A/N: Apologies for a slight lack of Randall in this chapter. But it had to be done. No pain, no gain, dear readers. 7
DISCLAIMER: Oh that they were mine... But they're not.
By ten o'clock the day had begun to swing into motion and the whizzing of cars along the curbside quickly impelled the two to vacate their table, tip the waitress and leave.
Lix felt relieved to return to the office. The familiarity of its minted walls and linoleum floor, the cluttered blackboards and filing cabinets spilling with confidential files and stashes of whiskey—it was all oddly reassuring. The thing about the news, Lix thought resolutely, is that it is one of life's sure constants; it will always exist and this being so, I will always have an office at the BBC with a comfy armchair and a liquor cabinet. She was also glad—although she was loath to admit it for the cowardice such a thought betrayed—to leave the French café on the Thames with its plastic tablecloths and uncomfortable reminiscence of Montpellier. She understood that it had been necessary, of course, but the part of her that increasingly liked to dominate these days—the little woman who squeezed her eyes shut, covered her ears with her hands and stamped her feet—was incessantly eager to block out these persistent truths and pretend they never happened. Too bad the more I'd like to just forget it, the more Randall seems to want to remember. Bloody hell. The whole point of having the back of a drawer or the underside of a rug is to sweep things there. Enough with the bloody cleaning.
Lix collapsed gratefully into her desk-chair and lit a cigarette. With the absence of work to occupy her mind and a sudden wave of well-buried feelings left her grateful for the moment of peace.
A quiet knock at the door dispelled the moment instantly.
Oh, just shove off.
The door opened without waiting for Lix's reply.
"Bel, darling!"
Despite herself and her desire for peace, Lix was pleased to see her. She quickly rearranged her smile, however, when she recalled the horrific events of yesterday.
"Darling, how are you feeling? How's Freddie?"
Bel shook her head and perched dejectedly on the corner of Lix's desk. By the state of her hair and the now crumpled dress she still wore from the previous evening's broadcast, it was obvious she had not slept at all through the horrors of last night.
When she did not speak, Lix persisted, "How is he?"
Bel sighed and began to slowly massage the bridge of her nose. "I really just came in to – to get some files… Nuclear armament. You know. Work stuff." But her red-rimmed eyes as she met Lix's gaze gave her away.
"No you didn't, darling," said Lix gently. "You can't hover at his bedside twenty-four hours a day."
Bel responded with a pained grimace, her eyes searching Lix's face with a sense of desperation. "They've operated already and they say they'll do another in a few days." She gave a shuddery sigh. "He's 'stable', whatever that bloody well means. I – I wouldn't say he's stable at all." She shook suddenly and hid her face in her hands.
Lix leant forward in her chair to squeeze Bel's knee. "Chin up, sweetheart," she said, gazing concerned up at Bel's buried face, "Everyone hates a sissy." Lix smiled kindly and Bel uncovered her face, offering a weak smile in return. Her cheeks were shining with tears.
"Yes. You're right," Bel nodded, wiping her eyes. She blew her nose into Lix's handkerchief and let out a choked laugh. "I'm sorry," she smiled wetly. "I've just been so, so worried about him."
Lix nodded and directed her into the chair beside her.
"They asked me to leave, you see. 'Give him rest,' they said. So I had to and I didn't know what to do with myself—I just wanted to be with him to make sure he was alright—and I was so angry with that nurse—I'm still angry actually—"
"Bel—"
"—and so I just came here. I can be busy here, you see—at home there's too much opportunity for thinking and worrying."
"Yes, I get that."
Bel groaned. Blowing her nose again, she laughed apologetically, "Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'll be OK in a moment."
"Sweetheart, it's fine." Satisfied that Bel had recomposed herself enough to sit upright in her chair, Lix lit another cigarette.
Sighing, Bel eyed Lix's whiskey. "May I?"
"Don't be daft—you need it more than I do right now." Lix sloshed a generous measure into two mugs and they settled in their chairs, each contemplating the events of the last twenty-four hours with varying degrees of exasperation and weariness.
The sound of the door clicking open behind them made them both jump.
"Oh." Randall stood in the doorway eyeing Bel with a look of mild surprise. His eyes searched for Lix, silently seeking explanation.
"Mr Brown has a bad habit of forgetting to knock before entering," Lix said to Bel, her eyebrows raised pointedly in Randall's direction.
Randall shuffled uncomfortably and made to leave.
"Mr Brown, would you like some whiskey?" Bel called after him.
"No, I—"
"Go away, Randall." Lix puffed at her cigarette and indicated her head in Bel's direction. This is a therapy session and for once you're not invited.
Randall cocked his head as he met her gaze and leant coolly against the doorframe in subtle protest. His voice was low as he spoke. "I'll talk to you later. I'm just going out but I'll be back soon-ish."
Lix raised her eyebrows. "Right."
For a moment, Randall stood hovering in the doorway as if he were about to add something more. The unsettling feeling of the two women staring questioningly back at him finally coaxed him to tear his gaze from her eyes and leave the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Bel swivelled in her chair and gave Lix a quizzical look.
"What?" said Lix defensively.
Bel narrowed her eyes. "Why are you so horrid to him?"
The corner of Lix's mouth twitched. "I'm not horrid."
"Yes, you are."
Lix raised her eyebrows. "I really don't see—"
"You are." But Bel's eyes had begun to gleam with a worrying playfulness.
"What?"
"Oh Lix, won't you tell me what's going on between you two?" Bel pleaded, her red-rimmed eyes almost lost to an impish grin.
"There is nothing—"
"Yes! There is. Don't lie."
"No—"
"Everyone in the office thinks you're sleeping together."
Lix choked slightly on her cigarette. "We are not sleeping together." She tried to inject a tone of disapproval in her voice but it was lost to a growing sense of weary resignation. "That was long ago."
Bel let out a quiet squeal and leant forward eagerly in her chair. "Lix, please tell. I really need cheering up and gossip is a girl's third best friend after tobacco and liquor."
Lix groaned and downed her whiskey, glaring at Bel reproachfully over the rim of her mug.
"Gossip. Me. Tell. Go."
Lix sighed. "I'll need a re-fill," she said, waving her mug in the direction of the whiskey. When Bel obliged, she leant back in her chair and allowed her eyes to trail unseeing across the ceiling.
"This probably won't cheer you up," said Lix slowly, glancing at Bel.
Bel widened her eyes and nodded.
Taking a swig of whiskey, Lix began: "We met in Spain in the late 30s working as photographers covering the civil war." She smiled to herself. "He was a useless flirt—we were just friends for a long time. But then the fighting escalated and we started seeing things that truly shocked us. Blood and that. There were lynch mobs." Lix cleared her throat and took a drag on her cigarette. "Anyway, I was like a teenage girl, stupidly attracted to him—he used to make my heart beat in my mouth, that kind of thing. We put it off for a while because of the war but I think we both found we needed each other for comfort when things got bad." She laughed. "And I think he had some designs about protecting me because he got terribly worried. Unfortunately we were right to be hesitant about starting a relationship during wartime; it didn't work out at all. I think…" She hesitated then, suddenly of quite what exactly had drawn them apart. "Perhaps it was the anxiety… We barely saw each other out of the throes of rioting and warfare, and it certainly tore me to pieces mentally. There was just so much going on, you see, so many awful, awful things. After about six months we found we had nothing left to say to each other for we spent so much time living in genuine fear for our lives that normal conversation felt so menial. And then he developed that irritating obsession with neatness—that was how he dealt with it—and I think I must've just drawn into myself because I was constantly angry at everything." Lix sighed, swishing her whiskey about in her mug absentmindedly. "He took me to France and proposed, but I'm sure his heart wasn't really in it; he was offering me protection but we both knew we couldn't go on worrying about someone else because the pain of it hurt so badly. It was a mutual break, really." Lix sniffed and cleared her throat again, dragging heavily on her cigarette as if to wake her from a trance. She glanced at Bel at sighed. "It's not the most gratifying love story."
Bel was staring at her, wide-eyed. "But did you see him after that?"
Lix gazed at a spot on the wall behind Bel's head and allowed the cigarette smoke to blur her vision. "I moved away to Madrid. I only saw him once. I – uh – I was pregnant and it was a shock."
"Oh my goodness, Lix." Bel had her hand pathetically covering her mouth in surprise.
"To be honest, darling, I'd rather not talk about it." Lix tried to smile but it didn't reach her eyes. She reached for an ashtray and her hands shook.
"But what—"
"Her name was Sofia, I gave her away and she died," Lix snapped suddenly. Her lips were wobbling dangerously and she squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to pull herself together. It didn't work and tears suddenly pricked her eyes. Why, Lix berated herself, do you have to bloody well cry every time you think about her.
Bel leant forward and grasped her friend's hand. "Lix, I'm so sorry, I didn't—"
Lix snatched back her hand and tried to hide her tears behind the mug of whiskey. The scorching liquor for once did little to ease her pain.
"Oh God, I'm so stupid!" she spat, her shoulders shuddering with the sudden weight of misery.
Bel gazed at her with wide eyes, not understanding.
"I took her to Paris when Franco claimed Barcelona and I left her with some neighbours when I went to take photographs in the field." She downed her second mug of whiskey. "They were a nice couple. She was with them when war broke out in '39 and when I returned to Paris from Amions I was told they had taken her somewhere safe. It was never official but she was gone, and I never saw her again." Her voice cracked. "But these last twenty years I thought she was alive. Bel, I always believed she was alive. And then we found out that she was killed in an air raid not long after I returned to England." Lix choked then, her eyes streaming. "If only I had gone sooner I could've taken her with me. She would be nineteen years old."
Bel reached for Lix's hand and squeezed it gently. "I'm so, so sorry, Lix. So very sorry." Tears were pricking Bel's eyes too, and suddenly they were both sobbing.
"Oh, this is pathetic," Lix laughed wetly, attempting to stem her flow of tears with the back of her wrist. She glanced at Bel and snorted. "You look terrible, sweetheart."
"So do you. You've got make-up everywhere."
Suddenly, they were both laughing and crying—an absurd conflict of emotion that caused them to gasp for breath between their half-sobs. Lix fumbled for another cigarette, found she had none left and let out an exasperated cry.
"Oh, this is ridiculous!"
"Oh God, I'm such a wreck."
"Bel, darling, I'm the wreck—you're just scraping against the rocks a bit."
"I feel as if someone has severed my hand, placed a gun in it and used it to shoot my own foot."
"Someone? You mean Freddie."
"Life, Lix. Life has shot me in the bloody foot."
"Don't be so melodramatic, darling."
"Says she on her third whiskey."
"Stop, stop." Lix's eyes were streaming and she flapped her hands in front of them rather pathetically, blinking rapidly. "You mustn't insult the whiskey; he's been there for us in many a time of need."
"Or is that just the whiskey talking."
"Oh that it were, darling. Do you know how long it takes me to get drunk these days? Liver's made of steel."
But Bel had fallen suddenly silent, her tearful giggles turned to hiccups as her thoughts slowly clouded. Their hysterical tears had stemmed from grief rather than the throes of laughter and such a thought turned her sombre.
"Lix," she probed tentatively, "What's going to happen?"
Lix flopped back against her chair and allowed her head to loll backwards to stare at the ceiling. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead. Am I tipsy or just exasperated? And since when did they become so close to being the same thing?
"No bloody clue," she offered unhelpfully. Straightening herself up slightly, she peered at Bel through her half-closed eyes. She was anxiously tapping her fingernails against her mug, biting her lip. Lix sighed, suddenly sorry. "Freddie will get all better and you'll have lots of sex and babies?"
Bel shot her an exasperated glance. "What if he doesn't get better?"
"Sweetheart," Lix groaned, "You can't think like this. Just be glad for what you have."
"Are you glad for what you have?"
Lix arched an eyebrow and straightened in her chair. "Don't pity me."
"Because, Lix—" Bel took a breath, "—if you were truly glad for what you have you wouldn't have told me that story with such a mournful look in your eyes. You looked like the whole world had died and someone had lit their funeral pyre using your Bill Haley collection."
"I don't have a Bill Haley collection."
"Ella Fitzgerald, whatever—that's beside the point. The two of us, we can't go on living out of whiskey bottles and feeling sorry for ourselves."
"Darling, speak for yourself."
But Bel had been fuelled by Lix's emotional revelation and the accompanying realisation that life could be worse—she was empowered by the comparative certainty of her own love. "Are you going to do something about Mr Brown?"
Lix reached for the whiskey but Bel caught her arm and held her gaze stubbornly.
"Seriously, Lix. Listen."
Lix dragged coolly on her cigarette, emotionally impenetrable once again. "And what do you suggest I do? Fall at his feet? Carve our names into a tree? Cut out my heart and burn it on his desk as some kind of sacrificial offering?"
"Ah, so you do love him."
"Bel, I didn't—" She coughed on her cigarette to mask her hesitation. "I didn't say that."
Bel raised her eyebrows incredulously. Her expression softened, however, as she saw Lix's face crumple in confusion. "Can I just say as one woman who's had a bloody awful time to another, it was the constraints of friendship, affairs and marriage that kept Freddie and I apart. Now what stands between you and Randall?"
Lix shook her head. "It's not as simple as that. It's what's already happened that stands between us, and that can't just be erased on a whim."
Bel reached for Lix's face and gently stroked a stray hair from the older woman's cheek. "No one has a past that can be erased but we can't let that bring us down—we have to use it to better our lives instead."
Lix nodded slowly. "And your past—?"
"Has never stood between me and someone I love."
She smiled at that. "And that's why you keep having affairs with married men."
Before she could protest, Lix was on her feet, clearing away the empty whiskey bottle and sweeping cigarette stubs into an ashtray. "Now scram, you," she said, the corners of her mouth twitching. "You have your man to attend to."
Bel smiled too and slowly made to leave. At the door, she paused. "And you have your man to attend to," she said pointedly.
"Off you go. Telephone if there's any news."
Bel nodded, turning away.
"And, Bel—" Lix hesitated. "Thank you."
The door closed quietly and Lix sank against her desk, wringing her hands. She noticed how her mascara had obviously bled beneath her fingernails where she had wiped her streaming cheeks and eyes. Reaching for her powder compact, she fled to the bathroom.
A/N: Thank you so much to those who have reviewed! You are all wonderfully charming and always succeed in motivating me to ignore the lovely summer weather and produce another chapter. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
