The Place

by lurkisblurkis

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from."

—C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Lucy was sitting in the powder room of a very grand old theatre, trying to fix one of her shoes. It was a pretty belted thing which she actually liked very much, but the belt had been broken when one of her brothers stepped on it by mistake, and now it would not stay on. She had managed to secure it somehow before going to the theatre, and it had stayed put during the first act of the play, but now it was giving her trouble again; and, as much as Lucy did enjoy being barefoot, she thought it wouldn't be appropriate to walk back into the beautifully lit, old-fashioned auditorium, along with all of the other dressed-up men and women (who had of course spent the ten minute intermission making themselves look even more grandly dressed up than before), and take her seat in the audience with one foot entirely shoeless. She thought this, in all honesty, not because she was worried about what people would think of her, but because she imagined it would be horribly rude to the lovely old theatre.

And yet her shoe would not buckle properly. Lucy was, you see, in quite a predicament.

The powder room door opened, and Lucy glanced quickly up to see who was coming in. It was Jill Pole, Eustace's friend. She had been invited by Susan (who had invited them all), because it was known by all of the Pevensies that Eustace was not a theatre sort of person, and he must have some compensation to help him get through the evening. (He must come with them, for he had been left in their charge by his mother and father for the weekend, and, at fourteen, could not, they were sure, be trusted to behave for an entire evening at home alone.)

"Hullo Jill," said Lucy, tugging hopelessly on her shoe.

"Hullo." Jill sat down on one of the cushioned seats. She looked distinctly out of place—of course her clothes and hair were as lovely as one could wish for a night at the theatre, but her expression showed that she was not comfortable.

Lucy wondered what could be ailing her. Perhaps Jill was bored. She put down the shoe for a moment and asked, "Are you enjoying the play?"

"Yes," replied Jill truthfully. "That is to say, I don't think I understand parts of it, but it's very nice all the same."

"Isn't it?" Lucy smiled.

Jill gave a wan grimace that was evidently an attempt to return the smile, and then Lucy was sure that there must be something not quite right with the girl, such an expression was so rarely seen on Jill's face.

"Is something the matter?" she asked, careful to take up her shoe again with great concentration, so as not to put Jill too much on the spot.

"Oh! no—well, yes, a little; I don't know" was the passionate response. Lucy glanced up. It appeared that Jill's hand had just finished gesticulating in the air. This was serious.

"Well, what's a little the matter?" Blast this shoe.

Jill blanched. "You'll think I'm silly."

"I've thought that before, and it's always sounded quite complimentary in my mind," Lucy replied easily.

This at last earned her a real smile from the other girl, although brief. "Well it's just—it's just—oh, Lucy, you're going to think I'm the basest person you've ever met!—it's just that—I think I'm ugly," she finished in a rush.

Lucy raised her eyebrows. There before her sat a lithe fourteen year old girl with soft golden hair and animated eyes, a heart shaped face and lovely features, dressed in the nicest of simple gowns that covered a figure just on the verge of womanhood. "Jill," she began, "you're certainly not—"

"Oh, I don't mean my looks," hastened the younger girl. "I'm not talking about that at all."

Lucy said she wondered what Jill could be talking about then.

"Have you ever..." Jill paused and chewed her lower lip in thought. Then: "Have you ever felt that, on your inside, you're a perfect beast, only nobody can actually see that but you?"

Lucy said that, yes, she had.

"But you see, then I remember how I feel about myself when I'm with Aslan, and I realize that it isn't how I see my self that matters," continued Lucy. "All those nasty things inside of myself, Aslan knows about them, he must, and if he's content to love me in spite of them—"

"But that's not what I mean," broke in Jill, "about being forgiven or accepted or any of that stuff. That isn't good enough for me."

"Jill, dear," Lucy started, but Jill kept going.

"Don't you see? It's loads better to know you're still loved, anyway, but that doesn't make those things go away. And isn't it better if they could just...go away?"

"If you mean making yourself into someone perfect, then I'm afraid I don't think you're on the right track," answered Lucy kindly; and she asked herself, as she tried to bend the belt on her shoe into its woefully damaged buckle, what could have made Jill start thinking of these things at the theatre. Was there something philosophical in the play that she hadn't noticed?

"Of course I don't mean that. Well, not that entirely." Jill frowned.

At that moment there was a knock on the door, and both girls jumped. Lucy's shoe buckle, which she had almost gotten right, slipped out of her hand. Blast!

"Who's there?" called Jill and Lucy at the same time.

"It's Scrubb," came Eustace's voice. "Are you two decent?"

"For heaven's sakes, why would we be changing clothes?" asked Jill, getting the door for him.

Eustace blushed. "Well I don't know what ladies do in powder rooms. They sound very mysterious."

"What brings you into this one, Eustace?" asked Lucy from where she was sitting.

"Su said she thought you were having...shoe trouble..." Eustace eyed what was by now the rather battered left shoe on the floor. "She thought I could help, something about fixing a buckle. I've rather a good hand for fixing things, you know," he added modestly.

"Have a go at it, then," conceded Lucy. She tossed him the shoe (he had sat down on the seat that had been Jill's a moment before).

"What were you two talking about before I came in?" he asked as he began examining the buckle in question. "You sounded...emphatic."

Jill and Lucy glanced at each other. "Philosophy," said Lucy. "Nothing," said Jill.

Eustace, to his credit, did not push the matter beyond remarking, "That's an interesting combination."

"Ugh." Jill straightened her dress and tried to sit down on the floor next to Eustace (there were only two seats). When this failed, she made Lucy move over to share hers.

"If you must know, Scrubb, we were talking about...well, bad things. The sorts of things that make you ugly inside. Well, not you specifically. People in general. So I suppose you're included, but that doesn't mean—"

"I think I get it," Eustace stopped her with a grin.

"Thank you," sighed Jill.

"Actually, I was philosophying myself a bit during that last act," admitted Eustace. "I mean to say, I was watching those dancers, and it really was quite...beautiful, I suppose, although you know I think plays are really a lot of rot on the whole." Jill nodded (sympathetically, Lucy thought, to her chagrin—Lucy herself liked plays very much).

"And I thought," he continued, "that there is a lot of what we would call beauty that we never really make it all the way to. I mean, none of us will ever dance like that, will we? Here's your shoe, Lu."

Lucy put the shoe on. The buckle gave way instantaneously.

"Oh bother," grumbled Eustace.

"You're right, though." Jill sighed again. "I don't know what to do."

"Well, I suppose one just has to live with it." Eustace got up. "Sorry about the shoe, Lucy."

Lucy took her foot out of the shoe. There was no saving it now. Eustace's brave attempt at repairing the buckle had only made it worse, and the belt was clearly not going to hold.

Outside of the powder room in the hallway, familiar sounds of bustling and talking were beginning to arise again: the intermission was just up. Jill, looking more wan than ever, adjusted her hair quickly in the mirror and went over to open the door. Eustace got there first and grabbed it before she could.

"You know, someday I think we will dance like that," he said, more to Jill than to Lucy. "After all, Aslan doesn't just take us as we are: he can teach us to really be good."

It was a little unusual for Eustace to say this, thought Lucy, because he hadn't overheard their conversation earlier and shouldn't have known exactly what they had been talking about; certainly not the part about Aslan. But Jill looked as though she had never heard anything so fitting in the world.

Lucy got up and hopped on one foot to where Eustace was holding the door. "You go ahead, Eustace; I'll be right out."

Her cousin nodded and followed Jill out of the powder room. Lucy could hear them going down the hall towards the auditorium, and Eustace's voice came quite clearly through the closed door: "You look pretty tonight, Jill."

And Jill's voice, for the first time that night, sounded full of something very like hope. "Thanks, Scrubb."

For a moment Lucy hesitated. Then she took off her other shoe, placed them both on the powder room chair along with her stockings, and walked out to the theatre hall barefoot.

fin