AN: A one-shot that occurred to me the other day. Hope you enjoy...
"Ruth? Ruth Evershed?"
His voice startles her and she freezes, hand clenching convulsively around the bottle of white wine that she's just picked up from the supermarket shelf. It can't be him. At last, swallowing to clear her suddenly bone-dry throat, Ruth rises and turns around. It is him. Older, certainly; his brown hair has all faded away into grey now, and his face is more wrinkled than ever, with deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. But the look in those eyes is the same as it always was – fiery, intelligent, and warm beyond belief or reason. He is the same height, although slightly slimmer than the last time she saw him. He dresses the same too – well-fitting and sophisticated shirts, although his customary crisp Savile Row suit has been replaced by a dark blue jumper, sleeves half-rolled up, and dark jeans. She takes all this in in a moment, weighing up this Harry Pearce with the one she left twenty years ago. Twenty years, ten months, six days and (she surreptitiously checks her watch as she puts the bottle of wine into her trolley) approximately four hours ago. Approximately.
She smiles. "Harry. How lovely to see you." Relieved that he has not been spurned, he steps closer, beaming with pleasure at the unexpected sight of her. Unconsciously, he takes in the changes that the years have wrought over her, too. She is still as trim as she used to be, and her hair is still dark, although he can make out the traces of a few silver threads in it. Her face, to him, could never change, but he is forced to acknowledge faint laugh lines. At least she has been happy. "Ruth. It's been a long time." Twenty years, ten months, six days, four hours, fifteen minutes, and about thirty-seconds. They speak like strangers, both concealing the delight that hearing the other's voice brings. Ruth bites her lip and blushes slightly. His voice is low and deep, and if she thought that two decades apart would have made him forget his special way of speaking to her, as if she was the only person in his world, she was wrong. She nods and shuffles from one foot to the other as a comfortable silence falls. At last, Harry, unwilling to leave her, repeats, "It's been a long time."
"Very," she murmurs. He sighs – she doesn't want to speak to him – and jerks his head towards the end of the aisle. "Well," he announces at last. "Must get on. It was very nice to see you again, Ruth." He turns away, and Ruth panics. She doesn't know what to say to him, but she also knows that she doesn't want to let him go. Not yet. "Harry!" she calls out, and several shoppers look askance at her. But he stops and looks over his shoulder, waiting for her to catch up with him. She does so, breathlessly pushing loose curls of hair out of her eyes. "There's a little coffee shop just around the corner," she explains daringly. "If you've got time, I'd... I'd love to catch up." His heart lifts in happiness, but he keeps his face neutral as he replies.
"I've got some time."
While Harry orders their coffees, Ruth marvels at the idea that she is sitting with him again, after so long, hearing his voice, looking into his eyes, renewing her acquaintance with all his nuances of speech and gesture. At last, waitress dispatched, he turns to her and smiles. She smiles back, and soon they are chuckling together like gleeful teenagers. "I'm sorry," he gasps out at last. "It's just – I never expected to see you again. And here you are." She sobers, and takes a sip of her coffee. Leaving the Service – leaving Harry – is a part of her life she prefers to forget. She had put in her decommission forms the day after the end of the Albany inquiry, knowing herself to be a coward for doing so. Harry had signed her forms without question, without even a word, numb to all feeling. Thanks to her testimony, he had escaped with the loss of his knighthood and a hefty slap on the wrist, but nothing more serious, for which she had been more grateful than any number of words could have expressed. Harry had released her without even asking her to work two weeks notice. Right up until this day, Ruth isn't sure whether she is grateful, or annoyed at him for doing so.
"Do you regret leaving?" Harry asks suddenly, watching her shrewdly from over the top of his coffee cup. She pauses to think for a moment, and then shakes her head softly, calmly. "No," she informs him lightly. "It was the right thing to do, Harry. Albany... broke a lot of things that couldn't have been fixed if I'd stayed." He nods, and she realises that he understands. That, perhaps, in the intervening years, he has made some attempt to understand her. Ruth shakes herself off, giving the appearance of a bird settling its feathers, and adds briskly, "But let's not talk about shop, Harry. What have you been doing with yourself?"
He sets down his coffee cup, and his face softens. "I retired the year after you left, you know," he reveals. "Couldn't stand how..." He pauses, trying to formulate his meaning. At last, he settles for, "Empty. How empty the office was without you." She smiles wistfully. "Both of us out in the cold," he jests dryly. She wants to tell him how, for the first few months, she had still made mental notes of things she wanted to talk to him about, jokes she wanted to tell him, experiences she wanted to share with him, and had then suffered the horrid, sickening sensation of knowing that it was all impossible. But Harry continues swiftly, as if this is a period of his life that he doesn't want to dwell on. Ruth can understand that, of course. "I spend a lot of time with Catherine," he tells her, abruptly changing the subject. "She's married now, with children. A boy and a girl – Will and Sophie. So I'm kept well-occupied babysitting!" Ruth laughs and her heart warms at the sudden vision her imagination presents her with, of Harry surrounded by children, their youth lending him strength and happiness.
"I see Graham, too, occasionally. Things aren't settled yet, but they're better than they've been in years. We speak on the phone, and we've had dinner together at Catherine's house a few times." His voice is shy, and Ruth can tell that he's trying not to get his own hopes up, but she's pleased that things are going well for him. "That's good," she offers, mimicking his words after her acceptance of his invitation to their one and only date, briefly squeezing his right hand, which has edged across the table towards her. He grins, and then taps his fingers on the back of her hand. "So, Ruth, what have you been doing?"
Ruth takes a deep breath. She has known, somehow, that this question was coming, but it won't be any easier to answer for all that. "After I left, I travelled for a while. Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin..." She pauses, flushing crimson as she realises the significance of her words. Harry inclines his head and she can tell that the same realisation has hit him when he inserts wryly, "The Grand Tour."
She closes her eyes briefly, and then continues. "I even back to Cyprus for a few months. I saw Nico, had a chance to explain to him. He was old enough by then to try to forgive me for what I'd done to him, to his family." Harry opens his mouth, wanting to protest that none of what had happened had been her fault, but she raises her hand firmly. "Don't, Harry. Please. Nothing you can say can make me feel any less guilty for what happened to Nico and... and George." He bows his head in submission, not wanting to argue with this assertive Ruth, who seems to know so clearly what she feels and wants. The years apart have helped her, then.
"And then I went to America. I have a friend who was teaching English History at Harvard at the time, and I went to visit her. I... oh, Harry, I met someone. An Englishman teaching Classics there. We got on very well, and when it was time for me to come home, he decided that he wanted to come as well. We got married."
His throat closes up and his eyes burn. He never dreamt that this would happen to them, not again, not after George. He coughs lightly and forces a smile. "Congratulations, Ruth. What's his name?"
"David. David Yorke," she murmurs softly, seeming almost ashamed.
He swallows again, and the words are out before he can think of holding them back. "Do you love him?" Her eyes lock onto his sharply and then soften. She nods her head, once, firmly.
"Very much," she replies, with infinite tenderness in her voice. "As much as I ever loved you. With David, I could be the woman I would have been, had things worked out between you and I. I told him everything – everything – and he still cared for me and wanted me to marry me. He was the only man, apart from you, who could accept me for exactly who I was, no more, no less. We went into business together – antique books." He fiddles awkwardly with his cup, just for something to do. He isn't sure if hearing of her happiness, her life, with another man is harder to bear than if he had heard she was alone, or worse still, trapped in a loveless marriage. Briefly, he glances down at her left hand. There is no wedding ring. His eyes transfer themselves back to hers, mildly questioning. She looks away, out of the window, and her voice is thick with suppressed emotion when she next speaks.
"David was killed in a car accident last year."
Harry closes his eyes with the horrid knowledge that he has probably caused her so much pain. "Oh, Ruth," he breathes. "I'm so sorry... Forgive me." She turns to him and smiles – an old smile, her blue eyes filled with mingled pain and pleasure. Gently, she touches his hand. "Oh, Harry, we've been friends for far too long to worry about apologies. You weren't to know, after all." She drains her coffee cup and glances at her watch.
"I should be going," she apologises softly. Harry looks at his own watch, and realises the lateness of the hour. The cafe's other customers have long since departed. He stands and waits for her to gather together her coat and shopping bags. Together, they walk outside and stop on the pavement. "There's a bus stop just down the road," Ruth informs him, her voice tinged with hope. "Let me walk you there," he pleads quietly, and she offers him a smile of honest pleasure and hesitantly hooks her arm through his.
To his disappointment, her bus is just pulling in when they reach the stop. As she fumbles in her purse for change, Harry makes a split second decision and rests a hand on her arm. "Ruth," he begins desperately, "take my phone number. If you ever feel like a chat, or a coffee... I'd like you to think you could call on me." She hesitates for a moment, unsure of whether this is beginning something she doesn't want, and then nods. The number is given and received, but he waves off her offer of her own. He has pushed Ruth too far, too fast in the past, and it only ended in chaos.
He watches her board her bus, and raises a hand in mute farewell as it pulls away. A flash of her smile, a glimpse of brown hair, and she is gone. After a moment, he straightens his shoulders and turns away. An end. Or perhaps, just perhaps – a beginning?