"It's pointless, Harold," she said almost brusquely as they went to bed that night. Harold, half started by her tone, turned the bedside lamp off early and had to turn it on again. The shadows flickered back into being. "I've never known Susan and I never will. She's neither Victor nor Helen and I can't make her out."
Not even Eustace Clarence tried.
But Harold had only furrowed his brow and twisted his hands over the quilt. He did not speak for several moments, but breathed in and out heavily in that way that suggested that he was on the verge of saying something significant.
"I don't think anyone has really tried with Susan," he said eventually, as though still working out his words. "When I last spoke with-" his voice faltered for a moment, and Alberta knew.
Victor. When you last spoke with Victor.
It twisted her then to know that her husband had spoken with her own brother more than she had.
Victor, I'm sorry. Can you hear?
But of course he couldn't, and she shrank against the headboard, pillow squashed in a thin line.
"- When I last spoke with Victor, he said he was concerned about Susan," Harold eventually continued. "And that- that's why I think maybe you ought to try, Alberta."
The distance and discomfort of the dinner flew against Alberta's stomach, pinning her against the headboard.
"If you're feeling so gracious about it, why don't you try?" she snapped, wondering why she felt so vaguely infantile.
Harold gave an impatient sigh, the muscle in his lower cheek twitching.
"She's your niece," he said tightly, "For God's sake just think about it, Alberta; if I try to spend too much time with her, what will people say?"
And it was true, she knew it was true; she wouldn't have been able to bear the whispers and stares at work, even if she only marched in twice a week to hand in her article and have a short chat with Harry.
And she is my niece, after all.
She sighed and slid down to rest her head upon her pillow.
"Monday," she said, tiredly. "I will go see Susan on Monday."
Harold didn't say anything, but when he turned off the lamp, his hand was so gentle she could hardly hear the click.
She wasn't entirely sure what made her wake up that night. It wasn't a common occurrence, and even as a child she had enjoyed the fact that once she would lay her head down and shut her eyes, sleep would come, swift and deep, and depart regularly at six in the morning.
But tonight- or this morning, she wasn't sure- she lay on her back staring at the ceiling, the regularity of Harold's breathing filling the room with a gentle pulse. In the corner of her eye, the curtain flickered; almost imperceptible, but it gestured towards her, and she found herself slowly sitting up, easing herself off the mattress; walking to the half-open window.
Putney was quiet. Outside, on the half-deserted streets, a lamp flickered. In the fluttering light she heard a restless neighbour's dog emit a small howl.
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world, she thought, and suddenly an infinite ache filled her heart, and she felt so tired.
Blackened streets. She recalled the Blackouts during the war; how glad she had been that Eustace Clarence had been safe at boarding school; how angry that she had needed to do so for a war at all.
Her own words, from a column she had written not long after the end of the war, came back to her with the next breeze, tiny words slicing across her skin.
"The tiredness of London today is almost entirely its own fault. Why should a people agree to go to war, fight the war, endure the blackouts and the bombs and the carnage that has wreaked havoc upon the very fabric of our society- and then attempt to justify it? Our post-war rhetoric has failed; the people have succumbed. The ennui has seeped into our very bones, and this is our cry: no more war! Yet there is still conflict continuing in the countries in the East, and our nation is even now contemplating entering fresh wars in this excessive red fear.
The British Empire has failed; and well it ought to have, for it was built on conquest and battle. Now is the time to put aside the bombs and guns. This is what our collective ennui is calling for; this peace is the only balm for our nation."
She shivered.
Eustace Clarence had been mildly troubled by that, she recalled, and she had not understood why at the time. Certainly it had not been excellently received, and she had received angry letters from wives and widows (and almost-widows) and mothers all defending the notion that their husbands and fiances and sons had died for a purpose. She had spoken with Harold, and, at work, with Harry: while Harry had told her that she had laid it on a little thick, she was running the Cassiopeia column, and it was her role to show the people how their own beloved nation was turning into the Cassiopeia they so frequently detested.
War, perhaps, she could rationalise. But death, death, it crept up upon her and seized, and stole, and she could not balance anything in her mind.
A train.
The monster of modern technology, she thought wryly, but even that did not make her laugh.
There was a train; there was a steel wreck. And then she had no son, no brother, no nephews; only one niece, as distant and unknown as any woman coming and going and talking of Michelangelo.
But this was madness. Eustace Clarence was a smart boy, a strong boy, he was her son! How could he have been taken so easily?
Why?
Eustace Clarence, when will you come home?
But he wouldn't, he would never- could never come back. He was in a wooden box, surrounded by darkness that he would never perceive, beneath freshly laid grass without even a headstone to mark the space.
"We'll inform you when the headstone has been erected, Ma'am," the cemetery worker had informed her, superficial sympathy etched across his forehead.
Was that only yesterday, or, even, today?
She shivered as a breeze came through the window again and wrapped her hands around her upper arms.
"It is always hard to lose a son."
But how would Millicent MacPherson know? Had she watched her son sleep at night, watched him grow up, watched him pin insects to boards and draw diagrams, and go away to school and come back with such mature opinions about the folly of treating boys and girls differently? Had she watched her son fall into an attraction to a girl (for Alberta could not deny that her son had clearly been attracted to that Jill Pole, though whatever he had seen in her Alberta still had no idea), felt the pain of growing distance and the ache of unending love?
Eustace Clarence!
And he had always looked so innocent in his sleep. She had sat by him in his younger years, watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, seen his light lashes nestling in the fold where lid met lid.
And now he will never wake.
It would have been easy so easy to give in, to wail and keen. She had to clutch at her stomach and shove a fist into her mouth, and even then the shuddering overpowered her, and she slid against the wall, tears forcing themselves through the tiny (frozen) spaces of her eyes.
And then a cry escaped, half-human, between a wail and a croak, and she could not hold back. The tears came with unforgiving relentlessness, and she felt each gasp as though it was throwing her body against a wall.
Now they will never wake.
But it felt as though she was the one who was dead, that the others had left her behind; that Victor had taken his wife and his daughters and her son, and they had left her in this horrible, horrible nightmare.
She wasn't sure when Harold's arms closed around her, and she fought briefly before another cry slackened her arms; she wasn't sure whether they were all her tears falling to her darkened nightgown, or Harold's as well. At some point, breathing became difficult and her hands shook uncontrollably ("shh, shh, Alberta") but still they came, still the tears, still the raw rake ploughed against her heart, and still, still, she saw their faces, heard their voices.
If she cried, would they stay? But that was the nightmare, still; and she glimpsed in that moment another way forward, a quiet escape (but you may lose their voices) and still in that moment, her vision darkened, and Harold's arms did not loosen around her. In the breath of another breeze, she let the darkness seep in.
A/N: Because the stages of grief really aren't all that clear-cut, and it has, after all, only been a week.
Also, for those who are interested, Harry" is Harry Guy Bartholomew, editorial director of the Daily Mirror following Rothermere's disposal of his shares in 1931. Known for his liberal, anti-authoritarian views, he turned the Daily Mail into a tabloid and encouraged William Connor to write the 'Cassandra' column, which is replaced in this story by Alberta's column.