A/N: I've been a bit hesitant to post this part, so many thanks to Freythefrog for giving me the little push I needed to get this up. I hope it all makes sense in context.
The Grapes of Wrath: Part II
During the afternoon and evening Gerry had thought a hundred, a thousand, times of calling Sandra, or even driving over to her flat to check that she was all right. She wouldn't appreciate the intrusion, he told himself. He considered calling Jack, asking if he had checked in with her. It somehow felt as if that should have been her former boss's place.
A little after ten his mobile went, and for a few seconds he thought just maybe –
But no. "Brian," he answered after having checked the phone's display.
"Gerry, have you spoken to Sandra?"
"No," he replied, attempting to sound much more insouciant than he felt. "Why?"
"I'm concerned is all, but I don't feel quite right ringing her. Might be a disturbance, you know." He lowered his voice. "I seem to have exhausted Esther's patience. She's already gone up to bed."
"I'm sure the governor's all right," said Gerry, who wasn't sure at all.
"I just feel so bloody useless," Brian returned. "I didn't tell you, but on the day her mother died, Strickland asked me if I wanted to be the one to tell Sandra, once we had finally tracked her down." He paused. "I said no. I couldn't do it, Gerry." He sounded crushingly guilty. "I should've done, though. Bloody cowardly."
"Don't beat yourself up, mate." Gerry paced a few feet behind his favourite chair. "Listen, I'll ring Jack, and let you know if I find anything out."
Jack answered so quickly and sounded so irritated to hear Gerry's voice that the ex-sergeant immediately knew his friend, too, was hoping to hear from Sandra.
"You haven't talked to her either, then," Gerry said without preamble.
Jack's sigh was drawn out. "I've rung twice. She's not answering."
Gerry rubbed his weary eyes and made a snap decision. "I think I'll go over to hers in the morning, just see she's all right. She can get mad if she wants to. So I'll be late in."
When Jack spoke again he sounded relieved. "That's not the worst idea you've ever had, Gerry. Tell her hello for us. See you tomorrow."
When Gerry was, indeed, nearly two hours late to work on Friday morning, and when he removed his coat, hung it up, readjusted his shirt sleeves, and sat down behind his desk without a word of greeting, Jack and Brian assumed it was because he'd been to Sandra's to check on her.
But he hadn't.
He had, however, seen Sandra. And he had just passed perhaps the strangest twelve hours of his life since his cousin Terry conned him into dropping a tab at a Stones gig on a memorable August night in 1966.
Fifteen minutes after he had rung off with Jack, Gerry could stand the suspense no longer. He dialed Sandra's number, muttering, "Feel free to bite my head off if I wake you."
He didn't expect her to answer. Even less did he expect her to greet him, "Gerry – I was just going to ring you."
He pondered this unexpected pronouncement. "You okay, gov?"
"Yeah." She paused, and he heard the wind and traffic noises coming over the line. An ambulance siren wailed, and it took him a couple of seconds to realise he was hearing the shriek twice, once through his double-glazed windows, and again over the phone.
"Sandra, where are you?" he demanded, looking out at the dark street in vain.
"Opposite." She sounded reluctant, ashamed, smaller somehow. "I – I'm sitting in my car."
"Opposite my flat?" he clarified, and yes, now that he knew he was looking for it, he could just make out the familiar shape of her car parked across the street. "How long have you been there?"
Her voice shrank even more. "Maybe twenty minutes, twenty-five."
Gerry hesitated. "Would you, uh, like to come in?" Under the circumstances the question seemed ridiculous, but he didn't know what else to say.
"Yeah."
He opened the door and stood on the step, and only then did she actually get out of the car and walk across the street. As soon as he saw her in motion, Gerry's first question was answered: without a doubt, Sandra was stone-cold sober.
She stopped a few feet away and cautiously sought his eyes. "Hi," she said simply. "I know it's late."
"It's not that late." He stepped aside, gesturing. "Come in."
"Thanks." She let him take her red coat, and he saw that she had changed clothes. Her soft, worn jeans were frayed at the cuffs; black and white trainers peeked out from beneath. Her hair hung wavy and a little unruly, as if she'd showered and let it dry naturally, and her skin was scrubbed shiny clean. The lack of makeup somehow made her look simultaneously younger and older.
In short, she looked exhausted and vulnerable and devastating.
Sandra sat on the sofa, slipped her shoes off, and curled her feet under her, as if she wasn't planning on moving for a while. Good. Gerry was perfectly content to have her right there where he could keep an eye on her, even if she'd murder him for saying as much.
"Drink?"
"Yes, please." At her immediate response he opened the cabinet, held up the bottle of whisky she'd given him, and she nodded. He poured a generous amount, figuring she deserved it. After pouring a more conservative measure for himself he joined her, placing himself at the opposite end of the sofa, just as he'd done on Christmas.
Sandra sipped her drink slowly, contemplative. She didn't seem inclined to talk, so Gerry let her be.
She had finished half the whisky in her tumbler before she looked at him and said, "It's Thursday."
"Yeah, it is." He smiled very slightly. "I don't suppose you're hungry?"
"No." She held the glass up to the light. "This will do fine. Just keep it coming."
Noted, he thought. So his governor had deemed his flat a safe place to come and get pissed. The thought pleased him.
She finished her drink and, as she poured herself another, curled her toes into his carpet. Her toenails were painted dark red, almost black, and Gerry stared at her bare feet until he shook himself. No, he didn't have a foot fetish; but he so rarely got to see this simple part of his friend. Detective Superintendent Pullman was normally brushed and polished and high-heel-shod.
"You were right," she said, her back to him, and he could see that she had squared her shoulders. "I didn't want to be by myself. And I didn't know where else to go."
It was hardly a compliment, but Gerry knew how much the admission cost her. "It's good you came here."
She shivered violently and suddenly and he jumped up, although he wasn't sure why. He reached out tentatively to touch her shoulders, but then let his hands fall at his sides. "You all right?"
Sandra turned around. "I'm just cold." She laughed bitterly at some joke to which he wasn't privy, and he thought she looked desperately unhappy.
The flat was warm already, but he turned up the radiator anyway. "Do you want a snack?" he asked as she sat again and pulled a throw pillow into her lap – Yes, Gerry has throw pillows. "I have cheese and fruit – grapes, I think –"
Her eyes widened. "Oh, God, not grapes!" The exclamation was so vehement that it caused Gerry to raise his eyebrows, and Sandra flushed. "Just not grapes," she reiterated mildly, glancing down at her fingernails. One of them, Gerry noted, needed to be filed. "I'm really not hungry anyway."
"No worries." He said down again, not knowing what else to do. Gerry Standing had entertained many, many women in the various flats he had inhabited over the past forty years, but never in a situation like this.
As if sensing his discomfort, she laid her fingers on the crook of his elbow. "Telly," she instructed quietly, and he was only too happy to comply.
Gerry found an old movie and dropped the remote between them. This would do, whatever it was. He spotted a Marx Brother. Duck Soup, maybe, or A Night at the Opera. It didn't matter. Neither of them was going to watch it. Sandra just wanted something to stare at, something to provide background accompaniment for her thoughts, wherever they were.
She stuck with the whisky, drinking it steadily and silently. "I shouldn't have gone," she finally said, and her pronunciation was looser than he had ever heard it before. He didn't have to ask where she shouldn't have gone. "I should've been there."
Gerry took her left hand, which was lying inert on the cushion between them, and squeezed it gently. "You wouldn't have been with her anyway," he pointed out rationally, knowing it would do nothing to assuage her guilt. "You would've been at work. By the time you got there, she wouldn't even have –"
"I would have known," she interrupted. It would've been nice to say good-bye to one of her parents. And then, fiercely: "I did love her."
"Course you did. She was your mum." His thumb rubbed lightly over her knuckles.
I think I hated her too, she thought.
Sandra yanked her hand away, stood up – the slightest bit unsteady by now – and got herself another drink. "We never liked one another very much."
"That's not a requirement for families. It's just a bonus if it happens – you know, organically."
Gerry Standing was talking about things happening organically? When had life become so strange?
She moved the remote before she sat again, slightly closer than before. "How do you do it, Gerry?" She propped her elbow on the back of the sofa and rested her head on her hand, the alcohol loosening her joints as well as her tongue. "Why do people find you so bloody likeable, even your ex-wives?"
"You don't," he retorted lightly.
She actually smiled briefly. "You've grown on me. Bit like a fungus."
"Very flattering comparison." He lifted his glass, toasting her ironically. "Cheers."
"I'm a bitch." She tipped more of the liquid down her throat, easily, as if the burn had worn off.
"It's one of your more endearing qualities," he said, but she didn't seem to hear him.
"My mother was a bitch too." Sandra shifted, pulling her feet beneath her again. "I'm just like her. She always thought that I was like my father – that I had actually become him and rejected her. She hated the job, hated the way I do it." She lolled against the cushions and Gerry wondered if she had eaten anything today other than the handful of grapes Esther gave her at the pub. "She realised near the end, though."
He knew he shouldn't ask. Gerry already felt like a voyeur, even though she was in his home, sitting on his sofa, drinking his booze. Sandra didn't talk to him like this. She advised, she ordered, but she didn't tell him things, personal things. He knew that, in the cold clear light of morning, she would regret this, and she'd make him regret it as well.
Bugger it. She was here now, and in need of a good listener.
"Realised what?"
"That I'm her, not him," Sandra replied simply.
Grace had been eating grapes, one of the few foods she could still manage, although the process was agonizingly slow. Sandra had sat and watched and it physically pained her, so much that she'd made the mistake of trying to assist. Her mother had used the feeble strength of her less affected left side to swat at her daughter's hand. Her speech was distorted and laborious, but "Stop" was easy enough to understand. Stop. No. Don't. Grace hadn't lost any of those words.
"Happy Christmas, Mum," Sandra had said as she stepped into the hospital-style private room. "Well, Christmas Eve."
Only Grace's eyes had moved in response, but their clarity told Sandra that her mother was fully present. Sandra settled herself on the rigid chair by the bedside and kept up the fiction of one-sided conversation for several minutes, and then made the disastrous effort to help Grace with the grapes. Her mother's fingers had barely grazed her arm, but Sandra jumped back as if she'd been shoved by a world-champion wrestler. She folded her arms in her lap, well aware that she would react the same way in Grace's position. It would feel like an insult, an indignity.
"Mum," she began decidedly, "I've decided to cancel my holiday. I'll go some other time, maybe." She offered a smile. Grace's eyes narrowed.
It took Grace time to assemble the sounds she wanted to produce, and Sandra did a few mental gymnastics to interpret them. "Don't need your help."
Sandra reminded herself that she was no longer fifteen years old and refrained, barely, from rolling her eyes. "I could keep you company."
Grace's look was almost comical; she needed no words to communicate her incredulity. Sandra sighed. Her mother had a point: they'd never exactly been the type of mother and daughter who sat around gossiping and braiding one another's hair. But she looked at her mother's frail form in the narrow bed, physically so vulnerable, and felt a quick, stabbing pain.
The reply came quickly, according to their new time-scale, with zero possibility of misinterpretation. "No. You go."
Was Grace absolutely sure?
Yes, sure.
Was this a test she'd set up, waiting for Sandra to fail it? (All right, she shouldn't have asked that; but old habits died hard, or not at all, in her case.)
"Too late," Grace responded, which put a full stop to her daughter's queries. That statement could be interpreted a few different ways, but Sandra thought it was better not to spend too much time thinking about any of them.
They sat – well, Sandra sat, and Grace lay – in silence. Happy, happy holidays from the Pullman family.
The quiet drew out to such length that Sandra started like a sleeper waking when her mother spoke. "Sorry, Sandra."
The growling "r" sound was beyond her grasp, but Sandra understood her mother readily enough. She leaned forward in the chair, bringing herself a bit closer to Grace – physically, at least. The older woman had been right when she'd said the two of them were too far apart to grow close at this late stage. They'd both tried after Grace had moved into the home, but not, Sandra had to admit, very hard on either side. They were too different, and too fundamentally alike.
"That's all right, Mum," she said quickly, not sure what the apology was for, but wanting to soothe her mother. Wanting to escape this room; needing to stay.
"No." Grace's left hand moved restlessly atop the bedclothes, picking at a snag in the cotton threads of the sheet. Her hands were so thin that the delicate veins looked like blue and purple bruises beneath the skin. "You're like me. Not like Gordon."
Their eyes locked as Sandra dragged the chair as near the bed railing as she could. "I'm like you?" she repeated questioningly, and then with assurance, "I am like you, Mum."
Grace was silent again for several minutes. Speaking exhausted and frustrated her, the words her mind formed so perfectly refusing to trip from her stiff, clumsy tongue.
"Cold."
Sandra automatically reached for the blanket across the foot of the bed, but her mother's emphatic "No" halted her motion. She turned inquiring crystal eyes upon Grace and waited.
"Cold. You. Me." The pauses between the words grew longer as Grace grew more fatigued, but she struggled valiantly to express her thought. "Not like other people."
Before Sandra could respond with a quip, Grace added, "Something missing," and her daughter froze.
The second stroke had reduced Grace's lexicon to the essential words; listening to her was like reading post-modern poetry. Sandra supplied subjects, verbs, nouns as needed, but as she continued looking into her mother's eyes, she knew that, for once in her life, she understood the other woman completely. With the blanks filled in, Grace said, "We don't feel things as deeply as other people do. We're solitary, independent. We don't need anyone. You get that from me, Sandra, and for that I am sorry."
She'd left feeling like she'd been punched in the stomach, and as she sat behind the wheel of her car, safely in the car park, she'd been overwhelmed by unexpected sobs, harsh and tearless.
"Sandra?"
From his tone she realized that Gerry must have called her name repeatedly. Sandra jerked herself fully upright, blinking, and was suddenly aware that her eyes were filled with tears when they overflowed to track hotly down her cheeks. She swiped at them, infuriated.
Gerry was standing over her, his hand on her shoulder. "Let me get you something to eat." She shook her head. "A glass of water, then."
She let him bring the water, but left it untouched on the floor. She thought maybe she'd been talking, but had no idea what she might have said, and couldn't seem to summon the embarrassment she knew she should feel. She was falling apart in front of this man she bossed, for Christ's sake. If she lost his respect, she lost whatever control she had over the squad. Lose UCOS, lose everything. How pathetic was she?
She needed her mother not to be right about her. Sandra knew she was drunk, but she saw that very clearly.
"Right, no more." Like a tired child, she didn't protest when Gerry took her glass away. She could do nothing but sit there, sunk into the sofa cushions. "It's two in the morning, Sandra. I can take you home, or you can stay here."
He could've called her a taxi, too, but he was unwilling to let her out of his sight like this.
She looked up slowly, as if struggling to focus. "I don't want to go home," she said certainly, sounding a bit more like herself, albeit a drunken self.
Gerry could work with that. "Fair enough. You can stay here." She looked directly into his eyes, blue on blue, and he couldn't read what he saw there. "The guest room is made up," he continued, "or you can have my room."
He wasn't sure why he'd offered, and wasn't prepared when she quietly responded, "Your room."
He had her precede him up the stairs, hovering behind her to offer support that, fortunately, she didn't need. At least his room was relatively tidy, he thought, refusing to allow himself to dwell on her reasons for choosing to be enfolded in the slept-in sheet and duvet on his bed, which smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and could do with a washing, instead of the pristine linens in the guest room. She'd never been in his bedroom before – why would she? – and Gerry tried to see it through her eyes: sand-coloured walls, chocolate and golden duvet, slightly rumpled sheets peeking out from beneath. Solid wooden furniture. Presentable, at least.
Sandra moved with the unpredictable gait of the truly inebriated. Gerry had never seen her like this. She was always so controlled, so careful; he had only seen the façade slip when she was infuriated. This was different.
She wasn't sobbing or hysterical, but then, she never would have been. It was inconceivable. She was instead raw, and it made him uncomfortable, made him want to take her straight home or pull her into his arms and hold her and pat her hair as if she were a child – He wasn't sure which. Both, maybe.
Businesslike, she unzipped her jeans and shimmied them down her legs, and Gerry instantly told himself not to look, but he was Gerry and he was human and he did, even as he prayed to be spontaneously struck blind. Shit, Standing, get out get out GET OUT.
"Right," he said instead, lifting the covers up for her as if she really were a child. He was, essentially, tucking her in the way he'd done for his daughters times out of number, except of course this was Sandra and it was nothing like that and he was in the shit very deeply.
She sat down on the bed, unself-conscious, one foot atop the other, and Gerry couldn't breathe. He was afraid to touch her anywhere, even the safe territory of her arm or her shoulder, so he edged away to arm's length, more awkward with a woman in his bed than he had been since – ever, actually, because he had no bloody idea what to do.
"Do you need anything?" he asked politely, the good host.
She stared back at him, unblinking, still expressionless, and Gerry thought, Sandra Pullman has finally succeeded in emasculating me – simply by forgetting that I'm a reasonably normal, reasonably healthy man and looking at me like some sodding eunuch.
But the rest of him, the most of him, knew he'd been right earlier at the pub. What he was seeing was Sandra going to pieces, in her own, unique, complicated way, and he felt simultaneously like the luckiest and most certainly doomed individual on the planet, because somehow she had chosen him to whom to reveal this part of herself. Yes, perhaps out of sheer desperation, but she was here. Seven years ago – hell, seven weeks ago – he would never even have imagined it. He was still good old Out-Standing Standing, a naughty boy but not a bastard. She was still his boss, his friend – his very dear friend – tough, brilliant, cutting and soothing and then pouring salt into the wound. But tonight the universe had tilted sideways.
She didn't answer his question, but finally slid beneath the covers and dropped her head onto the pillow, the side of the bed where he slept, and he allowed himself a breath of relief.
"Gerry?"
"Give a shout if you need anything."
She stared and stared at him, and he finally snapped off the bedside lamp because he couldn't stand it any longer.
He went into the spare bedroom, but only stood there for a moment, hands on his hips, contemplating the floor. He was too restless to sleep. Instead he went back to the lounge, belatedly thinking that he should've gotten his pyjamas from his room, or at least a blanket, and sank down on the sofa, clicking the television on. He adjusted the volume so that it was an indistinct drone, stretched out, slipped off his shoes and socks, and crossed his ankles as if he didn't have a care in the world.
As if.
He opened his eyes to the same flickering of the light from the telly, impossibly certain that it was still the middle of the night, maybe half three. A more distinct sound interrupted the low hum. His name.
Suddenly fully awake, he turned and found himself face-to-face with Sandra as she knelt on the carpet. "What is it?" he asked, disorientated. "What's the matter?"
"I'm cold."
This, he thought, was extremely strange. Sandra was nothing if not resourceful. Nicking the duvet from the guest room would hardly have been an insurmountable challenge. "I'll get you a blanket."
"Won't help." He lay stunned, paralysed, as she clambered over him gracelessly, pulling his duvet with her and draping it over both of them. In the space of a few seconds she was pressed against his body, wedged between him and the back of the sofa. One of her legs trapped his as her weight settled half on him.
"Shit, Sandra! What –"
Her mouth descended upon his, cutting off his breath, not to mention his words. She tasted of whisky and salt, and he reflexively clutched her upper arms, squeezing convulsively before his brain kicked in and he forcibly lifted her away. She fought him, not giving up easily, kissing him the same way she'd kissed him outside their local weeks ago, as if she was furious and needed to prove a point.
This time he was fairly certain her anger had nothing to do with him.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." He wedged her away, not wanting to hurt her, afraid his fingers would bruise her shoulders where he was gripping them so tightly, but he was hot and cold with panic. "Sandra, love, what the hell are you doing?"
Her eyes narrowed, but she otherwise ignored the misplaced endearment. "You've been insisting for eight years that you know all about what I'm doing," she retorted acidly.
"Yeah, I may, but you don't." He managed finally to sit up, pulling her with him because he was unable to disentangle himself. "If you did, you bleedin' well wouldn't be doin' it. You're pissed and you're upset and you don't know what you're doing." His words were harsh, but his hold on her gentled as he spoke, his thumbs smoothing over the tense muscles in her neck.
Her eyes bored into his. "Tell me you don't want me," she challenged, a hair short of overtly hostile.
Oh, hell. He might end up damned for his virtues, but he wasn't going to lie to her. He swallowed hard. "Not like this," he said very seriously, side-stepping the direct question in a way that would've been transparent to a two-year-old – and he was talking to a trained detective.
That seemed to sober her up a little. Her eyes focused more sharply. Gerry watched as a flicker of the usual Sandra returned, wavering somewhere behind her irises, and she looked embarrassed, distressed – scared, even.
His shoulders sank with the first rush of cautious relief. "It's all right," he reassured her, wrapping an arm around her, no longer afraid to touch her, and pressing her cheek against his rumpled cotton shirt. "You're all right."
He preferred not being able to see her eyes as her body jerked in a single, silent sob before going completely still. Even when she was behaving wildly out of character, that moment was so perfectly her, so Sandra Pullman.
"I'm cold," she whispered, her breath whispering damply against his skin through the fabric, and he was pretty damn sure she was talking about something other than the coolness of her skin on this frigid January morning.
"Come on," he said, helping her briskly to her feet. "You need sleep. It'll be better in the morning."
This time he led her up the stairs, then watched her lie down on the bed and covered her with the duvet he carried bunched in his arms. "There," he said when she was still, as if he were cleaning up the mess, sweeping her fear and hurt and grief under the rug. As if tomorrow morning everything would be exactly the same as it had in all the time they'd known one another, when he knew things would never be exactly the same again, even if they both lived to be 120.
He retreated to the guest room, convinced he wouldn't sleep a wink.
When he awoke in the watery morning light, well after he should've been sitting behind his wobbly desk in the UCOS office, she was gone.