Thanks to all for the excellent feedback and never-ending patience. I promise HTKANMS, L&L, et al will be finished… right now college is devouring my time like a monster and as I type I’ve got a 13 page paper to wrap up. I will try to update every now and then until breaks and will hopefully be able to write like a fiend over those.

Not sure how long this will be. In my head I have four conversations between the Professor and each of the children planned out (and in my notebook I have two, including this one), but I don’t know if I’ll expand beyond that.

This chapter centers on the issue of Peter’s location during VotDT (which, by the way, I did not come up with…that would be Lewis). None of this is mine. This one is mostly random and not earth-shattering--much like the Professor, I daresay.

Conversations –by JotM

He gripped the telephone tightly, waiting for the operator to put the call through. His face was a comical mixture of anticipation and anxiety, the sort one gets when one knows one is about to hear something agreeable and yet can’t help but worry that one won’t.

Finally, a familiar (but only barely, because the ‘phone line distorted it) voice crackled out through the receiver. “Professor Kirke speaking,” it stated politely from the other end.

The boy shook himself as from a daze and stumbled over his answer. He was speaking rather loudly into the mouthpiece, giving one the impression that he didn’t do things of this sort very often. “Hallo—sir—I mean to say—this is Peter, Peter Pevensie, sir,” the answer rushed out all at once in a breath as if he expected the other person to slam down the ‘phone at any minute.

“Peter! Bless my soul! It has been a while. You’d better stop stammering, boy, and tell me why you’ve rung in a coherent fashion.” Here he muttered something about the state of schools today which Peter didn’t quite catch but didn’t ask him to clarify.

“It’s just that—” He stopped and slowed himself down. “Well, you see, Mum and Dad are taking Su—that’s Susan—to America and Ed and Lu—I mean Edmund and Lucy—have got to go off to Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta’s but Aunt Alberta’s complaining something dreadful about finding space for myself and so there’s nowhere to go, sir, except a boarding school, and it’s very modern and Mum and Dad don’t like it at all, sir,” he paused briefly and was gratified to hear another muttered disparagement against the current schools. “I thought—I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if I came and studied with you, sir,” he blurted. There. Hardest part was over.

“Certainly! And you needn’t gasp in surprise so, it’s not as if I could refuse. You know I’m not in the country anymore, so it shall be a rather wretched flat thing or whatever they call them these days—what are things coming to, I wonder?—and…I say,” his voice lowered suddenly. “Have you—how shall I say this, party line and all—been…since then?”

“We have—all of us,” Peter’s voice lowered as well, and at that moment anyone listening would have thought this a conversation between two friends with a deep and well-loved secret and a world of common ground rather than a learned Professor and an ex-refugee. “I can’t go again—neither can Su—that’s Susan, sir. He said so.” The excitement faded from his voice, turning to sadness tinged with resolve.

“I see,” the Professor’s voice sounded, if anything, sympathetic. “In that case, you’d better hurry off an pack so you can come as quickly as you can and tell me about it. Will a week from tomorrow do? Too soon? No? Very well. Have your Mum bring Susan along when she comes to dispatch you—I’ve a feeling I should talk to her…America, eh? Splendid! Or perhaps not. No matter. You’ll have to break the bad news to Edmund and Lucy that there’s no room for them, much as I wish it. Wretched, modern houses! All settled? Tell your mother I send my best. Good day.”