Bloomsbury, London, April 1945
If asked, Elphinstone Urquart would agree that life, in general, was good.
How could it not be, if one had a comfortable flat with a fireplace and a gramophone, a fulfilling and well-paid job, and the freedom to fill one's days as one pleased? If, on top of that, one had the satisfaction of having worked hard for one's place in the world, with nobody to thank except one or two kind people? How could life not be good with a dog by one's feet and Handel in the air?
Taking a puff from a pipe, Elphinstone leaned back. It was Friday evening, the end of the working week. Elphinstone had traded the Ministry robes for a slim-cut smoking jacket, put on a gramophone record, and sat down in the armchair by the fireplace, feet warmed by Orfeo who had curled up on the hearthrug and was chasing rabbits in his sleep.
It used to be that Elphinstone looked forward to Friday evenings. Not that work wasn't satisfying; it certainly was that, especially for someone who had started out as a mere clerk. Still, weekends had always been sacred. No overtime on Fridays, no work taken home for Saturdays and Sundays. Those were the days for walks and books, for dinner with a few, select friends, and for a premiere at Covent Garden now and then. In short, days to enjoy life's little pleasures.
Also, weekend days were days of freedom. One could get some curious questions when one had grown up in a colony, often liberally studded with veiled criticism of a mother who subjected her offspring to a climate like that, or a father who should either have done better for Britain or not have been down there in the first place (as if young Elphie had ever been asked). Eventually, conversations would inevitably turn to why the Consul and his wife never visited, and why Elphinstone wasn't in International Magical Cooperation; surely the Consul could have landed a son of his in a better entry position than that of a simple clerk?
Few were the people in Wizarding Britain who didn't ask such questions. Kettleburn's young apprentice was a rare exception, a young woman with whom Elphinstone had begun to strike up a tentative friendship over a sprained paw some time ago. Frederick Johnson from the British-West African Wizarding Society was another one. And then, of course, there was Griselda Marchbanks.
But then, Griselda Marchbanks had known Elphinstone much longerthan anyone else in these latitudes.
It had been a perfect coincidence that they'd met again, back on Elphinstone's first day in London, in April 1921. Elphinstone had been strolling down Diagon Alley, looking for new robes, a place to live, perhaps an offer for a position as a clerk or shop assistant somewhere. And then, suddenly, at the bargain table of Flourish & Blott's, something about a woman across the table had seemed oddly familiar. She was short, clad in impeccable, high-necked robes, her dark blonde curls cropped short like a man's, and a pince-nez in front of inquisitive eyes that forever seemed a tad narrowed, especially when they scrutinised book titles - or insubordinate ten-year-olds.
No, even after almost ten years, there could be no doubt that this was the traveller from London who had stayed with them for a month before she travelled on to join a lady friend in Calabar, back in September 1911.
The woman hadn't looked up yet. Elphinstone's first impulse had been to turn around, go back to Master Malkin's, perhaps, on the pretence of having forgotten to buy gloves, or simply to disappear in the crowd. But that would have been cowardly - unmanly, really. And besides, if one encountered Griselda Marchbanks on one's first day in England, how big were the chances that one could avoid her forever?
And so, Elphinstone decided to take a heart. "Ma… Madam Marchbanks?"
The woman looked up. She frowned, as if she couldn't fathom for the life of her who this tall, slender creature in the khaki travelling robes might be. Then, after a breath or two, her forehead smoothed, and she took the pince-nez from her nose. She nodded, mostly to herself, and slowly extended her hand.
"Mr Urquart, I gather?"
It had been the beginning of a friendship that now entered its twenty-fifth year. After a sigh of relief at the greeting, Elphinstone had followed Griselda to the tea parlour, where she'd ordered Fortescue's Monumental Tea for Two, suspecting (quite rightly) that her guest was ravenous. Griselda hadn't asked any questions. She'd simply spoken to Elphinstone as if it had been the most natural thing on earth that they should walk into each other in Diagon Alley on a Monday afternoon, and declared that lunch would be served at her house this Sunday at one.
They'd taken it from there, and indeed, little by little, Elphinstone had begun to talk. Several Sunday lunches, a few teas, and more than a few bottles of wine later, Griselda Marchbanks had learned how the rebellious ten-year-old she had met at the Consul's had come to be the serious-faced youth in pinstripes who sat across from her in her Islington parlour, cigarette in hand and eyes that looked as if they desperately wanted to be optimistic.
It wasn't until Elphinstone had finished that Griselda had asked her first question: "So. Now what?"
Elphinstone had shrugged. "Try to find a job, make myself a life, I suppose."
Griselda readjusted her pince-nez, the better to look across it. "Love?"
"Perhaps," Elphinstone had answered, and it had come out more defiantly than intended.
"A woman's?"
No answer.
"You know that with a little skill you'd have a good chance at keeping a wife from discovering your secret if that's what you want." She took a sip from her teacup. "Is it?"
"No," Elphinstone whispered.
"Good." Griselda set down her cup, got up to retrieve her wand from the desk, and turned around to face Elphinstone. "I will lend you my support. I daresay you'll need it on occasions. I will also always have an open ear for you. But there is one thing I cannot accept, and that is betraying the confidence of a loved one. Mind you, living without lying to someone you care for will be difficult for you, sometimes even impossible, and there will be times when you will curse your fate, honesty, perhaps even wizardkind. But if this is what you truly want, then I will be there for you. No matter what happens." Her face broke into a faint smile. "Consider me your adopted maiden aunt."
Griselda fell silent again. The only sounds in the room were the tick-tick-ticking of the grandmother clock and a rustle of Griselda's robes when the cat brushed by her legs. Only when she saw Elphinstone give a slow nod at last did she continue. "Give me your papers."
"My papers?"
"Of course. I want to see what you've done to them in order to get here." She took the bundle of parchment, shook her head, and tutted. Again, again, and again. "This won't do. Not at all. Solid work for a non-Hogwarts nineteen-year-old, and no doubt good enough for the Muggles who got you here, but the Ministry will see right through this."
"The Ministry?"
"Naturally. Where else do you think a bright young lad such as you should work?" She spread out the papers on her desk and pointed her wand at a spot on the first one, then repeated the procedure on the others. "There."
~ / ~
In the days that followed, Griselda had provided Elphinstone with an interview in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, persuaded an old friend to let out two rooms in her Chelsea terrace at an affordable rate, and then proceeded to buy a small bottle of Firewhisky and a pack of fine cigarettes for both of them, to celebrate the successful signing of two contracts.
Those early years had been little short of blissful. Going to work each day, being a respected, contributing member of society (working for the Ministry, no less), having money to spare for a bit of creature comfort, eventually for a bigger flat and a gramophone, and later still, being promoted to a job with an office of one's own, to which one could easily bring a well-behaved dog - it surpassed everything young Elphinstone had dreamed of, poring over the books of the library in the Consul's mansion. Even a few friendships had happened over the years, honest friendships with people who took one as one was. Horace, for example, who would never judge a fellow lover of Handel and Havanas, and Wilhelmina, who never judged, period.
And if one thing was missing to make life truly perfect, well, one couldn't have it all, could one?
Oh, it wasn't as if the attempt had never been made, at least for the mere physical side of it. The first had been with a Muggle lady from the South Bank, one sweltering night in August 1927, when heat and loneliness and the burning desire for the experience, finallythe experience, had proved too much to be tempered with a cold bath and some music. But the knowledge that the woman's moans had been for money (and probably a good deal of pity) had filled Elphinstone with more shame and embarrassment than any kind of pleasure could have compensated for - if there had been any pleasure to begin with.
A second occasion had presented itself a year later, in the form of a bob-haired, cigarette-smoking woman in a West End nightclub. But when, after who-knew-how-many dances and a few drinks (very few on Elphinstone's part, rather more on the lady's), the parted lips and the silk-sheathed thigh couldn't possibly issue the invitation even more clearly - well, Elphinstone had simply been unable to do anything but mutter a polite excuse, kiss the lady's hand, and disappear into the night, never to return to the world of Muggle nightlife.
What good was a moment of exaltation if what one really wanted was to be loved for what one was?
That night, Elphinstone had made a decision. The flat would be refurbished, the paint done up, new bookcases fitted and a fireplace installed. A gramophone would be bought, a cooking course booked, and a subscription to Covent Garden taken out, cost what it might. Life would be as comfortable as it could be. Home would be a place of quiet, dependable happiness, with a tail-wagging companion to provide warmth and laughs, and with always an open door for whoever would come to share dinner, a glass, or simply some talk.
But Elphinstone Urquart wasn't made for this thing they called love.
The conviction remained firmly in place. It was surprisingly easy to live by. Elphinstone wasn't one to go out looking for adventure; 1921 had been adventurous enough for a lifetime, thank you most kindly. Anyway it wasn't often that a shapely behind, say, a smooth voice, or an intelligent conversation made Elphinstone's heart beat faster. It was rarely anything that a bit of music, and sometimes, though very rarely, a wandering hand in the dark couldn't fix.
Certainly, Muggles had clubs for all sorts of people, thus probably also for the Elphinstones of the world. But Elphinstone wasn't a nightlife kind of person; this much was clear. The dim light, the cheap silk, the air thick with smoke and too-heavy perfume, and then the knowledge that so many couples didn't survive the stress of a secret life, of a love that had no place outside dingy bars and small flats, had invariably left Elphinstone with nothing but a stale taste in the mouth and a lump in the chest.
No, as things were, Elphinstone was happiest living the quiet life of a bachelor with a place in society. If that meant renouncing twosomeness, well, then so be it. Countless people had managed before, and so had Elphinstone.
Until Minerva McGonagall arrived.
She had struck Elphinstone the day she'd first introduced herself, with the brisk handshake of the well-mannered middle-class girl, confident for her top marks at Hogwarts and a height of a good five foot ten in her boots. She was the angular type, not mannish, but the kind that defied classical standards of female beauty with her pulled-back hair and unpowdered face, and the robes that were so unlike what Crouch's and Benson's trainees considered work attire. It was refreshing.
She was also a young woman with a head of her own. Miss Brown and Miss Quirrell weren't exactly discreet, and thanks to of the DMLE's tea kitchens being right next to the Wizengamot Administration Office, Elphinstone already liked this Minerva McGonagall even before she presented herself for her job interview.
~ / ~
"Turned him down, can you believe it? Huge farm, all his own land, supplies cheese to the King himself, they say. All because she doesn't want to give up a 'part of herself.' Part of herself, Merlin's suspenders. As if a bit of magic wouldn't come in handy on a farm now and then."
"Oh, please. Can you see Minerva McGonagall doing nothing but milking spells and ploughing charms for the rest of her life? Didn't they say she'd won a scholarship for Salem?"
"Something like that."
"So maybe she wanted to do more with her life than farming. A career, like."
"And look where it got her. No Salem, no MacGregor, instead a secretarial job at the Ministry. I'd have taken the farm any day."
"Maybe she's going to save money to go and study."
"Oh, I can just picture it.
Professor McGonagall…"
"Who knows? I wouldn't put it past her. She got a scholarship once; she may get it again. And it's not exactly as if she's
inviting suitors."
"You can say that again. If she goes on dressing like my shrivelled spinster aunt, I bet she'll have enough time for her books to become a professor well before either of us have children."
"Oh, bag it. You're just jealous …"
~ / ~
It was fair to say that Elphinstone had never looked forward to an interview as much as to this one. And indeed, Minerva McGonagall had not disappointed. In simple, narrow-cut robes with a high neck, she looked a good five years beyond her age. She also spokea good five years beyond her age, in a soft brogue that reminded Elphinstone of a childhood as it might have been. She was intelligent, she was professional, she didn't mind overtime. She would be perfect.
Yet at that point, Elphinstone would not have thought that a mere six months later, Minerva McGonagall would have become the reason why Monday morning had replaced Sunday dinner with Griselda as the highlight of Elphinstone's week. Their tea breaks were a delight, and because the two of them were an exceptionally fast-working team, they could afford many of them. And over the weeks and months, Elphinstone had discovered that images of Minerva had begun to strike at the oddest hours of the day, images of a neck bowed above a scroll, of a surprisingly large hand massaging the bridge of a nose when Minerva had been reading too long without remembering to increase the light.
By the time the days grew shorter, the images had started to make an appearance in Elphinstone's nights.
When the lights were out, when the world was quiet and dark and not quite real, the Deputy Head of the Wizengamot Administration Service had finally given up trying to keep the mind from wandering. For a few weeks, the attempts had even been successful. But every impeccably-drafted protocol, every childhood anecdote shared, every joke about tea preferences and every glance at the narrow waist and those perfect, small breasts chipped away at the resolve and fed the imagination. What it might be like to touch Minerva. What her hair would smell like, how the warmth of her body might feel, or her lips, how her spine would respond to the caresses of a hand. What she would look like, collar buttons undone, hair coming down from her bun. How long might it be? Waist-long? Frayed at the tips, in that quaint, earthy way of the woman who never had it cut? Or shorter than that, thick and even-ended and perhaps a bit wavy?
It was when Elphinstone's hand had begun to join the mind in its nightly perambulations, when the mind had begun to make it Minerva's hand that wandered there in the dark, that the realisation struck.
This could not go on.
And more was quite out of the question, too. Minerva wanted her job; more than that, she needed it. It would be cruel to confront her with an advance that would make her uncomfortable. And wouldn't it be even crueller if the unthinkable became true? If she talked herself into more than collegial feelings for her much older boss? For crying out loud, the girl was nineteen.
There was a solution. Elphinstone had been pondering it for a while. It might make Elphinstone's working days considerably sadder, but it would be the best that ever happened to Minerva, professionally. And wasn't that what one wanted if one cared for a person? To make her happy, to give her wings rather than tie her down in an impossible constellation, or in a job that was beneath her, like a beautiful canary bird kept to brighten an old bachelor's days?
The fire crackled. A ring of smoke made its way up from the slender pipe, and a hand reached down to Orfeo, who had curled up by the armchair and snored lightly.
When the smoke ring dissolved, Margaret Elphinstone Urquart, daughter of Consul Archibald and Lady Jane Urquart, First Secretary of the British-West African Wizarding Society and Deputy Head of the Wizengamot Administration Service, had made her decision.
~/~