With a sigh, Millicent took her hat from the stand and glanced in the mirror.
Fifty-one years old, she thought, and I'm already greying.
She had noticed it most strongly on Friday, when she had dressed for the funeral of the Pevensie family and young Eustace Scrubb. Not that it had bothered her much- hair being such a superficial thing- but it had surprised her, just a little. She did not think that she could be that much older, for example, than Eustace's mother (poor Alberta Scrubb, fine features marred by severe frown lines and her tired, tired eyes)- but her hair bore so many strands of grey that it was a daily visible reminder of her age, of her mortality.
It was strange that hair should have become her marker for mortality, that grey had come to signify dying and ginger, life. At school she had resented those fiery carrot strands, forever tugged at and dipped in ink. At Sunday School she had hidden behind hats, until she was old enough to realise what it meant to say that she was loved by God.
But it had changed, it had all changed twenty-eight years ago. Twenty-eight years and a week and a half ago, to be more precise. Robert had shown hints of her hair when he had come, so quietly and peacefully (too quietly and peacefully), breathing his first (and few) unsteady breaths. Even now she could see him; tiny slip of a baby with a small button nose, piercing blue eyes and a wisp of ginger dusting his pale head.
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away," she murmured, "blessed be the name of the Lord."
I believe, oh Lord, overcome my unbelief!
"Millicent?"
She felt, rather than heard, Samuel's footsteps behind her, and a smile touched her lips.
"Millicent, we should leave for church now."
Turning around, she placed her hat on her head and nodded.
"Yes," she said and laughed lightly, though it was a sad laugh and she knew that Samuel had noticed it. They would discuss it in the car, or after church, though, and now that she checked her watch, she saw that they were pressed for time. "Do you have the trays with you? It wouldn't do for us to be late to Mothering Sunday when we have the simnel cake."
But before they left the room Samuel took her in his arms in an almost crushing embrace and dusted a chaste kiss on her cheek.
He knows, she thought, without the faintest echo of surprise. He is thinking of Robert, too.
As they were leaving the church hall to make way for the 11am service and heading to the gardens for morning tea, Doris Millican approached her with a smile. Doris had always been cheerful, as a young girl in Sunday school to the almost but not-quite flighty young teacher, and now she was a mother. Mother.
The concept was still strange to Millicent's mind, strange enough that she dared not voice it. Young Doris Millican was more a mother on this Mothering Sunday than she, fifty-one year-old Millicent MacPherson, was. She tried not to feel jealous.
Thou shalt not covet.
The not-quite two years-old Mary bounced in Doris' arms, grinning toothily and clapping her hands together.
"Really Millicent, you outdid yourself with that cake today!" Doris exclaimed, before Millicent could greet her. "People will remember your wonderful simnel rather than any of the sermon or any of that motet. Reger, was it? You see, I've forgotten already! But oh, your cake- sugar and spice and everything nice, wasn't it, Mary?" Doris began cooing at her child.
Sugar and spice and everything nice.
Millicent had known her eyesight had begun to fail her when she had sat up the other night to stitch the hemline of an old dress, and she had slipped and pricked her finger. The intense sharp jolt, the sinking realisation of what had happened and the dull throb had faded within moments and she had forgotten the sensation, remembering only to make a note to buy a new thimble and perhaps invest in a pair of spectacles.
That selfsame sensation was right now hurtling through her body as though she were made of thin air.
"What are young girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice!"
"Millicent, don't you think this is a little advanced? What if it's a boy, and not a girl?"
Laughing, swatting the papers at Samuel.
"I know it's a little girl. She'll have your lovely hair, not my wretched locks, and we'll sing her to sleep at night."
But instead, Robert had come; her darling pale boy with his tufts of ginger. And he had been more than 'anything nice' that she might have hoped for in a girl, he had been her perfect little boy, and then the Lord had taken him away, seven hours after she had first held him.
"Millicent?"
She blinked, flustered, and smiled her way back into the present.
"Why, thank you, Doris. I hope Mary enjoyed it?"
She brushed lightly at the tiny trail of crumbs down the side of Mary's mouth and smiled as Mary waved her fists in the air.
"Cake!" she cried, "Mama, cake!"
"I will take that as a yes," Millicent smiled, and bent over so that she was eye to eye with Mary. "How are you today, Mary? Did you enjoy creche?"
Doris laughed.
"Oh Millicent, you know she's a terror at creche! A delight every other moment at church but oh, in the creche room! Don't you remember what she did when that poor girl, Jill Pole- God rest her soul- volunteered to help out in the creche room just last month?"
Millicent remembered very well the bite marks on Jill Pole's pale forearm. She had thought it amazing at the time that a child so young could bite so remarkably hard, particularly considering that they were only Mary's baby teeth. Jill had laughed it off, she recalled, and her mother, Gladys, had made some passing comment about how Jill had done far worse things at an older age than little Mary Millican. Doris, of course, had apologised profusely and baked a semolina cake in apology which Gladys donated to the morning tea table.
"Heaven knows you do more than enough to feed us ungrateful folk," Gladys had explained cheerfully, "and nothing would make me gladder than to share this cake with others who will appreciate it."
She was a lovely woman, Gladys; steady, dependable, warm. They had been part of the sewing group together, and she had helped Gladys on a particularly difficult pattern for a patchwork quilt. Yet she felt as though it was Gladys who had helped her more, sharing with such sincere ease passages of scripture, asking piercing questions that, often enough, Millicent had felt ashamed to not know the answer to.
"But you don't need to know the answers, do you?" Jill Pole had asked half shyly and half frankly as they had stood together one morning, serving tea. "Mum says that you sometimes say sorry when she asks something and you don't have anything to say. I don't- I don't think that's necessary. I think sometimes when we say, "Why", we get no answer except "Because". And it's not until afterwards that we see the signs were staring us right in the face."
Such words of wisdom from a sixteen year-old girl. Gladys had been a wonderful- and a richly blessed- mother. Millicent would miss Jill.
"God rest Jill- and God be with her mother," Millicent said as a realisation descended upon her, searing itself through her heart. "God be with Gladys Pole."
A look of horror flitted across Doris' face, and she covered her mouth with a hand. Mary reached out, still grinning toothily, and attempted to grab her mother's glove as though playing a game.
"Jill was an only child, wasn't she?" she said, and her eyes began to pool with tears. "Oh!- and Gladys has always been so lovely." She blinked, realising the foolishness of her words, and shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean to say. Whether or not Gladys is lovely isn't part of the matter at all, it's just- oh, poor Gladys! I don't know if I could bear it if anything happened to Mary."
"Robert, Robert! Samuel, Samuel- our baby! My baby!"
Millicent swallowed down the strange strands that had knotted in her throat.
"You would bear it, Doris," she said, feeling tired. "Christ bids us take up our cross."
Doris looked at her sympathetically, and Millicent had to fight the acerbic response on her lips- "Don't look at me like that, you don't know suffering. You can look at me when your brother has died in service of this country in a war that didn't solve anything and you can look at me when your only child dies in your arms, but you! "
God give me grace, she begged, as the anger flickered and bloomed inside. God give me grace.
Doris looked at her, still sickeningly sympathetic, and Millicent thought of poor Alberta Scrubb, from the funeral on Friday. It had been so much easier to show her grace, a woman who knew what it was to hurt and ache.
Inside the church, the organ began playing the final phrases of Kingsfold.
"I heard the voice of Jesus say," she heard Doris murmur in anticipation, and almost in response, the congregation inside sang those very words in a strangely unified voice, despite the various accents and pitches of its members.
In that moment, a ray of light escaped the clouds and rested upon Doris' face. Her eyes were closed, and her face was ever so slightly upturned. It was almost like an echo, or a very dim whisper, of Jesus' baptism, and Millicent found herself catching her breath. Only a moment, it lasted only a moment, but the light rested still against Doris' face, still in the movement of time.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
I have no child, Lord, she thought, and she felt the tears, warm and ready, in her eyes. I have no child, and you have made no promise either to me or to my husband as you did for Sarah, for Elizabeth. I am old, older than Hannah- and I am afraid that if you gave me a child, I would not give that child up to you as Hannah gave Samuel.
Then Doris was laying her hand on her forearm, and Millicent felt her prayer ripple and scatter with the wind.
"Millicent, may I come visit you on Wednesday? I-" she cleared her throat. "I would like to speak with you and, and seek some guidance. And you've always been so wonderful. May I come?"
It was as though a small flicker from a single candle had touched her; merely a whisper and an echo, but even now there were shadows lightening, and she did not feel so cold.
"Please do come," she said, and meant every word. "I would love to have you for tea, Doris."
And as Doris left and Samuel came to help her wash the cups and plates, Millicent felt a strange, familiar peace settle like a haze around her heart.
"Samuel," she murmured, and he looked at her questioningly. "Samuel, the Lord is faithful. All is well. The Lord is faithful."
He put the cup down into the basin and smiled as he nodded.
"Yes," he said, "the Lord is faithful." He paused a moment before picking the cup up and rinsing it. "I was speaking with Andrew before- Andrew Pole."
Her eyes flickered up to meet his.
"It sounds as though Gladys isn't coping very well. He wanted to know if I could help him understand."
"And what did you say?"
"Millicent. Shh, shh. The Spirit- the Spirit makes intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered."
Arms holding her, rocking her, in a darkened room of wet pillows and empty cots.
"What did you tell him, Samuel?"
He paused a moment, his brow slightly furrowed.
"I told him I was a terrible person to ask because a man isn't a mother, and we can't pretend to be. But-"
She already knew what he was going to say.
"I'll call on Gladys tomorrow," she promised, and he set down the spoons he was holding, wiped his hands on a nearby towel, smoothed her hair behind her left ear.
"What a wonderful wife the Lord has blessed me with," he said softly, and even though she had heard him say those words a hundred times over, and though they had been married thirty years, she still felt the beginnings of a small blush forming on her cheeks. "This world has to run on grace, or I would never have found her."
"What a wonderful life the Lord has blessed us with," she whispered back, catching his hand as it fell from her face.
Doris, she thought, and then, Gladys. And then a third figure flitted through her mind, and she grasped at it, glimpsed the woman's face, and knew. Alberta.
I asked for children.
And by the grace of God, still, she could be a mother.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
"I am this dark world's light;
look unto me, thy morn shall rise;
and all thy day be bright."
I looked to Jesus, and I found
in him my Star, my Sun;
and in that light of life I'll walk
till travelling days are done
A/N: Happy Mothering Sunday to everyone. I know this is barely a fanfic, because it's mostly about an OC I've created whose life has come into contact with a few characters from the CoN, but I didn't know where else to put this. It's designed to add to the AMM ficverse, at any rate...
The hymn is set to the tune "Kingsfold", and the words are by Horatio Bonar.