14 January 1946
"Good morning, Doctor Blake," a solemn voice murmured near Lucien's ear.
With a groan Lucien rolled to the side and opened his eyes, fighting a childish urge to tug his thin blanket up and over his head, to block out the voice and the dawning of a new day. He was tired, and his whole body ached from his toes to his hairline, but this was the path he had chosen, and he knew he could not run from it. Nor could he take out his aches and pains and peevish mood on the lad who'd come to wake him.
"Good morning, Mister Beazley," he said instead, opening his eyes with some difficulty and finding himself looking square into young Christopher's face.
Lucien was lying on his makeshift bed in the back of the barn, the place he now called home. When Jean had - rather hesitantly - agreed to accept his help, Lucien had been insistent that he could not stay in the house. While he pointed out to Jean that it would be rather improper, should people discover that the recently widowed Mrs. Beazley had opened her home to the equally widowed Lucien Blake, gossip was not his only reason for putting distance between himself and Jean. The house was hers, the home she had made with the husband she loved, the place where she raised her children, and Lucien knew it was not meant for him. And besides, the farmhouse was cramped and small, and Lucien did not do well in tight spaces. The barn was much more suited to his taste, with its high vaulted ceiling and the vast door he could leave wide open to let in the summer breeze. He needed a place of his own, a place where he could be tormented by nightmares without disturbing his hosts, a place where he could hide a bottle of whiskey beneath his bed and not draw any unwanted questions, a place where he could sit and weep uninterrupted in the darkness when the loss of his beloved wife and daughter became too much to bear.
With young Christopher's help he had constructed a makeshift bed made from pallets, and Jean had with a bit of ingenious sewing made him a mattress of sorts from scrap cloth and dried hay. It was nowhere near as fine as the bed he'd had in Singapore before the war, but it was altogether more comfortable than the cot where he'd slept while he was held prisoner in Changi, and Lucien was grateful for it.
"And how are you this fine day?" Lucien asked winsomely as he rolled to his feet at last, trying not to wince at the protestations of his exhausted limbs. Farming was hard, hot, never-ending work, he'd discovered, and he'd yet to become fully adjusted to the gruesome pace. He never once complained, however, for Jean never did, and he was determined that if she could endure, he would as well.
"Very well, thank you," young Christopher said seriously as he fell into step beside Lucien. "And you, Doctor Blake?"
"Oh, fit as a fiddle, I'd say," Lucien lied blandly.
Life on the farm of necessity followed a certain routine, and Lucien - not yet fully recovered from the habits of a soldier's life - had taken to it quickly. Every morning at first light young Christopher came to wake him, and together they would cross the pasture to milk the cows while Jack and Lily collected eggs from the henhouse and Jean started work on breakfast.
"Mum said she has to go to the bank today," young Christopher said as they trudged along, a hint of concern in his voice.
For a moment Lucien was silent, mulling over how best to respond to the boy. Christopher was a strange lad, quiet and watchful, wise beyond his nine years. Likely he was well aware of his family's dire financial straits, no matter how hard Jean tried to hide the extent of their woes. The bank manager's decision today would be the final word on whether their plan would go forward or if Jean would have to sell the farm, but Lucien did not want to tell Christopher just how important this meeting would be, did not want the lad to spend the whole day fretting about his family's future when he should have been focused on his schoolwork. In truth, Lucien was worried enough for the both of them; he had sunk quite a bit of money into the farm, buying seed and fixing the equipment and giving Jean more than enough to restock her larder and keep the lot of them fed. It would be quite some time before they saw the return on that investment, but with the tomatoes and the apples coming in, they had enough to keep them afloat for a little while.
"She mentioned that to me," he said lightly as they reached their destination, the two cows watching them warily from their position by the fence line. "It's nothing too monumental, I don't think."
Christopher seemed satisfied with that, and did not speak again until their task was finished and they went marching off back to the house. They stopped by the water trough behind the barn so Lucien could rinse himself off quickly, splashing water over his neck and chest. The nights were warm and he often slept bare-chested, and he much preferred to wait until after the milking was done before putting on his shirt and making his way into the farmhouse for breakfast.
"She also said we're not to tell anyone that you're staying in the barn," Christopher told him, watching him with those thoughtful grey eyes so like his mother's.
Again Lucien took his time answering as he toweled off his upper half, thinking hard.
"Well," he said at last, "that's her decision. You know how your mother feels about gossip. Some people might think it strange, that I'm staying here and not in town. But that's nobody else's business."
"I'm glad you're here," Christopher said firmly. They were on the move again; Lucien ducked into the barn to retrieve a clean shirt - one of Christopher Senior's, he was sure, though Jean had not told him where exactly she had procured the clothes she'd handed to him with trembling hands.
"Me, too, Chris," he said as their feet turned towards the house, and breakfast. "Me, too."
The rooster had woken Jean, as he always did, before the sun's first rays slipped through her bedroom. And, as she had done every morning for two weeks now, she lingered in bed for a time, weeping. They were quite tears, now, no longer the great, wracking sobs that had struck her when she first learned what had become of her husband. They did not last quite as long as they had done, in the beginning, but still each morning she woke to an empty bed, knowing there was no hope of Christopher ever coming back to her, no hope of her ever having the chance to say all the words that had built up in her heart over the last three years without him, and each morning she found herself quite overcome with grief. It was hardest in the darkness, she'd found; during the daylight hours there was so much to do, with two crops coming in and three to plant and three children and a somewhat hapless farmhand to feed and manage. After sundown and before sunup, when her hands were idle, when the house was still, grief and guilt came from her, and she could find no escape.
She wept for her children, wept for the part she had played in the argument that had sent Christopher off to war, wept for her empty bed, wept for Lucien's dead wife and his daughter whose fate was still so uncertain. She wept for the predicament she found herself in, feeding Lucien three meals a day, watching him laugh with her children, watching him teasing Lily, and knowing she could never speak the truth aloud. They had made their choices, Jean and Lucien; she had chosen Christopher, and he had chosen Mei Lin, and now they were both lost, stuck in the same orbit and yet separated by the vast chasm that time had torn between them. Jean had been grateful, when Lucien insisted he sleep in the barn; she did not want him too close to her, did not want him there to witness the shambles of her life. He worked for her, and she fed him, and neither of them could ask more from the other than what they had already given.
The sun rose and so did Jean, slipping through the house to wake her sleeping children. Once they were dressed and on their feet, she took up her position in the kitchen, making eggs and sausages and toast and tea for the lot of them. And as she worked the pain of her grief subsided, as it always did, numbed by the sounds of her children's voices and the warmth of the early morning sun.
"Good morning, Mrs. Beazely," Lucien said as he and young Christopher arrived with milk pails in hand. As she did every morning Jean relieved them of their burdens and nodded towards the table where Jack and Lily were already eating.
"Eat your breakfast while it's still warm, Doctor Blake," she answered him. Jean never called him by his given name when the children were around; it wouldn't be proper, she thought, for them to call him Lucien, and the best way she knew of to get them to call him by his title was to use it herself. So far only young Christopher had taken her instruction to heart, however, as Lily took great delight in speaking to Lucien, and Jack still refused to acknowledge his presence. It would seem her youngest son blamed Lucien for what had befallen Christopher, and nothing Jean could say to him would soothe him.
Give him time, she thought as she watched them, Lucien sitting down to tuck into his meal while Lily chattered about school and Jack scowled and young Christopher remained still and quiet, as ever. They all just need some time.
"Will you be all right on your own today, Doctor Blake?" she asked him as she stowed the milk away, turning back to take her place at the head of the table. Privately, she had her doubts about the wisdom of leaving Lucien on his own; he meant well, and he could follow instructions, but he did not know the first thing about farming, and it showed in everything he did, in the tender flesh of his palms, still red and raw, not yet calloused as Jean's own hands were, as Christopher's had been.
"Oh, I think I can manage," he told her around a mouthful of eggs. "Tomatoes in the morning, and apples in the afternoon."
"Mark Dempster's coming 'round tomorrow with the truck," she reminded him. They'd keep a fair bit of the crop for themselves, and the rest would be sold to the greengrocer in town. They had only a few rows of tomatoes, and only a few little apple trees, but what little they'd bring in would go a long way towards paying off Jean's debts, and she was grateful for Lucien's help, and for Mark Dempster's willingness to offer them the use of his truck.
"We'll be ready," Lucien said confidently, offering her one of those lopsided smiles of his.
Despite herself Jean smiled back, trying to hide her expression behind the rim of her teacup. It was so nice, having another adult to speak to, having someone to help around the farm, having a reason to hope that perhaps her little family could be restored from the brink of calamity. It was nice to have someone there, to know that even if he was sleeping out in the barn there was someone out there who understood what she was going through, her grief and her uncertainty, for he was caught in the same quagmire himself. And it was nice, to look across the table, and see a smiling face. Even if that face belonged to Lucien Blake.
"I really must thank your father," Jean mused after a moment. "Without his help I'm not sure what we would have done."
Lucien's heart sank at Jean's words, but he spoke quickly, trying to appear nonchalant. "Please don't say anything to him, you know what he's like. He doesn't want to draw attention when he does something so uncharacteristically charitable."
Jean hummed and sipped her tea and let the moment pass, and in the resultant silence Lucien heaved a sigh of relief.
In point of fact, Lucien still had yet to speak to his father. Wounded pride and doubts and anger kept him from going to the man with his hat in hand; Lucien had survived the last twelve years without help of any sort of from that old bastard, and he wasn't about to start groveling now. He had promised to help Jean with the farm, however, and he had known that to do that would require funds, and so he had done the only thing he could think of.
He had set out for Ballarat, promising Jean that he would speak to Thomas, when in actuality his feet carried him to the local pawnshop. Lucien owned only one thing of value in the world, a pretty bauble he had been carrying in his pocket the day the Japanese invaded Singapore. He had found it in a shop and purchased it for his wife, thinking fond thoughts of their reunion, of sweeping her into his arms, of kissing her soundly, of holding his little girl close, and though it was dreadfully expensive he had purchased it anyway. Jade and diamonds and silver, it was a beautiful brooch in the shape of a flower, and he knew that Mei Lin, with her taste for the finer things in life, would treasure it. And then hell had rained down from above, and for days on end he had been caught in terror and misery and horror the likes of which he never could have imagined before that day. Through it all, somehow, miraculously, the brooch had remained unscathed, until the day they marched his unit through the gates of Selarang. That first night Lucien had snuck out of his bunk and buried his treasure in the dirt just beside the door of the barracks house, wrapped in a shirt he'd stolen from a fallen comrade. For three long years it lay beneath the dirt, a whispered promise of what would be, if only Lucien were freed from that hell. Three long years he'd spent thinking of it, thinking of Mei Lin, of Li, surviving on hope alone. And then the Poms came marching through the gates and he'd dug it up at once, tucking it into his pocket alongside Christopher Beazley's letter.
The day he learned of Mei Lin's death he'd very nearly thrown it away. What was the point, he'd asked himself as he wept, of holding onto such hope, of holding on to a present meant for the woman he loved, when his wife was dead and gone? Still, though, he couldn't quite seem to part with it. It was meant for his wife, and though she might never have it, the little brooch had survived against all odds, and he could not bring himself to so carelessly toss it aside.
Faced with the choice between selling it or speaking to his father, however, Lucien had found himself backed into a corner. He had pawned it, had accepted the little slip the man behind the counter had given him - along with a paltry sum that while more than sufficient to keep the farm running was less than half what Lucien had paid for it - and slunk away, consoling himself with the knowledge that he had six months to earn enough money to buy it back. How on earth he was going to do that he had no idea, but he was determined both to rescue the brooch and keep the unsavory truth from Jean.
It would seem that she was content with his answer, that she would not push the subject of his father any further, and so Lucien kept his mouth shut, and finished his breakfast in silence.