Hung Out To Dry
By the time Scrubb is ready, it might be too late for Pole. Part of the Stone Gryphon Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies AU. A collaborative fic with OldfashionedGirl95 and Starbrow.
My apologies if you have seen a version of this before. This story was originally posted in the Everybody Lives, Nobody Dies AU LiveJournal community at the request of reader Clairel. Starbrow and OldFashionedGirl95 have decided to continue Eustace and Jill's AUT tale I began. To get them started, I now repost the story with modifications and Hung Out To Dry now becomes the first chapter in a collaborative work with OldFashionedGirl95 and Starbrow following, and then my conclusion. So, go and put them both on alert and see what happens next! More to come very, very soon!
Quebec, 1954
Scrubb shows up at her Quebec City doorstep unannounced with a month's beard, the dust of the Canadian badlands still on his boots, a rucksack bulging with teeth, bones, brushes, picks, cameras, rolls of undeveloped film, and a small duffel stuffed with soiled socks and pants.
Jill had been expecting him for weeks, ever since a frantic, incoherent telegram from Mary, a terse one from Peter, and then a longer letter of explanation from Asim. Mary had apparently gotten drunk enough on moonshine with Peter to forget her seven years of mourning for her dead husband, with the predictable results. Scrubb had said he was very happy for them, really and truly and everything was fine, except, of course, it wasn't. Three days later, he bought a Ford and left the Everglades, heading north.
"Indian, French, Italian, or Chinese?" she asks as he drops his bags at the door. A cloud of dust rises and Jill hopes it does not settle on her still-damp water colours.
She adds, "But I can't bake anything as I've got pottery drying in the oven."
She is not surprised when he grunts, "Anything but Indian or Chinese." Those are Mary's favourite foods.
Scrubb knows his way to the bathroom; there is a space in the cupboard for his kit and a drawer in the bedroom with clothes. She keeps two sizes, one for Scrubb at the beginning of the paleontological season when he's fed and watered, and one set for the end of the season when he's as desiccated as the bones and rock he digs and meticulously records.
While he shaves and bathes, Jill clears and cleans her counter, measures out a mound of flour, drops in two eggs, and begins to mix and then knead the yellow dough. She decides to roll it out by hand; they are in no hurry.
Scrubb returns, shaven, scrubbed, most of the dirt gone from under his fingernails, and very, very thin. He's cheeks are burned from the wind, his belt is cinched tight around a very narrow waist, and his collar bones are sticking up from under his shirt. Jill decides to take the basket herself and go down to the garden to see what looks ready. He's just gotten clean and there's no reason to dirty him up again.
Scrubb nods. "I'll take over, Pole." The long, slow, smooth process of shaping and rolling the dough, folding it, and cutting it, will be good for him.
By the time she returns with a basket of basil, garlic, salad greens, and courgette, Scrubb has moved her Coelophysis bauri illustration for his Ghost Ranch article and her water colours of rose bushes from the kitchen rack. In their place, he's carefully hung long strands of golden, cut pasta to dry.
"It's beautiful," he says of the dinosaur illustration. Jill has drawn the little green thing leaping in the air to catch a dragonfly. It reminds her very much of the Owls of Narnia and how they would catch bats in mid-flight. Scrubb sees the similarities too, but the scientific community isn't ready for dinosaurs who are birds or birds who were once dinosaurs.
He'll be sharing publication credit on the article with Mary. Mary's done that and so much more for Scrubb. Grant money and guest lectures, polite, enthusiastic invitations, and teaching offers have followed Scrubb ever since he left Oxford with two firsts to pursue his research and defend his thesis in the States. Jill wonders if it is out of guilt that Mary has so enthusiastically helped Scrubb advance. Surely, there is envy, too, as Scrubb is easily scaling the ladder that has proven too steep for Mary. First eclipsed by her famous husband, now Mary is outpaced by her brilliant protégé. One of Mary's gifts, Jill always thought, was her ability to collect talented people. Perhaps, Mary felt a sense of vicarious accomplishment?
Scrubb carefully sets the Coelophysis bauri illustration on a high shelf with an air of weary resignation and starts on the salad. He never uses enough salt but Jill doesn't correct his seasoning this time.
Jill gently pushes the sprout out of the fat garlic cloves with the tip of her knife – it tastes bitter otherwise – and slices the dark green courgette into an even julienne. She sautés the garlic until it is nutty brown and adds the courgette. When the vegetables are tender, she dumps the cooked pasta and some of the salted water into the sauce (always add pasta to the sauce, she learned in Veneto), and sprinkles the (fragrant and torn, never cut) basil and cheese at the end. The Quebec sheep milk cheese isn't a proper parmigiano-reggiano, but it's hard and piquant, and enhances the sauce nicely.
All the surfaces of her flat where they might eat are covered with pottery, paintings, and illustrations, so they eat on the balcony, elbow to elbow and it's almost like Nice was that time when Scrubb was studying in Paris and she was learning to cook in the farmhouses of Provence and the hotels of the Italian Riviera. They enjoy a bottle of French white wine, twirl tender pasta on their forks, and listen to the sounds of the ships on the river.
She had selected this flat for its views. Jill finds her inspiration in the greens and blues of the Quebec summer, though autumn comes early in the Laurentians. In a few weeks she'll return to the yellows, oranges and reds of Jamaica for the winter and to see her parents. Her cousin Esther is getting married and Jill is Chief Cake Girl.
"You know why I'm here?" Scrubb asks just as they start washing up.
"Yes," she replies. "They were worried." I was worried.
They go back out to the balcony to finish the bottle.
"I should spend a few weeks in New York," Scrubb says. "Develop the film, look at the surveying I did in the Badlands, and catalog what I did find. Will you come with me, before you go to Jamaica?"
Jill hates parts of America intensely. It's not a good place for a woman with dark skin.
"We won't go further south than New York," he says. "We could visit Boston, see the Clarks, and Lucy and Jack, and the kids."
"You'll get lost in the Harvard Museum again," Jill says.
Scrubb laughs, sounding almost normal. "I never got lost. I just lost track of time studying the Kronosaurus queenslandicus."
He's looking for her support. Jill thinks she knows why. "Where will Mary be?"
He lowers his eyes. "I'm not sure. You know Mary. She could be anywhere."
But she'll be with Peter dangles unsaid.
His car would make her migration from Quebec easier. "If I go with you to New York, maybe you could come with me to Jamaica once you finish up at the Museum?"
Scrubb always says no; there aren't any dinosaur bones or sea monsters in the Caribbean. And Mary is never there, either.
But this time he nods. "I think that would be good for me."
They toast the plan.
"I don't hope for it anymore," Scrubb says and drains his glass. He's a little drunk. "I don't dream it, or wish it. I know nothing would ever come of it. So why do I still feel betrayed?"
By Mary? Or by Peter? Jill doesn't ask. Probably both, and maybe Peter more than Mary who has never given Scrubb any romantic encouragement, ever. The problem with putting High Kings on pedestals is that it can be a long way down when they fall. Jill doesn't remind him that they've been betting on this for years with Edmund and Lucy. Someone owes someone money. It had always been a joke. Maybe Scrubb will see the absurdity of it. Eventually.
"Let's go to bed, Scrubb."
They've learned over the years how to sleep together, ever since the long trek across Ettinsmoor. Her back to Scrubb's front isn't good for either of them, with their bodies pressed together feeling what the heart doesn't. Scrubb turns away from her to face the wall and Jill sidles up to him and throws her arm over his bony back and across his chest.
Unexpectedly, he rolls back over, and pulls her into his wiry arms. He tastes of basil, garlic and wine. "Pole, you're never going to be my consolation prize," he says eventually.
"I know, Scrubb."
And so, as always, they come to the line they will not cross. They separate, line up, back pressed to back, one blanket on top, one of the bottom. Sex, out of pity, to soothe hurt and rejection, or to offer comfort are all terrible substitutes for making love. That's something they both understand. Jill won't settle for second place in his life. When Scrubb is ready to put her first, Jill wonders if it might be too late for her.
This story now continues in OldFashionedGirl95's lovely, wonderful story Bedraggled As I Am, in which Lucy is insightful, Scrubb is morose, Jill has artist's block, and a melancholy story is told. And the hstory concludes in Starbrow's Enchantment Vast But Foolish.
It was all the fault of Anastigmat. One day, Anastigmat wrote a TSG AU story on her Live Journal in which Peter, Mary Russell, Asim bin Kalil, and Eustace Scrubb go to the Everglades to look for alligators. A companion piece of hers became Mary/Peter shippy and explored how they both shared a bond in feeling they had disappointed Digory Kirke. I tried an experiment, attempted something sentimental and failed. With much better success, Songsmith posted a smutty follow-on to the hunting for alligators story in which, while Asim and Eustace are cleaning the cameras that fell into the swamp, Peter and Mary get drunk on moonshine and their association takes a more intimate turn, with disastrous results. In response to a request from reader Clairel, I wrote this miserable aftermath between Eustace and Jill.
With this melancholy end, Eustace pining for someone who will never love him that way, Jill building her own life and relationships without Eustace, and them proceeding on separate paths, Starbrow and OldFashionedgirl95 now pick up the tale. That combined story will, to give you a preview, span New York, Boston, Jamaica, dinosaurs, rum, hips, Lucy being awesome, and lots more. So put them both on alert and watch how they spin the AU and tell them how awesome they are. Once they finish, I conclude new (yes new) content.
Thank you!