Something happened after nightfall. During the day, Jean had gotten so used to spending her time with Lucien up in the studio that she could almost feel as though he were alive and real and ordinary. As though she were still housekeeper in the Blake house, this time working for the younger Doctor Blake instead of the elder.
After all, during the days, that's essentially what she did. Jean cleaned the house as she always had, and she cooked meals for two just as she'd done when old Doctor Blake had been alive. Instead of setting the table in the kitchen, she brought everything up to the studio on trays.
And Jean found it very comforting to have some sort of continuity in life. So much had changed and yet much had stayed the same. It made the adjustment easier. And it made it easy for her to pretend that Lucien Blake was alive and well. That everything was just fine.
Only that wasn't the case, was it? Lucien wasn't alive and well. He was behind the veil and trapped in the studio. Jean didn't like to think about it too much, for it upset her to contemplate. She'd accepted the reality of him alright, even if she still did not understand it. Even if she didn't really want to believe it. The fact of the matter was that she couldn't deny it.
But then darkness came and things changed. Reality changed. Jean had trouble pretending during the night. Perhaps it was because everything felt quieter.
All day, Lucien would greet her pleasantly and remark on the food. He'd not eaten in so long, every meal was something of a renewed adventure for him. But as they were still getting to know each other, his enthusiasm was easy to attribute to him being polite and getting acclimated to a new cook's food. During daylight hours, their conversations focused on Jean's daily life. Lucien would ask her what she'd done since he saw her last. If she went out, where did she go? Was that shop or that street in Ballarat as he remembered it? Would she describe it to him? Who did she see? Oh yes, a name he recognized, was so-and-so still alive, whatever happened to what's-his-name? Conversations like that were easily lent to pretending normalcy.
Not at night, though.
Lucien got contemplative in the darkness, Jean had found. He wasn't as cheerful or talkative. He seemed content to sit and just watch her. It was a bit unnerving, and Jean was filled with such things that she did not want to think about whenever he got like that.
The fact of the matter was that Jean found the silences that fell between them to be invitations for disaster. She wanted so much to ask him things, to wring every single thought and memory and experience out of him. He may have been trapped in the studio for fifteen years, but before that, he had seen so much and done so much, and Jean felt, in comparison, that she had seen and done so very little. She'd had such desperate yearning dreams as a young girl, dreams that Christopher had always encouraged and fostered in her, dreams that the realities of life had crushed in the mud of the fields outside the farmhouse. She'd learned temperance and restraint as the years went by. She had learned very, very well how to hold her head high and hold her true self deep inside where no one could get her. It was preservation more than anything else, but the struggles of life had not stamped out that yearning completely. And now here she was, faced with Lucien Blake and his extraordinary life, and all she wanted to do was beg for his stories.
But she knew better than that. If Lucien wanted quiet during the evenings, she'd not disturb him. She'd sit on the sofa with her knitting, the clicking of the needles the only interruption to the silent stillness of the studio after dark. Perhaps if he didn't sit there watching her, it might be easier.
One night, though, it proved too much, and Jean crumbled under the weight of her own curiosity. She finished the row of stitches and set the nearly complete blue blanket aside. "Lucien?" she began.
"Yes, Jean?"
"Would you tell me about Singapore?" It was a bit blunt, she realized, but there was nothing for it. If she weren't blunt about it, she'd not get the words out at all.
Lucien regarded her with a small, pensive smile on his face. "What would you like to know?"
"Oh anything," she answered. "I don't know anything about that part of the world."
"And are you often curious about things you know nothing about?" His smile grew.
Jean's brow furrowed, feeling that telltale twinge of judgment and disapproval she'd been subject to all her life. "I suppose I am," she replied carefully.
"I find that people get to a point in their lives and don't like to know anything new. Though obviously I've not been around many people recently. But I seem to recall somewhere around adulthood, most people are frightened and upset when confronted with things they know nothing about."
"Well perhaps I would be about certain things, but I'm asking you about Singapore because I am curious about new things. Though I suppose I have my limits like anyone else," Jean said primly.
Lucien chuckled lightly. "I'll accept that, I suppose. Now then," he said, readjusting his posture so he could lean toward her better. "Singapore."
Jean sat and watched him animatedly describe the city where he had lived, how it was very much a colonial place full of the comforts of home pressed into an unfamiliar setting. There was a gentlemen's club not unlike the Colonists'. He was with the army, so military people were everywhere, and they always had a distinct way of doing things. Jean knew a bit of that, what with her young Christopher in the army for his entire adult life.
But he went on to describe things she'd never imagined. The animals and the way the trees grew and the dense jungles. And the people he'd gotten to meet, the men who had been captured alongside him and put in the camp and with whom he formed a bond thicker than blood. The Malaysian people and the blend of the cultures between old and new, native and European.
"Did you learn their language?" Jean asked.
"There were a lot of languages spoken there. A lot of remnants of old tribes, and they all had different dialects I never got the opportunity to know. But with all the colonizing, people mixed and blended. The main language—other than English, obviously—was Malay. But there were a lot of Chinese influences. I learned a bit of Malay and Tagalog, since a lot of workers were brought in from the Philippines. But after the first year or so, I started to learn Mandarin Chinese. That proved very useful," he told her.
"Useful?" she pressed.
An expression crossed Lucien's face that Jean hadn't seen before. He was wistful. He just hummed in response.
"What made Mandarin Chinese useful?" she asked again.
"Well I think it showed I was serious, you see. Everyone in a position of authority in Singapore could speak English. They had to. But to speak someone else's native language is an important show of respect. A lot of the officers, I'm sorry to say, never saw the point of working so hard to learn a language other than English. But I really wanted to impress, I suppose."
Jean put the pieces together from his somewhat cryptic explanation. "Your wife was Chinese," she deduced.
"She was," he confirmed.
"Tell me about her," Jean requested softly.
That wistful look on his face became stronger. And sadder. "Her name was Mei Lin. She was very beautiful and very intelligent. Extremely well-educated and from a family with a lot of influence in the Chinese government and in Singapore. She was very proud. Walked very tall, despite being physically quite small. She was magnificent, really, and she knew it. I think she cast a spell over me the first time I met her, and I practically tripped over myself to prove worthy."
She did not say it out loud, but Jean got the sense that she and Mei Lin likely wouldn't have enjoyed each other very much. Jean found people who were proud and privileged to be wearying at best and cruel at worst. She always found herself ill at ease in the presence of such people. Though Lucien wasn't like that. Maybe he once was, or maybe Mei Lin had been different when she was alone with her husband. Either way, Jean had grown to like and respect Lucien. She surely would like and respect his wife, if she ever met her.
"And she had a fierceness to her that I always liked," Lucien continued. "A strength I found enthralling. I was arrogant in those days, but I never really felt very strong, as much as I tried to be. I think I thought that if I could succeed in marrying Mei Lin and having her fall in love with me, I might learn how to get some of that strength for myself."
Jean understood that sentiment all too well. "And did you?"
"Not at all," he chuckled. "I loved her and found myself softening even more. She and our daughter, Li, were my whole heart while they were alive."
"Only while they were alive?" Jean asked, saddened by the thought that such love did not survive death. That hadn't been her experience at all.
Lucien shook his head. "The camp and now here, I don't think I have a heart left at all."
"I can understand that," she said quietly.
"Can you?" Lucien's bright blue gaze searched her face, almost beseechingly.
Yes, she could. And she couldn't put it into words. Didn't want to, more like. And all of the yearning and loss and grief and frustration and longing from her whole life crashed over her in a crippling wave. She couldn't bear it.
Jean could practically feel the air being sucked out of the room. It was the darkness of the night that brought these things upon her. It must be.
A shiver went up her spine, and she stood up abruptly. "It's getting late. Goodnight, Lucien."
Like a frightened coward, Jean hurried from the room, closing the door to the studio behind her.