”
“You would have rather been a coward then?” Ed ducks gracefully, and Peter's fist doesn't even brush his sleeve.
“Oh, dry up,” Peter growls, shoving his hands back into the safety of his pockets, and turning away, trying to shove down the heat risen in his chest.
“I'd love to.” Drops spatter Peter's arm as Edmund shakes his head hard. “But truly, Pete, if we had known what was inside the wardrobe, would we have ever gone in in the first place? Who we were then, would we have done it? Gone to fight a witch and a war and everything?”
Peter pauses, casts his mind back, remembering the first chapter, the one he remembers best, and then he feels Lucy's fur coat empty in his hand, sees a wolf snapping at Susan's feet and Ed lying on the battlefield… The images fade, but his smile is grim. “I wouldn't have let you.”
“Course you wouldn't have.” And Edmund's own half smile says he hears what Peter doesn't say. “But Peter, that's the point. We were called. He called us because we were needed. And we needed to go. There was no accident about us finding Narnia. So why should there be any accident in our finding the way back home to England?”
Peter sighs, heavy air leaving tight lungs, tilts his head back as the rain increases, thickens to big drops. He never hurries out of the rain anymore, much to Mother's concern. “How do you do it?” he asks, pained, longing. a glance over at Edmund. “How do you have so much faith?”
Even in the grey rain Peter sees the colour rise in his brother's cheeks, and Ed ducks his chin a moment, before looking back, and oh, has Peter noticed before how old he is now? On the cusp of 13, and his eyes look like Dad’s; Edmund is a man in contrast to those boys from earlier.
“It's not really me,” he says quietly. “But is it really Narnia you want to get back to? Or is it Him?”
Lump swells hard and sharp in Peter's throat, and he cannot answer, but he knows Ed reads his silence. The rain picks up suddenly, a downpour onto the pavement, and Peter puts out an arm as he walks, drawing Ed into his side, tucking him under his coat, and for once, Edmund doesn't fight him. In fact, a thin arm snakes its way around Peter's waist, Ed leaning into him, and Peter gives him a little squeeze. Thank heaven you're here, he thinks. They walk the rest of the way home like that, leaning on each other, not speaking.
One afternoon when they're all home, and the rain beats at the glass and thunder rumbles in the roof, Lucy (laughing, dancing, singing, faithful Lucy) looks up from her book, a startled look in her eye, says suddenly, “Oh, Peter! You don't think they'll forget us, will they? Like we forgot about England?”
“Of course not!” Peter exclaims, startled in his own turn, but instinctively parrying her fear, then turning back the blade with a strike of his own: “We remember them, don't we?”
A sigh, wildness leaving her face, but he lifts his arm, lets his book fall shut on his thumb, and she comes across the living room at once to settle, warm and solid into Peter's lap. Dad’s chair wraps tight around them, big enough to hold them both easily.
“Perhaps it will be like King Arthur,” Edmund murmurs, stretched lazy in front of the fire.
“How do you mean?” Susan asks, sewing needle not hesitating as she patches Lucy's brown skirt.
“Well,” Ed rolls onto his stomach. “They call him the Once and Future King, don't they? Because they say, even though he's been gone a thousand years, that he's not really dead. Just… somewhere else, and in Britain's darkest hour he'll return.”
Peter frowns, but Lucy says it first. “You mean to say you think it will be forever and ever till we get back?”
“No, of course not. I mean, perhaps we're not needed there right now, but we'll be brought back when we are. In Narnia's darkest hour.”
They all look at each other, and Peter can tell they're each seeing it, the flashes of memory.
“I don't see how there could be a darker hour in Narnia than the one we already saw.” Susan's eyes lock on Lucy's for a long moment.
Peter remembers too—the dawn chill as he stood in Aslan’s empty pavilion, but just as quick comes the echo of that roar, loud enough to shake the mountains.
“I hope not,” Lucy says soft, playing with Peter's fingers, smoothing the knuckles with their scabs, earned from meeting a drunk stumbling home the other morning. “I wish Narnia to always be happy and shining in the sun.”
Peter looks down at the freckles splashed over his little sister's nose. “Me too,” he whispers.
But the idea lingers with Peter, and every time he picks up Le Mort d'Arthur, he thinks of Narnia.
My Once and Future King, he writes on the fly leaf of the first volume of A History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I—bought from a old couple selling everything unnecessary out of their half-shattered home—a Once and Future Justice. Happy 13th birthday, little brother. Pete.
The girls wrinkle their noses at the heavy old books Ed unwraps from the newspaper, but Ed lights up over them as much as the torch from Mother and Dad, and Peter feels warm inside. He thanks Peter, and immediately goes to tuck the books into his school trunk sitting open in the living room.
After a summer of hard work and money in his pocket Peter feels odd mixed up in the flurry of packing for school, the hollering and running up and down stairs, and Susan ticking things off the lists in Mother's handwriting. Part of him feels too old for all this, but he knows he's got a whole year till he'll be mucking around at Bampton.
They're all up early to say their goodbyes to Mother before she leaves for the factory, and she hugs each of them tightly.
She pauses longest in front of Peter, hands coming up to cup his face, and his own feel too big at her waist. “Try to enjoy it, this last year,” she murmurs. “Have fun, be a boy, before you can't anymore. You already know how to be a man.” And then her eyes glaze over and she wraps her arms tight around his neck, and when he stands straight, her feet leave the ground.
He sets her down, smiles into her teary face. “Alright, Mum,” he says, cheerful as he can. “I'll get the midgets to put a snake in Quizzler's desk, and maybe some spiders in the San–”
She is laughing, and over her shoulder he can see the others smiling as they disperse to start breakfast. “No, Peter dear, not that kind of fun!”
“Well then, I'll get the best grades in all the school and sleep in the library.”
She takes the clean blue kerchief Susan hands her, ties up her hair in a practiced movement, still smiling. “Perhaps not quite that either? Try somewhere in between.”
Peter knows his own smile is crooked. “Alright, Mum, I'll try.”
She's blowing kisses all the way down the hall and out the front door. Their goodbyes follow her till the door clicks shut.
“Who wants toast and who wants eggs?” Susan says, before silence can fall.
They are lingering over breakfast when Mr. Solomon comes for the trunks with his car, and Peter makes doubly sure Le Mort is in his nightcase, alongside the journal Ed gave him last Christmas at the professor's.
The sky is clearing as they walk down to the tube station, and Lucy swings her nightcase cheerily, singing snatches of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”. It's following her that means they take the wrong train, and get stuck at Charing Cross for half an hour.
Peter tries to temper his impatience, tells himself they have plenty of time, but it chafes at him, being in these crowds of noisy children, nobody looking where they're going, shoving and talking and generally behaving with the manners of a flock of gulls. Everyone is going back to school, and nobody cares about being polite, and he's just another one of them, getting shooed along by the ticket lady, till he's swallowing back heat.
The Once and Future King, he thinks bitterly to himself. Some king a schoolboy makes.
It's too easy to snap, too easy to swing a fist into a sneering face, and then there's shouting and his blood is up, but it makes him sloppy, the burst of frustration, and there's too many of them, a kick in his gut, a hand in his hair, and then it's all over, he is a scolded child being soothed by his baby sister, and he feels small and stupid.
I'm sorry, he wants to say.
“How long?” he asks.
Strange how he couldn't have felt less like a king, when the call comes and the magic takes them home.