Apologies to everyone who was reading This Terrible Beauty, there seems to have been an issue with it, warranting removal from the site. It's going to be re-worked and re-posted at a later date with some editing and, probably, an M rating to get it past the censors.
In the meantime, a wedding needs to happen…
Just You and Me
Ruth's gaze lingered on the up-lit display of bottles; potions, lotions, unguents and gels. Nail polish in sixty shades of red and blue. What's the point? She wonders, what do they do? Swatches of eye-shadow, lash curlers, hair straighteners, and eyebrow tweezers and nail clippers. They all had a purpose, at least – unlike the mystery lotions. But what was right for her? It was like a cosmetic mine field; one false step and her whole look would be ruined. Or, at least, that was how it felt. And making matters worse was the infinitely patient teenage beauty queen standing behind her salon chair, waiting for the final, fateful, decision to be made. It was easy for girls like her: young, trendy and leading the fashions, as opposed to running just stay apace of modern ideals of beauty.
The clock struck ten: four hours to go and she was still wearing the fluffy bathrobe the beautician had handed her when she stepped through the door almost an hour ago. Then she had to get her dress. That dress. The dress she still hadn't made up her mind about. The black one that will look bloody awful if she lets this beautician assault her with a spray tan. Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder and looked up at the pristine beautician.
"You're not going to dye me orange, are you?" she asked in a tremulous voice. "I'll look like an Oompa Loompa at a funeral."
Her nerves screamed at the very thought of it, bringing a fresh wave of pre-wedding jitters. She imagined the Oompa Loompa song playing on a church organ as she walked down the aisle to the ill-concealed laughter of the onlookers. The beautician's dazzling smile widened as she scooped up the bottles of St Tropez and locked them back in a cabinet. Stay there and die you orange bastards, Ruth silently cursed them while smiling sweetly at the Beautician.
"You're not having a white wedding then, Miss Evershed?" the girl asked, picking up some of the instruments of her trade.
Ruth grimaced. "A bit passé, don't you think?" she replied. "I mean, everyone does it."
"But its tradition!" the girl sighed, running her hands through Ruth's hair.
"Tradition be damned."
The beautician laughed and wheeled Ruth's chair over to the wash basin. "Well, trust me Miss Evershed," the girl added, starting up a shower head affixed to the wall. "I'll have you looking a million dollars."
Tentatively, Ruth lay her head back against the sink and looked up at the Beautician. She could see right up the girls narrow nostrils, where a stray hair fluttered every time she breathed out. See, Ruth thought with a flicker of triumph, you are human after all.
"The thing is, you see," Ruth began explaining as her wash began. "It's complicated, even now. It's been … a journey."
She wished she could impress upon this girl just how much of a journey. The years of treading on eggshells around Harry, the two years of forced exile and sheer brutality of their job. All the twists and turns of a complex decade that now, only now, was coming full circle. But she couldn't; not without breaking every clause in the official secrets act, at any rate. A radio was playing softly over the speakers mounted on the wall, the music gave way to a news broadcast and Ruth's heartbeat raced. Even now, a major incident could scupper every plan she and Harry had made. Instead of racing for the registry office, she could be racing back to the Grid. She strained her ears, listening to the reports of road accidents, civil servants threatening to go on strike and the latest parochial issues of day to day life in Middle England. She breathed a sigh of relief when the weather forecast began. The weather, as far as she was concerned, could do what it damn well liked: this wedding was happening. Today.
Harry checked his reflection in the hallway mirror one final time, straightening the knot of his tie. If he didn't do that, he would be faffing with the white carnation Malcolm had threaded through his top button hole. He thought it looked ridiculous, but without it he looked even more absurd. Like he was attending a business meeting, instead of his own wedding. Behind him, Harry could see in the mirror, Malcolm rolling his eyes.
"How many more times, Harry?" he asked, wearily. "If you've done that once, you've done it a hundred times."
Harry stopped what he was doing, instantly restless with his hands unoccupied and glanced towards Malcolm apologetically.
"I keep thinking about what she's doing," he admitted. "Is she getting her hair done, is having a manicure; is her dress just right; or is she getting cold feet?"
There; he'd said it. Malcolm got up from the armchair he'd planted himself in and moved towards the drinks cabinet. After all these years, the retired Techie knew Harry so well it could be them getting hitched. A whiskey bottle was duly procured; Harry went to protest but lost heart. He needed it more than ever, regardless of the hour. With a sigh of resignation, Harry moved into the living room and gratefully accepted the glass.
"You've been waiting for this day for years," Malcolm pointed out. "After everything, I don't think there's much chance of Ruth getting cold feet now."
As a moral compromise, Harry sipped at the whiskey instead of bolting it down and risking another. Assuming that all went well, he didn't want to be even slightly tipsy until after the actual ceremony. The reception, however, is another matter. He can cut loose and fly for that! In an effort to assuage his nerves, he decided (for the first time in a long time) to use his professional life to distract him from his personal life.
"Lucas is going to be there," he said. "I hope you don't mind."
"Why would I mind?" Malcolm replied, sounding uncharacteristically facetious. "All he did was try to steal a state secret, forcing my elderly mother and I leave the house we'd lived in for decades."
Stung, Harry decided against trying to explain that away. "I'll keep him out of your way, don't worry."
"I won't," Malcolm tartly retorted. "Anyway, won't Ros do that for you?"
Arching a brow, Harry knocked back the rest of his whiskey. "I'm afraid not. It's all turned sour since … the revelations."
Malcolm took a deep breath and fixed Harry with a measured look. "After Juliet, Connie, Bernard Qualtrough, Nicholas Blake and god alone knows who else; I am stunned and amazed by your continued trust in Lucas North. Or whoever he is."
"You don't understand, Malcolm," Harry feebly put in. "It's everything. It's the whole thing… If things had been different…"
But they weren't different, and his attempts to explain and justify the continued existence of Lucas North sounded lame, even to his own ears. He had made his decision, and it was final. Besides, it was time. A sleek black limousine had pulled to a halt outside his house, the bright spring sunshine glinting off the paintwork. The pair of them stood up in unison, watching out of the window as the chauffeur got out and made his way up the garden path.
Malcolm raised a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "This is it, then."
"This is it," Harry concurred, nerves twisting every sinew in his body.
"Ruth! Come on!"
Beth called through the bedroom door just as Jo was lacing up the bodice of the gown. For a few minutes, it felt as though iron bands were rapidly tightening around her ribcage, but Ruth soon got used to it. She paused, steadying her breathing until her heart rate returned to normal. Two feet in front of her, Jo turned the mirror around and Ruth got a proper look at herself for the first time.
"Two more minutes!" Jo impatiently called back to Beth.
Ruth, however, was taking in her appearance. The girl at the salon had worked wonders with her hair and makeup, and a sapphire necklace, with matching earrings, given to her by Harry as a Valentine's gift complimented the darkness of her gown like a charm. She didn't even know she could look like this. When she looked at Jo, her vision was swimming with tears she was struggling to hold back.
"You look amazing," Jo assured her, beaming brightly. "Now don't bloody ruin your face with crying."
Jo's bridesmaid dress was charcoal grey, sleek and figure hugging, tied at the waist with a black satin sash. She reached behind her and carefully gathered a bridal bouquet of neatly arranged white roses. Ruth tried to make some reply, but her power of speech seemed to have quite deserted her.
"It's time," Jo added, moving behind Ruth to gather her train and the hems of her skirts. "Open the door, Beth."
Minutes later and they were outside, the chauffeur holding open the door of a black Rolls Royce. Ruth held her breath as they crossed the tarmac, fearful of frayed hems and specks of dirt. Then the nightmare creases as she folding herself inside the car. Mercifully, she had foretold the problem and opted for a gown without voluminous skirts. Besides, she didn't want to look like a doily either.
"What if he's changed his mind?" asked Ruth, once the door had closed and the engine started. She'd considered it before, especially the night before as she tried to get to sleep. But now the prospect of being jilted seemed more real and likely than ever.
"Who?"
"Harry, of course!" Ruth replied, desperately. "Knowing Harry, it would be for some deeply honourable reason, all to do with work of course, but the effects the bloody same. It could happen-"
"Ruth!" Jo cut over her. "You're being stupid. Stop being stupid."
She's right. Ruth tried to tell herself that she's right.
"She's late," Harry stated, bluntly.
"Fashionably late," Malcolm replied. "And yes, I've got the ring," he added, pre-empting the next question.
Harry tried to relax. But the guests had arrived and he'd caught sight of Ruth's youngest bridesmaid who'd arrived with her parents, Tom Quinn and Christine Dale. Tom was sat beside Lucas, the two men deep in conversation about god knows what seeing as their last meeting was less than comfortable. Ros was sitting with William Towers; the Home Secretary cracking jokes in a futile attempt to make her laugh. The look on Ros' face, however, was pricelessly milk curdling. Over on Ruth's side, half of GCHQ had turned up. Row upon row of mathematicians and geeks. Harry wondered whether they had his side of the room bugged already.
"For god's sake, Harry, have some more champagne," Malcolm ordered.
Harry ignored him and carried on looking at the closed doors of the registry office. He had already had one glass of champers and a whiskey before leaving the house. The doors opened once more, but it was only Beth Bailey. She looked down the narrow aisle, to where Harry and Malcolm were sat and grinned. "Two minutes," she mouthed at them. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Beth had travelled in her own car ahead of the bridal car.
"Now relax," Malcolm urged him.
Even as he spoke the words, the doors opened again and Christine Dale darted through the narrow aperture. It could only mean that Ruth had finally arrived. True to conjecture, she was soon standing on the threshold of the office, framed by the doorway surrounding by bright sunshine. Silence fell across the room in an instant as everyone turned to look. Harry included.
On Ruth's side of the hall, a very elderly lady looked stunned. "Whose funeral is this again?" she demanded, rather loudly and amidst hastily stifled sniggers at the faux pas. "They told me it was a wedding!"
Even Ruth was grinning from ear to ear as she began the slow walk down the aisle. Harry had never seen her look so beautiful, in such a unique dress. Whatever he should have expected from Ruth, he should have guessed it would be the unexpected. He noted, with a surge of relief and pride that she was wearing the jewellery he bought for her back in February. When she reached him, their free hands met across the small divide between them.
"You look extraordinary," he whispered low, so that only she could hear.
She smiled coyly. "You don't look so bad yourself."
The ceremony began in earnest, with the registrar getting the ball rolling. Throughout the whole thing, Harry felt a sense of something finally coming to end, to make way for the new. No more dancing round pinheads; no more excuses and prevarications. They each exchanged their vows with an assured clarity of purpose. They love each other; they want to spend the rest of their lives together, come what may. It felt equally strange that it should all boil down to a signature on a piece of paper, albeit a piece of paper he signed with much more aplomb than any other bit of paperwork. Then, it was done. They were man and wife.
Harry watched as Ruth put down the fountain pen and the ink on their signatures dried. Then, their gaze locked into each other's as they were formally pronounced man and wife by the Registrar. He felt her tremble as they embraced and kissed to seal their union. At last.
It was the same at every function, and this wedding reception was no different. You could tell, just by looking at the guests, what their job was. The techies were propping up the free bar (and the free bar was propping up the techies before the night was done), where they made disastrous efforts at chatting up the waitresses and bar maids. Cracking bad jokes that only they found raucously funny. Young Tariq was chief among them. The Field Agents gathered in a semi-circle round the dance floor, way too cool to actually join in. They nursed bottles of beer or glasses of fine red wine, looking on with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. Lucas and Tom, still seemingly joined at the hip, were half in shadow as they stood sentry. Tom looked at the "dancing", but Lucas' gaze lingered over the tall, blonde nursing a cocktail from the opposite side of the floor. Whether Ros was looking back at him, neither Ruth nor Harry could tell. As for the rest of the Field Agents, if they really felt daring and wanted to cut loose, they'd tap a foot in time to the music. Meanwhile, up on the dance floor giving it loads with gleeful abandon, were the Analysts. Always the quiet ones; the ones you least suspect. There would be broken limbs and torn ligaments aplenty before the night was done.
Presiding over the lot of them, however, were Harry and Ruth up on a first floor balcony mezzanine, looking down at their guests. It had been a long day for them both, but it was only now that they were finally getting some time together. He held her close, arms wrapped around the black satin clad hips, nipping at the lacing of her bodice with his teeth to make her laugh and blush. He loved the feel of her body as she tried to squirm away from him and when she replied with a playful swat to his thigh.
Then, she stopped and wrapped her arms around the back of his neck. For a long moment they simply gazed at each other, the racket from the DJ booth washing over them as they turned a slow circle where they stood.
"Looks like it's just you and me, now," he said, leaning in to kiss her.
Ruth smiled brightly. "Perfection," she replied, kissing him back.
A/N: I was going to simply weld this on to an actual story, but after what happened with the last I decided to simply go ahead and post it as a one shot while I'm working on a real, multi-chapter story. Thanks again for reading and, if you have a minutes, reviews would be appreciated.