In the Garden at Night

"...then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad certainty..."

from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams

...

Anne nestled into Gilbert's arm, playing with the fine hairs on his chest and drawing her fingers over his skin like a hand on a velvet jacket. The soft even breaths he took, the dark lashes lying upon his cheek, his was of the very sleep of angels, and she smiled as she prepared to wake him up.

'Gil?'

'Mmmm.'

'I can't sleep...'

'Come here,' he said, still half in dreams, pulling her closer to him before drifting off once more.

Anne's head now rested upon his breast and she listened to the beats of his heart as she rose and fell with its rhythm. Her hand circled one of his nipples and she grazed over it distractedly, noticing that even in sleep his body still responded to her. She breathed in the smell of their new togetherness, made of heat and tenderness, salty skin and damp sheets.

She looked at her beloved who slept with the curl of a smile on his lips and his wife's hand clasped in his. Then she looked up further. She hadn't meant to but when one decides not to look at something it invariably becomes the only thing the eye will seek. She first noticed it, when, as it happens when bodies are finding out about each other, she found herself facing the head of the bed. Given the nature of her occupation she was able to put what she'd seen to the back of her mind. But later as she lay under the hideous thing it played on her thoughts like a mosquito in the bedroom.

Anne let go of Gilbert's hand and began pinching at his nipples more intensely.

'Hey, Anne!' he exclaimed. That area of his chest had experienced more attention in the last few hours than they had in his entire life and consequently were rather sensitive.

'Oh, Gil. Did I wake you, again?' Anne said, without the least intention of letting him go back to sleep.

'Still can't sleep?' Gilbert yawned, stretching his chest in a strong, broad movement so that Anne soon found herself back at his shoulder again.

'It's that thing above us. It's keeping me awake.'

Gilbert listened out for the clock which he supposed was what Anne was referring to, though he was fairly certain there had not been one in the list of chattels he'd purchased from the previous owner. He glanced up but only saw their large brass bed-head. It was a fine, early Victorian example with a hand-painted enamel of basket of flowers set in the centre of the brass posts. Those flowers, he thought, had seemed like an omen. So this was to be their marriage bed! It seemed like a promising sign.

'What thing?' he muttered.

His eyes blinked slowly and he pulled at the sheet around his hips preparing to fall asleep again.

'What thing? You just looked at it!'

Anne sat up, sweeping her hair over her bare breasts and pointing directly at the floral enamel on their bed. It was a dark and gothic design, almost funereal, and worse. If one looked at it, if one were particularly imaginative that is, they might make out a shape that looked for all the world like a skull. Made of olde world roses and peonies, but still... To some at least, and one very definitely in this bed, it had the very look of death.

'I can't begin to sleep when I keep thinking of that -that death-head sitting just above us!'

'Death-head! What on earth... Do you mean those flowers? I thought you'd find them pretty. When I first saw this bed, I thought, now if there's such a thing as kindred furniture then, Gilbert Blythe, you've just discovered it.'

His tired, husky laugh turned into another yawn.

'Kindred furniture,' Anne said, scornfully, 'this is not funny, Gil. I cannot go on sleeping here.'

'Then don't sleep,' Gilbert replied.

He swept her thick red hair over her shoulder and gazed at her. Anne looking for all the world like Andersen's mermaid, though one with her tongue very much intact. She cupped her hands over herself -which did little to decrease Gilbert's desire- and looked down at him fiercely.

'How can you say that? I can't bear to think of what that ghastly thing has already seen-'

'Anne, it's a bed!'

'And I'm not sleeping in it.'

Anne leaped out of bed and drew the tangled sheet up with a vigorous tug. Gilbert saw now that she meant it.

'It's connected with little bolts,' he said, scooting up and examining the enamel, eager to get his wife out of that sheet and into his arms. 'I could probably twist it round so you wouldn't see it-'

'It wouldn't make any difference, Gil, I'd know it was there.'

'Then... there's only one thing for it,' he leaped out of bed too. "You like the mattress, I suppose?'

It had served them valiantly so far, besides which it was brand new. Anne nodded mutely, unsure where her husband's thoughts would lead.

'Then if you don't like the bed, my girl, we'll just find another place to sleep.'

He tugged at the mattress, it was almost comical to see a naked man moving the furniture. It was comical! Anne stifled a giggle as she wrapped her sheet about her and helped him push it off the bed.

The upstairs already had another bed, a narrow single that lived in the smallest room. The spare room had yet to be furnished. The previous owner was not inclined to part with the valuable piece that had been housed there -though Gilbert could fairly guess which bed would end up in there now.

They tugged the mattress into the hallway and manoeuvred it round the stairwell, Anne as much a help as a hinderance, either pushing and dissolving in fits of laughter. At some point Gilbert, expecting her to have a firm hold, leaned the bulk of the mattress's weight against her while he turned around. In the next moment the mattress had juddered down the stairs.

The two clambered after it, Anne clutching her falling sheet and laughing loudly at the sight of a naked Gilbert racing down the steps.

'No damage done,' he said, examining the ticking.

'Yes,' breathed Anne, as she tucked her sheet firmly under her arms, 'but now we have to get this unwieldy thing back up again!'

'We could take it outside.'

Anne looked out through the small panes of glass at the top of their door -their own front door!- at the silhouettes of lombardies that beckoned to her from the garden. They could sleep outside, indeed they could. There was after all no one to pour scorn on such a suggestion, no one to say no.

'Gilbert Blythe I could kiss you!'

And she did, in places she had never dared kiss until this night.

'I always wanted to sleep outdoors with you, Anne,' he laughed, 'and I know you've always-'

'Dreamed of it!' Anne cried, with girlish delight. 'I'll go fetch the pillows and quilt,' she added, but not before she opened her sheet and wrapped it round Gilbert's waist.

Then when her husband should have been pulling their bed outside he watched her slender form scurry back up the stairs, her ruddy locks brushing cheekily across the small of her back and tickling her bottom.

They lay together after brief consultations about where their bed should be situated. Anne preferring to be near the flowerbeds so that they might enjoy the perfume, Gilbert closer to the trees which would provide the most privacy. In the end they chose the position that afforded the best view of the stars.

'So you always wanted to sleep outside with me. I never knew,' Anne said, settling into her place which had already become so comfortably familiar -her cheek at his shoulder, his chin by her head.

'Anytime I'm outside I think of you, dryad!'

She had never seemed more like a nymph of nature than she did right now with her hair falling loose around her bare shoulders, wrapped in a sheet and lying under the canopy of heaven.

'Oh, Gil, look at those stars, it feels like the sky itself is happy. Like angels are peering down and smiling at us.'

And not a death-head to be seen, Gilbert thought to himself.

'Did you ever you think they might be little children?' Anne asked, stifling a tiny yawn.

'The stars? I think they're giant masses of light and heat, Anne, beyond that no one knows.'

'When I lived at Hopetown a matron there, Missusabberley-'

'Missusabber- what? That was quite a handle for the poor, old dear.'

'Poor and old she might have been but hardly a dear,' Anne began, twisting a length of her hair about her fingers. 'I never knew her name, never knew if it was Mrs Abberley or Miss Sassaberley. You learn very quickly not to ask questions -questions are an impertinence in an asylum, you know. If I didn't have my little Violetta there would have been no one to answer my questions at all.

Gilbert tried to recall a friend of Anne's, any friend of Anne's, that she'd had before she came to Avonlea. It was not a name that he ever remembered her mentioning. But he put his own question to one side and listened.

'So in my mind she was always Missusabberley,' Anne said, 'and that way I never got in trouble for mispronouncing it. You learn quickly not to make mistakes in an asylum, too.'

Gilbert hugged his wife to him protectively, knowing that a girl like her -prone to asking so many questions and making so many mistakes- must have found herself on the wrong side of Missusabberley and her ilk far too much for his liking.

'We used to have these fire-drills. Some of the folks at Morley were awfully reluctant about it, but asylums and orphanages always had a terrible habit of burning down, so the bell would be rung and off we'd trudge, and on clear nights the skies were just like this. And I remember Missusabberley telling us that stars were the souls of good children and the most we could ever hope to be in God's eyes was another star in his sky.'

'Anne, that's heartless-"

'I think in her way she meant to be kind. At least the liquor in her blood used to soften her somewhat,' Anne continued quickly. 'You can imagine I thought it the highest ambition in my little ten year old heart to be a star amongst the firmament. But when I grew up," said the girl of the ripe old age of twenty-five, 'I began to think maybe Missusabberley knew something after all. Not that the stars are our own dead looking down on us but the souls of children... waiting to be born.'

An exhilarating chill went through them both, Gilbert kissed Anne's hair and held her tighter still.

'Shall we... if we have a daughter, Anne -would you like to call her Violetta?' he asked her.

Anne drew the feathery end of her twisted hair to his nose and tickled it lightly.

'You don't like violets, Gilbert Blythe, you said as much yesterday.' It had been yesterday, and a new day, one that was theirs to savour in whatever way they chose lay before them now with all the possibility and promise of a new born babe. 'It's very sweet of you but I've outgrown Violetta, just as I've outgrown Katie Maurice and Rosamund and Cordelia-"

'Cordelia too? But Diana's daughter is Cordelia.'

'I do admit I will always have a soft spot for Cordelia. Though I can never have one now, I suppose. Not that I mind -a Cordelia is much better as a crow than a carrot,' Anne joked, nudging her husband slyly. 'But Violetta and Katie even the fair Rosamund in a way... they were only my imaginary friends.'

Gilbert stared out at the stars, tracing their constellations over the sky.

'You know,' he said, 'I once had an imaginary friend myself.'

'You, Doctor Blythe? Never!'

'Though I hadn't your knack for such rarified names-'

Anne rolled up onto her elbow and looked at him, intrigued.

'And what did you call him?'

'Rose.'

'Gil, that's a girl's name-'

'And so she was,' Gilbert said. 'I suppose I must have been missing my mother.'

'But your mother's name isn't Rose.'

'No, Rose was just the prettiest name a ten year old boy could think of. She used to play with me when father was sleeping. And he slept a lot. And we, I mean I invented all these elaborate games with cards and checkers and chess. It got quite competitive, actually-'

'I can imagine,' Anne said, with a knowing smile. 'Was this when your father was ill, when you were living in Alberta?'

'It was still Fort Macleod then, just a frontier outpost really. There were none of those grand sanatoriums they have now. Father and I were pretty much left on our own and I saw first hand what poverty could drive a fellow to.' Gilbert turned away from the sky and looked at his wife. 'I was there you know, when the Mounted Police routed all the settlements and reservations trying to stamp out all the bootlegging. The drink caused so much pain and misery... I can't bear to think that you were at the mercy of such people, Anne-girl.'

He gazed at her intensely as though wanting to find and heal her wounded heart. How to tell him that she didn't need saving from yesterday. It was tomorrow -tomorrow with all the promise and possibility of a new born babe- that would bless that old pain with new joy.

She couldn't tell him. She scarcely knew it herself. Anne took his hand and kissed each finger, like the points of a star in the sky.

'You forget my darling man that you married a dryad. We are the daughters of flowers, and flowers always grow toward the light.'

'I haven't forgotten, I know who you are Mrs Blythe. But someone still needs to protect that light for you. And when I came to know you and we finally became friends I knew then what I was made for, what I was meant to do with my life. To keep people from harm.'

'Protect the light,' Anne repeated softly. 'Is that why you decided to be a doctor at Four Winds, because of the the light-house?'

'Like the way my father chose to go Fort Macleod in the hope of getting well again? It was my mother's name, you know... Anne, I don't know,' Gilbert said, stroking his wife's red hair. 'But it will make a fine story for our children if it's true, so let's say that it's so.'

Anne lay down against his arm again and looked up at the sky, Gilbert's touch and the night scented air, it sang through her body like a lullaby. She yawned languorously, almost too tired now to even stretch a limb.

'And if one of them is a daughter,' she said sleepily, 'shall we call her Rose?'

'Let's have one for every flower in our garden and every star in the sky.'

Anne gave a quiet smile, too tired now to even raise one eyebrow against the thought of such a family. The night too retired to bed, a coral coloured blanket tucked up over it by the sun's warm hand rising in the east.

'The children in the sky, Gil, they're gone,' Anne murmured.

The stars above them faded just as they did in her own grey eyes, and she closed them now and gave herself to sleep.

Gilbert looked at Anne in the dawn light and the longing and love he felt for her had never been equalled. The white-faced boy at the pond, the student turned to stone by her rejection, and the hot fool who took her to bed, could never have understood what he came to know now; what it meant for a man to love this woman. He wanted to wake her, he felt now he was ready to make love to her. Thoughts of performance, gratification and fear had no hold over him, had no meaning.

He understood now what it would mean to be inside her. He believed now that he belonged there. This was what Anne had meant on the night before their wedding, when she had said she wanted for them to be more when they were together than when they were apart. Yes, his body wanted her -even after all those incandescent hours his body would always want Anne. But it was his heart that was ready for her now. The heart that wanted to unite with Anne's, and make a child with Anne, and protect her forever.

Anne slept. And the man he was could let her. Gilbert decided then that by the next dawn he would marry her the way she dreamed of being married to him. He would find her a birch cathedral and fill it with a thousand rose blooms. He would make all her dreams come true too.

...

Darley- Hello! Nice to meet you. You made my night too!

Raindropcatcher- that was my favourite part too. When I was thinking about Gil's POV after she refused him, that image was all I could think of -sigh...

Guest- breakfast, noon and night! That sounds like my day too. A kindred spirit!

Alinya- you know I think I wrote ch 7 with you in mind :o)

HMA- and I shall not keep you waiting, but then maybe I will...

Jenn- welcome, welcome to a fellow Windy Willows grrrrl! It has so much scope for the imagination, doesn't it? ;o) thanks for noticing and appreciating all the details; btw I am an editing freak -I love a semi-colon more than I love tormenting Gilbert Blythe

Insubfreak- you know with a totally math name like yours I am kind of surprised you liked ch7 so much – it means double portions of cherry pie to me! And steam! Oh, you don't know the half of it...

GoDons -you're my kind of girl

Guest -hello guest with a g! thank you thank you for your thoughtful comments. That was exactly what I was trying to get across -the very first quote in the very first AoGG described a girl of "fire and dew." This is Anne- she goes after everything with her whole heart and her whole body and damn what the neighbours think. That's why I love her so much :o)

Syncchick -spare a thought for poor old Gilbert! But I'm glad you thought it was getting good, I hope this didn't disappoint too much.