Gladys Pole set the mug onto the table, heavily. The aura of heaviness hung about her, too; seeped through the pores now visible on her cheeks, rested in the tiny creases of her forehead. It was so tangible, so thick one could hardly breathe, in her dark eyes.

And she was so young.

Millicent placed her own cup onto the saucer, untouched.

For a moment, neither woman spoke. Silence could be comforting, the swirls of steam rising from her tea could perhaps be beautiful; but here the silence was almost quantifiable (the exact height, breadth and width of Jill Pole). And it was heavy.

"Gladys." Hesitant glove resting on immobile forearm, slipping a note into her purse: 'Tea at mine, Thursday at 3?'

And Gladys had come. Of course she had come, of course she would come. Sadness was catching like that, even more catching than the flu, and she had only had to hear the bell to catch Samuel's gaze for him to nod and shuffle out the back to prune the perfectly pruned hedges, to sweep up lonesome petals that had not survived the fresh spring winds.

"I can't do it," Gladys said abruptly, the silence shattering. Millicent felt a shard lodge in her heart.

Oh Lord, oh Lord, give me words!

"Can't do what?" she asked, wishing her voice were gentler, more understanding.

No matter what, it will be abrasive.

"I can't clean out Jill's room," Gladys whispered, and her face crumpled like one of those napkins Millicent sometimes saw waiters shaking out in fancy restaurants. "I can't do it, because if I do then it-"

Then it will feel real, Millicent filled the words in, and the shard in her heart, only half dislodged, rent through thick, sinuous flesh. It will be final, because Jill will never come home.

She should speak. She should say something; this was what Andrew had spoken to Samuel about, what she had promised Samuel she'd do. This was what she had prayed for, wasn't it? And the Lord had answered. Her chance to mother, her chance to say to Gladys what she would have said to her own unborn daughters, her chance to comfort- and now, how useless, how painfully useless she was! Gladys would have been better off staying at home talking to the wall, or to a wardrobe!

I couldn't get rid of Robert's crib.

Perhaps she could say that. She opened her mouth, but the words drained in her throat, and she swallowed thickly.

Gladys cast her eyes downwards, and the heaviness pressed almost visibly about her shoulders as she fumbled in her purse.

He healeth them that are broken in heart. Oh Lord, bring her healing!

"Here," she murmured, fishing out her own handkerchief. "Gladys-"

But Gladys pulled out, with trembling hands, not a handkerchief, but a folded envelope. She unfolded it, pressed alongside the creases with tender, if shaking fingers, then pushed it hesitantly towards Millicent.

The envelope was still white. On the front, beside a small stamp featuring a small nightingale, was a simple address written with a consistent, firm hand:

Miss Jill Pole

15 Aylesbury St

London Borough of Islington,

London EC1R

She raised her eyes questioningly, but Gladys only bit her lip and looked away, so she cautiously turned the envelope over.

Return to Eustace Clarence Scrubb

15 Redhill St

London Borough of Camden

London NW1

The seal was unbroken.

"I don't know what to do," Gladys said, and her mouth stretched out in a grotesque smile as the tears flowed over her cheeks, spilled onto the table. "Jill will never get it, and oh- is it so awful that I want to read it? No- don't answer, I know it is, I know it's- it's invasive. Andrew told me so-" she broke off here, bit her lip as she glanced almost fearfully at Millicent. "We- we had an argument. He told me I was- too unstable- at the present moment. And perhaps he was right. But I virtually bit his head off- and I don't think I should have done it."

Was she to produce a lecture or a sermon on loving one's husband? – But that could wait, and even before the thoughts had risen and taken form in her mind, she was distracted and they flew away like wisps of steam from cooling tea. And Gladys was still speaking.

"- and I know it's dreadfully invasive, and Jill would-" she actually did laugh here, eyes crinkling even as the tears continued to form and topple, form and topple, "Jill would tell me what a monstrous thing it is I've done. 'We're not to know any story but our own', she'd say- do you know she said that?"

Millicent did in fact know. She wasn't sure where the phrase originated; she certainly hadn't heard Father Bowyer perpetuate it from the pulpit, and it had seemed, for the most part, to be rather a phrase employed by the youth and young adults at St Matthias'. Indeed, she had heard it many times from such youth, from behind the tea and coffee table. She had heard Jill Pole whisper it, as if in comfort, to Edmund Pevensie (and oh, how it burned to know that he, too, was gone; such a sweet, serious and kind young man); had heard Peter Pevensie (how could so many be gone with one train? Oh Lord, how much pain could be visited upon a single family, upon a single parish, a single city?)- young, promising Peter Pevensie murmur it as though impacting a piece of seasoned wisdom to Eustace Scrubb.

But her tongue was frozen, and in any case she knew it was not the time to speak, so she merely nodded, reached out and laid her hand over Gladys', still trembling slightly. Gladys glanced at her briefly, and Millicent thought she saw a swirl of thankfulness intermingled with the scores of emotions she could not quite read (but could perhaps guess at).

"- if- if she were here, if she had read the letter- she mightn't have told me everything, but she'd have told me something. What am I to think of this? 'Just friends' don't write each other letters when they live so near each other in London and see each other so often at school, at church. And I do want to know, I would so like to have known- Andrew and I often spoke of Eustace, and he is- was- such a lovely boy-"

Gladys broke off, reaching for her handkerchief.

"I'm sorry, I haven't let you get a word in edgewise," she babbled, the words foaming and tumbling out like waves, Millicent's own tongue still thick in her throat. "I know I'm just being foolish, and it's not as if this is- well, it could have been important, terribly important, but I know that it's not- well-"

She looked hard at Millicent then, her eyes blazing, and Millicent knew the passion that lay behind them could not be washed away or glazed over by mere tears. "I know that Jill is with the Lord, and I know that there is comfort there; I know I shall see her again on that last day when the trump sounds. And I will hear the Lord say to her, 'Well done, good and faithful servant'", and we will be together, and that gives me joy, truly, Millicent, it does, but-"- and Gladys paused to draw breath.

And also to avoid saying the words she is afraid to say, for fear of making it true, or for fear of being heretical.

A strangely comforting sensation bloomed in Millicent's chest at the thought. I know the trick too, she thought, and, unbidden, daughter! – The last word grew and magnified and echoed in her heart till she was afraid she would smile, a ruinous smile that might only serve to widen the heavy silence that only now was dissipating from between them.

"I know that I will see her again on the last day," Gladys repeated in a whisper, her eyes dropping to the tabletop once more. She rolled her lower lip ever so slightly, as though biting the inside of her lip (and the heaviness was still there, and she, so young, so young!)

"But you will not be mother and daughter, not in the same sense," Millicent murmured, and Robert's face rose before hers again; his tiny button nose, his tinier, perfect, pale little fingers.

Gladys gave a dry, choking cry.

"Sixteen years, Millicent! I know that is ever so much more than what you were given and I ought to be thankful- and I am, I couldn't have had a sweeter child than Jill- but she was just starting to grow up, and I- I oughtn't have done it, perhaps, but I treasured them in my heart- hopes, and dreams, and fancies, and at times Andrew and I would talk and say-" she shook her head- "oh, foolish things, but-"

Millicent pressed her hand against Gladys'.

"They're not foolish, Gladys," she said firmly, and Gladys nodded even as she closed her eyes, let her head lower perceptibly.

"When we have grandchildren, that sort of thing," Gladys said, dully. "Not for now, not for a while, but it just seemed things would go that way. Jill would graduate, perhaps find a job, settle down and have children. And she and Eustace have been close for several years now, and at times, I thought- so when I saw the letter-"

The heaviness was descending like a curtain between them. The tea had long ago stopped steaming; Millicent realised with something almost like shock that she had almost knocked her own cup over, that she was standing. It was not far to go, to walk around the table, to sit beside Gladys, but the curtain was falling thick and fast, and it was so heavy to breathe, a darkness that caught and swelled in her throat, and at one point she almost tripped over her own ankle in the crossing over.

Carefully, gently, Millicent eased herself into the chair beside Gladys, clasped the younger woman's cold white hand with both of hers.

"We all have dreams," she said softly, "hopes for how the future will look." Sugar and spice and everything nice! "And we can't stop those dreams, anymore than we can stop being ourselves- but what we can do, what we must do, is give those dreams back to the Lord."

"All we have is His," murmured Gladys tiredly. "It is not- has never been- fully ours."

Samuel, where is he? Where's our baby? Where's Robert?

- tired, tired eyes, and a broken voice-

"No," she said, her hands and Gladys' hand blurring into one, swirling. "It was never fully ours. They were never fully ours- And-"

The words stuck in her throat like cement, but she felt something pushing at her heart and knew she had to speak.

"Even if Jill had lived, Gladys; even if my Robert had lived, we would have had to have given them up, let them into the wilderness, trusted them to the Lord and all His angels."

Even as she spoke, the weight lessened and the cement thinned. Words flowed more freely now, as water from a draining pond.

"But we do have one thing, Gladys, one thing that is ours, is ours completely- such that none can separate us from it. And what we have is of infinite worth. What God did not ask of Abraham He gave to us, and in our own Lord's precious Son we have life, and I will see my Robert again and you will see Jill, and it mightn't be the same, but it wouldn't have been the same in five, ten, twenty years here; and there, things eternal will never change! And we have that, Gladys, we have that!"

The glow of the words lingered in her heart, and, perhaps in the room, and the curtain seemed to lift, infinitesimally. Then suddenly, the room seemed to whirl, or perhaps it was still, and it was Millicent who was disoriented, moving this way and that, and guilt like a bag of cement settled in her stomach.

A lecture, this woman wants comfort and I give a lecture!

The silence paused, swelled, and Millicent could almost feel the invisible life pounding within it, saw the curtain with certainty looming closer, darker, heavier.

- Then she felt it.

Not much, just the tiniest of gestures, but it was definite- a slump in Gladys' hand, the slight relaxation of shoulders, the almost imperceptible deflation of one about to breathe fresh, new air. The curtain was flushed back as waves came, billowing, bringing with them the clean, pure air of joy, of relief.

She met Gladys' eyes and smiled hesitantly.

"I just wanted to see Jill grow up," Gladys whispered.

Wordlessly, without breaking her gaze, Millicent held out the letter. Gladys blinked almost as in confusion, looked at it, and for the briefest moment a smile illuminated her face.

"We needn't know anyone's story but our own," she said, her voice high and thin and shaking but firm. She took the letter, held it briefly, smoothed the creases once more, then began looking about the room. Millicent guided her to the wastepaper basket, and after a brief pause, Gladys dropped the envelope, turned away.

"Thank you for tea, Millicent," she said, and Millicent smiled at her.

"You are free any time," she replied- then, suddenly, Gladys dropped her purse and had flung her arms about her, and she was holding the younger woman, could smell her perfume, the faint odour of starch on her shirt, the floral shampoo in her soft, wispy hair, and she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply.

The Lord doth build up Jerusalem

And gather together the outcasts of Israel


A/N: Sooo this is my 'sorry I haven't updated A Mother's Musings recently' post. Also I think Gladys Pole doesn't deserve enough recognition, and her grief, though painful, would be slightly different to Alberta Scrubb's.