Disclaimer: I think you can assume I don't own Merlin, but I'm putting this here to say that I also don't own Sey and Sissy Ola. (BBC fans, try to guess where they're from!) I also don't own a car, land or a dog, which probably makes as little sense in terms of legalities to tell you as any disclaimer, but I like doing it because I don't like claiming other people's works as my own.
For One Brief, Shining Moment
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November 22, 1963
Finsbury, London
Merlin was whistling to himself and doing up some chips on the burner when he heard it. In the background, his new suit jacket - for which he'd got more than a few jibes for at work for his new "mod" look - lay draped over the back of the chesterfield, while on the telly Harry Worth competed to be heard over The Rooftop Singers' "Walk Right In" coming from Mrs. Ola's phonograph next door. Content in his warm, homey little bed-sit, safe from the increasing wind outside, the slight mystery he'd had on the bus of a middle-aged woman with a dull coat, a frumpy hat and a bag of groceries and a look of absolute shock on her face, rushing not towards the stop but to a cluster of other people chattering intently in front of the stationer's, had already been forgot. Truthfully, it'd been forgot the moment the clippie had distracted him by asking for his fare. Tomorrow was his half-day and he was looking forward to the debut of the new programme they'd been working on at the studio, set for Saturday evening. (1)
Now he was just tugging off his tie when a sudden silence from the television penetrated his consciousness. He had a vague notion Harry Worth had given way to something about fish and later "Britten At Fifty", but this made him turn to look. Switching off the hot plate, though his chips were only half done, he moved closer towards the television as the BBC graphic came up and then the screen switched to a dark-haired man.
"The death of John F. Kennedy happened in Dallas at twenty-five past twelve, in our time twenty-five past six this evening. Thirty-five minutes later, President Kennedy was dead. Half an hour later still, the United States had a new President, the newly sworn in Vice President, Lyndon Johnson," a newsreader - Merlin thought his name was John Roberts - reported.
Merlin staggered to the chesterfield and sat down hard.
"The diary of disaster began with the very credible agency message that President Kennedy had been shot, time 6.42," the newsreader continued as a copy of a telegram from Reuters flashed on the screen. "He and his wife Jackie, and the governor of Texas, John B. Connally, were driving through Dallas in the big Presidential limousine, usually bullet proof, but this time vulnerable. The transparent hood had been taken down to give the Texans a better view. One man on the fifth floor of an office building had a view already improved by the telescopic site on his Mauser Army rifle. He'd sat there for some time while the work of the building went on above and below him. He'd even fried chicken while he'd waited. At one o'clock, with the President emerging into view from an underpass, he fired three shots. One bullet took the President in the head - " (2)
At the phrase 'in the head', Merlin couldn't take anymore and lunged forward, turning the dial of the set so roughly it came off in his hand. Slapping a hand to his mouth, he barely managed to hold in a moan of horror while the incongruous sounds of Cilla Black singing "Love of the Loved" poured in from next door.
-x-
Everyone was shaken in their own ways. Sey Ola, convinced his presence as a coloured man would only hurt his wife's chances of being welcomed in an air-raid shelter, cornered Merlin in the corridor while Sissy was putting the kettle on and made him swear to get her to safety in the event of the "4-minute warning" going off. (3) Not an hour later, Merlin found Sissy in the floor's shared lavatory while Sey had run out for the evening paper, weeping because she was expecting and she didn't know what kind of world she was bringing a baby into when World War III was about to start. "And I want to stay with Sey!" she sobbed. "I won't go to the shelter without him! I won't! But then what will happen to the baby? Oh, Martin, I don't know what to do!"
But for Merlin, the pain was different. After having gone through two World Wars in the space of less than thirty years, and worse, seeing first hand what the Nazis had done to humanity with their concentration camps, Merlin had spent the last eighteen years telling himself that Arthur wasn't coming. The prophecy simply wasn't - couldn't be - true. Not after all this time.
Not after Hitler.
But when he went to the Ola's that night and Sey - who looked ever so much like Elyan - opened the door, Merlin nearly blurted out, "Arthur's dead!" instead of Kennedy.
Because that was the nightmare that ran through his head all that desolate Friday night, not that Arthur wasn't coming, but that he had come and Merlin had missed him.
Kennedy, he reflected, the charismatic war hero and anointed prince of old Joe Kennedy, leader of his nation, dynamic, fighting injustice, he and his beautiful wife both beloved by their people…
What if Arthur had come back, just not as the Arthur he remembered? he asked himself. Was there anything in the prophecy that stated the King must come back to Avalon? To him? If his immortality was merely a side effect of the return of his powers in the Crystal Cave, was there anything that tied him to Arthur? His endless exile in the living world could just be a mocking and heart-rending coincidence, a massive joke of Destiny's. He certainly wouldn't put it past her.
Or…
Or maybe I failed once more. Maybe I was supposed to search Arthur out. Maybe I wasn't just meant to sit idly by and wait like the Gods' own idiotic pawn, but to go out and actually find Arthur and help him shape the world. Maybe Kennedy - Arthur - died because I hadn't been protecting him like I should have been.
"No!" he argued out loud, twisting and turning on his small fold-out bed in the early dark morning hours of the 23rd. "Kilgharrah said Arthur would arise at the time of Albion's greatest need, not America's. It couldn't have been him! There's no reason to be worried over some silly notion, to become paranoid like a great big girl just because the man seized my imagination for a bit!"
But Kilgharrah was hardly infallible, now was he? Merlin's fear disputed back. He was wrong about Aithusa, about pushing the need for Mordred's death on you when Arthur was being judged by the Disir. And what if he was right, but couldn't see it ALL? Maybe Kennedy leading American was what was supposed to save Albion. Maybe his would have been the presence to save us from Russia and their atom-bombs!
Gods, please no, Merlin wept silently - at that moment no longer the ancient warlock but only the lonely young man battered by the centuries, laying curled in the darkness and clutching his bedclothes tightly to his face. Please tell me I haven't doomed Albion after all this time! I've never, ever wanted to hurt anyone! Please don't let my mistake be the source of so much pain! Please don't let me have failed again! How was I to know any better? How was I to know?
Just then, softly, so softly, came the sound of music from next door:
"When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm,
There's a golden sky,
And a sweet silver song of a lark,
Walk on! Walk on!
With hope in your heart!
And you'll never walk alone." (4)
As Merlin listened to the low, sweet song, which was played again and again until daybreak, probably by Sissy, the cold hand around his heart eased its grip a little and hope made its slow way back.
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1) Sci-fi fans, can you guess which program?
2) This is taken word for word (including the redundancy of "The death happened" and then "Thirty-five minutes later he was dead") from a BBC News clip I found on Youtube. I don't think it was their first clip that night, but I couldn't find anything else. Most information and articles about that night are naturally more concerned with American broadcasts.
3) Sey and Sissy Ola are from the BBC show "The Hour" and I snuck them in mainly because Adetomiwa Edun (Elyan) played Sey, and because it fit roughly the same time period. Also, please don't be offended by the phrase "coloured man" - at the time, that was the polite term. "Black" would have been considered offensive and Sey would probably not have called himself that.
The 4-minute warning, conceived during the Cold War by the British Government, was a system meant to serve as a public warning in case of Soviet nuclear attack. The name refers to the supposed length of time (likely overly optimistic) it would take a missile to get to the UK.
4) "You'll Never Walk Alone". Music by Richard Rodgers and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Originally written for the 1945 musical "Carousel", the version being used in this story was sung by Gerry and the Pacemakers. It fit rather conveniently for the ending, but it was in fact on the UK top 40 the week Kennedy died, as were the other two songs Sissy Ola played on her phonograph.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the title, it comes from the musical Camelot, written and composed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and based on the novel "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White. The musical became associated with JFK's presidency after his death when Jackie Kennedy said that the cast recording was one of his favourites (though some think this story to be apocryphal), in particular the song that had these four lines:
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief, shining moment
That was known as Camelot