16 June 1959
As Lucien trembled above her Jean stole one very brief glance at the hourglass, and found, to her delight, that it was not yet empty. She did not want it to be empty, did not want to rush him from her bed, to lose the warmth of him above her, to have to acknowledge that despite the beauty of what they'd just shared he'd paid for it, and could be allowed no more than what he'd purchased. They had a little time, yet, a very little time; given how rapidly the sand was falling through to the bottom and how little was left at the top, she reckoned it was no more than five minutes, and found herself both disappointed, to think their time would be ending so soon, and grateful that Lucien had managed to wring so much from the precious minutes he'd been given.
Above her he sighed, coming back to himself, broad chest still heaving with his panting breaths, and then his eyes opened, and they were so warm and so full of fondness for her that a knot formed in the back of her throat, and she found herself blinking back tears.
"You still have a few minutes," she told him softly, reaching up to run her fingers through his sweat-slicked hair.
"Good," he said. And then - "erm," he added, shuffling around, "one moment."
Jean watched curiously, smiling at him and indulging in the sight of his powerful body, naked and warm, as he left her side and draped himself over the edge of the bed, rooting around on the floor for a moment before he cried "Aha!" in triumph and emerged holding his vest.
"Here," he said, and before she could ask him what on earth he was doing he knelt beside her, and gently wiped her belly clean with his vest. It was a chivalrous gesture, she thought, and a practical one, and she was grateful for it; while she had enjoyed herself in the moment Jean had always disliked mess, and he had rather selflessly volunteered to take care of that particular issue without her having to voice her concerns, spared her the need to speak of something that had seemed so beautiful to her a few minutes before, and now seemed only vulgar.
"There," he said when he was finished. He gave himself one quick pass with the vest, tossed it aside, and then flopped down beside her. He was quiet for a moment; they both were, breathing slowly in the stillness, lingering in this fantasy world they'd created, one that existed only for them. But Lucien Blake was by nature a talkative man, and he did not remain silent for a long; after a few breaths he turned to face her, and ran his hand over her hair.
"Can I hold you, Jean?" he asked her shyly, sweetly, and the urge to kiss him welled up within her, stronger now than it had been before, even when he was inside her. What a dear man he was, to treat her so courteously, to seem to want so badly to simply be with her, so badly that he had willingly spent one hundred pounds and every ounce of his enthusiasm to demonstrate that want to her. Jean did not answer his question with words; she only smiled at him, softly, and rolled against him, draped herself over his chest while his strong arms rose to encircle her at once, broad hands ghosting gently over her back while she rest her chin against his chest and watched him from inches away, this beautiful man who had so shaken her resolve, and yet remained so much a mystery to her.
"Can I ask you something, Jean?" he said then, tilting his chin so he could look into her eyes.
"You just did," she answered, dropping her head to press a kiss against the hard, solid muscle of his chest. "But yes, you can. You have a few minutes still."
Three or four at the most, a prudent voice whispered in the back of Jean's mind, but she did her best to ignore it, wanting to focus on the pleasure at hand, and not the inevitable doubt and loneliness that would come with his departure.
"What happened to your husband?"
It was somehow not at all the sort of question she'd been expecting, and she could not help but frown. What would make him ask such a thing, she wondered, when he was lying warm and naked beneath her, when he would have to leave with his vest balled up in his jacket pocket as proof of their entanglement with one another? Was this the question he most wanted an answer to, or had he simply decided to start there, and work his way towards something else, something even more personal? And did she want to answer him, truly, to open that door so long kept closed, to lie in bed with a man and speak Christopher's name aloud? It seemed an insult to his memory, to do such a thing, but Jean had done a great many things she reckoned Christopher would have taken as an insult before this evening, and there was no judgement in Lucien's eyes; perhaps, she thought, he might understand.
"The war," she said, softly, and his eyes darkened in recognition, his arms tightening that little bit more around her.
"I'm sorry," he answered, and she knew that he was. "Is that how you came to be here?"
Coming from any other man she might have taken the question as an insult. She had accused him of wanting to save her, to steal her independence - that was how they'd wound up here, after all - but she knew now that was not the way of it, not with him. Not yet. He might in the future decide to try to coax her away, but he had so far met her on her own ground, according to her own terms, and treated her respectfully. Perhaps, she thought, he deserved the same in turn.
"Yes," she said simply. "We married young. I had everything I wanted, for a time. I had a beautiful husband I loved, who loved me. I had a home I was proud of, I had two children who were the center of my whole world. And then the war came, and took him from me. When Christopher...when he didn't come home, I found out the truth. He'd taken out loans I knew nothing about, and I couldn't keep up with them on my own. Before he left, he managed the farm, and I worked as a seamstress on the side. He died in 1942, and there was a shortage of men to help with the farm. I worked in the school tuck shop for a while, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the loans. The bank encouraged me to sell, but…"
"It was your home," he said in a quiet voice, as if he understood, which she rather thought he did.
"It was our dream," she answered, just as softly. "I couldn't let it die. But no one was hiring, anywhere. I'm more than capable in a kitchen, but the cafes and the bakeries didn't have any openings for me. I'm a dab hand at gardening, but the florist didn't want me, either. The richer families all wanted live-in help, in those days, and I had the boys with me, so they wouldn't hear of it. No one else was looking for hired help, with the war on and the men gone. I'd run out of money and run out of food and that's...that's when she found me."
"The old madam?"
"Yes." Jean wasn't looking at him any more; she couldn't face his gaze. Never, not once in nearly two decades, had she shared this piece of her history with anyone else. There were some who knew a little, but there was no one who knew the whole story, the truth that Jean carried within her heart. And yet here, with Lucien, she found she wanted to share it, to share with him, and hear from him in turn. There were scars upon his back, plain as day, and while her scars were darker, and harder to see, they felt the same, somehow, to her.
"She found me in the laneway outside the baker's. I'd spent the whole day being turned away from every door I knocked on, and the boys were with my sister. I wasn't ready to face them yet, and...well. Truth be told I was having a cry. She must have heard me." Jean smiled at the memory; even now, knowing what the woman had done, how she had ensnared Jean in this life, it was hard to hate her, for she had been kind to Jean when no one else seemed to even see her. "Her name was Mrs. Harker. Her husband had owned the pub, and organized the girls, but he'd died many years before we met. At first she just hired me as a cleaner."
Lucien made a surprised little sound in the back of his throat, and Jean smiled, a bit grimly.
"I'll have you know, Doctor Blake, I have always been a church-going woman. I knew what sort of a place this was, and my husband had been dead less than a year. I was young but I wasn't stupid. I didn't want any part of what she did."
"But-"
"Do you want to hear the story, or not?"
He looked suitably abashed at that, and so Jean smiled, and continued. "I worked for her during the day, laundry, housekeeping, that sort of thing. Young Christopher was already in school by then, and my sister Eadie looked after Jack. Her boy Danny is around the same age as Jack, and her husband had been injured early on in the war, and sent home. They were doing all right, keeping their heads above water, but they couldn't take us in. I wouldn't let them, in any case."
She'd drifted off topic, thinking about Eadie and Lawrence, about those grim days when her sister had enough to eat, and she had tried to hide the fact that she didn't. Pride, Jean had learned, was a great motivator.
"I found it hard, at first. I had a certain idea of what sort of woman does work like this, and I'm afraid to say I judged them for it. But that changed. The girls were all very kind to me, and I grew to like them. Mrs. Harker paid me enough to keep the farm, and no one else in town had offered anything close. I was happy, for a while."
"What changed?" The question was asked gently, and his tender hands against her skin were gentler still.
Everything, Jean thought. "I found out how much money the girls were making," Jean said. That wasn't the start of it, not really, but it had mattered rather a lot to her, at the time. "I was barely scraping by, and the officers from the army base were paying handsomely for an hour's work. There were others, too, men who were too old for the CMF, or who'd been sent home already. The pub was doing fine trade, even in those days. I'd been working for Mrs. Harker for about a year when she said there was an officer from the base who'd expressed some interest in me. He came in the afternoon, had a standing appointment with one of the girls, but she'd left and he was looking for someone new. He must have seen me upstairs. Actually, I'm not so sure he even knew who I was. When I think about it now, I think maybe she just saw a convenient opening. She always had a good head for business."
At the time Jean had believed Mrs. Harker, and never questioned it. Only with age and experience had she begun to realize how smoothly she'd been manipulated, but by then it was too late; she'd chosen her path.
"So you agreed?"
"Not at first," Jean said, shaking her head at the memory. "At first I was appalled. I couldn't imagine doing such a thing. But she didn't give up. The boys were so young, but even then Christopher was doing so well in school. And she told me...she told me that if I earned a bit more money, and set it aside, maybe one day I could send him to university. Give him a better life, away from the farm we couldn't keep up, away from this little town. That's what made me consider it. I'd always dreamed of leaving Ballarat, travelling the world, but my circumstances wouldn't allow it. I wanted better for my boys. Christmas was coming on, and even with what Mrs. Harker was paying me I was only just keeping ahead of my bills. A little bit would have gone a long way, in those days. And the other girls, they didn't seem unhappy. They were always friendly to me, and they had everything they needed. So eventually I said yes."
Lucien listened, spellbound and silent, as Jean told her tale. All thoughts of the hourglass had been forgotten, now; Jean was lost in memories, and Lucien was too enraptured to interrupt her. She was warm, and soft, draped over him like a blanket, and she seemed comfortable here, with him, spilling out her secrets. Lucien, wanted very much, to take those secrets and keep them safe, to understand her better, this woman who had, rather suddenly, become more important to him than any other.
"The officer liked his daytime appointments, and that suited me best. I could agree, and no one would ever know. The boys would be looked after, and Eadie knew I had a job at a pub during the day. I kept telling myself that, that no one would ever know. Mrs. Harker was kind to me, when I finally said yes. She didn't treat me any differently. And the officer...he was kind, too. In his own way. I thought I'd hate it, I thought it would feel terrible. And I did feel guilty. I went home and cried. But I had earned more in that hour than I'd make in two weeks cleaning. And those notes meant not having to worry about food, or Christmas presents. They meant I could put a little by for the future. Maybe it was the wrong choice. Father Morton would say it was the wrong choice."
Lucien knew the old priest from a previous case, and he could not help but agree; Father Morton almost certainly would have judged Jean for the choices she'd made.
"But Father Morton doesn't have any children, and the world is kinder to a single man than it is to a woman on her own."
That was true, and Lucien knew it, and so he bit his tongue. Was it the wrong choice? To sell the one thing she could for the chance at a brighter future for her children? The world as Lucien knew it was a cruel one, a hard one, and some people had harder choices to make than others. But oh, how he cursed that world, and the God he didn't believe in, for placing such a choice in front of Jean, Jean who was bright, and beautiful, and deserved so much better.
"So after that, I took the daytime appointments. City councilors, solicitors, a few of the other officers. I was always careful, and Eadie never knew a thing about it. She knew they were paying me well, at the pub, but I didn't let her know how much, or what for. I worked upstairs for almost five years like that. The war ended, and the men came home, but even if I'd hired someone to come out and work the farm with me I'd never bring in as much as I did at the pub. And young Christopher was so bright, so clever. I was sure he was going to go to university, and I was going to send him there. And in the end, it turned out Mrs. Harker didn't want me working upstairs forever, in any case. She was getting on in years, and she'd found out I had a good head for numbers. She started talking to me more about the business side of things. She put me in charge of deliveries, and then she handed the books over to me. And in 1947 she told me she was going to officially retire, and she wanted me to take over the business."
Lucien smiled, despite the rather grim feeling in his heart. No doubt this Mrs. Harker had seen, as he did, that Jean was far too clever to be just one of the girls forever. She might not have had the education or the experience to run another sort of business, but after a few years of instruction, learning the ins and outs of this trade, she no doubt had shown the makings of a fine successor. Lucien had the benefit of seeing Jean as she was now, seeing how well she ran the Lock and Key, but Mrs. Harker had clearly recognized her potential all those years ago, and capitalized on it at once.
"I could have sold it, I suppose," Jean continued, beginning to wrap up her tale. "She turned everything over to me. But the girls would have had nowhere to go, and I didn't want to throw them out on the street. So I sold the farm, and moved in here with the boys, and that was that."
There was a resignation in her tone, a soft sort of lament, that Lucien understood very well. He knew what she had not said, that she had taken the job as a means of keeping her farm, and then sold the farm anyway, in the end. What had it been like for her, he wondered, raising two sons in a place like this? Had her sister ever learned the truth of the work she did, and if she had, how had she taken the news? Had young Christopher ever gone to university, the way his mother dreamed he would?
"Jean-"
"Don't you dare tell me you're sorry," she cut him off, though she kissed his chest once more, as if to take the sting out of her words. She sighed, and gave a shake of her head, but before she said another word her gaze drifted towards the hourglass on the side table, and she frowned.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Blake," she said, and those two words Doctor Blake settled in his chest like a block of ice. "I'm afraid we're out of time."
In that moment Lucien wanted, very much, to ask for another hour. He would have paid another hundred pounds, if that's what it took, simply to lie with her, soft and close, and keep the world at bay a little while longer. She was so very beautiful, and so very sad, and there was so much left to say, but she had called him Doctor Blake and as she did she rolled away, rising smoothly to her feet and dancing across the room, sliding into her black robe once more and hiding her nakedness from view.
"All right," he said, not protesting for fear it would offend her. He left the bed more slowly than she had done, shuffling around in search of his trunks.
It was a strange sort of feeling, getting dressed with the weight of her gaze upon him, instead of her gentle hands. Over the course of the hour - and more, now, he was sure - they'd spent together he had felt so close to her, as if their hearts were beating as one, had started their time together bumbling and afraid and ended it feeling as if she were a piece of his very self, but now...now there was a distance between them, and he did not quite know how to bridge it.
The moment he was dressed he straightened his shoulders, his ruined vest balled up in his hands, and looked at her, beautiful and soft in her robe, her hair mussed up and the red mark of his beard burned against her neck, and his heart broke, just a little, knowing that he had to leave her.
"Thank you, Jean," he said earnestly, meaning every word, wanting to thank her for her warmth, her hands, the understanding she had shown him, the trust she had given him along with her secrets.
She smiled at him once, softly, sadly, but did not speak.
"Can we do this again, sometime?"
He was desperate already for another chance to hold her, if only so he could whisper to her quietly of all the thoughts that swirled through his mind, all his regret and half-formed hopes.
"Whenever you want, Lucien," she told him, and that would have been enough for him, but she did not stop there. As he crossed the room she took his hand, and held it, and then she lifted herself up onto her toes, and kissed his cheek. It was a soft kiss, a chaste kiss, and it meant more to him than any other he had ever received.
"Let me walk you out," she said, and so he did, holding her hand all the while.
