Hello all! Happy New Year, and apologies for such a delay in updating – my goodness it's been a while! Real life is keeping me occupied but I'm still here, very slowly plugging away, and I hope you enjoy!
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Christmas was Jean's favourite time of the year. A life of church service had taught her the importance of the season, and there was never a busier time for her community, but more than that, Jean absolutely loved the festivities. It was everywhere at once, the lights and the garlands and the drapes of green and red all over the place. Even in the din and the fog of her most potent grief, and even when the war raged on and on, she could always rally at Christmas time. Even when her sons were troublesome or absent she would find unequivocal peace in Midnight Mass and the hymns that seemed to come forth of their own volition, or be comforted by the small army of churchgoing women who were equally dedicated to feeding and clothing the poor and lonely through their bake sales and church fetes. Ballarat was a hive of community activity at Christmas time, so much so that often Jean struggled with the incongruity of it all; how was it that women could slave over a stove during the month of December to feed at clothe the poor beggars that, any other time of year, they turned their noses at?
But no matter, it was done, and nothing Jean may have thought would change the way of things, and people thrived for it regardless. During the war Christmas was always bustling, putting together hampers for men serving overseas and making lunches for widows who had lost husbands and sons through those years. In its aftermath everyone seemed doggedly determined to make the most of it, having been touched so closely by death and therefore relishing the chance of life. Whatever grievances reared their ugly heads for eleven months of the year, near everyone could be asked – or obliged – to forget them for a moment in the festive season. The town would hang garlands of greenery in every shop window and ignore the way they withered in the blast of summery heat. Bows and red tartan would be decked on unwitting children and on the handlebars of prams, and everybody seemed to put just a little more effort into their greetings.
In the weeks leading up to the main day, Jean's mood seemed to lift and her heart felt less heavy, although Christmas day often reminded her of all she had lost and she had to fight the tears that came with her few treasured memories. Every jaunt into town was a chance to smile at the butcher, laugh with the seamstress, run into an old acquaintance and ask if their family were visiting for the holidays. The Salvation Army trumpets would blow their happy tunes on the street, as young people took shelter from the sun under the eaves of the cinema or Her Majesty's, sucking on ice cones. Everyone bemoaned the process of roasting hot meats on Christmas day for a whole table, even as they relished the traditions brought over from England and other places abroad, never really abandoned, the summer heat tempered slightly by Ballarat's natural inclination to remain cool.
And so it was that Lucien Blake had blown back into town at the exact time of year when the town was at its most welcoming, a trick of fate for which Jean felt immensely grateful. Nobody had yet questioned the circumstances of the handsome, exotic Blake son coming back to his father's house with a Chinese child in tow; nobody had yet made the inevitable queries as to Jean's own living arrangements, as they might have done any other time of the year. To live with the good Doctor was one thing – unusual but not unseemly, for they were so far apart in age and both so well regarded in standing, Christopher and Jack coming with her in the beginning, that they managed to avoid any hint of a scandal. She and the good doctor slept on different floors of the house as masters and servants had done for centuries, and people accepted that easily enough because they had seen the way Jean Beazley struggled after her husband's death, and they wanted her to be well. The few sly questions to either of the boys quickly waylaid any further inclination to gossip, as Christopher defended his mother's honour with stony silence, and Jack only grumbled – for the short time he lived there – about the doctor forever being on his back.
But it was the mercy of the season that Lucien and Li had so completely changed the dynamic of the house, and nobody had yet to question if perhaps it was improper, unseemly, uncouth, for Jean to remain in her upstairs bedroom, alone in that fine house while it's Master and Miss slept in the very next rooms.
Jean was able to carry on towards Christmas blissfully ignorant of any such innuendo, for in truth, just having one of Ballarat's sons return – when so many of them did not and such scars still stung sharply – was enough for Ballarat to quiet.
And it was with glee unbecoming of a woman her age that Jean looked forward to showing young Li all that Australian Christmas had to offer. The heat was not that different from what she remembered of Singapore, though her orphanage further north in China felt the seasons more readily. But the child's memories of Western traditions so lived by her parents at the time of her birth had faded. Some tunes felt familiar – one she even remembered her father playing for her on the piano – but Li had barely been older than a baby when Singapore fell, and not able to comprehend the reason for the season.
And so Jean delighted in teaching her, and though it was completely beyond her station, she was practically giddy over the prospect of sharing it once again with a family.
Oh, it was not her own family, and yes her heart still longed for the days when her boys would come running into her bedroom before dawn, waking her and Christopher, demanding they all rise and open the meagre few gifts they could afford. Shiny new boots, or wooden toy bi-planes, or one year a baby goat that was their very own pet (and rather a handy mower of grass around the house as well). But it was a family nonetheless, and one still healing around the fragile few stitches that had fused its scars back together.
Thomas Blake was still bedridden, and under the careful eye of both his son and the district nurse. Both made sure he started exercising, and doing arm raises and leg stretches to keep his body limber. His chest pained him, but no more than was to be expected, and he had taken to walking through the house with a cane. It wasn't an easy sight to take, seeing such a proud and strong man – a pillar of his community – looking older than his years and frail. But he was a pragmatist before all that, and after a day he accepted the cane as a necessity for his own mobility. Jean breathed a sigh of relief. It was one less argument for him and Lucien to have, and one less thing for her to have to mediate.
And Lucien was… well, he was Lucien. Jean was still trying to figure out the dashing younger doctor. They had struck up a rather close comradery very quickly, forged in the familiar fires of emergency and quick action. Brought together less by the things they shared and more by common goals; to care for Thomas, to look after Li, to navigate the future Lucien would carve for himself in Ballarat. For it was clear he would stay in Ballarat, even if he hadn't quite admitted it yet. Doug Ashby was singing his praises, and though Jean did not fully respect the policeman, she knew he was considered firm yet fair. If he believed Lucien was doing a fine job as police surgeon, then offers at the hospital may soon follow, provided Thomas took back his practice as he was inclined to do.
And Lucien still doggedly refused to be treated as a Master of the house, which left Jean to treat him – much to her chagrin and with a sense of overstepping – as more of a strange friend. She became a trusted council, who could help him along the way even as he refused at every step to act as most others did or settle back into small town thinking. She was at once intrigued and infuriated by him. His arrogance, now that the need to flee was gone, knew no bounds; his pomposity in walking around as though he knew best chaffed against every blister and bruise Jean had suffered to forge the life for herself that he now saw.
Jean knew precisely why Margaret Fuller looked down her nose at Li in the street; because Maggie, as she was once known, had watched her much wealthier husband get on the same bus that took Jean's Christopher, to head to the same front in south-east Asia, and just like Christopher, Graham Fuller did not come home. Maggie, whose life for a short while looked to be so much better than that of her parents, was forced to take a job as a secretary at an accounting firm to pay the bills now that her husband was dead, and in Li she must have seen every enemy soldier that had robbed her of the life Graham so promised her when he took her off the farm. It was unfair, but Jean understood it, and she paid it no mind when Li accompanied her into town, making sure the girl knew she was respected by those who mattered. Jean knew why Patrick Tyneman called in to visit Thomas and wish him well, and why no less than four times in the conversation he mentioned getting Lucien a club membership. Lucien brushed him away, but still he persisted, and she understood that too. Jean knew why the people in town scoffed at Lucien's unkempt beard and tattered clothes no matter how uncharitable it may be. The war was not so very long ago; people didn't want to be reminded of the poverty wrought and the wreckage it left behind in the faces of other nameless men who walked around with a scruffy beard and no shoes, a soulless look in their eyes.
Jean knew so much, and understood the machinations of Ballarat better than anyone, so as much Lucien – with his bright eyes, boisterous demeanour, and booming opinions – may want to rally against it, she always found herself fighting a smile, even as she snapped at him to mind his manners, respect people, accept the life he was settling in to. Never mind what other people are doing, she used to tell her boys, you just pay attention to what you're doing, and how you treat people.
Some days it felt as though she had regressed, and was espousing the same lessons all over again.
And yet still, infuriatingly often, the man managed to turn her head. His laugh would startle her as he read the paper, bringing a smile to her face before she could stop it. The brush of his hand against her back, her arm, her shoulder, happened so frequently it was nearly indecent, though of course he didn't mean it that way. The twinkle in his eye was becoming a near-daily occurrence, replacing that look like a horse about to bolt. As the week drew on – as Christmas came closer and December made her mark in warmer weather and drier winds – Lucien Blake got further under her skin, and Jean feared that come Sunday again, she would have to confess to the same sins that dogged her at her last confession. How was it, she wondered, that her heart could miss and long for her Christopher as sharply as is did the day she got the telegram, while at the same time her head turn so frequently to seek out a man she had barely known ten days? It didn't seem fair; it certainly didn't have a solution.
Lucien walked in one evening about a week after Thomas' heart attack, and Jean's breath just about caught in her throat. While he had trimmed back his beard and hair as best he could manage himself, he hadn't quite gotten around to seeing a barber in town to have it properly shaped and styled and made neat again. Jean knew what he looked like when it was – had seen the pictures that he kept under his bed – but suddenly before her was a Lucien Blake who looked every bit the debonair doctor, and she tried very hard to hide her blush. He was everything that her young and naïve heart had longed for before it fell in love with Christopher Beazley; worldly and well-travelled, multilingual and cultured, his education the best money could buy and his arrogance a fitting match for it. In Lucien, Jean could see all her girlhood fantasies of an exciting life painted in broad strokes, and it set her cheeks blazing, for she knew the reality was so different. She never once wished for anyone other than Christopher from the day she met him – her husband had been her true love, and she missed him and ached for him every day. But a remembered fantasy was very different from love, and Lucien was that girlish whimsy brought to sudden life.
I wonder what would have happened if we'd met earlier, she thought to herself, and then promptly dismissed it. Her older brothers might have crossed paths with Lucien had he stayed in Ballarat through teenhood, but he was away at school and so they never had that chance. And anyway, she had loved Christopher too deeply – had dedicated her entire being to him so willingly – that wishing for something to be different would be an insult to his memory.
Life had not been kind to Jean in many ways, but she was not so battered that she had lost the tiny spark inside, of the young girl with big dreams whose only understanding of the wider world was what she read in books. A trip into Melbourne had been the most exotic travel plans in her childhood, let alone the places that Lucien Blake had seen and lived. How was it that such a travelled gentleman could sit so easily and comfortably in her parlour; how could anyone who had been on an aeroplane want to help her wash the dishes at night?
It wasn't fair, she decided – then and there, she made up her mind that it wasn't fair to either of them for her to stay in that house.
From where she sat at the dining room table Jean took glances at Lucien's back. He was seated on the lounge room couch, newspaper open, one leg crossed casually over the other. He was also wearing a brand new tailored suit. It was a dark grey pinstripe, and though he had shed the jacket when he got home, he still wore the matching vest with slacks, white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows in concession to the heat. With his fresh haircut and pomade, beard trimmed to frame what she already considered to be a handsome face, Lucien Blake was, quite frankly, one giant distraction.
It was a blessing he chose to take a seat with his back to her, for he would no doubt have caught her taking a look at him too often, the mending in front of her near forgotten. It was equally a blessing that Li was already in bed, for the girl was observant enough to comment on it should she notice.
After close to an hour, and with her mending practically abandoned, Jean succumbed to the most potent, most terrifying thought that had settled in her mind not long after her eyes had wandered to Lucien's back.
She couldn't stay here. Not if he was truly taking on this mantle, not if he was a handsome, eligible bachelor, looking the way he did when he came home, not even if she reminded herself daily of her husband's sacrifice, could Jean continue to live in this house.
The sinful thoughts – the what-ifs and dreams that came knocking around her mind in those quiet and uninterrupted moments – were brought to the fore with such alarming clarity that just being in the same room as him was causing her heart to pull in two different directions.
Neither of you are yet too old, said a sinister little voice in her head, which sounded suspiciously like her mother and every women in town who had comforted her immense loss with a paltry well at least you're still young. To stay would be to tempt fate. Maybe not now; not at Christmas time when the world was a little brighter. But Christmas didn't last forever. It would then be the school holidays, with people milling in town looking for something to do. It would be February, and the entire rest of the year; it would be the oppressive Ballarat winter again soon enough, and nothing warmed the hearth and home quite like scandal, whether it was real or imagined.
Jean and Lucien were both still young enough to make new lives, but Jean didn't want a new life; she was still reeling after all that life had thrown her way, and she knew for a fact that Lucien was too. Thomas Blake had opened his door to her when options had seemed dire, and she would be forever grateful; he had kept her on even with all the troubles Jack brought, and for that she could not repay him. But she would not darken his doorway with scandal about his son, and she would not dishonour Christopher by continuing to live next to the only man since who had driven her to such distraction.
Jean stood from the table and walked over to Lucien. She paid no attention to her abandoned things, and came to stand by the arm of the couch where he sat.
He looked up at her with a smile – his face was lighter in recent days, since the risk to his father's health had started to diminish. His eyes were welcoming when they met hers.
"Jean" he said in greeting, and the soft, deep timbre of his voice confirmed what she already knew to be true.
"Might I have a word?" she asked.
It was far too ceremonial for Lucien, and she knew it, but it felt appropriate to approach such a thing with this level of formality. She should really take it up with Thomas first, as his employee, but he was still not well. To lay such a burden at his feet would be unfair, and would leave Lucien in a lurch, which she equally didn't want to do.
"Of course" said Lucien, and he folded away his paper and set it aside, bringing all his attention to her. He was sitting enough to one side of the couch that there was room for another, and though common sense told her she really ought to take a seat in one of the armchairs, Jean barely considered it when she folded herself neatly into the other end of the couch. She sat as far away as physically possible, and angled towards him, her hands neatly in her lap.
"I wonder if I should look for alternative arrangements" she said. She didn't look in his eyes, to save her pride and her dignity. And she wondered what he must be thinking.
"What do you mean?" he asked, brow furrowed deeply as if she were speaking another language. She risked a glance up at him and confirmed her suspicions; he was worried for her, and curious, but nowhere in his countenance was a sense of formality. He was turned to her the way he might speak to a friend, and she was reminded that they were – new and tentative, but it was a friendship that was forged between them all the same. They escaped many of the formalities of her position by virtue of the fact that it was technically Thomas who hired her. And Lucien hardly paid attention to her station anyway, seeing her more as a permanent fixture of the home than a housekeeper.
Still, despite all that, Jean forged ahead, dropping her eyes back to her lap. She was proud of herself for not fidgeting. "With you and Li living back here, it doesn't seem proper that I-"
"No Jean, don't even finish that thought" said Lucien, and this time his voice was firm.
She looked up once more, and found him staring just about at her knee, his eyes not quite focussed yet somehow intensely honed in on her. He wasn't looking at her, didn't meet her gaze, and yet somehow she was rooted to the spot by the frankness of his tone and the fire in his eyes. "This is your home too" he said.
There was an edge in him that by now felt familiar, but the presence of it surprised her, for before it was only ever directed at others – sometimes his father, when the two of them were so close to breaking the ice; sometimes Li, when Jean spoke of the girl's future. It was a burning in Lucien that Jean couldn't quite place and yet seemed deeply important, and she wanted so desperately to help him find the words to articulate it.
She nodded at him, wary and gentle. "It has been my home, yes, but-"
"We need you here, Jean" said Lucien, and at once his eyes found hers, that fire cutting straight to her belly. She couldn't breathe for the way it made her feel, like he was anchoring her through the floor from where she sat, and any gesture would break the spell. "You are quite surely the glue that holds us together"
Jean truly didn't know what to say to that. It was honest enough – she knew it to be at least partially true, for she had done her mightiest to keep this family together in the days since Lucien and Li returned. But to hear Lucien confess it with such gusto, and such earnestness… it knocked the wind from her lungs. He was pleading with her, she realised. His eyes were glassy in the corners, and his jaw was set tight, and he was begging her to stay. For what reasons, she couldn't be sure, for Thomas' recovery was straightforward enough, and there were many other women in town that would make a fine housekeeper. Jean may even keep her job, just not live in the house, and that would make for a fine compromise.
But Lucien Blake was near on bursting into tears at the thought of her leaving, and the gesture was so sincerely touching that Jean's resolve crumbled in an instant.
"And besides" he continued, looking away again to regain his composure, "you wouldn't leave me to the wrath of my father, all alone, would you?"
She laughed a little in concession, not yet willing to give up the ground she knew was inevitably his.
"You have Li" she said, her face smiling and her eyes soft. The girl had been a balm on weary hearts these past few days, keeping her grandfather occupied with stories and practising her reading out loud, and the house was so much lighter because of it.
"Yes!" said Lucien, throwing one hand forward, animated and excited all at once. "Exactly, Li! And surely a bachelor living with a cripple-" She scoffed at him, scolding but amused. "- cannot be counted on to see to a young girl all alone? She needs a woman around"
It was a savage ploy, but it was working. What he was trying to say, in not so many words, was that he wanted her around too. For as much as she had become accustomed to having company her own age and temperament in the house – as much as Jean might think herself alone in the comfort of his company – Lucien had quite come to rely on her too. Often he would return from town with a question about a person or a family, a query about the best way to approach a topic, or a scathing remark that needed context. Usually he was set firmly in his place. But there was no denying that the bond they were forming was not that of employer and employee, but of great friends. Jean had not considered, as she sat and berated herself for her thoughts, that the reciprocity of their friendship would be a reason to stay. It had seemed like an excellent reason to leave.
But would she deny a man someone he cared about? Lucien, who had been abandoned and shut out so many times in his forty years, who had so few people in this town that he knew and trusted; Lucien, who was still finding his feet. Would she deny him the help he so desperately needed and the shoulder to lean on that she had come to be, simply because she couldn't keep her thoughts at bay? It seemed an overreaction. Her fancies were just girlish whims. His grief was very real. And he was a kindred spirit in so many ways; understood her like few others did, which was both alarming and wonderful.
And there was Li to consider in all sincerity, for Jean's own priest had counselled that the girl would need a guiding hand and a mother figure to help her settle into her new life. There was the holiday season to teach her about, and then they had to turn their minds to her schooling. She could be brought up to scratch with discipline and hard work over the summer, and attend a local school the following February. Perhaps, depending on what Lucien's answer pertaining to the club may be, Patrick Tyneman might help to sway the board at Clarendon College for Li's admission, or even the Grammar school if Lucien was less inclined towards the regimen of Presbyterianism. (Jean had already surmised he was a rather faithless man, and therefore enrolment at Loreto seemed unlikely, but surely the prestige of one of the better private schools in town could not be completely ignored; Thomas would see to that).
Yes, it seemed her decision to leave had been hasty, for there were many reasons to stay, not least of which was… she wanted to. Despite the temptation, and the head turning, and the way he grated against her sensibilities, Jean liked it in this house and she liked it even better since Lucien and Li arrived. It would not be easy, she knew that, but nothing worth doing ever was. And her melancholy would hardly have a place to land if she was battling the two of them and Thomas' demands as well.
Lucien still required an answer, and was not content to wait for her.
"If I thought for one minute that my coming back would force you out-" he said, his brow furrowed once more in a troubled look.
"No" she said, one hand up to stop him, or silence him, or both. "No, not at all. I suppose I just thought…" She couldn't possibly put voice to it, so instead she finished lamely, "Well I don't know what I thought"
He worded didn't seem to have fooled Lucien. He was watching her with a knowing look on his face that concerned her, for he was far more astute than most men, and far too cavalier to be deferential to her feelings on the matter. It was a blessing that he let her have her lie, and didn't question her further on it.
"Jean" he said again, his voice low and intimate the way it was when he was confessing something deeply personal to her. She leaned in a little bit out of habit. "I will do whatever it takes to make you comfortable to stay"
Her breath hitched and she looked him straight in the eye.
"I mean that"
Jean nodded just a little, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, although she was far too wound up to feel joy for long. His words had struck at something deep in her core, shaking her and rebuilding her faith in the same breath. It was overwhelming.
"I know you do" she said softly. Then she shook the feeling – and him – away, before it dragged her under. "Forget I mentioned it"
His fingers on the back of her hand nearly caused her to jump out of her skin. "Are you sure?"
"Of course. I was just… having a moment"
Jean stood, and flattened out her skirt to avoid looking at him where he still sat, angled near where she had been, his eyes searching for her and following her as she politely placed distance between them.
"Thank you, Lucien, for your kind words" said Jean. She wanted so much to go back to how they were before she had let her silly mouth run.
"I meant them" he said in return, still watching her like she was a skittish cat. It was a funny turnabout of manner that, at any other time, she would have laughed with him about. But she didn't laugh, only nodded her understanding, pushing down the well of emotion that his words brought.
"I'm going to turn in. Do you need anything?"
"No Jean, thank you, I'm fine"
He was indulging her, which was mortifying. She just wanted to escape with her dignity.
"Very well, then, goodnight"
She didn't wait for his reply, although she heard his soft echo of goodnight as she turned her back and left the room. She didn't give him an opportunity to call her back, and in the morning, when she came downstairs, her mending was exactly where she left it on the dining room table, strewn about with little care, her sewing box hanging open. Li was under strict instructions not to touch it, for it must be left exactly as it was – it was very special and required great care, she recited, no doubt told by her father – and that was perhaps the most humiliating thing about the whole evening in Jean's mind. It was an agony to think that Lucien must now see her as a fool, but at least in her shame she could hide, and in her care for Li she could rejoice, and in Christmas she could distract herself from a thoroughly distracting man.
The Lord had tested her in so many ways in her life, but this one was rather new.