Summary: Thirty years after TLB, Alberta reads an unsent letter, remembers, and regrets. Angst, Eustace/Jill, but also tackles a number of other topics. Inspired by the song The Living Years by mike & the mechanics.
Alberta sat in the living room, clutching her favourite reminder of Eustace Clarence; ironic, it was a letter he had never sent to Jill Pole. Still lying on his desk when he died, it was full of cheerful optimism and affectionate sarcasm. The obsessively neat handwriting seemed painfully old-fashioned now, and the language ridiculously outdated, and it was the first time she'd read it in a long time. Harold's recent death, though; it had prompted her to dig out the letter, and make her peace with the past. Reading the letters, she remembered the arguments, arguments in which she was aware she had often behaved worse than her teenage son. I wish I knew why my parents were so awful about you, Pole; well, my mother, particularly. I think Father quite likes you, even if he doesn't display it openly. We argued about you today-all I wanted to know was whether you were welcome at Easter, for crying out loud!
"I don't see why you have to be friends with her, Eustace Clarence." Alberta took a careful, measured bite of her marrow, and chewed several times. She was not going to get angry about this. Not again. She swallowed. "Why can't you be friends with that nice Jackle girl I met at the open day last year?"
"That nice Jackle girl is a spiteful little cat. She made Pole's life a perfect misery for a long time." Apparently, he wasn't going to get riled up, either. That was a surprising display of maturity. Her son was showing more and more of that these days.
"Better a spiteful cat than that common guttersnipe!" It was out before Alberta had time to think about her words. Harold frowned at her. "I'm sorry, Eustace Clarence, but I will never like your precious friend."
"Well, hypothetically, what if I were to marry Pole?" Eustace snapped. "Then you'd jolly well have to be nice to her!"
"Catch me at it!" Alberta bit her tongue; that had been childish. "You're too young to get engaged, Eustace Clarence." This had been what she had feared all along; it was why she didn't like the girl in the first place. Jill Pole was corrupting her son into becoming a dreadful, common young man. Imagine thinking about marriage at sixteen!
"I'm sixteen!" Eustace threw his fork down, and scowled at his mother. Now it was his turn to receive a frown from Harold. "I'm an adult, Alberta. And I'm not saying that I want to marry Pole, Mother," Mother! And Alberta knew her son better than he did. Ten years time-perhaps five, perhaps even less-would see him the husband of that awful girl, "simply that she is my friend, and I wish you could be nice to her."
"I shan't!"
Alberta remembered that argument, and realised in retrospect that her son had behaved better than her. There is nothing quite so humbling. Harold had taken each of them aside individually later that day, to speak about Jill Pole; of course Eustace Clarence was going to marry her, he had said calmly to his wife; well, their son could do an awful lot worse. At least young Jill Pole had a brain and a heart; Experiment House is good at giving the former, but terribly bad at the latter; didn't Alberta remember?
She didn't know what he had said to Eustace Clarence, but her son had approached her later, contritely; he wouldn't take back his defence of Jill Pole, but he apologised for the way in which he had approached it. Pole was his friend, he said; well, anyone could see that she was more than that (except, apparently, her son and the girl herself), but Alberta accepted the half-apology (with somewhat bad grace) and let it lie. How she wished, now, that she had been that necessary confidant, that she had listened to all his confused feelings, cherished them up in her heart. Then, perhaps, she would have had more to fall back up than crumpled bits of paper and a few staged, uncomfortable photographs. (She had one of the three of them, smiling falsely at the camera, and another one with Jill, Lucy and Edmund, laughing into the camera. It had been discovered in his personal effects after The Crash, and oh, how she had treasured it). Eustace Clarence's fingertips were grazing Jill's arm, in a way that could have been unintentional, but probably wasn't; the four were standing in a park (Hyde Park, Lucy's cheerful script identified it as, in the previous summer) with sunlight streaming down on them and shining off from Lucy's golden curls, making them look white in the monochrome. Edmund had his university colours pinned to his shirt, and a hand on his sister's shoulder. Alberta had realised with a start that her son was easily the tallest person in the picture, and Lucy just the shortest. Had she missed this? Had she missed her son becoming a man?
Harold, perhaps, had been that confidant, the one she should have been. Certainly, after Eustace Clarence had emerged from that conversation, he had looked rather sheepish and a trifle relieved; Harold would never tell her what had passed between the two Scrubb men in that private dialogue, not even after Eustace Clarence and Jill Pole had both had their lives wrenched from them.
Despite her avowed dislike of the girl, Alberta had felt some significant pain at the death of Jill Pole; it didn't seem right that any young girl should have her life cut off at sixteen. Or perhaps she was just mourning her because Eustace Clarence would have done. Either way, Harold had said that it represented a significant move forward. Alberta had written to Mr Pole (there seemed to have been a constant stream of Mrs Poles, and when Alberta found that out, she had felt a little sympathy for the girl), and asked if she could go to the girl's funeral "in Eustace Clarence's stead." The letter back had been warm and open, though quite blunt; Jill Pole's funeral was for Jill Pole's family, though the sentiment was much appreciated. His letter ended with a charming-and sincere, Alberta thought-few sentences about her own son. She'd always wondered about those gaps in her knowledge of Eustace Clarence's life. How was he when he wasn't with his parents? Very different, it seemed-with a dry sense of humour, an affectionate nature, and a reluctant sense of adventure. The letter acknowledged what she and Harold had always expected: we had better meet and become friends; after all, we'd probably have been family within a few years, if I am any judge of relationships.
So they had met, and made polite small talk for half an hour. She'd been so angry that Harold couldn't come, but perhaps if he had, it would have been less of a healing for her. Afterwards, Mr Pole (Gerald?) had seized Alberta's hand, and pumped it up and down several times. "Nice lad, your boy," he said, tears sparking again in his eyes. "Made my daughter very happy, and I liked him on his own merits. Sorry for your loss." She'd returned his handshake stiffly, and mumbled similar things about Jill, but she couldn't match his touching simplicity-she was acutely aware that she had despised Jill Pole-and she'd cried on the train on the way home. The letter Eustace Clarence had not sent paid tribute to the friendship, I miss you, I suppose, Pole; you're managing to irritate me even when you aren't here. Congratulations.
Apart from the blustery tenderness and brusque compliments, Eustace Clarence's unsent letter was filled with memories that she had never approved of before; many of them, she now realised, he had not shared with her, on the grounds that they would upset her. She had believed Jill Pole to be her son's only friend at the school; in fact, she could see from his letter, he'd had quite a wide circle. Tate and Peterson and goodness knows who else were almost exclusively foreign names to her, though she could glean information from the letter. Tate and Peterson, she remembered them, a tall, slender girl and an even taller, lankier boy; they'd come to Eustace Clarence's funeral, uninvited, playing hookey from school, but she hadn't spoken to them, feeling that these strangers had no place there. How she wished she had: if she hadn't been so unreservedly horrid to Jill Pole, perhaps Eustace Clarence would have felt able to introduce his other friends to her, and they would not have been strangers. From the letter, Eustace Clarence seemed to have disliked Tate, referring to her as the fourth silliest girl in all England-after your beloved Bennet sisters, and to have shared a reasonable level of confidence with Peterson. Peterson was a rugby player, she gathered, in the Second XV; she had not known Eustace Clarence played for the First XV until after The Crash. A photograph of the team had been found amongst Jill Pole's effects. She snorted. A wonderful mother, she had been.
There was one passage that truly puzzled her in the letter, with references to places she had never heard of and names that scared her. Narnia, Aslan-they seemed to be written with a sort of reverence. Alberta could imagine that, had her son had this conversation aloud with Jill Pole, he would have been whispering. People called Marsh-Wiggles and dwarves and Rilians. Private regrets about not going to Golg? This passage had always upset her in the past, had led her to question whether her son had been entirely well. Today, it seemed to offer comfort, and Alberta was not sure why. A sense of belonging, of understanding what had changed her son so much...She repeated, in hushed tones, some of the stranger lines from the passage: Pole, Aslan would never leave us without help... remember the Signs?... come and drink, He told you... saved me from falling (you know I've forgiven you, and so has Aslan, so stop making that face)... there is no other stream... Aslan, Aslan, what a heart-stopping name. She shivered, and as she fell asleep, she repeated it over and over.
In her sleep, or perhaps awake, she heard a voice saying Peace, Daughter of Eve.
Anyway, I'd better go, Jill. Harold is calling me. We're going fishing, apparently. Joy!
(Eustace) Scrubb
P.S.: I leave you with this small piece of literary gold-
"She tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof."
Oh, what bliss to be look-proof in this household.
I should stop saying things like that. I love my mother, Pole. I do. I promise.
P.P.S.: STOP CALLING ME CLARA! It isn't funny any more!
A/N: I'm pretty happy with the first bit, but to me, the ending seems rushed. All criticism welcomed, but flames will be used to keep me warm (apparently it's going to snow tomorrow :D:D)