Nightwatch Windmill - final broadcast before Stoker's rendezvous/departure - It should have been a much better Nightwatch than the one she had passed with Allen Dale, though that (for all their tendency toward sharpness and borderline irritation with one another) had gone rather smoothly.
She was feeling better where her wound was concerned, and Robin had been Johnny-on-the-spot where his arrival time was concerned. Points all 'round. And that did not even involve the matter they two had before them to discuss.
But it had been impossible to sustain happy chatter and dreams of layettes and christening gowns as they occupied space among supplies so dwindling as to call into question their very right to still be called supplies. Impossible to sustain even for Robin.
"I have found you a way home," he had told her, and his satisfaction with this development was more than obvious in his expression and demeanor.
"Me," she had asked. "Me, a way home?"
"You," he had repeated. "And I speak in the plural." Again that disarming glance of his at her abdomen.
He had then set out to explain the unexpected arrival of one Roger Stoker from home, come to the islands to take some of Robin's unit away with him. Happily, Robin outlined a plausible plan of escape, even making her recite back to him its details several times. Tonight - this night (as the Nightwatch would end in earliest morning) - in early evening to Sark courtesy Allen Dale's launch, then a rendezvous at Hathersage Heath, nearby the standing stones, the cromlech and its ancient dolmen having, hopefully, still enough magic to call forth Stoker's submarine to surface and spirit the lucky, chosen few home.
It was nearly too much for her head to get itself around. A ship home, escape. She found it hard to think, to reason as she was at changing records and relating news over-the-air. So rather than fight or argue against (let alone question) anything he proposed, she let him go on building his castles in the air while she - with decided feet of clay - finished her job.
Which had given her husband a good hour in which to be almost fatuously pleased with himself.
"...as long as 'night' has fallen," she concluded, "until oppression ends, the Nightwatch will broadcast freedom to these, our own dear Islands," not waiting much longer than the click 'off' of the transmit button before leaping into her counter-argument.
"If you decline the going," she told him staunchly, shaking her head in disagreement of all his carefully thought-through plans, "then it must be Carter that you send." She saw the predictable tension spring into his jaw. "Even you cannot be blind to the many reasons in evidence that it ought be him who is returned home, that it is a right he has more than earned. That he would be most-valuable to them there, and that his continued presence here endangers us all." She tried to gauge his acceptance of what she was saying. "He is still very much a wanted man. Unlike the rest of your band, his face known-"
Robin had obliged her own eagerness by himself jumping into the fray with both feet, not even allowing her to finish. As a result, some fifteen minutes of hot speech had passed between the two of them, during which she was left with no feeling stronger than that of mild self-satisfaction that she had managed (miraculously) to refrain from throwing anything in his general direction.
"Carter," he had roared at one point, "always and ever Carter. Must he always come between us?"
"He is not coming between us," she dissented. "If you will listen you will note I am saying to send him away. Farewell to Carter." She made a little wave. "Goodbye and bon voyage. And I will stay here, with you."
At this, Robin spun on her, coming dangerously close to spilling several of her precious records from where they were tidily stacked onto the stone floor. "Stop! Stop asking me to choose against you - or to argue your way into letting you choose against us - against yourself!" His breath and tone were hot, perspiration due to stress beginning to spring into being along the line of his beard as it descended from above his ear down to his jaw.
She noted this chink - this flaw in his bearing, knowing it showed how intent, how sold upon seeing her away from here he was.
"Since when did I come to represent 'us'?" she asked him, her own voice far from calm, the need to persuade him at this moment perhaps the greatest of her life.
His eyes shot heavenward, as though mystified she could need such an essential, obvious-to-him question answered. "Since you stood on the step above me in the mines and informed me that you now carry 'us' within you, you ridiculous woman!" He wanted to grab for her, as a drowning man grabs at a life ring, a man going over a cliff scrabbles for a root or solid handhold.
"No!" she disagreed. She disliked the way his every argument made a constant and consistent turn toward that development, this child, as though its existence ought alter rational thought. Here she lost her control, her voice raised to a near shriek, as though he had demanded she enact something physically agonizing upon herself. "Stop trying to make me choose myself over you! Stop it!" If she had not felt it would appear childish, she would have stamped her foot. But coupled with the coming-on tears threatening at her eyes, she denied herself further display.
In a twinkling, so immediate was his assessment of her, and the turning their argument had taken, Robin's eyes became composed, filled with something she could not name. It was not hurt, nor vengeance. It was not regret, but it was something like a truth, cold and hard and never fully, perhaps, to be in the past where it could no longer hurt them.
"You did it easily enough once before," he reminded her, even as she stood decrying his urging for her to choose herself and what she carried within herself over Carter - over him.
To take the boat and go.
London's West End, December 1938 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - The main floor - the floor appointed so perfectly for social occasions - was literally at the apex of its existence this evening. It deserved nothing less than absolute pages of newsprint devoted solely to the perfection that had been achieved in its dressing and furnishing for this single, flawless night.
Then again, parties given by Lady Nighten were always expected to be just so. And never yet a let down among them.
Clun, the Guernsey butler (who only rarely left the island), had been tasked with escorting a nearly-full boatload of flowers (alstroemerias, freesias - even orchids) from the Barnsdale hothouse across the Channel and on to London, where they were then carefully chosen by their mistress to match just the colors and meet just the remarkable levels of bloom and fragrance to properly compliment her annual Christmas party.
The party, a subject already of some lore and myth, was given every year on the third week-end of December, without regard to numerical date. Invitations were generously delivered, but still - to those among the less endowed levels of society - viewed as scarce and difficult to come by. A marquess might expect an invitation, but so might a struggling playwright with an interesting view of the political scene - as might headmistress of a settlement house who might have the good fortune to see the Nightens as among her patrons, and upon receiving the hand-lettered envelope (always delivered by a Nighten House footman three weeks prior), only to discover she had nothing appropriate to wear.
The now Duke of Windsor had been a frequent guest in the past - with his now brother King and sister-in-law Queen since '36 (as in other things) agreeing to stand as substitute for him in such social matters when their castle schedules permitted.
The lamps were lit high in some rooms, low and muted in others. Dancing was often chief among ways to pass the time, even for the older folk. And so the music (always live) was as important (if not more) than the menu.
Gentlemen of a somber bent usually found their way to the library with its tall bookshelves and leather upholstery, a table for chess - another for backgammon - and ample cigars always available for those professing two left feet while preferring to exercise both their tongues and their ideals.
For the evening, the main stair resembled more of Harrod's - if Harrod's were located within Buckingham Palace - as a seemingly never-ending display of ladies of the ton ascended and descended it on their endless trips to primp and see to their toiletries in one of the next-floor-up lavatories available for such necessities.
"Jacob's Ladder," sighed Mitch Bonchurch from his comfortable place and unobstructed view by one of the entryway's pillars to his best mate, Oxley, who, unlike his fastidious better-half was slouched (although charmingly so) against same pillar, cigarette in his hands to keep them still until the next footman came round passing something else diverting in a glass.
Without much thought he began to devil his friend, "a ladder straight up to Heaven? These girls - ethereal beauties - floating up to claim their reward? Not that Cora Winchester, methinks." Oxley shook his head dramatically, not bothering to hide a pleased-with-himself smile that he knew Bonchurch was not at an angle to properly see.
"Not Cora - " Mitch began, spluttering before he could help himself. Though he had only ever spent small amount of time with her at best, she had always been one of his personal favorites. A nice girl, with bright ginger hair to catch the eye. A fun girl. And now, here was Robin calling that very fun into question. "Why you couldn't...you didn't...you..."
The growing purple cast of his mate's face showed him he had let the joke go on a bit too long. Any further and Mitch would have to set out loosening his bowtie.
"Easy now, my Bonny Bonchurch," he attempted to soothe. "It must have been Margo Archambault-Nixon I was thinking of. 'Course it was. Must've been. She's charmingly acrobatic they say," he teased at Lady Margo's expense. "Though one would hardly think it to look at how she chooses to package her figure up as though it were already Boxing Day, and she the charitable foodstuffs."
For a moment both he and Mitch contemplated the young lady in question, wrapped - nay, swaddled almost beyond sight - in layer upon layer upon layer of baby blue organza so that it floated about her like over-milled candy floss, leaving only her head and hands visible, the rest of her a mystery - though not one any man might particularly care to unwrap and discover.
Mitch gave a grunt, as a way of accepting Robin's unspoken apology on the matter of Lord and Lady Winchester's daughter. "And why are you not partnering Marion, anyway?" he queried.
"Last I saw of her, she, too, had ascended the stairs to adjust powder and primp - rising up into your new version of Heaven," he tweaked Mitch. "And now I await her glorious return."
"Well, it is a lovely party," Mitch declared, reaching for a filled flute as a footman's tray passed by them.
"I'm sure," Robin agreed without conviction, watching the bubbly on its journey, but reaching for none of his own. "But yet it is every party. It is the same party we have been attending several times a month since we were permitted down the staircase as lads old enough the adults believed we could behave ourselves without irreparably damaging the family honour."
He inhaled on his fag, two fingers on top, thumb holding it steady from underneath. "The only difference is that Marion is here, and that for the second year in a row I am not too ignorant to know it."
At this undeniable display of oncoming pique, Mitch pressed the flute he had only just taken into Oxley's free hand and stepped away from the pillar as a fleeting shadow of grimace crossed his face. "I do not know why you were born to nark at me so," he told his oldest and best friend. "But I've no patience for it tonight. It is a lovely party, and I intend to find for myself a lovely time." He sniffed. "Therefore, I leave you, entirely, to your fiancee's care."
Robin gave a nod, choosing not to disagree with Bonchurch's assessment of his present bilious state. His eyes had already caught onto the object that might possibly save this party, rescue this very night, for him.
Marion Nighten stood momentarily at the top landing of the Nighten townhouse stair. Her brother Clem was at her side, genteelly escorting her down the steps, though she (and he) both knew she could more than adequately navigate them by the banister alone. (Without dancing shoes on, in fact, in her younger days she had, on more than one occasion when their parents were away - at Clem's dare - successfully ascended the greater part of them entirely upon her hands.)
She looked out over what she could see of the party below not unlike a monarch surveying her dominion. Not unlike, in fact, the way her own mother might similarly appraise her own party from that very spot.
The hem of her gown just flirted with brushing the floor. It was a green so dark it was, in its folds and pleats, black to the eye. Shimmering like colors in a peacock's tail feather. It had a wide neckline that chose to sweep out over her shoulders rather than plunge into decolletage, and sleeves that barely covered the elbow, leading to a peek-a-boo effect with every bend of her arms.
Her hair held a hidden bun at the nape of her neck, concealing its true length, and row upon row of perfectly sculptured waves down either side, as though plotted specially by an architect rather than designed by a beautician. There was none of the height to her coiffure that some of the other ladies were clearly experimenting with that night. The bodice and skirt of her gown were artfully (and daringly to the days' fashion - even if her hairstyle was not) ruched, increasing the opportunity for any viewer to admire the altering color of the fabric under the evening party's variant light.
She wore nothing about her neck - perhaps expecting a present to fill that space before evening's end - but each ear displayed chandelier earrings of white gold that fell well below the lobe, nearly to her bare shoulders, graced by both emeralds and black amber - as if further challenging the eye to puzzle out her frock's true nature.
"You're looking awfully grown-up tonight, Mrs. Tiggywinkle," Clem told her as they began their descent, her upon his arm. He was sure to add the old nickname in order to recall to her mind that no matter what, she was, in fact, still his little sister.
"And you look very handsome," she shot back, using the so-standard-it-had-become-somewhat-ridiculous family line on him.
"The music is good," he replied, not falling for her niggling of him. "Progressive, even, for Mother."
"They're from the Neapolitan Club. Robin recommended them - at her request he do so."
"Come to think of it," he tried again to annoy her. "You don't even smell of horse. Chose not to ride today, did you?"
"If you say one more thing," she threatened, with some relish, "I'll throw my leg over this banister and ride it to the entryway."
He knew her well enough to know that she did not threaten such action hollowly. His eyes narrowed, and his face took on a decidedly uncharacteristic dark cast. "Well, it cannot sink the night any further than it has already been sunk. If not wholly capsized."
Marion caught her breath. "I was hoping I was the only one who had noticed."
"Well, I do not know if it is apparent to others - certainly Father would not mark it. But one knows Mother will. We must be half-a-hundred (if not two-thirds) short in attendance from the numbers she invited."
The last thing Marion wanted to think about was their at-present social decline. It was too close to thinking of her mother. A subject her mind had been unable to avoid for long since Lady Lytton's recent visit, and the startling reveal that her mother was not really at all who her daughter thought she was. That her mother was - as she saw it - a traitor to her own past who had abandoned her personal convictions in order to advance in the life of London Society, over which she now all but solely presided. No. She did not want to think of her mother tonight.
"Clem," Marion began, not entirely certain how he would take the question. "Where do you go during a party such as this? When you want to be...alone?"
She thought she felt him pause in his stepping down, but it was so brief they soon continued on.
"Alone?" he asked, his eyes scanning the crowd below for the whereabouts of his good friend Oxley. Something grumpy, and borderline disagreeable, entered his tone. "I should think Robin Goodfellow would be a far better person to pose such a question to. He has a singular (and rather notorious) habit of sniffing such places out. Or is it someone else you are wishing to find time 'alone' with? Hmmm?"
She let the dig slide. "Yes," she agreed with his assessment of Robin's peculiar skill at keeping such spots for canoodling covert, "but it is not his house."
Several steps passed in silence. "Very well," Clem said, though clearly against his better judgment. "Up the stairs, where the staff stage additional champagne and cocktails should they run out before evening's end. On a night like tonight with the attendance so low, I can hardly think they will need the use of it. Block the servant's door with a few stacked cases of champagne. The hallway door be sure to latch, but other than that I cannot think you will be disturbed."
"But you cannot be sure?" she quizzed him.
"Well, Marion," impatience was added to the growing list of things among his ever-more-evident disapproval, "if you must know, in such instances I have Percival, haven't I? He has always been most helpful to stand guard outside such rooms for me." He shot her a sideways glance. "Do not think I will be asking him to likewise cover for you."
She tried to keep a blush half-embarrassment, half-indignity from blooming on her cheeks, and failed. "Very well," she told him through the blush. "In the interest of giving the dissenting party a platform - do speak on. Is Robin not a good friend of yours?"
"The best, of course," Clem readily agreed. "And I look forward to welcoming him as a brother-in-law in time. Even now, I am overjoyed to see him as you fiance." A cloud seemed to settle upon his brow. "But do not ask me to accept him as the chosen lover of my sister - no matter how grown up she may appear tonight."
"And why not?" she asked, equably. "You have been at playing such games for years. And with several different girls I can readily name."
Clem sighed, knowing that she would not like what came next. He stopped them several steps from the lower landing, just far enough away from the others mingling there to keep their conversation private. "You are twenty and one, Marion. And a young twenty-one at that. And no matter the vast upper echelon of Father's friends you have entranced and charmed - astounded even - with your political and intellectual sophistication (which I doubt can be well matched by many females living at present, much less others of your age) your interactions and conversations with them did not take place in social situations."
"I beg to differ-" she began.
"Very well," he countered, "potentially intimate," his voice dropped appreciably, "sexual situations. The men with whom you usually come into contact do not relate with you on a level where they see you as a female they might wish to pursue." He tried to think of how best to articulate what he meant. "You are a novelty to them. Sir Edward's trained bitch pup." He knew that was perhaps a bit too, but he could not take it back now. "'Isn't she precocious? What an unexpected place to find such wisdom, such conviction!' You are a Bluestocking, Tigs. No matter the era into which you were born. It is a rare male, indeed, wishing to both chase and bed such an unnatural stick of dynamite."
Well, she had asked for it - for Clem to tell her the truth as he saw it. And of course she respected him for it, giving it without gilding it - just as she would him, when asked. And she knew the opinions he shared with her were not his own. Knew that he loved and thought of her as much more than a trained novelty. Knew that she had his respect, as he had hers. But still, being Marion, she tried to argue.
"And what of Randall Pickering? Of Francis Wetherhugh? Of Geordie Wellington?" she asked, wishing to salvage something of her own dignity.
"Tigs," the infrequent, half-serious smile he only ever wore for her found its way to his lips, "we both know it was Wellington's family who thought it best for him to be seen involved with a girl to quell those nasty rumors threatening to surface about his very private private life." He waited a moment before finishing his rebuttal of her already-made decision. "You have had tutors from exotic places, read books (and retained their contents) enough to replenish Henry VIII's burned-down monasteries. But you have never traveled anywhere without either a parent or a nanny. Not even into the City to spend a short afternoon with friends. The level of social sophistication of women that have not been able to withstand Goodfellow - well, you haven't got it, my darling. I daresay there are women enough working in the Stews that haven't either."
This caused her eyes to harden in their expression. She did not care for his bringing fancy women into their discuss. Nor in his placing them so close to Robin. "You speak of him so, and yet you call him friend?"
He let out a light breath. "It is one thing for another man to enjoy the company and friendship of a notorious Lothario, Marion. It is quite another for you - you - to think you might engage yourself willingly in certain activities with him and expect to be able to control or manage their outcome." And here was his summation. "I think it is a bad, ill-conceived idea for you to take such a step. For at night's end I feel certain you will not find yourself long at the top of the stair," he cast his eyes upward for effect, "but rather, quickly having descended to its bottom."
Again, his half-serious smile that evoked both that he meant what he said, and that also, he knew she sympathized with his argument, and in his own sympathy wished he could reason otherwise.
She took a breath, it always being better to have plenty of air when announcing you are about to defy someone's plan of action for you. "Then I suggest you will find yourself most surprised this evening, Brother," she said cryptically, "for I plan to shock you on more than one account."
He let her declaration stand. "Marion," he said, knowing he had well lost long before he had begun, "be sure you know what you're doing." He would attempt to persuade her otherwise no further.
A contrary - even blithe - reply came to her mind, and she did not censor herself from sharing it. "I'm sure if I don't, Robin Goodfellow will."
Nightwatch Windmill - present time - "After all I have seen...have myself done - know I will myself yet do - Can you not know how precious this is to me?" Robin begged her to see, "A reason for hope - for anticipation. For things I never thought to know again. To think that perhaps the world is yet, still, a place for a child. That somehow, in all of this the human spirit yet wishes, longs, to endure?" He shook his head to clear the tears coming-on in his own eyes.
"I am a dead man, Marion - twice-killed. First my heart, then my body. Certified deceased, no longer capable of life, by our very Government. Finding you again proved to me the world was still capable of magic, of ways we none-too-well understand. I was the unicorn on Sark, Marion. Alone, without a mate, without any responsibility other than where I chose to find it. I will willingly go back to that now. In order to safeguard you - both."
"The 'human spirit'?" she scoffed at him. "Is it not that very 'human spirit' we live under now? That very desire to control and kill in order to have power over another? After all I've seen...after all I've done - and nearly done - Can you not know how terrified - how frightened beyond expressing it - I am? No matter that I know all but nothing about babies. No matter that I would likely have to go into an even deeper hiding here to wait out the next months. Say what you will, but there is no room in our world for children," her voice shook, and not only from the conviction with which she spoke. "The Germans have seen to that. Islander children with eyes already old as a grandfathers'. Their bodies gaunt and undersize, malnourished. Will we watch this happen to our child? A casualty of the human spirit? Still, nothing it is whispered, as to what the Germans do to the Jews in their Fatherland, and other Occupied lands. Children, too." Something told her she had lost her point, veered off, unintentionally, into strengthening his own.
"The only thing that doesn't terrify me," she began again, "is that it is your baby. And again, it is you - only you - that makes me believe in it at all. And yet here you scheme to rob me of that very foundation, that support post, by sending me - and my growing night terror - away. How can you do this to me? And ask me to agree to it?"
He waited no longer, all fight within her dissipating. He took her into his embrace.
"This is something you tell me I must live for," she told his shoulder, "and yet I am to allow - to permit - you to see it, instead, as something to die for? Do not feed me such rubbish and call it 'high ideals'." Even as she railed against him, she sought comfort in his proximity. "You are asking me to choose against my own happiness. Against my own sanity."
"No," he told her softly. "I'm asking you to choose for a future - and a future happiness - and in doing so to safeguard mine."
"What," she began to pull away, but his arms forbade it. "Your legacy?"
"No," he replied. "Well, perhaps yes. My raison."
She sniffed hard to keep her nose under control, let her arms slip about him. "So you have found that, finally, after all this time? A reason to live - a passion, a purpose?"
His smile added further creases to the crescent-moon wrinkles that clustered about his eyes. "Taking nothing away from our present discussion, but I found it upon my second death, really. I found what I could be to the lads. That I could effect change. That my existence might yet matter, might yet amount to something. That I could make choices, lead men, win a skirmish, steal a codebook. That at times I could even inspire another person to decide something for the better of all. And here, on your Islands, that as a unit we could make a difference, though small in the scheme of the war, not small to those we could help - those that no one was looking out to help. The abandoned, the hungry and needlessly impoverished. Those the King and his Parliament were sworn to protect and oversee, but whom had been abandoned to the Reich, abused by Prinzer. And the poor souls imprisoned upon Alderney for whom I still hope to do some good."
She nodded her head, rubbing against his cheek and neck. "So you found yourself, in a war."
"Yes," he agreed, stroking rhythmically at her back with the heels of his hands. "I found myself in a war I was little-schooled on, and even less interested in, but once in it? I found who I could be, and more importantly, who I wanted to be."
London's West End, December 1938 - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - "Do something with your life!" she had shouted at Robin, nearly adding, 'as I mean to do!' But of course she was getting ahead of herself in the memory. What had happened first had been far more cheeky, far more what one might expect at such a party than the first shot fired in a blistering, life-altering row.
It had been easy enough to get him to follow her to the room in question. Once arrived, he had been predictably charmed by its unusual contents.
"We might as well attempt a bathe in bubbly," he told her, his usual cheek dependable as ever. He noted there was already a large metal basin near the davenport packed with additional liquor that waited only to be removed in order to serve this decadent new purpose his mind had proposed.
He threw himself upon said davenport, smoking with a somewhat greater gusto, its high upholstered back for a moment concealing the fact from him that she was at carefully stacking several crates of champagne against the servant's door to ensure their privacy.
Knowing her better than to think she might take him up on his offer to swim and splash among the party's excess champagne, he addressed the ceiling as he spoke to her, his enthusiasm growing exponentially as he spoke on. "So I was thinking, my lady," he began. "I have heard you complain and moan and seen your eyes roll back into your head so often these past weeks as to cause me to fear I might never see them again properly within their orbits. What if...we managed to remove such travails from your life as endless chats with the stationer, lengthy fittings with the dressmaker - incessant worryings over seating plans and table linen? What if we just took control and eliminated such time-consuming impediments to your life? Going back to a life before this engagement? Before planning began to eclipse the 'loving' that unsuspectingly brought it all on?"
During his speech she had returned to stand next to where he still lay prone upon the davenport. "Whatever are you suggesting?" she asked him for clarification, her mind otherwise occupied, and having no understanding of what he could possibly mean.
Momentarily he looked for a place to ash his fag. Finding none he hastily (and indecorously) flicked it into the un-touched flute he had carried into the room. The champagne within it hissed and bubbled as it accepted the new visitor, which slowly floated to its delicate, curved crystal bottom. Robin slid from where he now sat on the sofa onto a single knee.
Incorrectly assuming him somewhat pickled and unable to stand, Marion lowered herself into a seat upon the sofa and tried to see into his eyes.
"Marry me now," he told her. "Sod the planning." He did not usually use such language in front of her, but then again, since their engagement became public they were not very often alone. "Sod the rest, the guests, the presents, the pomp. Let us take from all this the part which makes us happy, which is each other. Throw the rest overboard to lighten our journey."
"To-tonight?" she asked, her voice shaky, his request so unexpected - so contrary to what she had to tell him before party's end.
A level of reason returned to his tone. "Well, perhaps not tonight, but tomorrow - or before week's end. The good vicar at Kirk Leaves will gladly assist us, if your chap at Lincoln Greene objects. We have been publicly engaged, all the necessary announcements made for well over a year. You cannot - nor can they - accuse me of attempting to Rochester you to the altar before you discover my mad wife in the attic." His eyes were lit as though from behind, sparking to something inside of him that even she did not often witness. "Kiss me and say yes," he told her. In the absence of her having offered him her hand, the pair of his rested half upon the sofa upholstery, half upon her knees.
"I. I," she had not planned to struggle to get the words out. She forced herself to lean in toward his ear to finish her practiced declaration, which allowed her to render it in a much lower and softer tone. "I'm not wearing any knickers," she said, realizing as she felt one of his hands flex involuntarily near her knee that she hadn't really practiced a follow-up.
...TBC...