A/N: Hiiiiii everybody…okay so before you all get very angry with me, this is not new. I wrote this a long long time ago and never published, and I'm sick of it sitting around so I'm just going to put it up. I am SO SORRY I haven't really put up anything new, but I am nearly through a new chapter of Falling In and I may be starting a new story or continuing one of my old ones after that…not quite sure. But a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who are STILL reading and reviewing my stories, I read all the reviews even if I don't have time to respond and Just THANK YOU. You guys honestly make my day, and I don't deserve having such wonderful readers!
This story is set before the events of Atonement. That being said, Cecilia smokes in this fic – you have been warned. While it's not a healthy habit nor one I want to promote in any way, it is something McEwan included in his characterization of Cecilia – and I think it's too significant to be ignored. Hope you like this little oneshot!
If Walls Could Talk
She lay on her bed, on her stomach, feeling the heavy comforter pressing up against her ribcage with every breath she took, exhaling and inhaling deeply, acutely aware of the fragility of the curved bones of her ribs against the thick strength of her bedding. Her light summer dress, a pale blue, rustled like a whisper in the dark as Cecilia propped herself up on her elbows, lifting up a pillow to search for what had been in her hands moments ago.
Her room was untidy, cluttered, everything haphazardly strewn around, and yet she felt no compulsion to straighten, to neaten, the way Briony did. She felt comfortable in this environment, secure in the warm embrace of the chaos she had created, that she was the master of. It gave her a heady sense of power, to know that she could fabricate something, something that hadn't existed prior to her hands giving it existence, and to know that just as easily, with just as little thought, she could rend it apart like a torn tapestry, unraveling every thread until nothing of its former glory and brilliance remained. To others, her room was a travesty, the product of an indolent and rebellious eighteen-year-old girl's mind; to her, it was a cave of wonders.
The softness of her pillow gave way to something rather sturdier beneath the stubborn searching of her sightless fingers, and Cecilia lifted a paperback into her hands, drawing it closer to her chin, and yet she only flipped the pages idly, not prepared to immerse herself in its depths just yet. A strange smell rose up to her nose, tickling it gently, some odd combination of autumn leaves and cinnamon and something else, something unidentifiable and mysterious. Perhaps the machines that had pressed ink into the pages, methodically, evenly, each page lined with text that lined up with the print on the page preceding and following it, the entire book so orderly she couldn't stand it.
And what Cecilia could not control in its early stages of conception, she altered after its birth. The book, Jane Eyre, something she knew no one would expect her to even recognize the title of, was one of her favorite novels. The enigmas, the secrecy, the violent love doomed to suffer unimaginable horrors before it could be tamed into something the heart could bear, it called to her, spoke to her, invited her in and folded it in its comforting paper embrace, the ink whispering to her tales of lovers and friends, of families and enemies, of the sane and lunatics, driving her nearly mad with longing for a life that could never be her own.
Yet she had left her mark on the thick novel. As her slender fingers, so used to the languid motion, unconsciously fluttered the pages like the wings of a thirsty hummingbird, evoking a similar soft buzzing sound, fanning her face to afford some relief from the stifling July heat, Cecilia saw from her peripheral vision the scribbles she'd made in the margins. Little notes to herself, a passage deftly underlined to highlight its beauty, a circled phrase or page number she wanted to return to later, her name and the date she had bought the book on the title page, inscribed in her slanted, unfurling script in the upper right corner.
All done in pencil, of course. She could not bring herself to violate the sanctity of the ink, which belonged only to the creator of the book. While she could add to it now, she could only alter the final product, and her insistent use of a pencil was a mark of the reverence she had for the act of inception.
Briony hated the smell in her room, Cecilia knew that. Her little sister was forever bemoaning the lack of fresh air, even the lack of sunlight. Briony would never understand. Nor would anyone else. Maybe Robbie, but thinking of him always made her head throb with confusion-induced agony. They'd been playmates, explorers, friends, adventurers together since they were seven, but recently Robbie had grown up. So had she. And Cecilia had begun to notice things that she hadn't registered before. Like the way his broad shoulders narrowed gracefully down to his hips. Like the way the muscles in his forearms jumped with every movement he made. Like the way his green eyes had flecks of orange in them, lending his gaze an aura of beauty and mystery that she found irresistible. When he was near her she felt hot and cold all over, as if she was falling ill, and yet the malady was delicious, and she felt disappointed when it passed, when he walked away. Or when she did.
Sometimes she wondered if this was love, that word of four letters that always carried so much meaning, but it couldn't be. If there was one thing she knew, it was that love and catastrophe were always intertwined – and besides, a distance had come in between her and Robbie lately, one that rarely signified attachment greater than friendship. Love. Such an abstract term, something one longed for but didn't understand, like a savory dessert seen through a bakery's window yet never tasted. Made more attractive by its unattainable status.
She lit another cigarette, letting the match burn until the flame scalded her skin before blowing it out sharply. The fire danced before her eyes, the sweet fragrance of the burning matchstick filling her nostrils, and she took a long drag of the cigarette, her tongue flicking out to taste the smoke. Another attempt of hers to make a mark on a family she could not truly alter. Her mother was constantly telling her that she would have to marry, and move away. As if she didn't even belong. As if she didn't matter. One more long drag of the cigarette, letting the smoke warm her up from inside the way nothing else did. Except for green eyes with a dash of orange.
The smoke from her cigarette suffused the already musty air in her room, adding to the myriad of scents to be found hiding in unexpected places. Beneath the pillow, in between the books on her shelves, slipped among the slippery fabrics in her closet. Pressed petals of a once-beautiful blossom, a faint smell, a reminder of the beauty that once was, lingering in between the pages of the book that now formed its prison. Rosemary and lavender in her closet, perfuming her dresses. The distinctive smell of books in random places, beneath pillows and sheets, on tables and shelves.
Newspapers on the floors and on the stools and the desk, strewn around open to random pages, tossed there after a halfhearted perusal of their contents, deemed uninteresting and then doomed to the oblivion of the floor. Yet she continued to pick up new ones, only to add them to the growing piles of grayed papers, knowing that she kept them only because she liked the rustling sound they made when moved, and because she liked that their ink often rubbed off, coloring her fingertips black. Changing her in their own small way, in the unique little ways that all objects and people tried to influence each other, for better or for worse. Often for neither, just for the simple reason of having proof of their existence. Just as she longed for and tried to provide herself that proof.
And then there was her dressing table. Lipsticks and rouge, powder and perfumes all cluttered its surface, along with Clarissa and a few racy romance novels, bought for a few dimes at a local bookstore, affording amusement and nothing more. Not worthy of being placed in the piles with her favorite books, yet not dull enough to be given away. Cigarette butts and unused ones lay scattered, some in boxes, some loose; a matchbox reclined against the back of a shelf on her bookcase, next to a vase of some fresh roses, only half bloomed, their intoxicating fragrance mixing with the acrid odor of cigarette smoke and other less clear smells, all forming some strange amalgamation that only she found palatable.
She left candles on whatever little free surfaces she had, wherever the smooth, polished mahogany of her furniture, sometimes chipped from use, showed through. Slender and fat, tall and squat, they added vibrant and pastel hues to her room, the pink, red, green, lavender, white, yellow, and blue wax sticks balanced carelessly on small decorative coasters, on which the colorful wax pooled in a languishing stream, now cooled and hardened. She could detect their odor with little effort; it was sharp and sometimes rather unpleasant, but she liked the edge they added to her room. And the extra smoke, the way it added a dimension of the unknown, something ancient and primal, when the bright fire burned on the wick, flickering in its vivid dance of love and pain and hope. Light in the darkness.
Only rarely were the drapes in her room opened. They were heavy, a rich red velvet that fell in luxuriant folds to her floor, but it was not out of a lack of strength that she never pushed them aside. Her room was her haven, a place for secret desires and dreams to be explored, a place where her books could take her into worlds and situations she never would experience, a place for her own wishes to be the only law of the land. She would never allow it to be desecrated by something as common as sunlight.
Moving slowly, gingerly, she repositioned her elbow. Any sudden movements would upset the half-eaten sandwich and the now-cold cup of coffee resting on her bedcovers along with her body, and she dropped the still-smoking cigarette onto the saucer as she gulped down the coffee instead, closing her eyes as the cool liquid traveled down her esophagus.
Coffee and cigarettes. Eyes like the fruit of an apricot tree peeking shyly through the thick foliage of bright green leaves, both alight with life and the love of it.
In the bottom drawer of her dresser were the things that she kept hidden, things that the general disorderliness of her room helped her to conceal. A bracelet of daisies that Briony had made her years ago. The first lipstick she had ever bought, one she had used only once before realizing that the color was anything but flattering. A horrible scarf her mother had gifted her for her thirteenth birthday – while it was a bright yellow, and Cecilia loathed the color, it was also the last present she had received from Emily. And a small curled piece of paper, a yellowed piece of parchment Robbie had torn out from an old textbook to scribble a note to her only last month. She had found it slipped under her bed, a request to borrow her copy of Gray's Anatomy, since he had loaned his own to a friend. An innocent, simple message. And yet she had, without understanding why, kept it.
Maybe as a reminder to herself. A reminder of a throbbing pulse and dry mouth, of a pair of strong, manly, long-fingered and capable hands. A reminder of a rakish smile and eyes that crinkled and twinkled along with it. A reminder that he had once touched this same paper, had breathed upon the same material that she did now.
A connection that meant more to her than it would ever mean to him. A pain she intended to never let him see. And yet she longed to feel it prick her skin one more time.
The cigarette was naught but a stub, and she flicked it adroitly into the overflowing trash can by her dressing table, watching it land and bounce lightly on a mound of lipstick-stained tissues before rolling off them to rest on the floor.
Another sip of coffee. Pages rustling as she dropped her head to her elbow, inhaling the scent of her own skin, her eyes fluttering shut, giving way against the overbearing heat of the day and the comforting mustiness of the room.
Apricots in a tree on a hot summer day.
A/N: Please review, I'd love to know what you thought of it! :)