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I’ve got no money in my hand or my coat or my pocket…
Susan sighed as she opened yet another bill and skimmed the contents. Maybe moving here wasn’t the best idea after all. But then again, a girl had to start her own life sometime, and why not America?
On the steam-ship on the way over, she’d though she might just jump over the side, but somehow she felt not even the sea would notice that.
Another letter. More bills. And she couldn’t ask Mr. O’Connell for a raise, not this early in her new job. Father would be so angry if he knew. His daughter, a journalist! But what he didn’t know wouldn’t kill him, and he really wouldn’t know, as long as he never came to visit.
Susan laid the bills aside and picked up the next letter, smiling when she saw the return address. It was always nice to hear from Edmund, if a little painful. He had a way of reminding her of what she really had.
Remember, Su, he’d written in his last letter, You’ve still got a job, a home, and a beating heart. You will make it, I know you will.
Now he wrote:
Dear Su,
I hope you’re well and that Mr. Roberts hasn’t made any unwelcome advances again. If he has, let me know, and I’ll swim across the Atlantic and sword-fight him over your honour. Is the neighbour’s baby still keeping you up at night?
Uncle Digory and Auntie Polly hosted a meeting of the Friends of Narnia again. And don’t you dare write back any rot about games and childish imagination like you did last time, you're fooling no one but yourself.
Lucy has-
Susan laid the letter down, tears stinging in her eyes. Damn Ed and his bloody shrewdness! But he didn’t know. He didn’t know how tight her lungs felt, standing back on that train platform like nothing ever happened. He didn’t know how she cried herself to sleep almost every night, hoping, wishing, yearning she were back there. He didn’t know how she’d had to teach herself to love this world, with all its little quirks and beauties, and how much that kind of love still hurt.
...Well, if you can’t get what you love,
You learn to love the things you’ve got…
He didn’t know how she felt when the editor looked over her piece on the war effort and asked why she hadn’t written about new fashions instead. He didn’t know how her friends –more like the few other girls at the paper who were the only ones she could just about talk to- had teased her mercilessly about her love of open hair and long, flowing dresses, until she’d given in and worn skirts and nylons and make-up like the rest of them. Not that make-up wasn't nice, in itself.
...If you can’t be what you want,
You learn to be the things you're not…
He didn’t know how often she used to hope that she’d go back one day, despite what Aslan had said, and how much she now needed everything that reminded her not to hope.
...If you can’t get what you need,
You learn to need the things that stop you dreaming.
She’d hoped so hard, in those first few days weeks months. She’d looked in wardrobes, in mirrors, gone through every arch made by trees in the wood, but she’d never found more than disappointment and a creeping suspicion that she might be mad.
She’d tried writing poems, and her teachers had told her what a wonderful imagination she had and what wonderful stories these were and did she make them up herself?
And she’d said yes, and left it at that.
On her trip to America, that one year with her parents, it had all gone wrong again. Because she’d met Mary, and Mary had reminded her of Narnia. No, Mary had reminded her of Dalma.
Dalma, the centaur with the dark brown eyes that looked like pools of shadow./A dark night./A stolen kiss./A realisation.
And Mary was so much like Dalma, with her earnest demeanour and wild spirit. Said she wanted to join the WASPS, but wasn’t allowed to. Dalma had been allowed to fight. It hadn't even been a question.
Susan had promised Mary she’d see her again, and she’d kept that promise, like all the others in her life. That had been a wonderful summer. Sunburn and ice cream and watching the stars and not thinking about how they were different from other, far-away stars.
But it hadn’t lasted, because Susan had memories she couldn’t share, and secrets she couldn’t tell, and an ache in her heart that love would never heal. She left, as she had before, with a heavy heart.
So here she was now, lost, alone, no friends (because they’d never understand), trying to love a world that trapped her. But she had no choice. She could like it here, or she could be hurt over and over again. So she didn’t reply to Edmund’s letter, and she didn’t open the next one he sent, and the next one after that, until one day, the letters stopped coming and Aunt Josephine sent a wire with the terrible news.
Susan grieved her siblings and parents, but she never wondered where they went. She couldn’t afford to. It made no sense to wonder about those sort of things, fantastical countries where all the dead were alive and no one got hurt.
After all, she lived in this world now.
... Well, if you can't get what you love,
You learn to love the things you've got,
If you can't be what you want,
You learn to be the things you're not,
If you can't get what you need,
You learn to need the things that stop you dreaming.
Oh-whoa, all the things that stop you dreaming.
All the things that stop you dreaming.