Title: Jessa Called Jay
Author: Elliott Silver
Chapter 1: The Edge Of An Apocalypse
Timeline: Begins at the end of the finale of series 3, "Death Do Us Part."
Summary: "Come after me, Jack Robinson," she'd said, but when he tries, she doesn't answer. Three years later, Phryne Fisher returns to Melbourne.
Rating: R, for the series as a whole, though not for every chapter.
Author's Note: To come at end of nine-part series.
/ - / - / - / - / September 1932 / - / - / - / - /
"Some things never change."
Phryne Fisher announces this briskly in Dottie Collins' small Collingwood kitchen.
Murder in Melbourne, the bold headline of the newspaper reads. Police Hunt for Suspect in Docklands Attack.
The black print of the Melbourne Times stands out starkly here, against the white lace curtains and delicate pink roses on the tea cups, golden gingernut biscuits circled on scalloped plates. Light dances against a cut-glass bowl of daisies that throw idle shadows over the sunny table.
"And some things do," Dottie replies as an ear-shattering shriek erupts from the next room.
She sighs and pushes herself upright, smoothing the floral housedress over the bulk of her very pregnant belly.
Phryne watches her go, then tilts the page to skim the article by Jay Tayler, Melbourne's new Crime Correspondent. There hadn't been anything so special as a designated Crime Correspondent when she was last here; the most one could hope for was a somewhat accurate blurb in the back pages of the weekly paper, sandwiched somewhere after World Events and Society Doings, but before Gardening and Horoscopes.
When she left three years ago to fly her father home, she didn't know it would take so long to return. And yet as she puts down the paper, 1932 feels little different from 1928. Mac met her at the air field rather than the docks (though she rushed off for emergency surgery before they could have a proper drink), and 221B The Esplanade looks from the outside as it always did (though a small troop of servants has been hastily dispatched to promptly take care of the interior, given that it's been locked up since the abrupt departure of Mr. Butler some time before).
Dottie returns with a sniffling toddler in her arms and presents the squirming mass for Phryne's inspection. Phryne promptly declines to hold it.
"Say hello, Faith."
"Hello Faith," Phryne repeats automatically. With pale skin and red face, the child looks like an angry rutabaga.
"How old is she?"
"Just two now," Dottie answers, testing the contents of a bottle for warmth on her upturned wrist. She sits back down carefully, balancing for three as the child shrills in displeasure. "And her brother – I think – due next month."
Phryne nods and wishes there was more than just tea in her cup as her eardrums rattle with the keening. She smoothes back an errant wisp of her dark hair and straightens the edge of her skirt, trying to ignore the chaos. Dorothy Williams has made the transition from wife to mother easily, and through the tired lines of exhaustion it isn't hard to see she is content. And yet, it isn't the life Phryne had hoped for her young protégé who had shown such promise for making her way, as Phryne had, in a world that was so much larger than baby spit and soiled nappies.
"So how is Jane?" Dottie asks, drawing Phryne back into the present.
"Very well," she answers, setting her empty cup carefully back in its saucer. "She finished early at the Sorbonne and went to study medicine at Harvard."
There's little else to say since she hasn't seen her young charge since the Exposition of 1931 and wasn't there when she sailed for New York. The street-smart girl had transformed into a rather serious jeune fille when she wasn't looking. Phryne had wanted her to continue her studies in Paris, but Jane hated the avant-garde je ne sais quoi of city; she disliked everything the younger Phryne had found so appealing and maddeningly refused to be convinced otherwise.
Dottie nods her head, and Phryne chimes in between the baby's rather loud sucking on the bottle.
"And Mr. Butler?"
"He got married and moved to Perth last year," Dottie answers. "It was very quick, but there was a job offered for two and they decided to go together."
This explains the perilous state of her house. She's surprised that a man as fastidious as Tobias Butler would leave without proper notice. But then, she thinks, people do strange things for love.
"I would have hired them both."
"You weren't here."
Phryne feels the edges of sharpness in the other woman's voice, and there is a silence between them, redolent of something that Phryne has never felt to matter, the past.
The floor creaks as Dottie rocks the child in her arms, and Phryne has to look away, feeling dizzy with the motion.
"I'm sorry about your aunt," the younger woman continues at last. "We thought you would come back for the funeral."
The Fishers had received the telegram about Prudence's Stanley's death last May, though none had travelled for the funeral. Her father was irked that Aunt P. had been stubborn to the last and not included him in the will, and her mother was still recovering from a long illness. Phryne herself had been preoccupied by other things, and no one was inclined to sail halfway around the globe when Depression was spiraling wildly across the world. It's a sham excuse, Phryne knows as she tells Dot, but it's better than none.
"Will you stay for lunch then?"
Phryne hears the eagerness in the younger woman's voice, but refuses.
"No, no," she says, fighting not to appear so eager to leave. "I thought I would go by City South."
Adult company would be a balm after this, as would lunch preceded by a serious drink so she can think about continuing where she left off three years ago, the last time she was on Australian soil, when she was tantalizingly and possessively kissed by a certain Detective Inspector.
"If you're looking for Jack," Dottie says, reading her mind, "he's not there."
Phryne turns, fitting the toque hat high on her forehead. Her stomach twists, and not just in hunger.
"Then where is he?"
/ - / - / - / - /
City Central station of the Victoria Police is far bigger and busier than City South ever was.
Everywhere there is some sort of chaos; telephones ringing, people shouting, the scuff of feet and tap of soles like drumbeats in this sharp-flat melody. The clack of typewriter hammers is nearly deafening.
Suspects are booked, drunks hauled to the tank before they vomit on the floors, captains and constables threading their way through the melee in their dark uniforms. Secretaries – primly dressed young women in pale colors – flit between them like songbirds winging along correspondence and files, pushing tea carts with sandwiches and pastries.
Phryne is lost from the moment she walks in, and it takes three people, two flights of stairs and quite a bit of artful dodging to find him again.
His office door is closed but his name is stenciled across the opaque glass like before, though now it reads, Deputy Chief Commissioner J. Robinson, his name only slighter smaller than his title.
Phryne stands there for a minute, thoroughly nonplussed.
The Jack she knew never wanted a desk job, would never have taken one if his life depended on it. There was too much out there in the world that called to them.
And yet here they are, both of them.
She wonders how it has come to this.
"I'm looking for Jack Robinson."
The earnest young woman at the center desk continues typing until the bell pings; she taps the carriage return lever and the machine advances to the next line. Only then does she look up.
She stares at Phryne openly, evaluating the ankle-strap heels to her capelet-sleeved dress (bought specially in Paris) that drops sumptuously to her shaped calves in an abundance of coral-colored jersey. It drapes on her just so, but the color burns here, vivid and unapologetic amidst so many beiges and browns, where people glance at her suspiciously but not enviously. It is as if they feel her burning and want to douse that blaze, deconstruct the hue; as if they could take apart fire by its elements, sifting fuel from spark, removing the furious heat.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"No," Phryne answers, mystified. "Should I?"
"He's busy at the moment."
Through the glass Phryne can see only shadows, the bob and blur of a head. She can hear the tone of a male voice, but not the words. It could be him; it could be anyone. Her heart sings off-tune.
"He'll want to see me," she persists, "I'm the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher."
She puts stress on her title. She rarely does.
"Perhaps," the girl answers, "but he's speaking with the honorable Chief Commissioner."
She goes back to her typing.
"But – "
"There."
The girl gestures to the usual row of uncomfortable chairs lining the edges of the room.
Dismissed, Phryne sits and fumes.
This is nothing like the old days, with only Hugh and a few constables manning the desk at City South, where she could go through any locked door with only a smile.
Here there are guards at every corner, unassailable barriers that she cannot cross. Here there are rows of commendations and medals pinned to every wall, bright trophies in cabinets for police marksmanship and sportsmanship. Here everything is manicured into place, from the framed portrait of George V to the neat chain of desks with secretaries scratching dictation so quickly she can smell the lead of their pencils as they are ground against the paper. Here everything is so serious.
Phryne taps her fingers and prepares a suitably caustic volley as she watches the dusty hands of the clock on the wall inch towards ten after twelve.
Just as she's ready to launch herself across the room, the door swings open and a woman breezes past, the world suddenly blown open.
"Hello Ada – Marie – Louise – "
She greets the working girls as she sweeps in and they chorus cheerful replies that are such a contrast to their earlier stony silence.
This woman is tall and lithe and striking, her eyes as she turns to glance at Phryne the odd grey-green color of South Sea pearls. She has fair skin and honey-blonde hair, the color of melted butter, swirled into a short wave that barely reaches the nape of her neck. Her suit is a year or so behind the mode, but there's something timeless about the elegant way she wears it. The fabric color shifts in the light and the iridescent weave hums from blue to purple like a hummingbird on wing. Phryne thinks it's the color of gum leaves, slate-blue, the color that makes the mountains blend from earth to sky, that makes boundaries disappear.
The woman dips her head towards Phryne, a petite beret in the same color tilted on the crest of her head, matched by the muted grey of her gloves, bag and oxford heels. Tiny topaz earrings flash in the light as she looks forward and moves on.
She is stylish without being fashionable, even if she's not exactly beautiful, certainly not with that short bright hair and those sharp cheekbones, that agile body that is no less stunning for lacking proper round curves.
"Sybil," she says, addressing the secretary as she leans over and rests her gloved hands on the edge of the desk.
The girl immediately stops and looks up.
"Sybil, it's Thursday."
The younger woman stays perfectly still as the blonde walks forward, swinging open the door marked Deputy Chief Commissioner without waiting.
Standing now Phryne can hear the voice she once knew so well.
" – and then tomorrow – "
"Lunch," the woman orders.
" – we can – "
Then there's a distinct click of a phone being peremptorily hung up.
"I was talking – "
"Now."
There's a stretch of silence, pulled taut – Phryne imagines a staring contest, a battle of the wills, and waits for a dressing-down that never comes. Instead there's only muffled laughter, and two bodies reappearing at once.
The first time she sees Jack Robinson again her heart stops. His grey windowpane suit isn't as sleek as the bespoke suits she's used to seeing in London, but it's serviceable. Perhaps he isn't as wiry as he used to be, all trim muscle pulled tight over his bones, but he seems brighter now, healthier, more alive, as if he won't disappear when turned sideways. His white shirt collar is sharp and neat (what will the world come to when that changes), his fedora hiding the bright chestnut hair she has so missed. The lines of his face seem deeper, though, more evident as his eyes crinkle when he laughs, a low, warm sound that still turns her belly sideways.
"Sybil," the woman says as they move by, their bodies so in sync she can't tell them apart. The phone is ringing and the girl's hand ready to answer. "Tell the Commissioner I'll have him back in an hour or so."
Jack offers his arm so the woman can thread hers through his steadfastness. Then all she hears is the tap of the woman's heels and Jack's leather soles as they descend the stairs.
It isn't often that Phryne Fisher is left speechless, but certainly she is now.
/ - / - / - / - /
She hasn't been a detective for some time, but it isn't hard to follow them.
They walk slowly. Jack buys sandwiches and a thermos of tea from a café, and they cross over Lansdowne Street into Fitzroy Gardens. They angle leisurely toward the main pathway, sweeping into the avenue of English elms to sit under the deep shade of a fig tree.
Phryne carefully selects a bench nearby, grateful for the dim shade. The coral jersey of her dress clings to her limply, and she fans herself vigorously with the folded newspaper she'd taken from Dottie's this morning. The ink of the headline bleeds against her damp fingers, leaving black words on her skin. She's used to rain and chill now, has let her blood grow thick with the English weather, and has forgotten how much warmer it is here than in England. Autumn in London is as cold and miserable as September in Melbourne is warm and bracing. She feels she is steaming here, even in the shade, and fancies she can see the famous blue haze of the eucalyptus vaporizing before her very eyes.
As she looks around, Phryne thinks that everything seems so much the same, from the flowers to the park fixtures. In some ways it feels as if she never left, or even that she's gone back in time. The bright red waratah are in full frenzy, flushed out by the profusion of white flannel blossoms and pink wax flowers, their sweet almond and lemon fragrance filling the air.
Nothing seems to have changed except the people.
And that's how she realizes just how long she's been gone.
/ - / - / - / - /
The year she left – 1929 – had been one for the record books, from the unexpected (and unwanted) arrival of her father to her near-death at the cavalcade's mermaid act. It was the year of magic all her own, from her reminisces with Captain Compton to Italian dinners with Guido to searching for divine astronomy with Osman Efendi.
Yet what she remembers most about that time is the man she was with more than all of them together, Jack Robinson. There were times in that year before she'd left when she felt closer to the detective than ever before – when she wanted him more than she'd wanted any other man, when she would have done almost anything to have him. Those were the times that terrified her, the normality of it all, of wanting dinners, tennis games, waltzes and kisses from him, of sharing a life together, that sent her reeling into the arms of so many other men.
Jack loved her, she knows it, but she can't quite love him back – not the way that he wants. And yet she can't give up on him, on them, and desperate to get her father home, she tells him to come after her.
He had tried, she thinks, in his defense, but she didn't.
He wrote, he sent telegrams, he inquired about air tickets and steam travel. But she didn't answer.
At the time it was quite simple.
It was Fisher the Elder that kept Fisher the Younger contained, as Jack had once put it. Besides his usual shenanigans (German trade deals! In 1929?) and her mother's illness (a long bout of Spanish influenza) Phryne has more than enough to keep her busy.
And then, October.
It seemed she had just arrived in London when the first crash hit, the catastrophic plummet of the stock market in America. Black Tuesday became Black October and it never got better. Depression paralyzed the world. Industry collapsed, agriculture followed, banks closed, families dissolved. It isn't too much to say that the world went to pieces, and she went with it.
She stays to look after her family – or, at least, the family money and the Somerset estate which she wrangles back (in a card game that she didn't rig – much). She converts her money into gold and considerable stock in industry and armaments – she remembers the last war.
London erupts around her. The city is used to dancing on death, from plague and fire, so this is no different. Those without money fade away; those with it spend it like there is no tomorrow. Parties billow up at the least provocation, and when restaurants can't keep enough champagne in stock, they take to drinking sweet sherry. She's developed a most volatile distaste for it.
It is hedonism on a scale unimaginable, even to Phryne. It's a racket; they all know it, but it is like dancing on the edge of an apocalypse. It is glorious; it is terrible.
And, then on the brink of madness, she met –
(Well, she won't think about that now.)
The fact remains: she had so many chances to go back.
But the thing is, she doesn't.
She didn't.
Until now.
/ - / - / - / - /
Phryne looks up only then.
The woman is gone and Jack is alone, capping the thermos and crumpling the wax sandwich wrappers.
He tucks the flask under his arm and walks out of the shade.
In the sun, he glows, as handsome as ever, and her heart wobbles.
He moves towards the pathway, binning the rubbish. Gravel snaps under his feet, and above the branches of the elms ripple in a breeze, vivid green against a perfect blue sky.
She stands, palms suddenly sweaty and breath caught in her chest, as he turns.
For the first time in three years, Jack Robinsons sees her.
He stops.
"Phryne?"
He doesn't remember to be more formal, and this, she thinks, is exactly why she's come home.
"Hello, Jack."
/ - / - / - / - /
.