All The Right Things at the Wrong Time
A/N: A little chapter to set up a trip to Downton Village. We've moved ahead in time a little (a few weeks time).
"So you're going to meet his mother this weekend? Well, that's quite a big step," Beryl's voice is as animated as her hands as they gesture wildly.
"Beryl, it's not quite what you think," Elsie protests "She was a land girl during the war and I am interviewing her for the new book. That's all."
"Yes, but you've been seeing each other for what three months now, and you've been together most weekends and a good bit during the week when you can and," Beryl leans across the table to whisper to her friend, "Elsie, are you holding out on me? When a man takes a woman home to meet his mother….."
"No, there is nothing to report. I swear it," Elsie answers firmly. "You'll be the first to know." Charles is moving at a snail's pace but Elsie will not push him, will not force him. She knows that he will move along when he is ready and she has the patience of Job.
"What does Thomas think?" Beryl asks.
"So what does Thomas think about what or whom," a voice calls behind Elsie. Thomas slides into the booth next to her, bumps her hip playfully, plants a kiss on her cheek. Elsie calls him her "Bonnie faced lad" and asks him how he knew where to find her. "I know everything," Thomas smirks. Elsie knows it must have been Baxter who told him, but she doesn't say anything, allows Thomas to have his moment.
"Charles Carson. What do you think of him?" Beryl asks the young man.
Thomas shifts, reaches into his coat pocket and brings out a packet of cigarette, takes two and puts them between his lips, lights them, hands one to Elsie. It's something he saw once in an old movie; the leading man and leading woman sharing a smoke. Beryl glares at him, tells him that he's a bad influence, that Elsie is trying to quit and he is only enabling her. Elsie almost chokes. She asks Beryl where she learned that terminology and Beryl laughs in return, answers that she heard it on a chat show. Elsie swears it is the first cigarette she's had in three weeks and she only took it because she's anxious over her trip to the country.
"I think that he's all right. A bit of a stuffed shirt though," he says casually, a smirk ghosts across his lips, the two women have forgotten that Beryl asked him a question. "I doubt he's even kissed her properly," he remarks, raises his eyebrows. It's a cue for Beryl to inquire further.
"What?" Beryl screeches out rather loudly before she feels the pinch of Elsie's nails dig into her arm. "You mean to tell me that he hasn't even kissed you properly yet and if that's true then….."
"…..then nothing," Elsie grinds out, glaring at the both of them. "I am not going to discuss my love life….."
"…or the lack of it," Thomas interrupts before Elsie glares at him, her eyes narrowed into tiny fires of burning fury. Thomas holds up his hands in surrender.
"…..First, I'd never tell when or if we'd 'done anything'," Elsie states emphatically, her mother often told her she should have read for the law instead of history. "Second, Charles is a very private man and very traditional. He hasn't spoken much of it, and I haven't pushed, but I think Alice hurt him very deeply and furthermore, I think that he wants to go slowly, to make sure that it's what we both want. Friendship is very important as basis of a relationship and I'm not sure that he had that with Alice." She notes the demanding looks that her friends are giving her. Knows they like Charles but that jury is still out on her relationship with him but she's damned if she's telling them a thing; she'll stare them down instead. She pretends not to hear their collective sighs.
Elsie has the feeling that had she told them the truth, that she and Charles had cuddled, held hands, and he'd kissed her on the cheek at the end of every date, she would have sounded a bit ridiculous. Holding hands and cuddles at her age, but she is content for now, no matter what Beryl and Thomas may say. She sees the prize on the horizon, sees the way Charles' eyes darken when they are sitting on her sofa watching an old movie when he snakes his arm around her, or the way he dries her tears with his handkerchief when she cries as the heroine dies in the final frame. And the way they move together when they go dancing at the new place they discovered is enough to convince her that when something more does happen, it will be worth the wait. The wound Alice caused is still open, still needs to be patched up and Elsie knows that. She is a nurse working to stitch the jagged edges together with every kind word, knowing glance, gentle clasp of his hand, acceptance of what he will give; every day she sees the wound growing smaller.
"Did you have some reason to be here, Mr. Barrow? Or have you just come to heckle me? " Elsie asks pointedly.
"As a matter of fact I do have a reason to be here," Thomas laughs, pushes a manila file folder toward her. "Hopefully, you will forgive me for teasing you when you take a look at this." Elsie opens the file, flips through the pages it contains. "You will find there, my lovely friend, a contract for the motion picture rights for Queen and Country. And they want you to write the screenplay."
Elsie holds one of the papers up, examines it closely. "It's with the firm that we wanted all along and at the fee we wanted," she says, a smile crossing her lips before it spreads to her eyes. She lays the paper down, turns to Thomas, threads her arms around his neck and gives him a kiss. "My boy genius," she exclaims.
"Well, I'm not quite a boy but I will accept genius and I assume that I am forgiven for earlier," he says smugly. While Elsie continues to sift through the papers before he, Thomas drops the proverbial other shoe. "But there is one thing."
Elsie stops what she is doing, looks at Thomas with exasperation. "What one thing?"
"They want a working draft of the script in three weeks," he says quietly. He watches Elsie let out a deep breath.
"Elsie, you know that you can do it. Just lock yourself away and get to work. Go home to your mother's farm like you do when you are on the final push and…" Beryl begins and then brings her hand to her forehead, "Oh, lord." Beryl knows that Elsie doesn't want to leave especially now, now that she has Charles and this uncertain thing between them that is building. She can see it written on Elsie's face, the way her lip is worried, and Elsie is lost in thought. Beryl knows that when Elsie kept quiet earlier, refused to give any details about her 'love life' with Charles that she's serious, in it for the long haul.
"It'll be all right, love," Beryl soothes, reaching out to take Elsie's hand. "Go visit with his mother this weekend and talk with him about it. Something will work out. I promise you it will."
TBC… Thank you all for following along. No Charles in this chapter but it is the set up for lots of chelsie in the coming chapters. A little preview of the next chapter: they are off to Downton village to visit Charles mum and dad. They may even pay a visit to Violet at the Abbey, one never knows.