Love in the Time of ...
Hello here we go again, this will be another form of release in a crazy time. It will be bonkers, but perhaps not as much as real life. Hope everyone is staying well and safe. Remember wash your hands and stay apart.
This first chapter comes to us from the ever so clever and amusing MrsVonTrapp...
Gilbert beamed at his assorted children and guests with all the magnificent Gilberty Gilbert-ness at his disposal, feeling the tension of the previous weeks roll off his broad Blythe shoulders. He passed a long-fingered brown hand through still-thick curls sprinkled with salt in a fetching nod to the years, and could count his blessings by the lines fluttering from hazel eyes still twinkling with undisguised mischief and merriment.
"A toast, Dad!" encouraged Jem with alacrity, resplendent in all his shiny Jem-ness, his own broad shoulders nudging the honey-hued maiden seated beside him at the long table as she awoke from her doze with a startled look.
"What have I missed?" she queried, closing her mouth around her yawn. "I'm sorry I'm so tired. I'm just…."
"Overworked," he whispered, smiling fondly.
"No… I don't think so…" she gave that gorgeous little frown that encouraged the equally gorgeous little line of query to form at the bridge of her nose.
"You've got about five jobs, Faith. You know, the pizza place… all that volunteer nursing stuff Dad didn't let Di go near, the…."
"It's not work, Jem."
"Well, then, you must be pregnant. You often are," he indulged.
"No… that's Rilla."
"What have you read?" Rilla hissed harshly from further down the table. "Those rotten scandal rags! It's all lies you know!"
"I haven't read a thing!" Faith rolled her eyes expressively, and furthermore drolly. "Una told me. And Una never tells a lie."
"Not often…" the slight girl-woman muttered miserably. "Not if I can help it. And usually to protect Carl and Shirley anyway."
"Carl and who?"
"Carl and the monkey you mean?" Jerry piped up from behind his phone, where he was surreptitiously checking whether Call Me Cordelia had responded to his review. Nan was looking darkly if just as surreptitiously at her own phone, so it was highly likely she was about to take him down before the first course.
"Not monkey, my name is Shirley," a very brown boy frowned from the very end of the table. At least… I think so. And I made half the food here, thanks very much, including the cake for dessert."
"The two birthday cakes!" several people chorused, sharing a joint lightbulb moment, and Anne Blythe smiled benignly, watching as Susan patted his head affectionately before bypassing everyone to spoon large helpings on her very own boy's plate.
"Everyone, everyone…" Gilbert clinked his glass, trying his best to wrestle back the conversation. "As you all know, we are here for a very special announcement…"
"You're engaged!" Walter beamed towards Rilla. "I knew it, Spider! Congratulations!"
"I'm not! I'm really not!" Rilla protested, reddening under her green hat.
"Where is Ken, anyway?" Walter mused to no one in particular.
"He's… training…" Rilla announced airily, but also vaguely, waving a pale hand around for good measure. "It's difficult. He's away a lot. He has many responsibilities…"
"And no working phone, mostly…" Jem frowned, pulling his big brother card, hazel eyes rolling extravagantly. "You snagged a real prince there, Rilla."
"Come now, darlings…" Anne intervened, grey eyes trained on her fabulous husband. "Your father is trying to - "
"Where's the apple butter, Mrs Doctor?" Susan panicked, realising the table was suspiciously empty of most of the condiments. How had such a thing happened on her watch?
"We ran out," Anne and Gilbert snapped simultaneously, the guilty flush heating their cheeks in strange unison.
"And the eggs?" Susan whimpered, bottom lip quivering.
"Oh, that wasn't us, that was Dad and Marilla…" Gilbert asserted with a cheeky, somewhat relived smile.
"They've been using up all the hot water, too," Walter grumbled. "A fellow can't get near the bath when they're about."
"But how am I meant to bake anything?" Susan bleated.
"We must all make economies in these difficult and ever-changing times…" Anne reasoned beatifically.
"I have plenty of toilet paper if anyone wants it," Jerry offered.
"Now now, son, not at the table…" John Meredith pleaded.
"Cut down all the protected wilderness areas for it, did you?" Nan upbraided him, glorious in her immediate and incandescent rage towards him and him only.
"No…" Jerry frowned, having a sudden and incomprehensible desire to render that exquisite beauty in delicate watercolors, or maybe moody charcoals. "You wilfully misunderstand me. I'm only…"
"Excuse me, everyone!" Gilbert's smooth and fetching baritone thundered causing the flames on the Shabbat candles to flicker. He would have to put his foot down in a minute. "I was beginning to say something here."
No one had told him that having so many children would be such a drain on his time and his psyche, let alone his bank balance. Thank heaven for bi-location or he wouldn't have gotten anything done all these years.
"Sorry, Dad," Jem nodded contritely. "We're listening."
There were apologetic murmurs as the others followed suit. Gilbert paused for another anticipation-fuelled moment, loving an audience about as much as he loved baiting Susan.
"So, now, you were all too young to recall your mother and I heading off for our grand European adventure for our fifteenth wedding anniversary…" he began with the excitement curling his hair even further.
"We remember…" the chorused groans began in earnest.
"The bunk beds…" sighed Rilla.
"Being late for everything…" Nan offered with a pretty, despairing head shake.
"The weird puppets you made us perform with every year at Christmas," Walter moaned, still traumatised.
"Well," Gilbert persevered, almost bouncing on his toes. "This year being as it's an extra-special celebration we thought that we'd…"
There was, at that very moment, a most unfortunately-timed and precipitate knocking at the door, loud and insistent enough to rattle Ingleside's window panes and most of their teeth in their skulls.
"Now who could that be?" Anne wondered wonderingly.
"Di and Sylvia?" Jem mused.
"Don't you mean Di and Delilah?" Faith amended with a wry smile.
"Maybe it's Lillian…" Carl gave a doleful glance towards the bronzed figure to his right.
"Lillian?" Shirley paled, which was in itself a sight to behold. "How did you know about –"
"Never mind all that now," Gilbert warned authoritatively. "Perhaps we should just see who it actually is, Anne-girl?" he smilingly turned, trying to seek out his just-disappeared wife.
"Oh, no, not again…" he mumbled darkly as he took characteristically firm, long-legged strides towards the door.