A/N: thanks again to all my readers and reviewers, I've been slightly overwhelmed by the response! This one is going up a little early due to Easter. I wish everyone a good break!
4. December 2012
Hope had, technically although not in reality, been back home for nearly two weeks when she found the email from Erin in her Inbox when she arrived at work on Monday morning.
Hi Hope. We don't want to be impertinent but we're worried about Harry. He's fading away from us again and we were wondering if you've been keeping in touch with him? If not, can you send him something? We think it might help – he was better while you were here. If you have been in touch then I guess we will just have to go back to nursing him and try to find out what else it might be. Sorry to trouble you and thanks. Erin, Dee, Cal and Waleed.
Her heart sank as a quick burst of guilt flared and died. She had sent Harry a quick text when she got home and forwarded a few jokes and two-line messages through the email over the days since but had otherwise been so busy, reporting on her findings to the government and the intelligence community as well as the other members of the multinational task force – in fact she had just got home late last night after over a week spent briefing her counterparts in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and, very much on the quiet, China – that she hadn't got around to sending anything of any substance. Yet she had known, at the airport, that he was still incredibly fragile and had suffered a very uneasy flight back as a result, unable to shift the image of the total desolation that had been in his eyes as they had finally parted. It seemed that she had made the mistake of assuming that he was better than he was. The lack of contact hadn't been intentional and his depression wasn't her responsibility but he had, unwittingly, done her a lot of good and she felt she owed him a little, if only for that... Shit!
Sending a quick acknowledgment to the younger woman, she put everything else aside and finally wrote him a long, chatty email, deliberately keeping the tone light while apologising for being slack, passing on some scurrilous gossip about a mutual acquaintance that should be guaranteed to at least make him smile and finishing with a reminder that she was expecting wedding photos after next weekend. Hitting the Send button she sat back and scrubbed at her face, hoping that it wasn't all too late and that the contact would do some good.
Erin had sent the email late on Friday evening after a long day of politicking with Harry at Whitehall and Vauxhall Cross and after having been getting her courage up to do so for the previous week. Her boss had taken an inordinately long time to return to the office the day Hope had left; when he did, he looked like he had been hit by a metaphorical truck, wan, listless and far too quiet, and had gone down-hill rapidly in the time since, returning to his state of emotionless automata surrounded by an impregnable wall of self-defence. Even the black ties started to become more common again, although not quite as dominant as they had been. Unsure of the response to what was an unusually personal request to someone she didn't really know on behalf of someone else who didn't know she was doing it, Erin had sent the email deliberately late, well aware that it was the weekend already on the other side of the world and therefore giving her a couple of days to prepare for whatever response she might get from the older woman; she just hoped her instincts on that front were right. Then yet another crisis had blown up – a bunch of disaffected youths with a home-made bomb only this time they were fascist skin-heads whose lack of skill reflected their lack of originality – and kept them all busy until Sunday, so she didn't have time to wonder whether she had done the right thing or not.
As usual, Harry had sent them home once it was all over and then spent Sunday evening writing reports and tidying up paperwork. There was no reason for him to rush home. He preferred being here with his memories and the fantasy that Ruth might bowl in at any moment, or Hope, bringing with her that intangible air of peace and serenity. Polar opposites, that pair. Both brilliant, in completely different ways; one all nervous energy, the other stillness incarnate. He sorely missed having someone he could talk to, about anything, everything or nothing, in a way that he had never been able to do with anyone – and that included Ruth – before and wondered what she was doing, right now, in the too-bright summer of the other side of the world, and what Ruth would have made of her. He had a funny feeling they would have liked each other and would probably have delighted in ganging up on him to take the piss when he needed it, something he was willing to concede these days that he probably required more often he had ever received.
Realising he had let his mind wander yet again he pushed the keyboard away and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes for a few moments as weariness overwhelmed his deeply rooted sense of duty. It was always the way on these late nights, alone in his glass fishbowl. With nothing to distract him his mind would head in the entirely predictable direction of what his future might have been, had he been less exhausted and faster off the mark that day, or had Ruth listened to him when he warned her... then he would consciously divert the path he was taking by doing or thinking about something different. It didn't always work – like a tongue prodding a sore tooth he would end up back at his starting point sooner or later – but he was finding it a little easier with the passage of time.
The best diversion was also the most surprising: when Ilya Gavrik was in town he knew, no matter what the hour of the night, that he could ring or text his former foe and they would meet up somewhere to drown their sorrows. These days, Ilya slept as little and as poorly as he himself did and so was always happy to oblige; occasionally, he would be the one making the phone call and Harry was content to return the favour. However, despite the increasing frequency of his visits due to the expansion of his business – the only other beneficiary of his insomnia – Ilya Andreivitch wasn't in town all that often so Harry would have to find something else to use and that included occasionally thinking about Hope's story and how on earth she had survived it for so long.
Equally cogent was how Ilya was surviving revelations that must have almost destroyed him, would have destroyed a weaker man. At this stage, for himself he couldn't see further ahead into his future, sans Ruth, than the next month, let alone years hence and he knew the Russian wasn't even capable of that, living entirely from one day to the next, buried either in the minutiae of his business or, significantly harder, dealing with Sasha's painfully slow recovery in the high security psychiatric facility where he was serving his sentence for the murder of Anatoly Arkanov. Neither he nor Ilya could even begin to imagine how or where they would be in a decade or more but now there was Hope, the living proof that it was possible to endure, to still make something worthwhile of your life when you thought it had finished.
The very strangeness of the friendship with Ilya was proving to be one of its greatest strengths, the pair of them somehow glued together by, yet increasingly stronger than, the horror of their shared history and all entirely by choice. Harry had been at Catherine and Aron's place last weekend for one final discussion on wedding duties when he had heard something that perhaps reflected on the friendship and on this unfamiliar new world of more visible, if not quite unrepressed, emotion in which he found himself these days.
Aron, a rangy New Zealander who was Catherine's cameraman and cinematographer as well as her fiance, was also an obsessive surfer and was, to his future father-in-law's silent, thankful relief, slowly but surely refocussing Catherine's passionate interest away from the dangers of religious and political conflict to the equally, or maybe even more, urgent but less well-covered issue of the looming ecological collapse of the world's oceans, an event which would have implications that would dwarf any human politics. On this day he had been playing a remastered version of what was apparently a classic surf movie from forty years before on their large new television, the soundtrack forming a quiet backdrop to their conversation. At one point Aron had disappeared to take a phone call and Catherine had gone out to the kitchen to make afternoon tea, leaving her father alone with only the dream-like imagery of the sort of pristine water and beaches that rarely existed any more and its accompanying music for company. The words he heard, in front of a chiming guitar, had rung achingly true at points for the lessons he had so painfully learned over the past few years.
There's no formula for happiness that's guaranteed to work.
It all depends on how you treat your friends and how much you've been hurt...
...no lover's ever been in love and not been hurt.
No dreamer has ever dreamed and seen it all come true.
In the end you find the things that count are up to me and you
but it's a start when you open up your heart.
Give your love to others, they become your brothers.
Open up your heart, come on make a start.
Try not to hide what you feel inside, just open up your heart.
Well, he had opened up his heart and look at where it had lead but by the same token he had lived his entire life before that hiding everything that he felt and look at how that had ended up. At least, before Sasha – no, that wasn't fair, it was Elena – had destroyed it all, his small attempts at reversing that habit of a lifetime had been leading in the right direction with Ruth. Certainly the risk he had taken in spilling far more than he had ever intended to his daughter in the weeks following Ruth's death had paid off in spades – they were now closer than they had been at any time since she had been small – and continued to do so. Then, after some of the discussions he had over the past months with Hope, deeper in many ways than any he had even begun to attempt with Ruth, he had felt something of a kindred spirit in her on the risks and benefits of opening up to others and had finally decided he might as well do his best to continue on that new, unfamiliar and uncomfortable course and that included taking a firmer grasp on the friendship with Ilya. God knows they bothneeded someone to talk to... The lyrics to this unknown song had seemed to be a verbal incarnation of that notion.
Tonight, though, drifting between Ruth and Hope in his tiredness, he wondered whether he had actually achieved anything or not and why he couldn't completely drag his thoughts away from either of them: one was never coming back, after all, and he had hardly heard anything from the other since she had returned home, whatever that might signify. Presumably he had read more amity into those weeks of friendly discussions and calm silences than actually existed. That wasn't fair either – she had told him before she left that her feet were unlikely to hit the ground for her first couple of weeks home and she had been in touch occasionally from what looked like the length and breadth of the eastern hemisphere... His email chimed gently and he dragged his attention back to the computer from where it had been roving far, far beyond the screened windows. Bloody hell, the woman really must be psychic.
He could feel Hope's tranquillity oozing out of the page as he read her missive and his spirits lifted, helped in no small part by the by the gossip, which was both slightly scandalous and funny enough to make him laugh for the first time since she had left. He hadn't realised until then that he had slipped back into the depression quite so far or so fast, although he had acknowledged that his sleep had gone back to being more broken over the past weeks and both his mileage walked in the dark and whisky consumption had shot up as the pain had taken over again. He also hadn't told anyone about his meltdown on the way back from Heathrow that day, when he had had to find somewhere to pull over because he could no longer see the traffic through the tears and had nearly cleaned up a motor bike as a result. That had led to spending the next hour allowing the tears flow while being wracked by sobs, resulting in a filthy headache that ensured he went home to raid the medicine cabinet for non-alcoholic pain-killers before returning to the Grid feeling like a train wreck.
He hadn't had a jag like that in the entire time that Hope had been there and they had been becoming more infrequent even before that, the last one of such intensity being when he had last visited Ruth's grave. He wasn't even completely sure what had set the new one off, blaming it initially on yet another song on the radio – he had been channel surfing, unable to listen to the endless brainless twittering from gormless radio presenters that seemed to sustain most of the populace – that had eerily described exactly the mess of his inner psyche...
Now the wind has lost my sail.
Now the scent has left my trail.
Who will find me, take care and side with me?
Guide me back safely to my home, where I belong, once more?
Where is my star in heaven's bough?
Where is my strength, I need it now.
Who can save me, lead me to my destiny?
Guide me back safely to my home, where I belong, once more?
Who will find me, take care and side with me?
Guide me back safely to my home, where I belong, once more?
How can I go on?
How can I go on this way?
...but eventually admitting that it was probably no more than the realistion that there would no longer be any distraction to his brooding.
Now, he felt insensibly cheered by the sight of a simple email. There was someone out there who not only knew exactly what he was going through but, apparently, actually cared about the effect it was having on him. He was prettty certain that almost everyone else (excepting, to be fair, his immediate team and the Home Secretary, who had also been surprisingly protective of him while they were untangling the aftermath of that nightmare day) probably thought he had deserved everything he got. For himself, he wasn't so sure that they weren't right.
Two minutes after hitting Send, Hope's inbox chirped. She dragged her own eyes away from the view of a city and lake already simmering under the ferocious heat and bronze skies of an early morning that was dominated by bush fires, the view she hadn't been seeing, thinking about a red-walled office in London instead, and saw who it was from. What the hell are you doing at your computer at (she checked her watch) 9.15 on a Sunday night, Harry?
She read his response, laughed, and emailed the question back to him. He explained straight away; they continued to bat emails backwards and forwards for the next half an hour until she had to go to a meeting and told him to go home. Feeling strangely light, he finally followed her advice twenty minutes later.
Erin emailed Hope when she returned to the office on Tuesday. I don't know what you did but it's worked wonders. He's stopped fading. Thanks from all of us. EDCW.
Once proper communication had been re-established, Hope and Harry continued to play email and text ping-pong at least once but more often several times a day. In due course some wedding photos turned up: looking at him appearing so happy with his daughter and, to her quiet pleasure and delight for him, his son, made her smile gently and hope he was coming through the other side of the dark valley.
Christmas came and went; to her immense surprise he rang her on the day, briefly, just to say hello because he knew she was having a quiet one on her own before heading up to the big smoke to catch up with her extended family, including her mother-in-law and Wynne himself, once the Christmas traffic had died down a little, so he thought he'd call her before heading off to lunch with some friends and catching up with Graham afterwards. Although it was nothing deeper than polite chit-chat she appreciated the thought – that he had bothered at all – and gained some fond pleasure from the call, as did he, leaving them both more cheerful than they might otherwise have been as they went off to their respective familial duties.
The new year rolled around quickly and soon it was time for Hope to begin planning her packing to head over to the intelligence congress – another part of the international focus group – being held outside London. She was dreading the flight but looking forward to catching up with Harry again, even if she would have former colleagues from both ASIO and ASIS in tow and he was likely to be part of a group from Five, Six and GCHQ. Harry was just looking forward to the chance to catch up again and had no intention of letting anyone get in the way for at least one morning coffee. He was still having his moments but they were getting less frequent and didn't last as long. The ties were mostly grey now, although black still made an appearance on his bad days, and he had surprised himself by graduating to lavendar or pale blue occasionally. Charcoal grey suits were reappearing from the back of his wardrobe to replace the inky black that had been unvarying since the Estuary. None of it was conscious but he noticed it happening anyway, as did Erin and the Home Secretary, with both being quietly hopeful as a result. And he noticed that the pain was slowly being absorbed and the memories of Ruth were no longer uniformly accompanied by agony but some of them were actually gentle and warm and loving, leaving him so glad, now, that he had known and loved her, despite everything that had, and hadn't, happened.
Will go on.
1. 'Open Up Your Heart'. Written and performed by G Wayne Thomas from the movie "Morning of the Earth".
2. 'Guide Me Home.' Written by Freddy Mercury and Mike Moran, performed by Freddy Mercury and Montserrat Caballe.