Author's Note:
Goodness this has been a long time coming, hasn't it?! I could blame typhoid and Halloween both, for readers of those other escapades, but the truth of the matter is I had lost my mojo with this story, and so this chapter has been three-quarters finished for about the last six weeks…
But here we are, back again, and thank you one and all for anyone who has gone back to read it in the interim, or offered a new follow or review/pm. I really, really appreciate it! Again, I will touch base with all of you when I can. Please don't think I don't care if it takes me a long time. Apologies in particular to LizzyEastwood, kslchen and Alinyaalethia who have been so generous and so neglected by me.
This is the tenth chapter (which I have split due to length) of most likely fourteen in the first act of what I consider to be a three act play (ha! 'The Land of Heart's Desire' is absolutely a five act enterprise!) The second act will be shorter (in length, at least!) and will cover five years (this first act, aside from flashbacks, has been merely a single summer!), before we are in the third act where the pace will again slow. I appreciate if it is sometimes hard to follow, as it has time jumps and a large cast of characters, as well as some carefully choreographed canon and elizasky New Canon continuity. And I won't even start on Whitman or the 80's music and film references. There's a lot going on!
Thank you to long-term readers for sticking with this, and a warm welcome to any new readers.
Thank you to elizasky for her beta read and encouragement of this and the next chapter. And, obviously, for New Canon Carl.
I humbly dedicate this chapter to Anne O' the Island. I am sure she'll remember why x
With love,
MrsVonTrapp x
Chapter Ten
'Old Claims Renewed'
Interlude: Melissa Meredith
From Lowbridge to Four Winds, PEI, December 31st 1989
On the last day of the last year of another decade, Mel and Rob helped their respective fathers, Tim Meredith and James Blythe, quietly complete the move of Old Uncle Carl into the shiny new aged care home at Four Winds, high up on the hill overlooking the gulf, in sight of the lighthouse and of the cawing gulls, and built into the slope below the still-snug little House of Dreams.
Uncle Carl had come back from Christmas in Charlottetown, fattened on Auntie Nan's housekeeper's nut roast, crafted to her mistress's exacting standards. There had also been a cavalcade of confections of her own making that owed more to art than to dessert (though in an amused and puzzling aside he was thankful that something called Candle Salad, * which perhaps had once aspired to be both, did not put in a reappearance). The house on the Lowbridge Road, once blissfully private, now felt worryingly isolated; less of a home now, with two of its previous occupants gone from them, and Uncle Carl fearing he might be reduced to talking to the walls, having years ago confessed to similar one-sided conversations with the pear trees. The draught worried his bones, the garden gnawed at his conscience, and the loneliness troubled both his heart and his sanity.
It was time.
Before departing the Lowbridge house, Mel and Rob took a last turn around the garden with him, nodding sagely over his instructions for when to water this and fertilize that, though the gardener under new employ to come every fortnight once the snows cleared was doubtless capable. There would also be a willing army of volunteers to check in on the house, with many boxes still up in the attic, and bigger furniture still in place, newly dusted, if and when Carl decided to rent it out. Though a great many of Carl's most precious possessions were poised to make the trek to Four Winds – perhaps more than his single, nicely-appointed room at the Home could hold or handle – they could be sorted through more considerately in light of his new surrounds, and then safeguarded as necessary by either Merediths or Blythes at their own residences should the need arise.
They all waited outside whilst Uncle Carl took a final, lone tour of the rooms, his still-sprightly shuffle sounding as loudly as the memories, of this place in which he had seen sixty years.
Watching him come back out, patting down his streaming blue eye with his hankerchief, Mel had to turn away, the naked pain of this particular parting too great. Would a mere house ever have as much meaning for her? She had lived her childhood in a neat, nondescript little weatherboard, the rent of which was all her young-married parents could afford; and then on top of one another in the manse; and then into the big, bluff, modern house at the top of the Glen main street; and lately in a shared dorm room at college. She didn't seem to have any attachment to anywhere. And then, she felt a hand on her shoulder, briefly and ever-gently; a large Blythe hand, warm on her through winter layers, and looked up into loving hazel eyes and soft smile.
"He'll be OK," Rob murmured to her. "We'll all make sure of it."
She nodded, throat tight, sniffing loudly against her tears, which earned her such a look of burning affection from him it would have given the game away between them entirely, had anyone seen it. But the fathers were bracing their Great Uncle either side as they encouraged him to the first car; the one with the handsome twin tan leather recliners lashed precariously to the roof rack, and so Rob walked her down, occasionally touching his fingers to hers in shared solidarity.
Ingleside. That place meant something to her, she realised with a revelatory pang as she darted a glance back to Rob before jumping in with her father and Uncle Carl, the Blythes making up the rear of their little procession. More specifically, an upstairs bedroom at Ingleside, where she might happily live out the rest of her days.
They drew away from the Lowbridge house, standing starkly silent in the snowy surrounds, and Mel sent up a silent promise to Uncle Shirley for Uncle Carl, and to the pear trees too, feeling that its story wasn't quite finished… yet.
XXXXX
No one had been more surprised than Melissa herself to realise her affinity for older folk; the first of her fourth year work placements before Christmas had been a very successful stint at an aged care facility not unlike the one she now considered with knowing eye, as they settled Uncle Carl into his room with a little less fanfare than apparently had greeted the redoubtable Mary Vance Douglas when the Home had opened its doors six years before. The halls were certainly quieter now for that infamous lady's own recent passing, and rather less prey to profane interjections, though she supposed infinitely more dull.
Uncle Carl had looked around the pleasant, nondescript room with its unitarian furniture and very white walls, remarking wryly that this was Uncle Shirley's sort of abode. Although the changes they could make were only cosmetic, the brocade curtains, threaded with gold purchased by her mother that Melissa was already hanging at the window, to match the cheery set of yellow ceramic vases crated by special courier all the way from Toronto, were adding a vibrant sunburst of warmth to the sterile surrounds. Rob and the fathers were busily back and forth from the cars to the room, waylaid by curious residents, for whom a new arrival was exciting news, and Dr James Blythe especially curtailed by more than a few who thought he was on site today to see to their ailments, ahead of his regular rounds. This gave Melissa and Uncle Carl more than enough time to begin to rehome the momentos of four score and another decade or so in change; a Cuban cigar box full of photos, with many more framed and jostling for space on bedside table and bookcase; a watercolor of some fantastically hued geese; a stuffed shelf of sacred books. And in the specially locked cabinet, protected from both prying eyes and overzealous cleaners alike, a box in which resided an urn. Carl hadn't made this move alone and unaccompanied, in any respect… That you are here… That the powerful play goes on. **
Carl now sat on the bed, the emotion of the day catching him in his exhaustion, though he rallied to advise on the proper placement of his books, one in particular catching her eye as she lifted it for inspection.
"I thought you had two of these, Uncle Carl?" Mel questioned politely.
Carl reached for the comfort of the worn green cover, passing a hand over it and smiling in salutation, as to an old friend.
"We did. Shirley gave a copy to Gil Ford… though I never thought he was one for poetry."
Mel gave a polite snort, glancing again at the title. "Leaves of Grass… you know Rob used to think that was some sort of botany manual."
Carl chuckled in pleasure, even as the young man in question came dragging a suitcase of clothes, rounding the corner into the room.
"I thought what, Miss Meredith?" he huffed good naturedly, eyes lifting to hers in twinkling Blythe fashion.
Melissa indicated the tome perched on Uncle Carl's knee. "We were just discussing poetry, not botany," she smiled indulgently.
Rob approached the bed, glancing at Carl, the book, and then back to her. He might have once worn a chagrined blush and sheepish smile to match, but now he smirked unrepentantly.
"Well, then, I guess I need to be re-educated," he gave somewhat silky reply, holding her eye for a beat that promised many more lessons back and forth between them, though hardly of a literary nature.
She felt the breath lodge in her chest, and the blush that surfaced was her own.
Rob seemed to remember himself, and their audience, and stepped back, giving Carl a warm smile.
"Uncle Carl, we just have the recliners to go. I'll help Dad and Uncle Tim with them."
"Ah, terrific, son."
Mel watched him disappear with a new wistfulness, wondering if they would snatch any more time alone together before their return to Redmond was upon them, and this magical winter interlude would melt in the glare of work and responsibilities awaiting them. Turning to Uncle Carl she saw him noting her carefully, his blue eye lighting with a new realisation.
"It seems as if you both had a very merry Christmas…" he gave a sly grin.
His tone was too leading for it to be an innocent comment, though she determinedly treated it us such, nodding and beginning to prattle about presents and overlong dinners and fussing with more books, till such time as her companion began to shake his head in amusement.
"Love, neither of you are fooling anyone, and I don't know why you would want to."
Melissa opened and closed her mouth in ineffective, unexpressed denial. She was not about to start lying to Uncle Carl, but she didn't know if she wanted to yawp over the roofs of the world *** about it yet, either.
"Uncle Carl… we… that is, I…" she stuttered, uncharacteristically flustered, "it's still quite recent and new with us and… ah… we're still trying to figure it out."
Carl smiled softly. "And who decided to keep it a secret while you were figuring it out?"
There was an uncertain pause. "Me," she blurted the confession on a frustrated breath.
He nodded sadly. 'Well, lovely Melissa, we called this years ago, Shirley and I. Though I had more faith in young Rob getting there in the end than he did."
Mel felt her mouth dropping yet again in astonishment. "You talked about us?"
Carl Meredith gave his own knowing, unashamed smile. "I always did like to prove Shirley wrong. It didn't happen very often."
Melissa found herself trying to process this information on the hoof, darting a glance at the door guiltily.
"Our parents don't know… we wanted to play it cool. You know, Uncle Carl? Not have everyone get hysterical and start to knit baby clothes."
"Of course, love… but it just seems unnecessary to me. It's no fun keeping your happiness hidden. I wouldn't wish that for anyone."
Melissa colored, shamed, eyes straying to the photos newly displayed; one in particular, a studio portrait of Squadron Leader Shirley J Blythe, in all his uniformed handsomeness, dating from a time when happiness had to be hidden, and discovery would have had so very many unfathomable ramifications.
Mel was silent, throat thick and inexplicable tears welling, not quite able to meet that deep dark blue eye, so very like her own.
A great commotion behind her heralded two Blythes and one Meredith, jointly struggling with the first of the heavy recliners, comically tortured in the attempt and falling into the room, rasping their breaths. Rob, as tall as his russet-haired father and impressively broader, if that were even possible, straightened with a grin, rolling his eyes at her in silent acknowledgement of the older mens' theatrics.
She felt the smile on her lips just to look at him, this wonderful man who had waited so long to make her his, and still waited, poised at their chessboard; a faithful knight to her feckless queen.
Without a thought she crossed the room and planted a very deliberate kiss on his surprised, warm but not unwilling lips, for the benefit of the gawping gallery, if not herself.
Tim Meredith slid into the recliner with a loud moan. "Here we go…" he shook his head ruefully.
James Blythe exchanged a look and a smile with Uncle Carl over her head, leaning against the chair to whack his cousin and friend affectionately on the arm.
"You owe me twenty dollars!" Dr Blythe announced, smile morphing to grin and winking at his son.
Mel turned her face up to Rob's, who was looking too pleased with what had transpired in the past moments to be at all embarrassed by the attention.
"You've let the cat out of the bag?" he whispered to her, raising a dark eyebrow, grin absolutely in place, hand unsure if it should stray to her waist.
"Call it a New Year's resolution."
He chuckled delightedly, drawing her into his arms, ignoring the other three men smirking at them; eyes only for her.
"I can't believe they bet on us," he groaned.
"I will always bet on us from now on, Robert James Blythe," she declared fiercely. Once she may have cringed at such a tired and tiresome trope; a line fit for the worst of rom-coms; a long ago line belonging to a Maverick and a Goose. But perhaps some romance was allowed within the realism… and at any rate, the words were for him, and his kiss back to her shouted his approval of her vow.
The long night before made for a short morning after, and by the time Anne had ventured downstairs from the Green Gables Guest House's garret room, halting and hollow-eyed, it was to a table laden for brunch rather than breakfast, and to a message from Amanda Wright to say her mother hadn't wanted to disturb her sleep and had gone into town.
She looked around her, to the shadow-features of the past, overlaid upon the present, but they comforted, here, rather than confused.
"I'm sorry to have been so long…" Anne began her apology, to the determined shake of her hostess's blonde head.
"No need to apologise, love – it's your holiday. I only hope your later appearance is due to a good sleep and not the lack of it." She looked at Anne with the disconcertingly all-seeing gaze of someone who was a mother herself, and Anne hoped she had effectively concealed the new faint bruises under her eyes, let alone the vague air of unease she wore.
"Thank you… for waiting for me. This all looks lovely."
"Well, it's good to have someone to cook for, frankly. So – I can offer you pancakes, eggs any way you like, or you're welcome to something lighter…"
Anne's stomach recoiled at the thought of anything actually making its way down to her digestive tract, but the poor woman had been waiting around for her all morning. "Toast would be… wonderful. Thank you."
"Well, that's fine, too. Though don't be surprised if I sneak in a waffle. There's nothing of you to speak of." Her smile began carefully but grew wide. "It's a novelty having a young woman here. If anyone comes to stay they are mostly couples or retirees. My boys are always complaining of boredom, until we want them to help out with anything, that is."
"You have boys?"
"Twins," Mrs Wright have an impressive eye roll, and within the action spoke years of toil and trouble. "Still at school, but currently causing havoc for their dad at home."
"Home… that's the house behind here?"
"We sub-divided the land, and built a little place out back," Amanda Wright confirmed, crossing over to the kitchenette off the dining room. "There's a few antiques still about – the sideboard by Reception for instance. I wasn't going to trust my boys with the heirlooms – or the wallpaper."
Amanda Wright and her good nature disappeared around the corner, but soon returned with juice and coffee.
"I do hope you won't find things too quiet here yourself, love, and that there's enough action for you."
Anne tried her utmost to keep her expression politely impassive, when all she wanted to do was to burst into flame, remembering the too-real adventures of the previous evening. Anne-girl… that voice had called to her, conjuring the image of him, feverishly, fascinatingly adult, not a hint of the boy that still lingered about David in his lighter, unguarded moments. Gilbert… she had breathed in return, swooning against him, the flash of memory so real in that fleeting instant that …
She took a shaking hand to the glass of apple juice before her, pressing it to her lips.
Well, then, there it was… Anne… Gilbert… Certainly not Rilla, though the knowledge came as no surprise, and perhaps, if she was honest, Gilbert didn't either. The shared looks with David, the link of a medical career, the instant notion of seeing him and knowing him… And he had known her… that other Anne, with an intimacy that made her mouth run dry all over again, despite the soothing liquid she gulped down. The Blythes had come from Avonlea; had Anne Blythe, too? She tried to visualise the top of that particular family tree, but the names and dates blurred before her, and instead all she could see with any clarity were those eyes in the mirror, and the naked lust that had fired them.
Had David looked at her like that?
Yes…
But…
His actions did not completely follow through on his looks… excepting down in the dunes, and perhaps once before that, in the garden at Ingleside, pained and upset over his mother and her legacy of the Lowbridge house. But mostly… mostly… he was… gentlemanly.
Anne frowned to herself. Was he too gentlemanly? When did a virtue tip over into disinterest? When did respect become a rebuke? Was she not attractive enough? Could she not enflame anyone's passion, least of all his?
She knew what that passion was meant to look like, now. And she'd had the flash of the feel of it, too.
She sighed into the toast that had arrived in her distraction, and Amanda Wright, with a bemused gleam, prepared to leave her be.
Passion… she had no letters to prompt it, like in Possession, and no story of past lovers to link to it, save what her mind chose to reveal to her… or unless… it was forced to face it.
"Mrs Wright?" Anne gasped out at the woman's retreating form. "Do you have a little map of the walks you can do around here?"
Her mother had absolutely forbidden her from going into the woods alone, but there was nothing stopping her from wandering generally, drifting, in all respects, towards the lake. The feverish pinpricks of recognition were like reverse goosebumps across her flesh, making her skin tingle, and she viewed it with a sense that not only had she known the calm expanse of water, shining in the sunlight, but that it had known her… a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting hues-the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. ****
Her heart thrummed, and she sat on the edge of the bank, amongst the reeds, contemplating. Her lips moved of their own accord, in a silent recitation her brain couldn't quite catch. Her mouth skittered over the words. But she knew she had repeated them long ago, and she knew she had said them here.
What if she tried to dredge up the memory; force it into shape? Force it to the surface?
If she did now what she had once done, would her soul remember?
She was not the world's most confident swimmer. There was something about a wild, broad body of water, of uncertain depth and danger, that panicked her. She was never entirely comfortable out on the harbour with Grandad Tom, and she had terrible visions of slipping below the surface even at the local pool. Her beachside exploits with David had focused more on watching the waves than diving into them; she had begged off with mutterings of the dangers of sunburn to pale, freckled skin and the startling effects of saltwater on her hair, and really, swimming was an interruption to flirting and kissing, and he had been very prepared to forgo the former to concentrate most wholeheartedly on the latter.
But now, she welcomed the churning in her gut, because it heightened the connection to then. To before... Before, when she had been the woman held by her husband in the mirror's reflection. But Anne Blythe had also been a girl… who had definitely been out on a boat on the water, this stretch of water, with the sound of lovely, lilting words on her tongue, and the girlish laughter of others reaching her across the ripples.
She looked down at herself; the long, green cotton dress she had changed into, unthinkingly. She pulled her hair from its messy morning bun and let the breeze take it, closing her eyes to imagine the water darkening it to auburn, and the gentle current lapping at her ears.
She rose and walked and walked along the edge, away from the bridge, until she came to a little jetty, and a caravan set away up the slope, and a bored boy about her age inside, fiddling with his phone, perched above the signs for various Avonlea undertakings.
Fishing pole hire. Bait extra.
Paddle boats.
Row boat hire.
"Hello," she ventured gamely. "Can I hire a boat, please?"
It took an inordinate amount of time for dull brown eyes to raise themselves to hers. Mouse-brown hair hung lankly over brow and then in unfashionable protest over ears and nape, making her pine for David's clean-cut dark looks. "You over sixteen?" came the question, devoid of polite preamble.
"Yes."
He considered her dubiously. "Cos you can't go out by yourself if you're under sixteen."
"I'm seventeen," she answered huffily.
"Paddle boat or row boat?"
"Um, row boat."
He raised a laconic eyebrow at her slim shoulders and arms, and she looked down at herself, frowning.
"Okaaay. We have forty minute hire up to two hours. How long?"
She flicked a glance back over the water, biting her lip. "Two hours."
He sighed to himself, as if she had grievously interrupted his day, and shuffled some papers about.
"Right. This is your indemnity form," he droned, unable to beat back his boredom. "No responsibility will be accepted for loss of any valuables or damage to persons or possessions. No responsibility will be accepted in the case of accident or injury. A lifejacket is stowed under the seat which you must wear at all times. Please stay within the boat and do not lean out of the side of the boat at any stage." He jabbed the bottom of the single sheet with his finger. "Sign here."
She signed away with a grim resolution.
"Um, which one?" she gestured to the three dingy dinghies nestled by the water's edge, all faded into similar indeterminate hue.
"Take your pick."
She walked slowly down towards the crafts.
"And be careful!" shouted a voice from behind her. "It's extra if you lose an oar!"
It was another clear, beautiful day, and the tranquility of the scene could have easily eased her fear, but a calm row on the water wouldn't help her to remember. She needed to be afraid; she needed to lose all reason – perhaps lose herself – in a syncope that was the missing beat and breath of time between two worlds.
She had managed one of the oars, but mostly she was ever-slowly drifting down back towards the far-off bridge. There was not a person to be seen, not even a stray dog that might bark an alert if she came to some danger. Defying all warning, she leaned warily over the side, examining the water for answers, or even the right questions. She sighed. It was useless. What was she even doing here?
There was an awful lot online about past lives. She wasn't the only one out there who thought there was something more… out there. The idea of reincarnation – of the regeneration of a soul – was as old as religion itself. There were websites and books and manuals and workshops and courses and films. There had been a quote from Goethe; I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times. That was all very nice, of course, but really she was only interested in this one time… There wasn't really, yet, the yearning in her for some metaphysical or spiritual truth, but instead a very basic one; how had shebeen that other Anne, and how had David been Gilbert, and how did those hovering yesterdays affect their beckoning tomorrows?
In Somewhere in Time *****Christopher Reeve's character Richard had willed himself back to the year 1912, through self hypnosis and the power of suggestion. He had dressed himself in the clothes and accessories of the period and had booked himself into the same hotel room in the same hotel as he had first visited, holding fast to the knowledge that he was going back to what he already knew. He had Bid Time Return in every sense, going back to meet his love Elise, who had first urged him to find her in his present… Come back to me… Anne had booked into the place and commandeered the room she knew she had known; she only needed to understand the one who called to her.
Anne remembered a scene from the film, and a kindly professor with his own idea of time travel, requiring neither flying phone box nor De Lorean…
"… All the sights around me were part of the past… I conceived a notion… 'What', I asked myself, 'if I attempt to hypnotize my mind?... I closed my eyes and fed a suggestion into my brain… But, I felt exhausted afterwards… It was imperfect; transient… how could it be otherwise? If I was going to try it again… I would disassociate myself entirely from the present; move everything out of sight that could possibly remind me of it… then, who knows?" *****
Anne looked around to a landscape that was surely not much changed from what it had been; there were no modern craft out on the water; her own boat was wooden; she had no present-day accruements that would… wait. Her life jacket – it was surely more modern than the ones they used to wear, and when exactly was plastic invented? She paused for all of two seconds before unclipping it with shaking fingers, covering it with some sort of hessian sack in the bottom of the boat, and then examined herself for anything else preventing her mission. She even patted herself down, and came to her phone, with debit card tucked inside the cover.
Not exactly nineteenth century.
She tucked it inside her bra instead, which was at least out of sight, and not liable to fall out easily.
Breathe… breathe… she instructed herself, and inched down until she was reclining at the bottom of the boat, inelegantly sprawled over half of the bench seat, legs dangling down.
Close your eyes… she demanded in a frightened whisper, just like had happened in the film. You are from a long time ago, at least one hundred years ago, probably closer to one hundred and fifty… ah… well… you are a teenage girl of long ago, at any rate. You are floating down the river. Well, on the lake. You are thinking of something to recite… you are thinking of a boy… a curly haired boy with hazel eyes, who… who… waits for you down the lane, by the gate… You think of him and think how much he means to you… you think of his name…
Anne breathed as deeply as she dared, half submerged in a little boat heading for the bridge, willing the memory to take her.
Her lips moved, but no sound emerged, as if it took time to locate the words, reaching back from beyond.
"Well, I'll… well, I'll…" she repeated, though she knew not from where, or why. "…be Elaine… Elaine… Well, I'll be Elaine…"
"Anne, for goodness sake, smile a little," came another voice. "You know Elaine 'lay as though she smiled.'"
For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak… Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard…" ******
Anne bolted upright, her eyes flying open, the gasp which she had given then given again, but somehow trapped within her body.
She was Elaine… she played Elaine. Anne played Elaine.
She was Anne…
She knew it now, past all doubt, and certainly past all sense.
She had been Anne, here in Avonlea, living at Green Gables, playing with her friends, fighting with him.
Anne looked around her wildly, uncomprehendingly. It was very damp. The bottom of the boat was wet and the hessian sack, buoyed by the life jacket underneath, moved as if on a wave.
Water. There was water in the boat.
They were sinking.
She and Other Anne both.
Oh my God.
Anne flung her head either side but nothing and no one came into view, except for the bridge, looming ahead but still a frightening way off.
Anne felt as if she was already moving underwater, so slow and lethargic did she feel… utterly exhausted and spent.
Utterly exhausted?
It was real…. The time jump was real… It had worked.
Still uncomprehending, Anne bent to reach for the life jacket, nearly tipped the boat over, and saw it break free from under the sack and flip over the side and away.
She stared, her mouth open.
Oh my God.
She was going to drown.
She was going to drown on this forlorn stretch of water, far from anyone, with her mother never knowing any different, whilst she slipped gently below the surface.
Had she… had she drowned? Had Other Anne drowned? Is that what her fear had always been about? Was that what was going to happen to her?
Oh, God! Her mother. Her poor mother. She would have Rob but…
David. His name welled in her throat, preventing her scream. She would never see him again. She would never know his smile or his eyes or his kiss or –
Wait. Other Anne did not drown. She moved to Glen St Mary and had a dozen children with Dr Gilbert Blythe. She was descended from one of those children, and so was David, what's more.
You will survive this too. Just calm the hell down.
She breathed, she paused, she considered.
There was one chance – just one…
…it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down and to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment… I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it… ******
Anne had been floating all the while during her panic, and could see the bridge and the pilons quite clearly now. The boat was filling fast, water creeping from her ankles to calves, and there wasn't much time. She brandished an oar to help steer her closer to the bridge and then made a panicked grab at the nearest pole, using the boat to push off against to gain purchase, wrapping arms and legs around the pile as one would a lover, and clung to it as desperately as she would any man she might one day call by such terms. Half her body was now submerged in water that was neither frigid nor warm, but she was thankful at least her phone had been saved, shoved in her bra that…
Her phone. Her eyes widened with the shock of the realisation. If she could just manoeuvre her body she could still have both arms around the pole and grasp it and try to ring her mother, or try Siri for something useful for once other than the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody.
And that's when her breast actually began to buzz, as if someone had her heart on speed dial.
David.
She breathed his name to herself even before she twisted her wrist to pull out her phone and press that precious green button.
David stared at his cell for a moment of complete, genuine shock, and then put it up again to his ear as he started rapidly moving downstairs and through the house.
He had spent all morning doing sections of MCAT mock ups and checking texts from Anne, like some sad puppy waiting by the door for its owner to return.
And then, the incomprehensible pain, like a quick stab in the chest, and then it was gone. Not indigestion but not unlike heartburn, flaring and then subsiding just as quickly. Yes, that was typical. Anne was giving him heartburn in every sense. Just wait till he told her that, and shook his head, smiling uneasily.
He could just ring her now, and tell her that.
He didn't know what made him ring rather than text. Maybe to hear her say his name. Maybe to quell the inexplicable uneasiness that had washed over him, like goosebumps rising over his flesh in a swell of sudden dread. He would ring her to say hello, and he would know he was an idiot, and all was well. And then, her disembodied voice, which hadn't been a reassurance at all…
"Anne, sweetheart," he said now, fighting to keep his voice calm and level. "Just let me get this right. You're in Avonlea, in some sort of lake. The boat sank and there was a bridge…"
"Yes…" came her too-faint reply.
"And you grabbed hold of one of the pilings at the bottom of the bridge, and that's where you are in the lake, right now, just hanging on?"
"Yes!" she claimed more loudly but less steadily. "David, I can't really swim, and it's… it's…"
"Anne, listen to me! I am coming to get you. I'll be there in thirty minutes." More like forty-five, he thought despairingly, plus the time to actually find her. "In the meantime I'll keep trying your mom and also the emergency services."
"OK… thank you…"
"Anne, listen! If you get too tired you can always just drop into the water. Don't be scared to. You can bob back up and then continue to hold on to the piling one hand either side to help you float." He was desperate to give her some alternative to clinging on for dear life until she slipped and fell and was too disorientated and frightened to know what to do.
"OK…" she sounded forlorn and exhausted, and his heart lurched.
"Anne, can you tell me where you hired the boat?"
"A guy… in a caravan… just u…up from the water's edge." He could hear her breathing heavily. "Oh I think the battery's running out!"
"You'll be fine, Ford. You're tougher than you look."
There was a weak chuckle in reply.
"Anne, I – "
The phone died, and he lost her, but David was already in the car and reversing down the drive, leaving a scrambled voicemail for his father, and wondering what his last sentence to her should have been.
Chapter Notes
I take my title from Robert Browning's epic poem Pauline, one of his earliest works, written in homage to Shelley (that would be Percy Blythe, as opposed to Mary… it's obviously been a Shelley sort of week…)
*Ah, Candle Salad. It existed; I know not how, and definitely not why. If you dare to remind yourself, please see elizasky's 'The Happiness We Must Win', Ch 24 'Muggins the Sky Terrier'.
** Walt Whitman from 'Oh Me! Oh Life!' in Book XX 'By the Roadside', Leaves of Grass (1892)
*** Walt Whitman from Book III 'Song of Myself', Leaves of Grass (1892)
[Just a quick note here - obviously in the last Carl flashback (in 1984) there was only conjecture from Michael Meredith, in conversation with Rob, that Carl and Shirley were gay. We did not know Melissa's thoughts. This flashback now takes place five years later and it is clearly understood by all that the old uncles were a couple. There is another flashback to come happening in 1985 which will clear up any confusion.]
****Anne of Green Gables (Ch 2)
*****Somewhere in Time (1979) starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour (and not forgetting Captain Von Trapp himself, Christopher Plummer), based itself on the novel Bid Time Return (1975) by Richard Matheson. Time travel, eternal love, and Rachmaninov. And young Christopher Reeve. What more can you possibly ask for? Filmed mostly at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan, which sits on Lake Huron, which will be familiar to Canadians too... and eliasky's readers.
******Anne of Green Gables (Ch 28)