Susan's Teacher Talk

"You are Susan Pevensie, right?"

"Yes ..."

"Then you were Queen of Narnia?"

"At least in that book by C. S. Lewis."

"Were you or weren't you?"

"What do you think?" she asked with a slight tinge of hypocritical hope that Rose would not avoid the probable irony that was not really there. But Rose Pole just fell silent, to start with, and then added:

"Some say it was just a play?"

"We were enjoying ourselves, that much is true. Are you asking if I would believe you if you said you had been to Narnia?"

"No, it's rather ... what you believed in in the book, you believe in that for real?"

"Yes. At least I try to, even if modern England sometimes seems a bleak place for doing so."

"And it was you and your sister and brothers in that book who made a law so no one was sent to school by force unless he wanted to or unless she wanted to?"

"I can't make such a law here, you know. You would have to write to Her Majesty the Queen, and even she could no longer do it just by saying so, at least I think that would be difficult without the Parliament," adding the last because she had overheard some talk about King Caspian's non-parliamenterian methods of abolishing slavery, even though she did not take part in the talk. And, of course, had not been there.*

"So the laws say I have to stay in school even if I do not want to?"

"What's your age? And if you're pregnant they cannot force you anyway."

"How did you know I was pregnant?"

"You just told me."

"Eh?"

"Otherwise you'd have said: 'what makes you think I am pregnant?' right?"

Rose put her head on the side.

"Besides, I guessed it due to your looks, you look shining. Who's the father? Will you marry him?"

"Ma says I have to wait till 16 to marry."

"Not if you're pregnant, surely?"

"Ma says I should abort."

"But she cannot force you, can she?"

Rose said nothing.

"Besides it is illegal. From 1929 the new law says that if the doctor honestly thinks your life is in danger, but obviously it is not, he won't be punished."

"If no one knows about the abortion, the doctor won't be punished anyway."

"But if they forced you to abort, you could go to the newspapers and ruin that doctor's carreer: for one thing for aborting when he had no right to do so and for another for forcing you when you did not want to."

"Who would believe me - against a doctor?"

Susan just said a brief: "oh" ...

"Besides, I could not punish anyone if it involved punishing my parents."

"They have no right to force you to abort. It is murder."

"But one has to obey one's parents, right?"

"Not more than God, and He forbids murder and sacrifice to Moloch."

*You would know this if you had read a book called Prince Caspian and another called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.