Author's Note: Here is another request fic, this time for Iwish2remainNameless, who asked for a story about adjusting to a new baby. I thought this would be a great opportunity to fill in a few holes from other stories. I also tried to balance the light and the dark, and I hope I succeeded. Feedback welcome! Enjoy!
Lydia
The evening after the funeral, Victor sat in the front room of his daughter's house, staring into space. It was quiet. A chill hung in the infrequently used room.
His son-in-law—how strange it still felt to think of George Van Schelven, two years his senior, in those terms—had retired to his study and closed the door. Victoria was upstairs with Lydia, who had not attended the service. Victor couldn't blame her.
"Hello, Alice," Victor said when the maid came into the room. Alice, sturdy and tall and fair, gave him a nod.
"Sir," she said. And then she went about lighting the lamps. No electricity in the old Van Schelven place yet. That was a project which had fallen by the wayside in the wake of recent events. Victor sighed and turned his black-banded hat over in his hands.
Alice stirred the burned-down fire back to life, then added a log from the pile beside the hearth. Victor remembered her as a gangly teenager doing the same thing in his own house. And her mother before her. The Reeds had been good servants. Companions. Like Mayhew. Hildegarde. He turned his hat again and watched sparks fly up the chimney as the log caught.
"Tea, sir?" Alice asked. She sounded tired. Her eyes were sad. She looked as if she were about to sink into herself. Understandable. She and Lydia had become very close. None of this could be easy on her, either.
"No, thank you," Victor replied. With another nod Alice left in the direction of the kitchen. He heard a door close, then a cabinet or two open. The clang and splash of the sink.
Outside the sky was growing darker. Lydia's home was the first on the narrow lane near the village wall, quite close to where Victor had grown up. Of course Victor's childhood home was long gone—torn down decades ago to make way for a cobbler's shop. The buildings that remained were still tall and crooked, leaning over each other. Shops mostly. Not many people lived down this way nowadays.
If he leaned just so and looked out into the stark November twilight, Victor could just about see into the edge of the square. He wondered whether the other girls were still at Anne's house, or whether they'd gone home.
The sound of footsteps came from above, and then upon the stairs. Victoria, dressed in black, entered the room. Victor stood to meet her. Wordlessly she walked into his arms and pressed her face against his chest. Victor put his arms about her, resting his chin against her hair. For a long, long moment they stood that way, not speaking.
"How is she?" Victor asked. Victoria pulled away, wiping at her cheeks with a black-gloved hand.
"She's...she's..." Words failed her. She cleared her throat. "She's as to be expected. She'd like to see you, before we leave. I'll wait here."
They pressed hands, and off Victor went up the stairs. As he walked, trailing a hand lightly on the railing, he was struck with a vivid memory.
0—0
"There, you're all right, I'm right here," Victor said, pulling a squalling Lydia from her cradle in the nursery.
"I know this is a little out of the ordinary," he went on, hoisting her onto his shoulder, "but I'm afraid your poor mother is going to start hallucinating if she doesn't sleep a bit more."
Indeed, Victoria was exhausted. Baby Liddie had slept so well for the first few weeks, both Victoria and Mrs. Reed had marveled about it. Victoria had been telling him how wonderful it was, what an easy baby they had.
But then a week ago, out of the clear blue sky, Lydia had evidently decided she was bored with the routine and desired a shake-up of sorts. Every single night, the screaming began promptly at dinnertime and lasted off and on until the wee hours. Victoria and Mrs. Reed had very nearly turned nocturnal right along with the baby, and Victor only slept in fits and starts.
Tonight, the eighth night, Victor thought it time to step in. Victoria was so tired she'd fallen promptly back to sleep when he'd risen a few moments ago.
Now that he thought of it, he should have asked for instructions. He had no idea what to do. Lydia wasn't screaming any longer, but she was gasping and wriggling against him.
Some time in the armchair might work. Lydia was whimpering to herself as Victor made his way to the chair. As soon as he sat down, Lydia began to squirm and squawk. The squawk quickly became a wail.
"Oh dear, you don't like that," he said, standing up again. He gave her a gentle, experimental bounce in his arms, as he'd seen Victoria and Mrs. Reed do. He'd always declined to try himself. Despite their reassurances that it was unlikely that he would somehow break his daughter, Victor remained unconvinced.
Now, though, in the small hours of the night, alone in the nursery without anyone else about fussing or staring, he felt a bit more confident. So he began to walk about the room, taking measured steps. Lydia still fidgeted about. Her favorite thing to do, he was beginning to notice, was to pinwheel and wave her skinny little arms. Victor watched, fascinated, as Lydia reached out and grabbed at thin air.
They both marveled at the fact that she could make such impressive tiny fists, and could open and close her hands with such dexterity. Smiling, Victor held out a finger the next time she reached, just to see if she would grab it. Grab it she did, on the very first try. And didn't let go.
"Good gracious, what a grip," Victor said, a small laugh in his voice. "Well...every girl I've known has been stronger and more capable than me. You wouldn't want to break with tradition, would you?"
He felt as if he needed to make conversation. Lydia was his daughter, and a tiny baby, but she was still a bit of a stranger. So in a low voice he narrated as he walked. Describing the chair, the wallpaper, how a chimney was cleaned. All the time she held his finger.
"This was always to be the nursery, you know," Victor said. "We'd been thinking about you. Well, not you personally, of course, but children. Your mother and I...oh, no, please don't do that."
Lydia, perhaps weary of his monologue, had decided to amuse herself by putting his finger in her mouth. Gently he prised her little fist open and freed himself. For a moment he was afraid she'd start to cry—she gave out a half-hearted squawk—but she seemed to relax again.
"We always knew what to call you, was what I was about to say," Victor continued. Surreptitiously, not wanting to hurt Lydia's feelings, he wiped his finger dry on his dressing gown. "Your middle name, anyway. We wanted to honor an old friend."
By now he'd made his way over to the window. He looked up and saw that the moon was nearly full. Beautiful. He held Lydia up to see.
"A girl not too much older than you, really. If we forget, it will be as though she never was. But she was. Do you see what I mean?"
When he looked down at her, he saw that Lydia was asleep.
Victor hardly dared to breathe. Slowly, carefully, trying not to jostle her, he made his way to the cradle. Ever so gently, he set her down, tucking her up again. Liddie didn't wake. He watched her tiny chest rise and fall. The impossible miracle of every breath. So odd to think of breathing as miraculous. But when his infant daughter did it, that was precisely how it seemed.
0—0
The memory had come and gone in a flash. Victor fancied he could still feel the ghost of baby Lydia in his arms. That had never really happened again, not after that one night.
The upstairs corridor was dim. Yellow light shone under Lydia's door. He paused before knocking. What would he say? What could he say?
Here he was, about to offer comfort to his adult daughter after a great loss, and all he could think about was how Lydia had been as an infant. His firstborn. The first baby he'd ever really held. There'd been a time when his just being there had been enough. She'd not needed much else from him. Perhaps at a time like this he could simply do the same.
Victor took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then knocked gently on the door as he opened it.
Lydia sat before the small window, curled into an armchair, staring at the darkness. The room was oppressively hot compared to the rest of the house. A fire blazed in the fireplace. But still Lydia was wrapped in a quilt. The circles under her eyes were so dark and deep they looked like bruises. Her already pale face was ashen. And she looked so impossibly thin and fragile. The sight of her made Victor's heart hurt. He stood beside her chair, and waited for her to speak.
"I was telling Mother," Lydia said at last, "that his name was Thomas. I should have said something. Catherine and Anne asked but I wasn't...I wasn't thinking. Not clearly."
Her voice was sluggish, thick. Victor noticed her fingers shaking as she pulled the quilt more tightly about herself. Victor reached over to help.
"It's all right," he told her, tucking in the edges of the quilt as if she were a child. Lydia let him. "No need to worry."
Victor jumped a little, startled, when Lydia grabbed at his hand. Her fingers were like ice. Her eyes seemed to burn in her gaunt, pale face, wisps of her thick black hair straggling across her forehead. Lydia's face, nearly identical to his own, twisted with sadness in a way Victor knew his had never been.
"But it's important," she insisted, her voice cracking at the edges. Her lips were dry. "Nobody will know his name. Everyone will forget, if they don't know his name. It will be like he never was. But he was, Father. Just for a little while. He still was."
Speaking had exhausted her. Lydia sat back and loosened her grip, but still held onto his hand. Victor, stricken and heartsick, watched her for a moment before he murmured, "I understand."
"I know you do," Lydia replied thinly. "I...I know. Now. The remembering. It's important. I never understood that before."
The tears he could hear in her voice reached her eyes just then, and Victor was quick to gently shush her. How he hated to see her like this, unable to help her, only able to hold her hand and watch her grieve. Victor couldn't think of a time he'd seen her cry like this before.
"I just wanted to tell you that," Lydia managed to say in between sobs. "That's all I wanted to say."
"It's all right," Victor said again.
Abruptly she pulled away. With the edge of the quilt she wiped at her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. Not looking at him, she said, "I'm being silly. Stupid. I'm just sad. I'll be all right. Don't bother about me."
But Victor did. Deeply. Because he couldn't find any words he put a hand to her head, an embrace in a gesture.
"Could you please ask Alice to come here?" Lydia asked, her voice small. Victor assured her that he would, not thinking until later it was strange that she didn't ask for her husband. Feeling slow and old he left the room and went back downstairs, where Victoria was waiting for him. Together they left, sure to lock the front door behind them.
Victor and Victoria were silent on the carriage ride home. They held hands the whole way.
-The End-