Chapter Five
'My future will not copy fair my past'
Thank you to all my faithful readers and to my wonderful reviewers. I will thank you all individually in time – and sorry to be so behind in this - but I also do so here, with love. A few of you may notice some references to yourselves - or at least your reading habits! – and these are completely and lovingly intentional x
Please know that I have started an M series of short stories relating to the characters here in Betwixt, entitled By a Beating Heart at Dance-time. The first story, relating to Rob and Tessa, is up on the M section of the site. If M is not for you please note that you will still be able to read these main chapters of Betwixt the Stars and enjoy them without losing anything.
This chapter is dedicated to elizasky, for her amazing beta read of this; and who gave us her Shirley and Carl… and Whitman x
Interlude: ROB BLYTHE
En route to Kingsport, Nova Scotia; late August 1986
Their Island home seemed to reach back to them, beckoning as an elderly relative reluctant to part, even as the ferry chugged resolutely towards the mainland and the late afternoon sun dipped lazily towards the sea. Rob and Melissa leaned over the railing of the upper deck, welcoming the blasts of salt spray carried on the wind, which whipped their hair into frenzied creations normally requiring the liberal application of hair gel, and forced them to soon seek the relief of the upper deck lounge. Thankfully it was all but deserted by the marauding hordes, including both sets of parents, a level down, currently staking out the snack bar.
They expelled joint sighs, stretching out their sea legs to rest on the padded seats of the plastic chairs opposite. There had been a flurry of farewells that morning, from various interconnected family members and the occasional friend, and a surprisingly taciturn Michael, who appeared uncharacteristically overcome with eleventh hour misgivings to see his younger sister and his best friend depart for the big wide world, or at least what smaller approximation of it could be found in Kingsport. After the car ferry over they would drive together in their small convoy; the generals of the families Blythe and Meredith would settle their troops into their barracks, and after a hopefully quick and mercifully low key farewell, would enjoy dinner together at their hotel and undertake the reverse trip the following morning… leaving said troops to acclimatise themselves to their new surroundings. And to the gastronomic vagaries of college dining halls.
"It's quite a big campus, now," Rob mused after a time. "We're on opposite sides to it. I might hardly see you."
Melissa looked up at him from beneath her carefully teased fringe, dark blue eyes trying to ascertain how forlorn he appeared at this prospect. It had taken around a week for them to recover ground after their encounter at his party; she had momentarily feared something precious between them might have been lost out in the night air, even as she had gained some surprising, troubling truths in the exchange. But the good looking companion beside her had determinedly shaken off his hangdog persona to become as blithely cheerful as his name, and as affectionately teasing as ever, and the summer had continued in charmed Island fashion.
"Of course you'll see me," she reasoned, for herself as much for him. "We'll organise lunch dates, join some clubs, do whatever it is people do at college."
Rob nodded, but she felt he wasn't entirely convinced.
"Anyway, just wait till all those law babes get a peek at you, Robert James Blythe."
His chuckle was low. "I'm more worried about those rich city doctors getting a look at you, Nurse Meredith."
"You don't need to worry about that till at least second year."
"That's not entirely reassuring."
It was truth masquerading as banter, of course, and they both knew it. Whatever college had in store for them was more likely to pull them apart than push them together. It was perhaps a necessary thing, and even a desirable outcome; Melissa hoped he saw that, even if he didn't like it. If they had a bond to last, it perhaps needed to be starved for a little while, instead of overstuffed and crammed; to strive for a connection that was a gift and not a habit; something that came from true chemistry and not just mere proximity.
"Well, in case you think you'll forget me, here's a reminder." He fished in the pocket of his denim jacket, withdrawing a box that might house jewellery of some description, typically.
"Rob…" her startled look of misgiving failed to note the twinkle of mischief in those hazel eyes.
"Mel, seriously, just open it."
Her breath taking a momentary hiatus, she did as instructed. Her own eyes widened in relief and delight, scooping the cassette tape up to peruse its handwritten contents eagerly.
"Rob! A mix tape! That's so… cool." Her enthusiasm died a quick death as she quickly scanned the songs in his careful, upright hand. This was a mix tape of scarily lovelorn sentiments, with a tiresome track listing of breaking up and making up, and all the obsessive behaviours in between.
Rob leaned in, explaining with a disturbingly reverent tone. "I thought I'd make the Story of Us. All the important moments in our lives so far; all the songs with great memories and meaning. I had to start with Yaz. Obviously. 'Only You' was our first dance. Remember?" *
"I remember…" Mel echoed weakly.
"Well, there are some classics here, too. 'Every Breath You Take'. They say it's about some stalker, but it's always seemed pretty romantic to me. A bit of Wham! there – 'I'm Your Man.' 'Don't You (Forget About) Me'… we really liked The Breakfast Club, after all. Great movie. Um, Berlin, from Top Gun, of course. And there are, um, heaps of 'love' ones…" he appeared, to her horror, to take a great, shuddering breath, as if trying desperately to restrain some huge emotion, "you know, the 'Glory of Love' and both Huey Lewis and Jennifer Rush's 'The Power of Love' and… and…" he flicked a glance at her, and then seized his stomach, as if about to double over, and let out a gasp which became… a laugh.
Hysterical, breathless laughter.
"Oh God…" he managed, between breaths. "God, Mel. You should… see… your face!"
He laughed and writhed on the seat beside her, his hyena howls loud in the stillness of her incredulity.
"What?" she asked, not comprehending.
"Mel, I'm sorry… I couldn't resist."
"This is… a wind up?"
His laugh strangled speech; he could only nod in assent, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"This isn't… you've been… oh, you ratfink!" She scowled admirably, and then punched him in the arm in both indignation and relief.
"This is your actual tape," he rescued from his other pocket, handing over a mix reassuringly proclaiming all her current loves… Billy Idol, Bon Jovi, Madonna, Glass Tiger and Peter Gabriel, et al.
Mel shook her head. "You had me completely going there!"
"That was the idea," he grinned, calming himself.
"So there's nothing on this?" she gestured to the first tape.
"Oh, well, yeah, there is. I had to do those as a back up. That tape is completely full of those songs. In case my straight face held out, I was going to play some of them on my Walkman for you."
She rolled her eyes extravagantly. "You are a rat, Goose!"
"Er… you might have to make up your mind about the animal symbolism, there."
She huffed and considered her tape again, mollified.
"Thanks for the tape…" she half grumbled. "This one is pretty good."
"No problem. I can take this offensive one off you then," he went to pluck it from her grasp with his long fingers.
"Hey! Not so fast! I… I might keep this one, too."
"Really?" his look was bemused.
"For Sting," she defended with a haughty sniff. "And, well, maybe Yaz."
His smile was quietly self satisfied. So… it had been a job well done over this torturous summer; this recovery of their relationship, this safeguarding of their simpatico. He knew that mattered most, even more, perhaps, than winning her love. He couldn't promise that he would be quite so patient as he had indicated on his birthday, or that he wouldn't try everything in his arsenal to sway her. But to reach her, he had realised, as he fiddled thoughtfully with his signet ring, would be the end of a carefully judged marathon, not of a hasty, hapless sprint.
They listened to their tape, sharing his headphones, the rest of the way to the mainland; her head on his shoulder companionably, the breeze from the open windows and the music stirring their memories.
David, with an iron-willed resolution, rose at seven and undertook a determinedly productive two and a half hours of MCAT study, in between bites of breakfast, and twenty minutes of absurdly wasted time searching for his promised X Files t shirt.
Coming downstairs shortly before ten am, he noted that his father had hauled every conceivable local and family history book onto the dining room table, had recovered several files of old newspaper clippings, and had thoughtfully supplied notepaper, index cards, several pens, a pack of highlighters and assorted back issues of the local newspaper.
"Well, cheers for that, Dad. I'm sure the local branch of Nerds Anonymous will be very grateful for your efforts."
A pair of more-than-usually-excited hazel eyes met his own, and nothing, it was evident, was going to dull their gleam today.
Rob Blythe flicked a glance over his son's attire, dark eyebrows rising bemusedly.
"Well, then, you'll fit in nicely, by the looks of you."
David frowned, crossing his arms defensively. "It's a bit of an in-joke."
"I'll take your word for it." His father's accompanying grin was maddening.
Rob Blythe was clearly torn between enjoying the local delights with the delightful Tessa Ford and toiling through dusty historical records with her daughter. His expression was comically pained as he took his leave, apologising for not bringing anything down from the attic as yet and that she would be welcome to anything she might find up there herself, and cavalierly offering David's own services to this purpose.
When he finally headed off with the picnic basket-wielding Tessa, who had left a twin arrangement for them both, courtesy of their hotel, to enjoy here themselves at Ingleside, he and Anne stood either side of the dining table, chuckling in amusement as they surveyed an historical treasure trove.
"He really does love all this!" Anne offered incredulously.
"That would be affirmative," David shook his head, his grin all fond exasperation.
"And you never caught the history bug yourself?" she questioned, her eyes great grey pools this morning, contemplating him with that wistful earnestness that threatened to derail his fast-futile hopes for at least three more hours of study today.
"Well…" he shrugged, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, "when you grow up surrounded by something, it's either retreat or surrender… I guess I was always a little too practical for all the history stuff. A bit like my ma. I prefer to look forwards, not back. Dad was the one who was the dreamer."
"And you're not the dreamer? Medicine and all?" Her wry smile was gentle.
He guffawed in surprise. "Well, yeah, you may be right about that. If I ever even pass the MCAT there's just going to be years and years of – "
"No! That's not what I meant!" her interruption was agonised, and she even reached out a hand as if to physically stop his thoughts. "David, I just meant, well, that medicine has got to be the noblest dream of all, doesn't it? Tend the wounded? Heal the sick…?"
He blinked in surprise at her outburst. It was such a striking contrast to what Gillian had once said to him – or the way she'd said those exact same words, only her pretty lips had been curled derisively, and her tone had been scathingly condescending, accusing him of having delusions of grandeur that could well outstrip his ability. Or her patience.
They had another staring contest, he and Anne Ford; the kind where the air is sucked up and away, and the pocket of breath left remaining is still and thick and heavy and too warm.
David came round slowly to her side of the table, his eyes following the pink tinge to her pale cheeks that darkened by degrees as he neared her.
"Even if Keats pumped for poetry instead?" he queried, a little huskily.
She seemed to swallow carefully. "Even so."
Anne was acclimatising herself to the tightrope walk of being in this house again. It was indeed a high wire balancing act; concentrate on your balance; focus on what was in front of you; don't look around or too far to the horizon; take a breath.
Take a breath. Well, fine, except when David Blythe was in the room.
David Blythe? Or Kenneth Ford?
Focus.
She took the notebook she herself had brought, delighting in the highlighters Rob had left – oh the joys of colour coding! – and took out her own pen, smooth and weighty and perfect for this sort of serious endeavour.
Right.
She began with the family trees, perusing them with a careful eye, taking notes and a few snaps on her phone, through Rob Blythe had generously offered to have them photocopied for her. She started again, naturally, with the Fords. Kenneth Ford and Bertha Marilla Blythe – wow, the poor girl, saddled with those monikers! – married in August of 1919. A summer bride. Rilla Blythe had been… wow, only just twenty, the same as Princess Diana… fairly young, actually. Virtually a child bride.
I was a child bride?
Rilla had been married right after the war, to Kenneth who had been made a Captain; married, one would presume, from here at Ingleside; this very house. Coming down those stairs ready to be swept up into the arms of her young soldier…
Married before her older sisters, too. That was sure to have been popular.
But what a romantic thought. She likely knew him before the war; had perhaps grown up knowing him, with the connection between the Blythes and the Fords close as it already was… had perhaps had a little crush on him, going back to the start of the war, when he was around twenty or twenty one and she was…
Fifteen.
Anne blew out a breath. I was fifteen, being romanced by Great, Great Grandad Ford? That was two years ago. Two years ago in Toronto she was in braces and squeezing lemon juice onto her freckles. She was going to music camp. She wasn't yet obsessing over boys. Or…er…men.
She fiddled with her perfect pen; she tried very, very hard to imagine herself in a long dress delicately waving a lace hankerchief as a train full of fresh-scrubbed soldiers chugged away from her. She tried very hard to imagine one of them had David's dark curly hair and teasing smile.
It was perhaps more difficult to imagine than it should have been.
She became, inevitably, distracted by the Blythes. She tried not to think about the Blythe upstairs, even as she followed along with his family tree, reading his family's life story between the names and the repeats of names and the dates and the inter-marriages. James Matthew, Rilla's brother – fine then, be named for Captain Jim – who married a Meredith. Goodness, they all married Merediths. This Jem Blythe did, and he and Rilla's sister Nan Blythe did… even David's father. She traced all the way down the line with a slim, pale finger, till she came to the name. Melissa Una Meredith. Rob had noted the day of her passing, in the tiny, beautiful, precise script he had used throughout his extensive charts; the same tiny script as for her own father. Had Rob's hand wavered at all? Had he needed to pause, to breathe, so as not to blot the page?
Her throat throbbed at the thought. And for the curly haired boy she had gifted to the world. Was there any of his mother in David? He looked like his father, tremendously so, even if his manner wasn't quite the match for lovely, sweet, self effacing Rob Blythe. There was precious little that was sweet about Gerald David, son and heir. Except… well, OK, the t shirt today was rather cute. And honestly, perhaps a little tight for him, distractingly so, particularly across the shoulders.
David was born in October. He would be 21 after the summer, but was currently three years older than she. She sniffed to herself. Three years was certainly better than six or even seven.
Focus.
Her pen flew across the page making her notes; her free-flowing, looping script.
Did Rilla write? Poems, stories? She must have done, for the ghost-girl to be conjuring all these interesting words and phrases that would come to her. And names too. She had a feeling Rilla would have approved of Lady Cordelia, for a start. Ah, Cordelia and Roy… Anne had caught up with their fictional reunion this morning, tucked up in bed, and it had been perfectly lovely and… deeply unsatisfying. She couldn't put her finger on it. Everything that had been meant to happen, as if preordained, certainly did happen;declarations of love; a proposal; swooning; a more than acceptable amount of kissing. And it had all fallen flat somehow, as if the magic had been shaken out of it under that tree in the valley. So she had gone back to her phone, rereading her Facebook conversation with David of last night (this morning?) and grinned as she read, quite stupidly, glowing along with her screen as the day awakened outside her window.
Oh the puzzle of relationships and families and names. She thought of all the new names she had encountered this morning. Una. Now that was a name. A Meredith name indeed, and she crossed back to the Meredith tree. Certainly David was proud to call himself a Blythe but he, amusingly, had Meredith blood in him twice over, through his paternal ancestor, the infamous Jem who had married Faith Meredith; and through his mother Melissa too, who was descended from another Meredith branch; through a half-brother called Bruce. And he had a Meredith name, too, in his Gerald for Judge Jerry. Really, he had better not throw any more shade regarding names, that's for sure. Meanwhile, she could but only see one David anywhere… at the very toppermost of the Blythe tree; there was a David Blythe, a doctor no less, from here in Glen St Mary, predating even a Gilbert Blythe at the head of the tree married to that first Anne.
Gilbert Blythe. Married to Anne.
Gilbert.
Her lips curled in smile around the name. It was terribly old fashioned but also rather endearing. And of course she had heard of it before; but as Gilbert Ford, her favourite ancestor; the blonde flying ace in the Second World War; her Grandad Tom's father. Not as Gilbert Blythe… but there, see, Gilbert was Rilla's father… and she named her son after him. Well, that was lovely. And so… a Blythe became a Ford…
When the families intersect.
The phrasing heated her cheeks, as it had last night when Rob Blythe had first taken them through the overgrown forestof names and relationships.
She was back on the Ford family tree, looking at Gil Ford and his three children with Great Grandma Rose… their firstborn son Grandad Tom had another of those strange middle names you just didn't hear anymore. He was actually Thomas Carlyle.
Thomas Carlyle?
Anne had read that somewhere. Not on the Ford tree, that was for sure. She scanned the Blythes, but couldn't find anything there. And then back to those Merediths – the family she hadn't even heard of before yesterday. Climbing back and up… Gerald Meredith… Faith Meredith… Una Meredith… Thomas Carlyle Meredith. In brackets, as Rob Blythe had done for Jem and Jerry, was the name he was known for; Carl.
Grandad Tom had a Meredith name?
That didn't make any sense.
She could have understood a Blythe name, because Gil Ford's mother was Rilla; also the family had spent summers on the Island right up to… well, her own dad. At the house at Four Winds. So the Fords and the Blythes had always had that connection. But they had absolutely nothing to do with any Merediths. Fords weren't related to any Merediths… they didn't know any Merediths…
Who on earth was Carl Meredith then?
Was he a Meredith flying ace whom Gil Ford had admired? Somewhere there would be something here… Rob Blythe had another full exercise book just of all the war service of all these young soldiers in both wars… The war was how Great Grandad Gil had met Great Grandma Rose after all…
It was really all making her head hurt.
Fishing for the war notes of the thankfully, wonderfully meticulous Rob Blythe, she hadn't even heard his son come down the stairs, till that smooth voice with the edge of a smile floated across to her.
"Having fun yet?"
She looked up, startled, into those hazel eyes (where had the hazel eyes come from? she wondered errantly) and blushed, looking back down.
"I thought I was…" she mumbled cryptically, a fetching little frown line, he noted, forming as a bridge between auburn brows.
"And what great conclusions have you drawn so far? Before we adjourn for lunch; I need some non-medical tidbit before my head explodes."
"Well…" she flashed in her general annoyance over the perverse nature of parents in naming children, "it seems for one you Blythes would be nothing without all these Merediths!"
He laughed warmly in surprised amusement, and it made her stomach flip.
"Well, that's exactly what my mother would have said!" David crossed to the table, long fingered hands (Blythe hands? Or Meredith?) gripping the edge of the dining chair opposite her. His laugh ebbed away, and she was left with the residue of his smile, and those eyes softening as he regarded her.
"You know, Anne Ford, I bet Ma would have really liked you."
They eat lunch outside on the verandah, appearing very absorbed in the distant waves speckled by swimmers, when really they are surreptitiously watching each other; eyes darting and hooded; hands brushing in the reaching for this bread roll, that slice of apple pie. It is companionable to sit here on the bench together, the sun slanting onto their faces, and to muse that yesterday… only yesterday…? she was reading under a tree, and he was, unknowingly, heading down the slope towards her.
He is browned and sure and strong; his fingers fascinate; his scar is a vivid white against the sun. His forearms seem threaded with iron. At home she is a girl surrounded by girls and meets the occasional, forgettable boy; he here is no boy. When she senses him gazing at her she feels she should turn from it but she can't help but draw back towards his look. And his look… she hasn't learned the vocabulary for that yet. She deciphers the meaning as she puzzles on the intent.
Back inside, duty calls him; he trudges back up the stairs, heavier of tread than before, turning briefly back to her, as if having more care to stay than will to go.**
She tries not to imagine him up there in his room. One room of many rooms… Does he sit to study, disciplined at his desk? Does he flop on the floor, or mooch on the mattress? Does he tackle things methodically or is he sidetracked and scattergun?
She floats aimlessly about the house; a feather on the breeze; a nightingale flitting. She tries instead to conjure Rilla Blythe; stationed at the kitchen benchtop; reclining on the sofa; poised at the window looking out onto the grand sweep of grass and sea and sky. Did she peruse the books on the shelves as distant strangers or nodding acquaintances or old friends? The shelf at Ingleside now covers one entire long wall; half-ceiling high. She squeezes her eyes closed; she wants nothing superimposed over this, no hauntings of shelves and books as they were. Only here, now, and what is.
There is a method to the madness of the many books; not arranged alphabetically and certainly not modishly color-coded, but rather thematically or by subject. Some are nearly new and some are much older and some look like Noah smuggled them onto the Ark. There are children's books on the lower shelves, spines half chewed and much loved; moving upwards in age and shelf height to young adult; someone liked the bygone mysteries of The Hardy Boys; another was obsessed with Narnia; the Neverland of J.M. Barrie sits alongside the prairie dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the inevitable omnipresence of Harry Potter. A teenaged Melissa Meredith perhaps carried over an extensive and well thumbed Virginia Andrews collection as improbable marriage dowry, alongside some later nursing texts and a penchant for the biographies of 1980's musicians. Rob Blythe's hand is seen in everything from memoirs and histories of both world wars to an extensive collection of dusty law tomes. A younger fantasy-loving David Blythe perhaps kept time with Tolkien; the would-be medical student has possibly discovered Oliver Sacks. There are citadels modern and classic; from McEwan and A.S. Byatt to Dickens and Dostoyevsky. Further up, just beyond her eyeline, are the volumes oldest of all; those Little Women try to warm Ethan Frome; Ivanhoe attempts to court Persuasion; Pride and Prejudice nods politely to Sherlock Holmes; Sense and Sensibility watches Wuthering Heights agog; Jane Eyre gazes with sympathy at The Count of Monte Cristo; Frankenstein smiles wickedly at them all. ***
Her fingers trail over the spines, tracing a meandering path. She inhales deeply…
…the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it… ****
She comes to the poetry section, and thrills to the very sight of it. Oh these Blythes must have been great readers in their day; educated and articulate, and not a little opinionated. Obviously the heavyweights are represented; Shakespeare's plays elsewhere and his sonnets here; Tennyson and Wordsworth and Longfellow and Keats; others of the Romantics; the Brownings, husband and wife; the Rossettis, brother and sister; Poe; Walter Scott; later names, too, and the heartbreaking poets of the Great War; Owen and Sassoon and Graves and Brooke. She had thought their own shelves in Toronto were impressive, but this was something else again… this was poetry and history intertwined; the stories of the readers indistinguishable from the stories they read; one informing the other… a genesis folding back onto itself.
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? ****
Her fingers falter on a worn green spine. It is not known to her as so many of the others are.
Yet.
She takes it down; tests the weight of it; solid and heavy. The worn pages are soft and yielding to her fingers, and she turns them reverently. Her breath is loud in her ears… the smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers… ****
The air is still in the room, heavy and leaden; another too-warm day.
She turns randomly. Some pages are oft perused and unfold for her, as if flowers opening to the sun, as if they feel the memory of air on them… the swish of the petals and leaves stirring… and the whisper of the wind rushing through the reeds.
She swallows carefully. Her body feels static… electric as the title of the poem. It hardly feels like a poem… it feels like a confession. It is thoughts without rhyme, like the stream-of-consciousness of her earlier writings; her dreaming-awake writing, channelling that other girl.
This is not the work of a girl.
'The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them…' *****
'And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?' *****
An awful question. She frowns, ruminates, moves on, starting to inhale the words, unaware she is silently mouthing them in the attempt.
'And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?' *****
She staggers momentarily at that; to see her secret thoughts given voice.
'…the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face…it is in his limbs and joints also…' *****
Her eyes widen; she thinks errantly of David. She is always processing him as body parts; dismembering him with her gaze. Sometimes the whole of him is a little too much to take in all at once.
She scans the lines quickly, as if there is an incoming squall and she must stay ahead of it. There is a lot now about swimmers and labourers and farmers. She is about to close it and take down her Keats.
'…you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang…' *****
'…You would wish long and long to be with him…' *****
The unexpected blush catches her.
'…you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.' *****
She almost snaps it shut in alarm.
Gosh, what was this?
Her cheeks flame, her fingers tingle; as if her senses have been slapped to attention.
She reads on. She turns the page.
She feels her eyes and mouth gape... she knows she is uncomprehending. Her breath hitches. She scans and gulps and reads again and thinks she comprehends.
'Mad filaments... ungovernable shoots...' *****
'...negligent falling hands... all diffused... mine too diffused...' *****
'Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb...'
'Loveflesh sw - ' *****
"What have you got there?"
Her yelp would be comical, if her heart didn't need to start over. She is a marionette jerking up towards the strings. She nearly drops everything, including herself.
"David!" she gasps. "You… you nearly gave me a heart attack!"
"Sorry," he comes off the stairs, his smirk of course telling otherwise.
She stares at him dumbly. He is hair and eyes and…
"Anne- you look like I used to when Ma would catch me stealing cookies after supper," he chuckles softly, but then stops up short, as if remembering it really isn't wise of him to tease her, a guest in his house; a visiting fourth cousin.
But she is so far beyond and out the other side of caring if he teases her. Let him tease her and be diverted.
"So another one of your tomes? Which is it?"
She blinks rapidly, a prostrate mouse to his feline, who approaches with a stealthy grace.
One of YOUR tomes, rather, she thinks darkly.
"Oh, it's nothing," the reply shakes out of her uneasily, and she turns. She tries to shove the volume back on the shelf, anywhere on the shelf, but it is stubborn and refuses to go, to slot itself back in, to be forgotten again when it has been reclaimed.
"Anne - you don't have to put it back! You can read anything here, you know. Just take it. It's yours."
"No, really, that's OK."
"Hey! Seriously!" He comes to stand by her, and reads over her shoulder. Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman."
"Do… do you know him?" she murmurs.
"Whitman? Um, sure. Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society. 'I sound my almighty yawp' and all that." He looks a little pleased.
"Um… 'barbaric yawp'," she corrects, absently, her voice husky to her ears, as if her throat has taken up the very meaning of the word for its own.
"Right." He smiles down on her, trying to have her meet his eye. He has spent the last half hour in hopeless deliberation, study long abandoned, trying to work out what it is about her. When she remains awkward and still, standing halfway between shelf and him, refusing to look at him, he takes the volume back off her in desperation; plucks it quickly with his long fingers. "Do you like him?"
She turns to him, finally, her eyes flashing incomprehensibly with something that might be uncertainty but hold secrets of something else. Which 'him' was he referring to?
"Oh, um, sure. I don't really know him. I was looking for something else, but..."
He begins to flick through, mild interest not for himself so much as for her.
"David…" she does not know if it is a plea or a demand. All she can see is 'limbs and joints... and quivering.' ***** Her eyes widento saucers and her mouth drops open.
"Really, our parents will be back soon..." she makes a pass for the volume, grasping for the worn spine. "We'd better put it back".
He catches her hand to deflect her, lightly grasping her wrist. He knows advanced First Aid; he certainly knows how to take a pulse. Hers flutters like a baby bird's, strumming manically. Her face is still flaming. He notes it and his hazel eyes narrow in concern, and he brushes his thumb inadvertently across the pulse beat; the pumping blood against vein. Her intake of breath is sharp, her pupils dilating till all he sees is not grey but charcoal; he is back in his room in an instant, to that moment last night, as she leaned against his wall and looked up at him as if… as if…
"You'd better not do that…" his voice is low and sounds as if he has been swallowing gravel.
"Do what?" she squeaks.
"Look at me like that, Anne."
"Like what?"
"Like you want me to kiss you."
There. There.
He realises, his own pulse beat too late, that in trying to define the moment he has ruined it. In attempting to make sense of it – because none of this makes any sense – he has prevented the very thing he tried to name from happening at all. His teeth clench at his own unwitting self sabotage as she laughs uneasily, the shutters coming down.
"Your ego is… is… really extraordinary, David Blythe!" she splutters, understandably enough.
"That may be, Anne Ford," he acknowledges on a disappointed breath. "But it doesn't mean I'm wrong."
She has control of herself again now; she pushes past him, away from the shelf, certainly away from him, and in order to not have her barrel into his chest he steps back awkwardly, the half-opened Whitman he is cradling under the crook of his arm fluttering open, and a slim folded page slides out and away; up and airborne on an invisible current, and then gliding to rest on the polished floorboards between their feet.
They draw their eyes away from one another to stare down at it; reach together for it, automatically, though his long arms and long fingers have the clear advantage.
A letter.
He holds it in his hand, and then holds her gaze, apology in the gesture, as he offers it to her.
18 May 1919
Paris
Dear Kit,
You know that I am not much of a one for words, but there is so much I would say to you.
I wish I did not have to. I wish I were home right now and we could just sit next to one another among the sweet flag by the water and not be required to put thoughts into words. Sometimes I think everything would be alright if only we could sit together like that again. But then I think of coming home, of seeing you every day and knowing that we can never, ever have what our siblings have. Do you think I want to sit next to you at wedding after wedding after wedding? I do not.
It is too hard. I can't come home knowing that you can never really be mine. Would you, if such a thing were possible? After what you said to me the last time I saw you, I thought you would. But what could that ever mean for us? Paris was everything, but a few perfect days are not a lifetime.
It's likely I'll be demobilized in a few weeks. And then what? Home to the Glen? To see you every day — so near and still so hopelessly impossible? To have every busybody drooling over my medals and trying to make a suitable match for me? To stand up beside you someday and hold my peace while you marry someone else? I can't even bear the thought, let alone the reality.
Things will be better for both of us if I don't come home at all. You can stay near your family and lead a normal life. Get married. Have a family. You'll be good at all that. But I don't want to watch you do it. This way, you'll never have to worry about prison or Hell or any of it. You can just rest and be safe and I won't put you in any more danger. I know what you said. I won't ever forget it. But things will be better for you if just forget about me.
There was a moment in November when I knew I was going to die. Not someday; in a minute. And I wasn't scared at all. Just relieved. It would have solved everything, if only I had let it. But I woke up in the hospital to find it was all still an unresolvable mess, and wishing I had died as I should have.
You'll be safe, that's the main thing. It's no use talking of my family - they'll get on just fine without me.
I'm sorry. I never spent much time imagining the future. It hardly seemed worthwhile. Now I must, and if this is the new world, there isn't much in it for us, is there? If we can't be together, I don't want to be anywhere near you. For both our sakes.
All my love forever,
Shirley ******
They measure one another for several moments. The heightened heat still lingers, as they sit together at the table, the letter, concession to joint possession, lying opened between them, and the Whitman likewise beside it. They have read the letter and read it again; David props up his face with a long hand, as if needing to further support himself.
"Wow." The word is not enough and yet all either of them could possibly muster.
"Wow," Anne agrees, nodding dazedly.
"You need to come over more often," he tries to joke. "Though I'm scared as to what you'll uncover in our attic now."
She smiles sheepishly.
"This is quite… I mean it's quite a letter. I don't know that you'd even call it a love letter. I don't know what you'd call this…"
"I think you'd call it a goodbye," she offers quietly.
He picks it up carefully; scans it again. Anne notes how the letter has been safeguarded; treasured; how the page is worn and worn again, how the creases of the folds bite deeply into the page; how it is slightly discoloured as if oft perused; how all my love forever bleeds from the last line; and also It is too hard… and I'm sorry.
"OK," he determines. "So this Shirley was our Blythe unfortunate with the girl's name."
Anne nods, drawing the Blythe family tree towards them, indicating with her finger. "It was actually his mother Anne's maiden name, though I agree completely it was not the best call they could have made. He was one of the seven siblings. You know, Mr Jem-named-for-Captain-Jim, who is your ancestor, and then the youngest daughter, Rilla, who is mine."
"Ah, yes. The intersection," he notes, just to see if it elicits that same reaction. It does, and he bites down on his smile.
She steadfastly ignores this.
"So this Shirley Blythe is in Paris," she muses. "It's after the war, but he's still stuck there. Was that usual? Didn't they try to get all the troops home as quickly as possible?"
"I don't know… Europe was in a compete mess, though. Perhaps they had to stagger them returning?"
"Maybe."
She reads back over the letter again, her eyes blurring.
"Did Shirley ever come back here to the Glen? Did he ever see her again? It sounds like he loves her so much. Was she married already? Was she French even? Did they meet in Paris? And what is Kit short for anyway? Is it Katherine or Katie or Katrina or Kitty or…."
"Whoa! I know as much as you, Anne. Probably, embarrassingly, even less, considering you spent the morning going over all the family trees. I'll just ring my dad. Simple."
He fishes out his phone; thinks about a text but then rings instead. It rings out and goes to message bank, leaving his number but not allowing a voicemail.
"No answer?"
He shrugs. "If they are down by the beach anywhere, reception can get a little rough. I'll try in ten minutes."
"OK. Thank you."
They both gaze upon the letter once more, as if it is a magnetic force drawing them; a vortex into which they could disappear.
"She wasn't married," David asserts. "Shirley says if he doesn't come back then she can 'lead a normal life. Get married. Have a family of your own. You'll be good at all that.' And he wasn't married either. He talks of being worried about all those single ladies. Which makes me think maybe she was a close relative, or engaged to a close relative, and that's why they couldn't be together." There is a hint of humour to his conjecture. "We do tend to do that in our family."
She gives him a mock glare but can't quite help her smirk.
"He talks of their siblings though – his and hers – which makes me think different families," Anne demurs. "But they absolutely knew each other."
"Everyone in the Glen has always known each other," he remarks dryly.
"He tried to … kill himself … David," she observes, her voice very low, her eyes fixed on the strong, determined, neat script. "He thought it would be better – easier – for everyone if he was out of the way. If he ceased to exist."
His heart is in his mouth as he regards her worriedly, unsure how blurred the lines and circumstances are for her. He reaches for her hand without thinking, his heart finger clasping her palm.
"He thought he might allow himself to die. There's a difference. But he lived, Anne," he reassures, leaning in, his breath close to her ear, so close that it vibrates and hums. "Look here – 'at the last minute I panicked and fought to pull out of the dive'. He turned it around. He… wait…" David leans over to the letter, still with hold of her hand. "He was a pilot. In the war. He talks about his plane. He wasn't infantry at all. Perhaps that's even how he met her, and he begs her to go back to the Glen for her own safety, or…"
She smiles at his flight of fancy; beginning to concoct an entirely romantic backstory for one Shirley Blythe, pilot in the First World War. And then she falters.
"But he never married. He never ended up with her."
He tries not to notice how she surreptitiously wipes a tear.
"We don't know that for sure, Anne. Maybe they stayed lifelong friends, though. Or maybe they had…er… some kind of an understanding."
She looks at him curiously, her brows drawing together. "An understanding?"
He has to check that she's not baiting him. He is a little gobsmacked to find her genuinely wondering.
"Ah, well, you know. A friends with benefits kind of thing."
She laughs a little, and not at all coquettishly. "A what?"
Oh Christ. His cheeks flush slightly. He feels he is corrupting a minor.
"Ah, well, that they were friends but… occasionally slept together. No strings."
She watches the slow dawn of her comprehension rise in her reddening cheeks and widening grey eyes. She can parry and lunge with the best of them, but for all her living in the big city she is not quite such a worldly seventeen as she likes to believe, or have others do.
"Oh. Right. Sure." She withdraws her hand and flicks her red hair back imperiously.
She is possibly the most adorable creature he has ever encountered in his life.
"Although I hardly think that's going to happen in Glen St Mary in 1919," she huffs.
He allows her this riposte, hiding his chuckle in a clearing of his throat.
"Well, we're not getting anywhere. I'll ring my dad again."
"I guess I can ring my mom, too. Just to check in with her."
David encounters the same result as before, and glances at the time; nearly 3pm. Surely more than long enough for a picnic by the shore.
"I can't get anything!" Anne's face shows her confusion. "I think her phone is turned off! Or maybe the battery has died."
David's dark brows fly upwards. He contemplates; he remembers that late night call; of Tessa's light, flirtatious laugh; of his father's look this morning, hazel eyes aglow.
"What are you doing?" he queries as she begins to dial another number.
"I'm just going to phone the hotel. See if – "
"No, Anne! Just wait a while!" He has a restraining hand on her arm.
"But what if something's happened? Or if – "
"I am pretty sure they are both OK." He tries to convey something with his stare. "Really, more than OK."
He leaves her to contemplate this. He reads in her expression the swift passage, from disbelief to denial.
"But… but surely…?" she splutters. "You're not saying that… that they…? They wouldn't… would they…?"
He shrugs his shoulders, and tries to soften the realisation with his tone. "All I'm saying is they could well be sticking to the script. It fits the timeline. This is their Day Two, after all."
She expels a very embarrassed, affronted breath, but is learning to safeguard her composure. She takes a minute to fiddle absently with her phone.
"Well, then…" she murmurs, with a tiny glimmer of her old arch feistiness. "I guess we have plenty of time for that attic of yours now."
He grins at her, though his pulse lurches queerly.
Please don't make me want to kiss you, Anne Ford… he groans silently to himself.
Chapter Notes
My chapter title is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem 'Past and Future' but is also quoted in Sonnet 42 of 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'; possibly her most famous cycle of work.
*The 1980's Mix Tape was a deliberately chosen collection of songs; a modern playlist not downloaded in seconds but taped off the radio or through the miraculous technology of a double cassette recorder. It took hours upon painstaking hours to compile, and thus was the ultimate expression of friendship and love. Rob Blythe's song choices (both genuine and not) are faithfully taken from the Canadian Music Chart of 1986, with a few of my own favourites interspersed. Most favourite of all is Yazoo's 'Only You'; although released by a British duo (known as Yaz in North America) it charted at Number 67 on the US Billboard Top 100 and 38 on the Adult Contemporary Chart – close enough for it to register in Canada I should think, particularly when their first single was a club hit. It was used very lovingly in the British version of The Office, when during the Christmas episode Dawn comes back for Tim, which I believe is a scene that would have pleased Rob and Melissa immensely.
**William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Sc 5)
***for further understanding and appreciation of these last references please see elizasky's final chapter of 'Glen Notes (1907-1914)'; 'Felicity so Unmixed'.
**** all from Walt Whitman 'Song of Myself' (Section 2) from Leaves of Grass (first published 1855; these references from the final edition from 1892)
*****Walt Whitman I Sing the Body Electric', Leaves of Grass (1892)
******Shirley's letter to Kit; from elizasky's 'Dispatches' Chapter 52: 'Thoughts into Words'. Reprinted here and referenced with her kind permission.