Author's Note: This is a companion piece to The Graveyard Shift although you don't have to read that story to understand this one. Set before and after Ruth's death. Its so long since I've watched the series, please forgive me for any inconsistencies with canon.
It was the end of summer when he passed. There one day, gone the next. Ruth's mother retreated. The girl herself felt empty, hollow and completely lost. Awash at sea. Abandoned by not one but two parents.
The funeral, such as it was, took place on one of those late-Summer days where there was just the first hint of leaves turning and the nip of a wind that would soon turn cold as the nights drew in towards Autumn.
Ruth left for school next week. It was the only thought in her mind as she watched the coffin drop. He father gone, her home gone, all safety and security swept out from under her feet. She felt numb. Hollow. Her mother stepped forwards and dirt landed on the brass plaque that adorned the lid of the coffin. A rose fell, and then another.
Ruth did nothing. Felt nothing.
The reading of the will took place afterwards in the small back room of the local pub where the funeral breakfast was taking place. It didn't take long. There was money for school fees and university for Ruth. Everything else was left to Ruth's mother.
"Well then," Ruth's mother dabbed her face with one of her late husband's cotton handkerchiefs, "If that's all?"
"Very nearly, Mrs Evershed. There is one last item."
"Oh?"
"I'm afraid, unless I'm very much mistaken, that you may need to take off that chain around your neck."
"What, this old thing?" Ruth rolled her eyes as, from between her mother's breasts a long gold chain appeared on the end of which was a worn, gold wedding band. "It has nothing but my husband's wedding ring."
The lawyer gently cleared his throat, wincing slightly at what could only be the swift approach of bad news. "...To my daughter Ruth, I leave my gold wedding band, that she may one day give it to a man truly deserving of her."
Ruth froze, eyes fixed on her mother. At eleven years old she was old enough to know her mother's temper, especially in times of emotional stress and her eyes bugged as she watched her mother explode with grief and anger. "No! No, no, no, no, no. She can't have it! She can't! The little tart...!"
"Mrs Evershed, please..." Ruth watched the lawyer appeal for peace. "I am sorry to cause you any pain but I must insist. It is your late husband's final wish."
There was shouting. There was yelling. There were accusations against Ruth's character which no eleven year old ought ever to hear from their mother but eventually her mother snapped the chain off and threw it at her daughter. "You little whore! Your father always did love you more than me. Well, you can have him. Go to his precious school with his precious money and his precious wedding ring. You'll not get another penny out of me, young girl..."
Standing on the pavement on Bond Street in central London, Ruth Evershed swallowed back the memories that came with the gold ring she had brought out of her safety deposit box and with a new-felt decisiveness she strode confidently into the little jewellers she had chosen for this particular task and waited to be served. An elderly man who couldn't be less than eighty shuffled forwards from the back room, ignoring the young shop assistant who was currently returning items to the window display.
"Sir?" The assistant looked round at the proprietor.
"No, no, don't bother yourself. I'll serve this nice young lady. I have a feeling she has a very special job for me, am I right?"
Ruth smiled shyly. "Erm...yes. That's right, actually. Well, its just a little job really but its important to me, you understand. I wondered if you could resize this for me?" She held out her palm to present the gold ring and waited til the elderly man in his waistcoat and apron reached forwards to pick it up. A small eyeglass appeared and was held in front of one eye as he examined the hallmarks on the inside. "Oh yes, very nice. Scottish gold, if I'm not mistaken."
"Is it?" Ruth asked, surprised. "Is that unusual?"
"Its not common. Rather a nice touch, has a beautiful lustre to it. Family heirloom, is it?"
"Yes, it was my father's. He left it to me and there's a gentleman...he said I should give it to someone worthy. Of me, I mean...and we've not had the easiest run of things, but we've spent most of the last ten years dancing around and if I don't grab the bull by the horns now I never will and he'll be gone or I'll be gone and...well I need it resized. That's the point. Harry's a T, I think. I asked his ex-wife. So it would just be a matter of resizing it, do you see?"
"And does this young gentleman-"
"Old gentleman," Ruth cut in with a laugh. "I'm afraid he is rather older than me."
"My dear lady," The jeweller levelled his gaze at her, "Everyone is young when you get to my age."
Ruth smiled back, realising the elderly man behind the counter had probably been quite a charmer in his day. "Are you really sure its Scottish gold?"
"Quite certain," The jeweller said, going back to examining the ring, "Why?"
"Its just odd, that's all. I think his mother's Scottish. My fiance. Or he will be my fiance, when I ask him."
The old man smiled, "I like an assertive woman. Very well, I will resize it for you." He took down the eyepiece and continued his examination without it. "My usual fee-"
"Yes, yes, whatever. Sod the fee, whatever you charge. I'm afraid I need to get back. I'll leave you my number."
"Urgent, is it?"
"I have rather an important job to get back to," Ruth replied vaguely.
"Well then," The old jeweller smiled, "I'll just write you out a receipt and I'll give you a call when its done."
"Thank you," Ruth smiled a forced, polite smile as she took the slip of paper and took a step to the door before pausing and turning back around. "Its just, I can feel the window slipping, if you know what I mean, and I know he knows it too. I've already said no once and if I'm not careful our jobs will chew us up completely or he'll get desperate and do something stupid, like propose again, and...I know it needs to come from me, this time. I need to mend some bridges with him because I've been a bit of a bitch, if you must know. I was so angry at him, at everything," Ruth sighed. "I'm sorry, you don't need to hear this. He just...he infuriates me, do you know that? His timing, you have no idea and, God, if he wasn't such an utter prick sometimes!" Ruth sighed and then shrugged, resigned. "The course of true love, I suppose. Not that I'm one to talk, I've not been the easiest person to get along with either, lately."
"You sound just like my Lucy," The old man confided. "Died in the Blitz, she did. I can still hear her yelling at me for coming home shot."
"I'm sorry..." Ruth offered the expected condolence.
"I'm not. We had six happy months together. Best six months of my life. No man lives forever, young lady, do they? I'll see her soon enough. Good day to you."
Ruth had tears in her eyes when she finally turned and headed out the door, the soft tinkle of the bell in the doorway reminding her forever and always of her father's childhood tales of Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. Well, too many of their friends had gone off to Neverland. It was time to seize the day.
The reading of the will was, quite possibly, the most painful experience of Sir Harry Pearce's life.
She'd left most of it to charity. There was a trust fund for Nico should he wish to go to University.
Forced to sit through listening to her wishes read out in the lawyer's best BBC Radio Four voice while reliving with every waking moment the events of her death. Going over it in his head. In the night the few times he did sleep he woke in cold sweats, hoping that this time he could do something different.
"...and to Sir Henry James Pearce I leave my cats Fidget and Digit and the contents of my safety deposit box..." The solicitor held up a key, which Harry took, gripping it so tightly the metal dug into the soft tissue of his palm leaving an imprint.
As the lawyer finished up, the Home Secretary leaned over and questioned Harry. "Digit?"
Harry cleared his throat, "Like the gorilla."
"Oh," Towers replied, clearly still no more enlightened than he had been before Harry's answer but unwilling to press the matter any further under the circumstances.
"Its because of his paw," Harry added, looking down at the key in his hand and then the lawyer was done and he could escape the eyes and the sorry looks and the bloody rat-infested pity and get out of there.
At the safety deposit box he found a sealed letter addressed to 'Harry', a long empty gold chain, a receipt for a jewellers on Bond Street, complete false passports for the two of them and ten thousand dollars in cash. Harry left the cash and the passports, he took the letter and stuffed it in his inside coat pocket and then picked up the receipt and the gold chain and closed the safe.
Harry stopped for a whiskey on the way to the jewellers and opened the letter, reading everything in writing that Ruth had always struggled to say in words to has face. Struggling to compose himself, he decided to make it a double as he stuffed the letter back into his pocket and found himself fingering the gold chain in his pocket, wondering about where it was from and what might have been.
The address on Bond Street was one of the smaller, less showy jewellers in the area. One of the older traditional places that Harry realised was so like Ruth. It pierced his heart to be here, right now his chest ached with every heartbeat. The exhaustion of grief overwhelmed his very being. Putting one foot in front of the other seemed to take all the effort in the world but he had to do this, for Ruth.
A bell tinkled as he opened the door, the clear tone he recognised as being an old-fashioned doorbell of the type still made by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. A proprieter who appreciated good old-fashioned solid craftsmanship then, Harry guessed. No wonder Ruth came here.
As he stepped down into the small room an elderly man shuffled through from the back, attired in a waistcoat and apron that spoke of a man who knew his trade.
"Yes, young man?"
"I'd hardly call myself young..." Harry harumphed.
"Everyone's young when you get to my age," The old man waved off Harry's attitude, "What can I get for you?"
"I have something to pick up," Harry thrust the handwritten receipt at the jeweller, "It might have been left under the name Evershed."
"Ah, the young lady. Now, sir, I'm not at all sure I can give this to you. I remember very well the young lady who dropped off the item you refer to and she was quite specific about how special it was. I remember those ones, you see, the special ones."
"I'm afraid the lady who deposited the item with you is now deceased," Harry informed the jeweller quietly. "She died not long ago, very suddenly, and the receipt was left in my care."
"I'll need some ID, Sir?" The old gentleman announced coldly.
Rolling his eyes, Harry produced his driving license and hoped the old man would just bloody get on with it already. Harry watched the old man grasp the small pink plastic card and hold it very close to his eyes for examination before returning it. "Well why didn't you bloody say so in the first place? If you'd only told me you were her Harry there'd have been no need for all of this. Stupid man."
"Now look here!" Harry shouted.
"She's right. You are a prick," The jeweller told him, turning around to a series of small locked oak drawers behind the counter. "God knows why she wanted to marry you."
Harry just about had a heart attack. "Marry me?" He watched the jewellers back, stunned. That couldn't be right, Ruth had rejected his proposal out of hand at Ros's funeral.
Staring, Harry watched with rapt attention as the old man rooted around in the drawers behind the counter that clearly only the batty old codger knew his way around. Watched as the jeweller turned to face him with a little jeweller's eyepiece squeezed under his brow to examine a solid gold wedding ring. There was a paper label attached by a piece of string that was examined and then removed.
"Yes, yes. That's it. Why the devil do you think she was getting her father's ring resized?" The old man threw the words at Harry as if he was stupid.
The old man let the eyepiece drop into his hand and examined the cardboard label that had been threaded through the ring on a piece of string. "Size T, she said," Thrusting the ring at Harry. When Harry continued to stare dumbly the old man shrugged and put it on the counter. "Suit yourself. I guess if I had an ex-wife I wouldn't want her sharing my sizes with my new girl either."
"Let me see that receipt," Harry demanded.
The old man glowered at Harry but did, indeed, produce the receipt. Thinking back, Harry realised it was dated for the day before the Gavrik's had so unceremoniously burst back onto the scene. God, she'd been furious with him. Furious about the secrecy, furious about his difficulty in opening up even to her. Softly, gently, he placed the little piece of paper back on the counter. He'd felt her slipping, further and further from him. Had felt himself at a loss for how to grasp the few threads of hope left for any chance at a relationship with her and all the time Ruth had been planning, hoping, for this.
"Her father's?" Harry asked dumbly.
"That's what the lady said. Scottish gold that is, solid. Old, too. You don't give a ring like that to just anyone."
"No. No, I suppose not," Harry cleared his throat, deeply moved and still struggling to compute quite what was going on here. "She didn't...I mean she didn't say anything else?"
"No. Well, not as such," The old man shrugged. "Only she seemed concerned you might get there first. Ask first, I mean. Or again, or something. I forget. Seemed important too her, that's all."
Harry needed to sit down. Ruth's attitude. Her pissiness. Accusing him of always needing to be in control. Talking about timing. Secrecy.
She did want to marry him. Ruth wanted to marry him, not just run away with him. She wanted to put a ring on his finger and she needed...she just needed to be the one to do it. The one to ask. The one to move first. After everything that had happened between them, she needed to do it in her way, on her terms and then Ilya and Elena had burst onto the scene and the ring had been what, abandoned? No, not abandoned. The passports, the money, her request to leave...
Harry blinked back the threat of tears and choked back the sob that stuck in his throat.
Needing to get out as soon as possible, Harry took out his credit card and let the man process the payment for the repair, picking up the complete paperwork and turning for the door shoving everything in his coat pocket and as he did so, Harry's fingers touched the gold chain he'd found in the safe and paused, removing it slowly from his coat to examine it.
Grasping the ring in one hand, the chain in the other, he came to a decision and threaded the ring through the chain, placing it over his neck and tucking it into his shirt. Then with nary a backward glance he put his game face on, stuffed his hands in his pockets and stepped out into the winter sun.
Ruth Evershed had died for the Service, had died for him. The least he could do was honour her.