Reposting Comment Fic, Give the Pevensies A Friend
The following comment fics happened when I spammed the LJ of the lovely animus_wyrmis . I realized after posting l_a_r_m 's birthday fic that I should probably move these all over here, in one place. There are more over in Animus' LJ, but here is the gist of my own deplorable hijacking of the thread with discussion of the friends of the Friends of Narnia. I discussed and linked it earlier, here, but it's all sort of hard to find and two people have asked for links, so here it is in one place. The Lucy story is part of a much larger thread, with contributions by several amazing, talented women, including metonomia lady_songsmith and animus_wyrmis.
For those who saw these over in animus' LJ, there's no new content (other than what I did for LARM's birthday fic).
Susan, the Colonel and Tebbitt was posted here.
"You sure?" Layton asked, key in the laboratory door.
"Yes, very sure," Pevensie said, not sounding sure of anything other than that he would rather be anywhere other than the University dissection rooms. For god's sake, the man was pale as the moon.
"Right then." Layton turned the knob, pushed the door open and the formaldehyde fumes rolled out. Beneath the harsh, chemical smell was the sweeter odor of death and decay, temporarily arrested by the overpowering preservative.
On wax slabs the dogs were laid out like so much meat at the butcher, skin peeled and pinned back, organs exposed and neatly labeled for tomorrow's examination. Pevensie lasted a full eight minutes and thirty seconds; it was the cadaver of a Beagle bitch that did him in, womb and belly still distended from the litter that had killed her.
With a heaving gasp, Pevensie spun about and bolted from the lab as if the ghosts of the little hound and all her kin were on his tail.
Layton closed up the lab and followed the sounds. Around the corner of the building, he found Pevensie retching over a rose bush, hands braced against the wall, utterly miserable. He pushed a handkerchief in that direction, mindful of his shoes and cuffs, but Pevensie waved him off.
"Thanks, got one."
So Layton pulled back a pace, turned his back to give the man his privacy and assure it stayed that way, leaned against the stone wall, and waited.
When the sounds subsided into embarrassed silence, Layton turned back around. "I can't get the bead on you, Pevensie. You've forgotten more about mammal and avian biology than our illustrious Chair ever knew and you just don't seem the type to be squeamish about blood."
With the raspy voice of one who has just been thoroughly sick, Pevensie said curtly, "I'm not."
"What's that then?"
"Squeamish about blood. It's not the blood, even the organs."
"It's the death then," Layton said. "But they're just dogs. Dead dogs."
There was that dangerous, icy look that Pevensie got sometimes -- rare, but the sort that made you think you'd said something truly stupid and hoped you would live the next day to tell your girl about it.
"Sorry," Layton muttered.
Pevensie clapped a hand on his shoulder and the moment passed. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to test the theorem."
"No trouble at all. I'm sorry it didn't work out, Pevensie. You've got a real gift in vertebrate biology."
Pevensie shrugged. "I thought that was what would happen but I wanted to be sure before I committed to it." With his foot, he kicked some dirt around, covering up where he had been sick.
At the sounds of the birdcall they both looked up, and shading their eyes, watched the Oxford swifts darting about the rooftops catching the insects for their nestlings in the Museum towers.
"The team is waiting for us at the pub," Layton finally said, knowing that though they had watched the same aerial antics, Pevensie had somehow seen and understood things about those birds in a way the finest ornithologists in all of Britain could but imagine. "Do you need a few more minutes?"
"No, I'm fine. Besides, the party will not start until you arrive to pay for the rounds, Layton. First one's on me."
***
You could never just go to the pub for a quick drink with Pevensie. Eventually, the other crew had realized it too, and just gone along with it, if for no other reason than because free drinks and pretty girls always followed in Pevensie's wake.
At the pub, the cat would sit on his shoulder, the dog would shadow his heels, and Pevensie would make the rounds, chatting up everyone in the pub. "How's your mum?" "Have you heard from your son?" "Looks like your leg is healing well." "Have you gotten your check yet this month? That's not right at all, let me see what I can do." "Has someone been by to fix your door yet? No? Why don't I take a look at it?"
"Here, Layton, hold her, would you?" Pevensie deposited the tabby in his lap and fished in his school bag for the ever present hammer and box of nails. "The picture of Mrs. Finch's husband and son came down again, so I'm going to put them back up before she tries to do so."
The tabby wasn't happy with her changed position and jumped off indignantly to follow Pevensie as he made his way over to the bar and Mrs. Finch's wall holding the pictures and memories of her husband and sons -- Pevensie had said they had died in the Blitz, Normandy, and Operation Market Garden.
At least it was the cat. Last time, Peter had been bouncing a baby on his knee and Layton had gotten that and a wet nappie besides when Sally had asked him to mend a stool broken in a fight. And that was another thing about Pevensie. The man would ask you to do the most outrageous things, like hold a wet baby in a pub, or a spitting tabby cat, and you'd do it because it all seemed the perfectly reasonable and decent thing to do.
"It's Mrs. Finch's grandson," Pevensie had said about the baby. "A parting gift to Sally from a Yank." And the way Pevensie said Yank made you very glad you weren't the stupid sod who had given (another) English girl some chocolates, stockings, and a baby, and then gone back to a wife when the War ended.
How Pevensie knew every detail of strangers' lives and took their problems as his own was just one more of the things that made him the oddest man Layton had ever known, and the one who always had your back. Pevensie was the 6 on their 8+ boat, its most powerful engine, and the heart of their rowing team.
********************************
It had been such a long day. Polly had attended some excellent meetings at the Bronx Zoological Society to discuss the latest developments in wild animal husbandry. She plotted with Katherine and Douglas on how to raise monies for an expedition to Indonesia to document reports by Dutch sailors of very large lizards that swam in the archipelago. Veritable dragons, it was said, though that might have been sailors' tall tales and too much rum. Richard had guest lectured at Columbia and there had been cocktails afterwards. Now, Polly wished to return to their hotel room, draw a bath, order a stiff gin and tonic, and seduce Richard into massaging her feet.
But no, instead, they were trudging steadily, in the sleety rain, down from the Park, through Midtown and the Village, to the Lower East Side and Little India. All because of a book. A very particular book. Richard, lovely man that he was, was being an absolute pest and her patience and shoe leather had worn thin around the Bowery.
“This looks promising, Bird!” Richard said, indefatigable. He charged in to the curio shop. The bell on the door clanged noisily and Polly’s nostrils were assailed with the scents of curries and incense. They were in New York, in an Indian bookseller, on Valentine’s Day.
What a lot of bother.
Polly yawned, sat on a pouf, leaned carefully against a rolled up carpet, and hoisted her feet up on to a bag of Jasmine rice, propriety be damned. Richard could sweet talk her with “Bird,” all he wished, but she was not going another step and the old goat could carry her back to the Waldorf-Astoria.
Her Hindi was embarrassing; Richard’s was marginally better and he was already in an animated conversation with the shop owner. They disappeared into the back rooms.
There was some clattering and the sound of an alarmed cat being trod upon. The icy rain beat against the windows and Polly wondered if there might be a kettle and tea somewhere in the crammed shop.
“Eureka!” Richard shouted. Goodness, he had not sounded that animated since they found their way out of the Okavango Delta two years ago. That had been a miserable detour. No gin for the quinine and enough mosquito netting for only one cot.
****
“What have you found, Goat?” Polly demanded.
“The 1883 Burton translation of the Kama Sutra!”
Polly yawned and shifted on her pouf. “Yes, that’s all fine and well, but what if the censors excised out all the naughty bits?”
"You Goat!" Polly gritted through clenched teeth. "Richard, if all you are going to do is lecture to me on the verses in the Kama Sutra about acquiring a wife, the conduct of wives, and behavior in the harem, you can leave the book here."
He tried the hang dog hurt look. "All this effort, Bird, and you still will not be my wife?" Richard waved the book for emphasis.
"You already have a wife, Goat. In the Kenya Colony. I like her very much and we are terrific friends," Polly said stoutly. And really, Wangari was a fabulous woman, even if her judgment was suspect in marrying Richard.
"Wangari will share! There is a whole section here on management of the First Wife and second wives..." Richard began, grinning fiendishly. He was rapidly turning the pages, paused, and whistled. "Hullo!"
Polly craned her neck for a look. "The second section? Is it complete?"
He paged through the often removed section, muttering, "Sixty one, sixty two, sixty three, sixty four..."
Richard snapped the book shut triumphantly. All ten chapters! All sixty-four positions!"
****
St. Augustine, Alice decided, was a toad. An insufferable, incomprehensible toad. The monk should have never left his concubines and then she might have been reading something more Rabelaisian.
She almost did not hear the timid knock over the noise of pounding her head into her beaten desk.
“Yes?”
The door cracked open and two nervous girls in diaphanous dressing gowns peeked in.
The wellies were the give-away.
Oh not again.
“It’s Lucy Pevensie,” Marjorie Preston whispered.
But of course.
“She’s gone off. Again,” Jane Edwards said through sniffling tears.
And the sun shall rise tomorrow and Cook shall again murder perfectly innocent vegetables in their sleep.
Alice set her reading glasses down, pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers and cursed in colorful Gaelic the Communion of Saints, the Roman pantheon, the Hindu avatars, and the Yoruba deities for her utterly half baked decision to become Head Girl in this utter asylum. There was an American General -- 19th century --who had something to say about it… If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve.
“Alice?” Jane said through frightened tears. “It’s already passed curfew and if we don’t bring her back…”
“Matron will probably expel her.” Marjorie choked on a sob.
Alice pushed back from her desk, shoving her feet into her own boots and shrugging into her Mac.
“What was it this time?” She did the calculation in her head and answered her own question. “Lucy quarreled with the vicar, didn’t she? After Evensong?”
The girls nodded. “She said the most dreadful things,” Jane said in hushed tones of awe.
Dreadful? Well that depended on one’s point of view and in Alice’s opinion their school vicar was earning himself a very special place somewhere between the sixth and eighth circles of Hell for his interpretations of sacred text.
“Lucy said something about how having a penis did not make the vicar more qualified to preach on Eve’s sin, didn’t she?”
The girls both gasped in horror and Alice managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Marjorie and Jane were good girls, bright, sweet, and very loyal to Lucy. They shocked far too easily. Lucy Pevensie on the other hand... well, Lucy Pevensies was, Alice had to admit, probably the reason she decided to be Head Girl. Their grim, dull school shined much brighter with Lucy in it and Alice would do everything she could to keep the girl there, despite Lucy’s best efforts to be sent down.
Alice grabbed her torch knowing just where to look. Lucy was probably in a tree again.
***
“If Matron is about, you can also climb the apple tree near the dustbins and crawl in the second floor broom closet window,” Lucy had said blithely.
They fortunately returned to her room before Jane and Marjorie burned it down trying to boil water from Alice’s highly temperamental kettle. The girls had brought Lucy’s nightdress to help complete the fabrication that the three dorm mates were merely meeting for a late night tutorial on history and theology with their Head Girl and wheedle precious cocoa from her private stash on a cold, rainy night.
Alice had never gotten to the bottom of what had happened the term before amongst this merry band, but she suspected that the meddlesome shrew Anne Featherstone was behind it. She also thought Lucy was the one who had arranged for the spiders in Anne’s bed and the ants in her shoes and the mouse nest in her jumpers. Odd how no one had cared enough to investigate.
The girls were all clumped together on her bed, with Alice’s theology and art history texts out for show should Matron blunder by.
Marjorie thoughtfully stirred her cocoa. “I suppose it is not entirely Father Jameson’s fault.”
“Why ever not!” Lucy retorted.
“He is a man,” Marjorie began. Alice quickly swallowed her cocoa. Something outrageous was sure to follow. And it did.
“My mum always says that it’s their penises. It makes men stupid. They can’t help it.”
Lucy was not so fortunate and began coughing on a mouthful of hot cocoa.
“Spew on my bedclothes, Lucy Pevensie, and next time I shall leave you in the tree to Matron’s tender mercies!”
Poor Jane was always a step behind in this regard. Marjorie’s mum was a nurse and her father a doctor, which explained rather a lot about her selective sophistication.
Alice leaned over and opened her art history book on the bed. She pointed to the lewd pictures the girls always admired by Rubens and Caravaggio.
"But, it’'s so very wild!” Jane exclaimed, studying the Rubens paintings of The Bacchanal and Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by the Fauns. “Those women in the painting must be terribly frightened.”
“Oh no!" Lucy replied. "Bacchanals are great fun, when men don't get too much in the way."
Silence fell for a long moment.
"Lucy," Alice finally said, "I don't even want to know how you know that."
Lucy giggled enigmatically as she would do. “Truly though, I think Marjorie has the right of it. If penises do make men stupid, this explains why Adam took the fruit without asking questions. I always did think it was rather unfair to blame Eve for his stupidity."
*******
Susan had a luncheon appointment with Agnes. She was not sure how she felt about Agnes bringing her rat, Papa Legba.
More from TSG as I cheerfully hijack Animus' thread.
Susan drew herself to her full height and looked down upon the cretin with the disdainful gaze she reserved for a very special sort of idiot.
"I shall sit where I wish, Madame."
The hostess was wringing her well manicured hands. "But Miss, it simply is not done. It is not proper at all."
Oh for the sake of the Lion.
"Madame," Susan whispered in the sow's ear. "Perhaps you might be shocked to learn that being of skin color other than white is not contagious?"
And the wench was not worth another word or moment of Susan's time. She regally stalked passed the pristine crystal and silver place settings and Whites Only part of the restaurant where the Washington Ladies Who Lunch dined. She turned the corner and passed through the beaten, swinging door to where the better food and far superior company were to be found.
To find space across from Agnes on the crowded bench, Susan had to squeeze between an elevator door man who worked at the Capitol and a cleaning lady from the Smithsonian. On anyone else, it would look peculiar to see a Caribbean girl in her domestic dress with long white gloves, but no one ever questioned Agnes. Agnes believed the gloves provided an extra barrier between her extraordinary sensitivities and the rest of the world; Susan had wondered how Agnes could read the Tarot with gloves on, but thought it impolite to ask.
From her bag, Susan drew out her surprise. She had it for three days and simply could not wait a moment longer.
Agnes squealed with delight. "You found it! Susan, thank you so very much!"
She set Little Town on the Prairie on the chipped luncheon table.
"You are very welcome. And thank you for sharing Little Women. I am almost through with it."
"Have you got to the part about Jo and the Professor?" Agnes' grimace communicated very clearly how she felt about the romantic resolution in that part of the book.
"I have," Susan said, delicately sipping the sweet, cold tea Agnes had thoughtfully ordered for her and smiling her thanks for the cool drink on the warm summer day. She could not stand the stuff, but truly would never be so rude as to hint at her distaste.
"I am not sure I agree with you," Susan said. "I do not think Jo and Laurie were well matched at all."
For those who saw these over in animus' LJ, there's no new content (other than what I did for LARM's birthday fic).
Susan, the Colonel and Tebbitt was posted here.
"You sure?" Layton asked, key in the laboratory door.
"Yes, very sure," Pevensie said, not sounding sure of anything other than that he would rather be anywhere other than the University dissection rooms. For god's sake, the man was pale as the moon.
"Right then." Layton turned the knob, pushed the door open and the formaldehyde fumes rolled out. Beneath the harsh, chemical smell was the sweeter odor of death and decay, temporarily arrested by the overpowering preservative.
On wax slabs the dogs were laid out like so much meat at the butcher, skin peeled and pinned back, organs exposed and neatly labeled for tomorrow's examination. Pevensie lasted a full eight minutes and thirty seconds; it was the cadaver of a Beagle bitch that did him in, womb and belly still distended from the litter that had killed her.
With a heaving gasp, Pevensie spun about and bolted from the lab as if the ghosts of the little hound and all her kin were on his tail.
Layton closed up the lab and followed the sounds. Around the corner of the building, he found Pevensie retching over a rose bush, hands braced against the wall, utterly miserable. He pushed a handkerchief in that direction, mindful of his shoes and cuffs, but Pevensie waved him off.
"Thanks, got one."
So Layton pulled back a pace, turned his back to give the man his privacy and assure it stayed that way, leaned against the stone wall, and waited.
When the sounds subsided into embarrassed silence, Layton turned back around. "I can't get the bead on you, Pevensie. You've forgotten more about mammal and avian biology than our illustrious Chair ever knew and you just don't seem the type to be squeamish about blood."
With the raspy voice of one who has just been thoroughly sick, Pevensie said curtly, "I'm not."
"What's that then?"
"Squeamish about blood. It's not the blood, even the organs."
"It's the death then," Layton said. "But they're just dogs. Dead dogs."
There was that dangerous, icy look that Pevensie got sometimes -- rare, but the sort that made you think you'd said something truly stupid and hoped you would live the next day to tell your girl about it.
"Sorry," Layton muttered.
Pevensie clapped a hand on his shoulder and the moment passed. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to test the theorem."
"No trouble at all. I'm sorry it didn't work out, Pevensie. You've got a real gift in vertebrate biology."
Pevensie shrugged. "I thought that was what would happen but I wanted to be sure before I committed to it." With his foot, he kicked some dirt around, covering up where he had been sick.
At the sounds of the birdcall they both looked up, and shading their eyes, watched the Oxford swifts darting about the rooftops catching the insects for their nestlings in the Museum towers.
"The team is waiting for us at the pub," Layton finally said, knowing that though they had watched the same aerial antics, Pevensie had somehow seen and understood things about those birds in a way the finest ornithologists in all of Britain could but imagine. "Do you need a few more minutes?"
"No, I'm fine. Besides, the party will not start until you arrive to pay for the rounds, Layton. First one's on me."
***
You could never just go to the pub for a quick drink with Pevensie. Eventually, the other crew had realized it too, and just gone along with it, if for no other reason than because free drinks and pretty girls always followed in Pevensie's wake.
At the pub, the cat would sit on his shoulder, the dog would shadow his heels, and Pevensie would make the rounds, chatting up everyone in the pub. "How's your mum?" "Have you heard from your son?" "Looks like your leg is healing well." "Have you gotten your check yet this month? That's not right at all, let me see what I can do." "Has someone been by to fix your door yet? No? Why don't I take a look at it?"
"Here, Layton, hold her, would you?" Pevensie deposited the tabby in his lap and fished in his school bag for the ever present hammer and box of nails. "The picture of Mrs. Finch's husband and son came down again, so I'm going to put them back up before she tries to do so."
The tabby wasn't happy with her changed position and jumped off indignantly to follow Pevensie as he made his way over to the bar and Mrs. Finch's wall holding the pictures and memories of her husband and sons -- Pevensie had said they had died in the Blitz, Normandy, and Operation Market Garden.
At least it was the cat. Last time, Peter had been bouncing a baby on his knee and Layton had gotten that and a wet nappie besides when Sally had asked him to mend a stool broken in a fight. And that was another thing about Pevensie. The man would ask you to do the most outrageous things, like hold a wet baby in a pub, or a spitting tabby cat, and you'd do it because it all seemed the perfectly reasonable and decent thing to do.
"It's Mrs. Finch's grandson," Pevensie had said about the baby. "A parting gift to Sally from a Yank." And the way Pevensie said Yank made you very glad you weren't the stupid sod who had given (another) English girl some chocolates, stockings, and a baby, and then gone back to a wife when the War ended.
How Pevensie knew every detail of strangers' lives and took their problems as his own was just one more of the things that made him the oddest man Layton had ever known, and the one who always had your back. Pevensie was the 6 on their 8+ boat, its most powerful engine, and the heart of their rowing team.
********************************
It had been such a long day. Polly had attended some excellent meetings at the Bronx Zoological Society to discuss the latest developments in wild animal husbandry. She plotted with Katherine and Douglas on how to raise monies for an expedition to Indonesia to document reports by Dutch sailors of very large lizards that swam in the archipelago. Veritable dragons, it was said, though that might have been sailors' tall tales and too much rum. Richard had guest lectured at Columbia and there had been cocktails afterwards. Now, Polly wished to return to their hotel room, draw a bath, order a stiff gin and tonic, and seduce Richard into massaging her feet.
But no, instead, they were trudging steadily, in the sleety rain, down from the Park, through Midtown and the Village, to the Lower East Side and Little India. All because of a book. A very particular book. Richard, lovely man that he was, was being an absolute pest and her patience and shoe leather had worn thin around the Bowery.
“This looks promising, Bird!” Richard said, indefatigable. He charged in to the curio shop. The bell on the door clanged noisily and Polly’s nostrils were assailed with the scents of curries and incense. They were in New York, in an Indian bookseller, on Valentine’s Day.
What a lot of bother.
Polly yawned, sat on a pouf, leaned carefully against a rolled up carpet, and hoisted her feet up on to a bag of Jasmine rice, propriety be damned. Richard could sweet talk her with “Bird,” all he wished, but she was not going another step and the old goat could carry her back to the Waldorf-Astoria.
Her Hindi was embarrassing; Richard’s was marginally better and he was already in an animated conversation with the shop owner. They disappeared into the back rooms.
There was some clattering and the sound of an alarmed cat being trod upon. The icy rain beat against the windows and Polly wondered if there might be a kettle and tea somewhere in the crammed shop.
“Eureka!” Richard shouted. Goodness, he had not sounded that animated since they found their way out of the Okavango Delta two years ago. That had been a miserable detour. No gin for the quinine and enough mosquito netting for only one cot.
****
“What have you found, Goat?” Polly demanded.
“The 1883 Burton translation of the Kama Sutra!”
Polly yawned and shifted on her pouf. “Yes, that’s all fine and well, but what if the censors excised out all the naughty bits?”
"You Goat!" Polly gritted through clenched teeth. "Richard, if all you are going to do is lecture to me on the verses in the Kama Sutra about acquiring a wife, the conduct of wives, and behavior in the harem, you can leave the book here."
He tried the hang dog hurt look. "All this effort, Bird, and you still will not be my wife?" Richard waved the book for emphasis.
"You already have a wife, Goat. In the Kenya Colony. I like her very much and we are terrific friends," Polly said stoutly. And really, Wangari was a fabulous woman, even if her judgment was suspect in marrying Richard.
"Wangari will share! There is a whole section here on management of the First Wife and second wives..." Richard began, grinning fiendishly. He was rapidly turning the pages, paused, and whistled. "Hullo!"
Polly craned her neck for a look. "The second section? Is it complete?"
He paged through the often removed section, muttering, "Sixty one, sixty two, sixty three, sixty four..."
Richard snapped the book shut triumphantly. All ten chapters! All sixty-four positions!"
****
St. Augustine, Alice decided, was a toad. An insufferable, incomprehensible toad. The monk should have never left his concubines and then she might have been reading something more Rabelaisian.
She almost did not hear the timid knock over the noise of pounding her head into her beaten desk.
“Yes?”
The door cracked open and two nervous girls in diaphanous dressing gowns peeked in.
The wellies were the give-away.
Oh not again.
“It’s Lucy Pevensie,” Marjorie Preston whispered.
But of course.
“She’s gone off. Again,” Jane Edwards said through sniffling tears.
And the sun shall rise tomorrow and Cook shall again murder perfectly innocent vegetables in their sleep.
Alice set her reading glasses down, pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers and cursed in colorful Gaelic the Communion of Saints, the Roman pantheon, the Hindu avatars, and the Yoruba deities for her utterly half baked decision to become Head Girl in this utter asylum. There was an American General -- 19th century --who had something to say about it… If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve.
“Alice?” Jane said through frightened tears. “It’s already passed curfew and if we don’t bring her back…”
“Matron will probably expel her.” Marjorie choked on a sob.
Alice pushed back from her desk, shoving her feet into her own boots and shrugging into her Mac.
“What was it this time?” She did the calculation in her head and answered her own question. “Lucy quarreled with the vicar, didn’t she? After Evensong?”
The girls nodded. “She said the most dreadful things,” Jane said in hushed tones of awe.
Dreadful? Well that depended on one’s point of view and in Alice’s opinion their school vicar was earning himself a very special place somewhere between the sixth and eighth circles of Hell for his interpretations of sacred text.
“Lucy said something about how having a penis did not make the vicar more qualified to preach on Eve’s sin, didn’t she?”
The girls both gasped in horror and Alice managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Marjorie and Jane were good girls, bright, sweet, and very loyal to Lucy. They shocked far too easily. Lucy Pevensie on the other hand... well, Lucy Pevensies was, Alice had to admit, probably the reason she decided to be Head Girl. Their grim, dull school shined much brighter with Lucy in it and Alice would do everything she could to keep the girl there, despite Lucy’s best efforts to be sent down.
Alice grabbed her torch knowing just where to look. Lucy was probably in a tree again.
***
“If Matron is about, you can also climb the apple tree near the dustbins and crawl in the second floor broom closet window,” Lucy had said blithely.
They fortunately returned to her room before Jane and Marjorie burned it down trying to boil water from Alice’s highly temperamental kettle. The girls had brought Lucy’s nightdress to help complete the fabrication that the three dorm mates were merely meeting for a late night tutorial on history and theology with their Head Girl and wheedle precious cocoa from her private stash on a cold, rainy night.
Alice had never gotten to the bottom of what had happened the term before amongst this merry band, but she suspected that the meddlesome shrew Anne Featherstone was behind it. She also thought Lucy was the one who had arranged for the spiders in Anne’s bed and the ants in her shoes and the mouse nest in her jumpers. Odd how no one had cared enough to investigate.
The girls were all clumped together on her bed, with Alice’s theology and art history texts out for show should Matron blunder by.
Marjorie thoughtfully stirred her cocoa. “I suppose it is not entirely Father Jameson’s fault.”
“Why ever not!” Lucy retorted.
“He is a man,” Marjorie began. Alice quickly swallowed her cocoa. Something outrageous was sure to follow. And it did.
“My mum always says that it’s their penises. It makes men stupid. They can’t help it.”
Lucy was not so fortunate and began coughing on a mouthful of hot cocoa.
“Spew on my bedclothes, Lucy Pevensie, and next time I shall leave you in the tree to Matron’s tender mercies!”
Poor Jane was always a step behind in this regard. Marjorie’s mum was a nurse and her father a doctor, which explained rather a lot about her selective sophistication.
Alice leaned over and opened her art history book on the bed. She pointed to the lewd pictures the girls always admired by Rubens and Caravaggio.
"But, it’'s so very wild!” Jane exclaimed, studying the Rubens paintings of The Bacchanal and Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by the Fauns. “Those women in the painting must be terribly frightened.”
“Oh no!" Lucy replied. "Bacchanals are great fun, when men don't get too much in the way."
Silence fell for a long moment.
"Lucy," Alice finally said, "I don't even want to know how you know that."
Lucy giggled enigmatically as she would do. “Truly though, I think Marjorie has the right of it. If penises do make men stupid, this explains why Adam took the fruit without asking questions. I always did think it was rather unfair to blame Eve for his stupidity."
*******
Susan had a luncheon appointment with Agnes. She was not sure how she felt about Agnes bringing her rat, Papa Legba.
More from TSG as I cheerfully hijack Animus' thread.
Susan drew herself to her full height and looked down upon the cretin with the disdainful gaze she reserved for a very special sort of idiot.
"I shall sit where I wish, Madame."
The hostess was wringing her well manicured hands. "But Miss, it simply is not done. It is not proper at all."
Oh for the sake of the Lion.
"Madame," Susan whispered in the sow's ear. "Perhaps you might be shocked to learn that being of skin color other than white is not contagious?"
And the wench was not worth another word or moment of Susan's time. She regally stalked passed the pristine crystal and silver place settings and Whites Only part of the restaurant where the Washington Ladies Who Lunch dined. She turned the corner and passed through the beaten, swinging door to where the better food and far superior company were to be found.
To find space across from Agnes on the crowded bench, Susan had to squeeze between an elevator door man who worked at the Capitol and a cleaning lady from the Smithsonian. On anyone else, it would look peculiar to see a Caribbean girl in her domestic dress with long white gloves, but no one ever questioned Agnes. Agnes believed the gloves provided an extra barrier between her extraordinary sensitivities and the rest of the world; Susan had wondered how Agnes could read the Tarot with gloves on, but thought it impolite to ask.
From her bag, Susan drew out her surprise. She had it for three days and simply could not wait a moment longer.
Agnes squealed with delight. "You found it! Susan, thank you so very much!"
She set Little Town on the Prairie on the chipped luncheon table.
"You are very welcome. And thank you for sharing Little Women. I am almost through with it."
"Have you got to the part about Jo and the Professor?" Agnes' grimace communicated very clearly how she felt about the romantic resolution in that part of the book.
"I have," Susan said, delicately sipping the sweet, cold tea Agnes had thoughtfully ordered for her and smiling her thanks for the cool drink on the warm summer day. She could not stand the stuff, but truly would never be so rude as to hint at her distaste.
"I am not sure I agree with you," Susan said. "I do not think Jo and Laurie were well matched at all."