Title: Cathedral space

Author: arrebol

Rating: K or G

Summary: A baby for Mary and Dickon, and Colin still stands.

“That great Cathedral space which was childhood.”

Virginia Woolf

x

At 6 o’clock, they arrived.

“How are you since the day before yesterday?” He shook firm hands with Dickon, who carried the older girl, Susie, whose intolerably wide, quite blue eyes never closed. She sucked on her miniature thumb and watched him.

“Oh! The place is lovely! Everything sparkling and grand, you’d think royalty was coming! All this for your old cousin, who you practically see every day. Oh, Colin.”

She kissed Colin on the cheek, her fresh smell choking him, then nuzzled her new child.

“Well, shall I see my newest blood-relation?”

Over dinner, Mary’s eyes were wondrous. He regarded her healthy plumpness, and he really thought she blazed in the candlelight, although he reminded himself she’d always done that. Since the garden, anyhow.

Dickon bent to whisper in her ear, making fine wisps of hair dance away from her skin. Colin turned to his wine but could hear the lilt of Yorkshire talk. A secret smile lighted Mary’s lips, and then she remembered she was company and drew a hearty conversation out of the air for them all to share.

Hours after they had left, as he sat alone in his study with only the echoes of the occasion, all Colin could recall was an impertinent little girl who had once held his hand and opened a door.