Thirteen Years
By S. Faith, © 2007
Words: 3,935
Rating: T / PG
Summary: Flashbacks… and flash-forwards. Inspired by a line from the second movie.
Disclaimer: I only wish these were my characters, my universe.
Notes: This has been on my 'to-do' list for some time. The line this is inspired by is at the end of the story, so not to spoil.
He knocks at the door at the same time he swings it open. The boy looks up straight into his father's eyes, which she knows betray absolutely no emotion whatsoever. "Well. I've got the results."
Her son swallows hard with nervousness.
"Aren't you going to ask?" his father asks.
"I… thought you'd tell me when you were ready to tell me."
He sits on the bed beside his son, puts his arm around the boy, who clearly braces himself for the worst possible news of his young life, especially when he spots his mother hovering just outside the bedroom door.
"Your test scores," his father begins in all seriousness. "They… well, they were… outstanding."
That was obviously not a word he was expecting to hear, and his expression changes appropriately. He looks to his mother as if he's the victim of a cruel joke.
"You're in," she confirms.
"I'm in?" he asks; he can hardly believe his ears.
His father nods, then tightens his grip briefly. "Congratulations. Though I can hardly say I'm surprised. You can pretty much do anything you decide to do. Always have."
He quickly turns and hugs his father, who hugs him back; while both of them are always very physically affectionate with her, they are less so with one another. The child glances up to see his mother smiling, though she wonders if there's a tinge of something else in her face because he asks, "Are you happy too, Mum?"
Happy about a son leaving for school, even if it was still a few years off? Not particularly. But he had always expressed a desire to follow in his father's academic footsteps from the earliest of ages, and the boy obviously had the aptitude to do so. So she smiles, and it's genuine. "Of course I'm happy." She comes into the room, sits beside him on the other side, and embraces him.
Her husband takes hold of her hand as it rests on their son's back and squeezes it.
………
"When this day came," she said, "I thought I'd be a puddle of tears."
"Two boxes of tissues in the last week more than made up for it, I think."
She shot her companion an indignant look, then turned back to the trunk to inspect its contents, to make sure nothing was missing. "I will not cry. I promised myself I wouldn't let him see me cry."
A chuckle issued from behind her. "He wouldn't think any less of you for crying, I'm sure."
"That's easy for you to say. He's been teasing me all week about it. 'I just know you're going to bawl and embarrass me in front of everyone,' he said."
"He didn't," came the sympathetic reply. She felt strong hands slide around her waist from behind, a tender kiss just under her earlobe. She leaned back into the comfortable familiarity of the embrace, closing her eyes, wondering where the time had gone. It seemed like only yesterday he was proposing to her, that they were married…. The quiet voice echoed close in her ear again. "I'll have to have a word with him about teasing his mother."
She turned to face him. Looking at him was looking into everything that was love: kind eyes that crinkled in the corners from years of gifting her with that beautiful, gentle smile of his. She raised her hand to brush her fingers through the hair at his temple, could feel the coarse greys against her fingertips. With a smile of her own, she said, "Yes, Mark, please do."
She heard the rough clomping of shod feet heading their way at a hefty clip, and she looked up just in time to hear them stop and see the bright young smiling boy they belonged to appear at the door. "Are we going or what? Come on, thought we were leaving already!"
"We're coming, we're coming," Mark said; as the boy pulled on the doorframe and prepared to dash again, Mark amended, "Andrew, wait. Come here and take your bag while I get the trunk." Mark gave her a meaningful look.
She took the hint. "I'll go downstairs. See you down there."
It looked like a chilly September morning so she when she got to the foyer she went in search of her overcoat. It was funny how at times like this—at the cusp of a major life event like sending one's son off to public school—one tended to examine the path one's life has taken. From the moment they'd first kissed in that snowy street so many years ago, she'd somehow known he was the one. It hadn't been an easy road, especially at first when they were still working through their respective insecurities, but she'd realised early on there'd be no one else she wanted to spend her life with.
Very soon afterwards Bridget heard them coming down the stairs, heavy footsteps of the father, lighter footsteps of the son, and she turned to see them coming down together, almost in tandem. She also heard the tail end of a promise made from son to father, and she smiled as her eyes met her son's again. Andrew was tall for a recently-minted teenager, not yet nearly as tall as his father; still wiry and thin and only just coming into puberty. She remembered the recent shaving lesson she'd caught Mark giving him and felt slightly emotional again. He'd grown so quickly, and except for his lighter hazel eyes, so resembled his father it was scary…
"Do you have everything?"
Andrew nodded.
"Well," she said in an overly bright voice that reminded her eerily of her own mother's, "I think we're set to go, then. Unless… do you want a snack for the ride? Something to drink? Do you have to use the loo?"
"Bridget," said Mark, holding the boy's trunk out in front of himself. "I think we're fine."
She knew she was stalling. He knew it too; she could see the softness in his eyes. She pursed her lips then nodded, and without another word they departed the house together. She walked with her arm around Andrew's shoulder, then opened the boot of the car for Mark so he could slide the trunk in. She was tempted to sit in the back seat with her son, but told herself that he would probably prefer to arrive at Eton more like a man and less like a boy with a worried mum at his side hovering over him. For his part, Andrew looked relieved to not have to protest the point and slid into the back of the sedan, quickly closing the door behind him.
Bridget took the front passenger seat, and as Mark climbed behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition he reached for her hand, squeezing slightly before releasing it to put the vehicle into gear.
"Oh, Mum, Dad, it isn't as if you're launching me into space never to be seen again. Really."
Despite her anxiety over sending her only son off to public school, Bridget couldn't help but giggle; much like his mother he was not terribly good at keeping what he was thinking from coming out of his mouth.
Once they were in motion, Mark found her hand again and held it throughout the entire drive, only releasing it to change gears when needed, almost as if he'd known she needed the reassurance. There was very little said between the three of them; all of the excited, curious questions Andrew had had about the school had already been posed to his father and answered, and so he mostly kept his nose deep in his paperback book. It did not escape Bridget's attention, however, that she did not hear the pages turning.
………
She sits by his side at his little craft table, watches him studiously peering at his neatly lined-up coloured pencils. "What are you making?" she asks at long last.
He looks up in surprise, as if his mother's presence was not noticed until that moment. His light brown eyes are wide and fringed with those beautiful thick lashes that only young children and lucky women are gifted with, but he smiles shyly, revealing a hole where his top front tooth used to be, broad enough to fit a straw through.
"I'm writing you a story," he says very seriously, deciding on his next choice, this time bright blue, and writes a deliberate, squiggly line across the page.
She sets her chin down onto her palm and leans her elbow on her knee, then watches him. He works with the same concentration that his father devotes to his clients. "What's it about?"
He pauses, lifting the pencil up. "If I tell you, I'll spoil the story," he says, then continues with his indecipherable writing.
"Oh, of course. Silly Mummy."
"Silly Mummy, silly Mummy," he echoes in a sing-song, a grin appearing at the corner of his mouth. She muses that the lucky boy has the same dimples that would make him just as handsome as his daddy. She watches as he precisely sets the blue down, and moves to brick red.
"Well. Maybe when you're finished you can read it to me."
"Only if Daddy's here, too," he says matter-of-factly, as if he were negotiating the release of a political prisoner.
"Sweetheart, Daddy's going to be in after your bedtime again." Very important cases meant long nights at work. Since Andrew's arrival they were thankfully few and far between; Mark was very firm on that stance with the partners. When it does happen, though, she knows it's very hard on both of the men in her life. "If you want to wait to read it to the both of us, I don't mind."
He smiles shyly again. "Okay."
"Okay," she echoes, then reaches forward to hug him and kiss his mop of brown waves.
When the boy gets to read his story two nights later, his father declares it the best story he has ever heard. His mother only nods; she can't speak for the quivering in her lip.
………
The exalted halls of the famed school came into view in what felt like no time at all despite nearly forty minutes passing, and as they got closer Bridget stole a glance into the back seat to catch her son's unblinking eyes taking in the scenery. It was one thing to take the tests, visit the school with his father, speak to the headmaster, and exchange greetings in passing with the strangely-dressed boys on campus; it was another thing altogether to be walking onto the grounds as a resident student.
"We're here," said Mark, startling Bridget a bit, as he pulled up along the kerb, put the car into park and switched off the engine.
Andrew's door was open and he was rising up out of the car immediately after the engine disengaged. The wonder had not yet left his face. While she had never considered herself a great scholar (but thought of herself as relatively intelligent), Andrew had inherited his father's undying thirst for learning and razor-sharp brain. She imagined he was looking forward to meeting his fellow Etonians, to his schedule of classes, to the reputed level of stimulating learning he was in store for. As the years had passed, he'd looked more and more forward to the challenge.
Mark went around to the boot and removed the trunk, then hefted the thing into his arms again; they all began to walk towards what would be Andrew's home during his five years at Eton. As they did, Andrew began to pull ahead of them in his eagerness to get there.
Bridget leaned close to Mark as they walked. "He looks so grown up," she said with a tremulous voice, then looked up to Mark.
He nodded. She bit hard on her lip to stay the tears.
………
"Can you believe we actually made this?"
He laughs. "Darling, we're not looking at a Christmas pudding. We're looking at a baby."
"Our baby," she corrects, half proudly, half sternly.
"Our baby," he echoes softly. He pulls her closer as they gaze over the side of the bassinet, enraptured by the small child they have so recently brought home from hospital. She feels the softness of her husband's lips on her temple.
She reaches forward, and the small one takes hold of his mother's pinkie finger with a fearsome grip. She smiles. "Looks like he has my hair. And eyes."
"Most light-skinned babies have blond hair and blue eyes." He reaches forward and her heart soars as the pads of his fingers brush back that fine tuft of hair off of the baby's forehead.
"You're taking the piss out of me."
"I would never do such a thing," he says, still intent on getting that whisper-fine hair back away from his eyes. "Besides. He would be blessed to look so much like you."
"I wouldn't want him to look too much like me, you know, him being a boy and all." She pauses, thoughtful for a moment. "I think he has your chin." She tickles that facial feature with her fingertip, and as she does the baby's mouth gapes open and closed in a sucking motion, obviously in search of food. "Ooh, someone's hungry."
Again he laughs. "He's definitely your son. He likes to eat too much not to be."
She turns with a pursed-lip smirk and lightly smacks him before reaching to lift the child out of the bassinet. "And he's definitely your son. Doesn't say a word, not even when he needs a nappy-changing."
"I bet when he starts to talk we won't be able to shut him up. We don't know anyone like that." He's still grinning.
"You're lucky I have a baby in my arms or I'd thwack you again."
She takes a seat on the bed, pulls up her shirt and allows the boy to latch on, his little fists balled up and drawn close to his chest. Her husband sits beside her and pulls her back against him for support, enfolding the pair of them in his arms. She's been so bone-weary from new motherhood that even the gentle sucking of her baby's mouth isn't enough to keep her from falling asleep. She can only do so this easily because she trusts that he'll take care of her. Of both of them.
………
"The room seems really… small," she said confidentially to Mark as they closed the door behind them. Andrew was at the window, looking down at the grounds. He had been friendly enough with the boys he'd passed, but he'd been very silent considering his usual loquacity. The trunk and the bag sat untouched near the foot of the bed.
"It's room enough, believe me," he replied quietly, pressing a quick kiss into her hair before striding over to where Andrew stood. "Would you like a hand getting some of your things unpacked?" he asked.
Slowly, Andrew turned to face his father. She held in a gasp when she saw that the boy looked terrified. "Dad. I don't know if I can really do this."
"Of course you can do this. You're a Darcy." As she looked on, Andrew's eyes became glossy; Bridget knew the last thing Andrew wanted was to start crying in front of his father. Mark seemed to realise his misstep immediately, raised a hand to steady his son's shoulder. "Do you trust me?"
"Of course I do, Dad."
"By the same token, do you think I would ever lie to you?"
"Um. Maybe if my pet fish died and you didn't want to tell me."
Invisible to anyone but his wife, Mark fought a smirk. "I mean when it really matters, Andrew."
Andrew looked down. "Don't suppose you would, no."
"Look at me." Mark waited for his son to turn his eyes back up, then placed his other hand on his son's other shoulder. "I don't expect you to do well here simply because you are my son and bear my name; I know you will do well here because excelling is in your blood. You've always made your mother and me proud and I have no reason to believe anything is about to change. I went here; I know this place, I know you, and I can say with full confidence: you will do well. There are no 'or elses' attached, nor is this an arrogant boast by an overly prideful father. It is just a statement of fact. Do you understand?"
There was silence for what felt like many minutes, as father and son looked unblinking to one another, until at last Andrew slowly nodded. She then watched as a timid smile found his face. "I understand." He cleared his throat. "I think I can unpack my own things, thanks."
Mark nodded, patting the boy's shoulders before dropping his arms down to his sides. "Go on and give your mother a kiss goodbye."
Andrew looked to her, then went over and gave her a kiss followed by a big, tight hug. "Bye, Mum," he said quietly.
"You'll do great. Really." She pulled back from him, smiling. "Write to your father and me?"
"All the best stories," he said, then turned back to his father. "Bye, Dad."
She witnessed two quite amazing things occur at that moment: Andrew willingly embraced his father for the first time in many moons, and Mark… well, as he took his son into his arms, held him tight across the back, she saw a glistening tear slide down over his lower lid as he squeezed his eyes shut and kissed the top of his head. He dried it away with masterful subtlety as the boy pulled away, then Mark smiled as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened—but she knew what she'd seen.
"See you on St Andrew's," Mark said as he walked to the door and opened it.
"Okay," replied his son.
"I love you," she said, turning to look at her son one more time.
"Not so loud. Someone might hear," Andrew said, but it was in a teasing tone and he was smiling broadly. He then turned serious and mouthed I love you too in response before smiling again. She was suddenly struck by the fact that he was no longer a little boy, and the next time she saw him he'd be even less so; she even considered going back to him to give him another hug, but then thought better of it. Between an extra hug and the tears she still fought to keep at bay, she didn't want her son's house brothers to have any ammunition at their disposal to tease him. The thought of his amazement at her not collapsing into a round of wet, snotty bawling even made her chuckle a little.
As they left the building and began the walk back to the car, Mark slipped his arm around her shoulders, and in automatic response she slipped one around his waist, leaning into him as they walked.
"I saw that, you know," she said in a low tone.
"Saw what?"
She looked up to him; his face was inscrutable, as always. "Saw you cry."
"I did not cry."
She laughed. "I guess I imagined that tear I saw you brush away, then."
He did not respond.
"It's all right," she continued. "It actually makes me feel better."
He was quiet for many more steps before he said, "Why is that?"
"I thought I was overreacting, feeling as emotional as I do. But if you're moved to tears too… it must not be so much of an overreaction on my part. Hence I feel better."
As they arrived at the car, he stopped and gave her a kiss, then smiled. "Whatever I can do to make you feel better, darling."
She smirked. He reached for the door handle and opened it for her. "It's going to seem very quiet without him around."
"My life has not been quiet since I met you," he said with a sly grin.
She giggled, and as she did she unexpectedly erupted forth with the tears she'd been holding in all morning. Mark enfolded her in his arms, stroking her back comfortingly as she let the sobs flow; close to her ear she could hear him draw in a sniff or two.
"It's going to be a long two months," she said.
Without missing a beat, Mark replied softly, "Seventy days."
She pulled away to look at him, hiccoughing a laugh through her tears. "What?"
"Until St Andrew's Day. Seventy days. Nine days left in September, thirty-one in October—"
She silenced him with a kiss, then hugged him again tight with her arms about his neck. "I love you too."
………
"How was your day?" he asks as he comes in, roughly tossing his attaché on the chair, but gently slipping an arm around her waist, pulling her close, kissing her as tenderly as always.
Fighting the impulse to bounce in place and squeal at the top of her lungs, she instead shrugs nonchalantly. "Not bad." He releases her and loosens his tie, shrugging out of his suit jacket. She continues as she watches him pour a glass of water. "Rough day at work. Shaz stood me up for lunch. Finch is an arse. And I'm pregnant."
"I'm sorry you had such a—wait." She hears the glass clumsily meet the steel countertop, and he turns to face her, his face slightly paler than a moment ago. "What?"
Only then does the corner of her mouth curl up.
"Did I hear you correctly?" he asks, clearly desperate for information.
She nods.
He merely stares for a moment, but when he grins, it's broad and toothy; she didn't doubt for a moment that it would be welcome news. He's then whipping her up into his arms and holding her so close to him she feels like she can't breathe, but it's worth it to be so happy and to share that happiness with him.
"Oh, Bridget." Never have two words sounded so beautiful to her, especially since his voice is thick with emotion.
After a moment she chuckles. "You're going to suffocate me and our unborn child," she says in a mock-strangled voice.
He manages a laugh, pulling away, then he reaches up to her face and wipes away wetness from she doesn't remember spilling over onto her own cheeks. "You know what today is, don't you?"
She shakes her head.
"St Andrew's Day."
"Right." She suddenly remembers the traditions his family is steeped in, her initial reluctance (terror?) at the thought of consigning her male offspring to scary public schools… but oddly she feels only remnants of this now. Probably it has much to do with the fact that this would be her child as well; she would have her influence, and thirteen years is a long time. She also deeply loves a man that this school had helped to form, which helps too. "Well. I guess that beats Malcolm Colin or Colin Malcolm."
He blinks. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"Now we know what we can call him if he's a boy, don't we?"
He smiles tenderly.
She adds, "Unless you're sold on Noah."
He bursts forth with a laugh again. "River was growing on me."
She giggles. "I don't know, I rather liked—" she begins.
Later she realises that they probably could have gone on in this manner for some time if he hadn't stopped her with a long, slow, passionate kiss.
The end.
Notes:
The quote:
"Anyway, l could teach him to play cricket and rugby and visit him at Eton on St Andrew's Day." –Mark, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.