Home Repairs
Chapter Ten: The Dove Descending
by L. Inman
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
He pretended not to
watch her, keeping his eyes on the lane, and then on the road. But he was acutely aware of the tremble of
her fingers as she undid the top flap of her knapsack to search for ways to fit
the plastic bag with her kimono inside.
Several neat tucks and pokes later, she reached for the ties of the
cinch. But the smooth-worn cord gave her
trouble, and her hands shook worse.
She was fragile, and for a moment a
horrifying hatred pierced him: there was
no reason to it, though there were plenty of reasons to be impatient, plenty of
reasons to be angry. The—surely it wasn’t
emotion—passed, and the aftertaste of shame was strong.
Elisabeth conquered the cinch at
last, and fastened her knapsack closed.
She sat back in the rickety seat, looking out the dusty window with a
set face. Rupert was seized with a sense
of being trapped: if she wasn’t fragile, she was hurting him on purpose; if she
was fragile, he had to go forward without her, without the respect of their
partnership. And if it was both—
He couldn’t let a grief this strong
flourish. Not near
That was the other trap. If she was right about the Harrowing, he did
indeed have a hard fight ahead of him—they all did; and losing meant something
worse than the end of the world, it meant utter pollution of the world Xander
Harris had just recently saved.
If Elisabeth was wrong about the
Harrowing, it meant…it meant she was simply leaving him, and it would be just
like all the other times except this time he had had the opportunity to give
his heart, and it wasn’t fair.
Well, he’d gone and done it now,
he’d said the F word; how ridiculous.
Fair? He was using the word fair about love and war? But why not complain? The earth was constantly ringing with the
complaints of lovers and combatants….
Except for the lover and combatant
who sat next to him in the car: silence, not complaint, rang in the air between
them.
The little station came in view
before Rupert was finished thinking. He
parked, and opened the door before the stillness could settle over and paralyze
them. Elisabeth followed suit, slowly,
and started for the station house, hitching her knapsack over one shoulder.
Rupert waited on the platform. It wasn’t quite deserted: there was a
bored-looking trio of day-trippers occupying the sun-blistered bench. He ignored them, dug in his jacket pocket,
and lit a magisterial cigarette. He
could already hear the train coming.
Elisabeth emerged from the station
house just as the train billowed in and pulled to a stop. The doors opened, and a few travel-weary
commuters descended heavily to the platform.
When the conductor appeared, the
day-trippers, chatting and laughing among themselves, got up and drifted toward
him; they paused briefly behind Elisabeth, but moved on around her when she did
not budge.
She was staring at the train as if
it were a monster appointed to eat her, and Rupert was again annoyed: if she
was going to leave she should just fucking leave and have done with it. Turning half away, he took a long drag on his
cigarette, blew out the smoke, dropped it to the platform and put his foot on
it.
Elisabeth stirred herself, and he
looked at her.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said
quietly.
He jerked a nod.
She shifted her ticket in her hand
and began to move; suddenly he blurted:
“Will I see you again?”
She turned back to him a look of
grave intensity that felt like a mirror to his own. For a moment she said nothing, then: “No one can tell me. But that’s what I want.”
Again she turned away, and had
actually taken a few steps when, without thought, without plan, he found
himself reaching after her. Two long
strides and a strong grasp, and he had pulled her round again. He took her face hard in his hands and kissed
her mouth, an ungentle kiss into which he poured all his love and all his fury.
She melted, but did not wilt:
instead, she kissed him back, gripping with her free hand at his shirt. She held him as firmly as if it were he doing
the running away; and her touch spoke not of weakness but of scalding adamant.
When the kiss broke at last, he did
not know who was releasing whom—had even lost his sense of gravity. He fell back one ungainly pace as she fled
for the doors of the train.
That, he thought, was the end of it,
but no: as he stood there, waiting more
to reorient himself to the earth than to see the train out, his eyes focused
again on the compartment window before him, and saw her face, half-obscured in
the reflection of sky and platform.
Their eyes met through the glass; as the cries of the attendants gave
way to the slow cry of metal pushing the train along out of the station, she
put her hand to the glass, a gesture of both valediction and longing. He raised his own hand in a feeble mirror of
hers; the train pulled slowly past; and as he watched, it picked up speed till
snakelike it had pulled all the way through the station and disappeared round
the first bend.
Slowly, Rupert turned and made his
way back to the car with deliberate strides, to return alone to the house.
*
Rupert turned over and woke to the grey morning light on the ceiling. Beside him Elisabeth slept peacefully, curled away from him, embracing a plump pillow. He could see the crest of her hand, resting childlike above her head. It had not yet ceased to give him pleasure, to watch her enjoying creature comforts: she had not, as far as he could tell, been starved of pleasure, but it had always been pleasure of her own making, or bought secondhand, matter-of-factly stolen from a hostile world. He remembered that state of mind, remembered what it was like to be a boy salvaging treasures from the debris of adult living. But he didn’t know what this meant: did it mean Elisabeth hadn’t properly grown up, or did it mean that he had lost something vital since childhood?
In any event, he had something to give her, and this was of value to him.
At the moment, however, he was becoming aware of a faint sense of disillusionment. People who aired their naked emotions were supposed to feel better: they weren’t supposed to wake up the morning after with a heavy ache over the breastbone and a case of psychological vertigo. They weren’t supposed to be worrying that they might regret exposing themselves to the person they loved best, that they’d have lost face somehow or diminished themselves.
Rupert rolled his eyes. Get a grip, he thought at himself, and began to rise, quietly so as not to wake Elisabeth.
Downstairs, he took a seat at the kitchen table to wait for the coffee to perk. The cat appeared and leapt up on his robed lap to hunker in a comfortable curl, for once not begging him for food or egress. Rupert’s hand found its way easily to the wide black ears, his fingers seeking out the soft place under the base. The cat leaned into his gentle massage, and began a purr that Rupert felt more than heard.
“Elisabeth says,” he said presently, with one silky ear between his fingers, “that cats with big ears are supposed to be good mousers.” The cat turned his eyes to Rupert’s face. “Suppose that means you and me,” Rupert said. The cat winked both eyes at him and relaxed once more.
Rupert leaned his head back, closing his eyes briefly. He remembered the occasion on which Elisabeth had said that, remembered stroking her hair as she dropped off to sleep, weary from an unfathomable grief. It occurred to him now how remarkable it was that she had not turned on him, not attacked him for being witness to her weakness. She surely must have been tempted; and she surely must have had plenty of weapons at her disposal. Though it would have been foolhardy, in Sunnydale, not to listen to her sense of self-preservation; and given a chance to walk away, she had taken it.
Of course, she was far more dear to him now than she had been then; and she had so far recovered as to be stronger than he at several points along the way: this being one of them. Rupert sighed. It was probably one reason why she had presented such a noncommittal front to his churlish behavior; she probably knew that satisfying his urge to upset her would only have resulted in further guilt and resentment on his part.
The coffee was done. Rupert sat up, lifted the cat gently and put him on the floor as he rose. The cat mirrored his yawn and stretch, and then began to rub against his shins and calves, herding him none-too-subtly in the direction of his dish.
“Right then,” Rupert murmured, and opened the fridge for the half-can of cat food left over.
Rupert took his coffee into the study and stood looking out the French doors, sipping it and curling his chilled toes within his slippers. This was getting to be a habitual movement: in his new home, Rupert began to feel the variety within sameness that a morning ritual offered. Yesterday he had stood here in the same spot, fearing more than feeling; today the fear had faded to the background, leaving the black cinders of feeling to claim his attention. Perhaps, if he were lucky, he would stand here another day soon, pleased, or comfortable, or—exalted, Elisabeth had said last night.
He heard movement in the house: Elisabeth, out of bed. In the distance he heard the toilet flush, then the sleepy tread of her feet down the stairs. In the kitchen a cupboard opened; water ran and the kettle rang hollowly. “I see you’ve got your breakfast,” he heard her say to the cat.
Then her steps came his way. He turned to look at the doorway, waiting for her to appear. When she did, her face brightened into an unconscious smile at sight of him.
“There you are,” she said. “I’m having an egg for breakfast. Want one?”
He nodded dumbly, and she disappeared with a flip of her blue robe.
She still brightened when she saw him—a casual, unwitting gesture that said as much as her words of the night before. The hurt blindsided him; he turned again to look out the window, and drew a difficult breath. Would there be a time when this didn’t revive the intense ache in his chest?
Sighing, Rupert followed Elisabeth back to the kitchen, where he found her cracking eggs into a mixing bowl, the small skillet already on the range.
“Shall I make the toast?” he said, with a small clear of the throat.
She flashed him a quick grin. “All right.” As she beat the eggs in the bowl, she began to hum softly, a tune he gradually recognized as the Sleepers wake. After she was finished scraping a large pat of butter into the skillet, he purloined the butter-dish from under her elbow and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster.
Elisabeth skated the butter around the hot pan with one finger; she switched from humming the foundation melody to the Bach counterpoint. For a moment, watching her pour the eggs over the snickeling hot butter, he felt a stab of envy at her undampened spirits. But then he remembered the number of times she had trembled helplessly in his arms, made only the more uncomfortable by self-disclosure, and his envy dissolved. He bent his attention with a will to the making of toast.
Rupert set their places at the kitchen table, and put down the saucer stacked with toast; presently Elisabeth came with the pan and deposited them each a share of eggs onto their plates. She got her mug of tea and they sat down together.
He couldn’t help observing her again, as she cracked pepper generously over her eggs; the dark shadows under her eyes and the tucked-back corners of her mouth suggested that her peace, though real, had not come without its cost. She looked up at him, and her eyes on his were damnably shrewd. But she said nothing, and returned to piling her eggs on a slice of toast.
It occurred to him that if what they were attempting was successful, hers was the face he’d be looking at across the breakfast table for the rest of his life, however long that was. Slowly, Rupert fell to, meditating on this aspect of the thing. If this was successful, they’d spend their lives doing just this, trading strengths, worrying over one another’s dangers, breaking one another’s hearts. Could they do that? Could they keep that balance?
“So,” Elisabeth said, “what’s the plan for today, you think?”
He jerked himself back to the present and cleared his throat. “Well, one of us will have to go and fetch Buffy…probably better be me….”
She raised her eyes gravely to his. “Why don’t we both go.”
He nodded, mute again.
“Do you want the shower first?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No—you have it.”
“’Kay.” They returned to silent eating.
But near the end of the meal, Elisabeth shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and braced one hand on the table edge; he looked up to see that she had lost color, and was biting her lip.
“You all right?”
She looked up. “Yeah. It’s just—” She opened her mouth as if to say more, but shut it again.
“Yes?” It was his turn to look gravely shrewd. But he couldn’t guess what was on her mind.
She tossed her head aside. “I don’t…I would rather leave it unsaid. But I probably shouldn’t.”
“What?” His voice was calm, but he felt a qualm in his stomach.
“It’s just…I wanted you to know—that—” She stopped, and started again, this time looking him in the face. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Whatever it is, it’s probably going to be dangerous, knowing us. I’m afraid—I’m afraid you might be thinking I’m not willing to…to make the big sacrifices, even in principle. And—”
He couldn’t bear to listen to any more. “Elisabeth, what have we just been fighting about? Don’t you understand how tired I am of you making noble sacrifices?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said; then primmed her lips and let him have it between the eyes. “I’m not talking about decisions I might have to make. I’m talking about you. I’m talking about what happens if I get turned—or if I’m the only thing standing between you or Buffy and saving the world. There’s no point saying it can’t happen, because—”
“No.” He shut his eyes and gripped the table hard.
“Rupert—”
He talked over her— “I can’t do it again. I can’t. I won’t.”
“I’m not saying—” But she fell silent. When he opened his eyes at last, she had rested her forehead on her hand, elbow on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s just that—” She swallowed hard.
“Do you think I’m that cool-headed, that I could just casually make a plan to—to kill—”
“No,” she said, without lifting her head. “I’m saying you shouldn’t have to agonize over what I’d want, if I’m unable to say.”
He couldn’t answer; it was taking all his strength to keep his breath and his control.
She went on. “That was my mistake the last time. I had the guts to leave you, but not to put any of our problem in your hands. I…I lost your respect as a player—” she sighed, and he heard tears behind her voice— “and I might not get it back.”
He sat silent. Much as he wanted to refute it, he couldn’t.
After a moment she dragged herself upright in her chair and smoothed back her hair. When she looked up, he saw even more clearly the cost she had counted, in the steady lines of her face.
“I don’t want a cheap grace for us,” she said.
He swallowed, and found that he could speak. “I don’t either.” It came out hoarse, but firm.
“I know you don’t,” she said, a faint humor tugging at her mouth. “I’d have to be deaf and blind not to know it, with all the times you’ve tried to make me fight you.”
So she knew.
She took in a long breath and let it out in a great sigh, then rose with her plate and his. “You know,” she said, “I think I might defer my shower till later, like before we go to the service.”
“It’ll be dead cold then,” he said, “if the weather report is any good. Your hair might freeze.”
She turned a sudden smile over her shoulder. “Good point. I’ll borrow Buffy’s hairdryer.” As the sink filled, she slid in the pan and her empty mug and, when he pushed it an inch across the table, his coffee cup. He watched her hitch up the sleeves of her robe and take up the dishrag. Presently, she began to hum the Sleepers wake again, more softly than before: and this time he heard the acquiescent melancholy that twined with the joy, a Bachian Möbius strip; so characteristic, of both Bach and her.
“I’ll have my shower, then,” Rupert said, rising.
Steadily he went upstairs; steadily he found his bath towel, put on the bathroom heater and the shower, disrobed, and stepped into the hot spray.
And it came for him again, as strong as nausea. You asked for truth, didn’t you? Rupert braced himself against the shining new tiles of the shower and tried to weep quietly. When he was master of himself again, he put his face directly into the water for a long minute, and then began to wash, with a deliberation as acquiescent as Elisabeth’s.
He looked himself calmly in the face, shaving; combed his hair, brushed his teeth. With a chastened air he wrapped his robe round him and went back to the bedroom to dress.
He found Elisabeth there, sitting on the side of the bed with her hands in her robed lap. They shared a wordless gaze for a moment; then she reached out and patted the bed next to her. With a sigh he came to sit next to her, hands braced lightly on his knees, eyes cast down.
“What can I do?” Elisabeth said.
He turned his face hard away, to compose his face and voice. “There’s nothing to be done,” he said finally.
She answered nothing, but he felt her acceptance; after a moment she curled both her hands over the crest of his shoulder and nuzzled his arm. He turned to her then, and they reached to hold one another in an awkward embrace. She offered him no more apologies; and he laid his cheek on her hair and let go, again, of the shame. How many times would he need to do this? Maybe it didn’t matter, not if she always called him back and back in just this way.
“Why am I getting a déjà vu right now?” Elisabeth said, her ironic accents half-muffled against his shoulder.
It didn’t take him long to remember. “No worst, there is none?” he offered.
She sighed. “Oh, right. We have been here before.”
“I was just thinking,” he said, “that we’ll probably be here again.”
“I hope to God not soon,” she said.
For answer he bent his head and kissed her ear.
*
It took Buffy a few minutes, but she did figure out how to get Elisabeth’s radio on and emitting Christmas music. There, that was better: Christmas music, even at the frenetic pitch it always reached on Christmas Eve, was preferable by far to the silence of the flat.
Buffy didn’t actually regret refraining from drinking too much the night before, but she did find herself thinking occasionally that Giles might have a point, and facing a rough day through a haze of scotch wasn’t such a bad idea. She had tried to assure Brian that things would turn out all right, but in the cold—and she did mean cold—light of morning, it didn’t seem at all like a sure thing. Methodically she packed the bag she’d brought the night before and made the bed she’d slept in. With the radio on and blaring energetic pop versions of Christmas carols and cheesy Christmas versions of pop songs, Buffy found herself drawn into tidying the flat, which looked even more disheveled than it had when she arrived, the result of a week’s worth of raids for items needed at Pyke’s Lea.
An odd sound crept into the tumble of music, a sound she recognized. She dove for the radio, turned it off, then dug desperately in her bag for her cell. Without pausing to see who it was, she flipped it open. “Yes?”
“Buffy,
what did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to—who? Who are we talking about?” Buffy stood up and caught her breath in the sudden silence of the flat.
“Duh. Giles. What—”
“I didn’t do anything to Giles,” Buffy said, indignantly. “He’s fine.”
“He’s not fine. I can feel him from here.”
Offense; offense was good. “You said that before. I thought you had the power to keep yourself to yourself,” she accused.
“I do. I did.
I—well, all right, I put out a couple feelers to find out what’s going on,”
“Well, I don’t know exactly what’s going on,” Buffy said. “I haven’t seen Giles for more than twenty-four hours, as a matter of fact. So if anybody did anything to him, it wasn’t me.” Buffy felt a sudden qualm of panic. “He’s not…in danger, is he?”
“No,”
“I’m at Elisabeth’s flat,” Buffy said, heaving a sigh. “To give her and Giles some space to talk.”
“Oh.”
“So…,” Buffy said tentatively, digging her nails into her palm, “it didn’t go well?”
“I don’t
know about that,”
“Well…yeah,” Buffy said with another sigh. “That’s true. He’s been big on the breaking things recently.”
“Well,
give,”
Somewhat
chastened, Buffy opened her mouth to comply, but her phone beeped. “Somebody’s calling me,” she told
“At the
airport right now,”
Buffy looked at the clock. “Oh, right, I forgot. Well, I’ll call you tomorrow then. Promise. Merry—whatever, and all that. Bye.” Without waiting for a response, she clicked over. “Hello?”
“Hey, Buffy,
it’s me,” Elisabeth said. “We’re on the
road to
“I’m dressed and ready,” Buffy said.
“Excellent. Then we won’t do the errands first. Oh, and may I borrow your hairdryer later this evening?”
“Uh—sure,” Buffy said, caught off guard. She sat down, half-falling, on the bed.
“Thanks—I’m going to have my bath just before we leave for the service this evening.”
“So we still are going to the service then?” Buffy grasped at the flimsy chance to get some information about Giles.
“Oh, yes,” Elisabeth said. “Plan’s still on. —We’ll be there in a few.”
“Okay.” Slowly, Buffy lowered the phone and closed
it, thinking. If the plan was still on,
that could mean several things. It could
mean that Elisabeth and Giles were okay, that they’d been able to settle their
differences and move on. But
The problem was, she was jealous of the closeness she’d enjoyed with a man who was no earthly kin to her save by the manipulations of a patriarchal institution she’d rejected. And Giles himself had implied that rejecting it completely meant rejecting him too. He had as good as said You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Buffy.
For the first time in a long time Buffy tried to imagine what being a Slayer would have been like without someone like Giles nearby—without an objective presence, without reassurance that what she was going through wasn’t crazy, that the huge power taking over her life had meaning, a good meaning. Someone dedicated to a lifetime’s worth of supporting her, protecting her from the judgment of society, and—yes, loving her. Someone who promised to put up with the heartbreak when she died, and who therefore would not be able to complain when it became clear that she wasn’t supposed to live to adulthood.
Someone who, when it came down to it, did all that knowing he wasn’t as strong as she was.
Buffy went listlessly to the window and looked out. It wasn’t going to get solved quickly. There was not, after all, some brilliant and perfect solution, some magic arrangement that would enable them to love one another without losing their integrity. She’d already lost Angel to a situation like this; would she have to lose Giles too?
A new instinct was making itself felt to Buffy: it was no longer the time to make firm stands. This wasn’t like casting herself into a dimensional rip, or marshalling a force of Potentials. It was now the time to unsnarl knotted necklaces: too hard a tug and the thing would break. She would have to feel her way along.
Outside, she saw Giles’s car nose its way into a gap in the street parking: and was seized with a sudden, fundamental fear. She watched avidly as the car stilled, as the doors opened and Giles and Elisabeth got out. Elisabeth held up her hands like a catcher’s mitt: Giles tossed her the keys over the car roof in a gentle parabola, but she winced at the last moment, and they fell through her hands to the pavement with an audible jingling smack. Buffy saw the flash of Giles’s teeth in a smile. He said something, and Elisabeth rose from retrieving the keys to give him a brief two-fingered salute. Giles flashed her another grin.
Maybe
With a brisk rattle of keys in the lock Elisabeth pushed into the house. “We’re here!—Oh, you cleaned up in here. That was nice of you. Where are you?”
“In here,” Buffy said, still watching Giles shut the car door and follow Elisabeth up the front steps.
Elisabeth came into the bedroom. “Hey,” she said. “How you doing?” Without waiting for the response, she went to the bureau and pulled the top drawer.
“O…kay,” Buffy said, still off-balance. “What about you?”
“Doing all right,” Elisabeth answered, gathering something up out of a pile of socks. She flashed Buffy a wink, just as Giles came in.
“Hallo,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. “Care for a bite of lunch at the pub?”
“Oh, well,” Buffy said, “I think I can stand to eat two pub meals in a row.”
“Two?” Giles said, as Elisabeth unearthed a large flat object wrapped in brown paper from among her socks.
“If your overnight bag’s packed,” she said to Buffy, smoothing down the brown paper, “we can stick it in the car on our way out.” She maneuvered deftly around Giles and down the hall.
“Two pub meals?” Giles persisted, as Buffy reached for her bag.
“Yeah,” Buffy said, with a casual air, “I had a date with Brian last night.”
“You what?” Giles straightened up from the door and scowled at her, a very satisfying response.
“A platonic date,” she said as she moved past him to follow Elisabeth.
“I should hope so,” Giles said, following her.
“A date just oozing with platonicness,” Buffy said over her shoulder as they went out the door.
Giles rolled his eyes in his patented lonsuffering gesture. “Now you’re just teasing me.” He pulled the door of the flat firmly shut after him.
“We mostly talked about you.” Buffy alighted on the sidewalk and fixed him with a look.
“No doubt. Elisabeth—toss me the keys.”
With a quiet, wicked look, Elisabeth took aim and underhanded the keys up to him at the top of the steps. He fumbled them, but managed to hold on, and Elisabeth gave him a pursed smile before bending to arrange her parcel in the back of the car.
As they walked toward the Bridge, Buffy studied her companions closely for signs of either disaster or mending. Giles and Elisabeth, however, were studying the weather, gesturing at the clouding sky and the chasing wind. At first Buffy thought that this was an attempt at small talk; but as they crossed the Bridge into Oxford proper, she too began to notice that the sky and air had a look of something about to make a radical change—what, it was difficult to say. The wind was cold, but when the sun came out by turns, its watery light cheered Buffy enough to feel her own warmth.
Buffy took what opportunities she could to study their profiles as they walked, but Giles had his usual air of impenetrably vague aloofness, and Elisabeth looked grave but calm—not like a person who had uttered a cry of shame and despair thirty-six hours before.
Maybe I should take up spellwork again, Buffy thought. It sounded easier than taking up the verbal hammer and chisel.
But as they approached the turning for their pub, Elisabeth suddenly slowed and turned to the others. “You know,” she said, “I think I might slip down to the church and see how Anne’s getting on with the Christmas preparations.”
“You don’t want lunch?” Giles asked her.
“You guys go on; I’ll grab something.” Elisabeth’s air of indecision vanished, and she felt briskly at her jacket pockets. “Did I give you your phone back?”
Giles slipped a hand into his pocket. “Yes. Have you got yours?”
“Yeah,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll call you in a bit and arrange a rendezvous.”
Without wasting any more words, she set off briskly ahead, leaving them to take the turn for the pub.
With only the two of them, it was easier to walk abreast. Giles did not hurry his pace, even when the unruly wind picked up and flattened his hair upward. Buffy was glad she’d put her hair up and out of the way. “I think I’m getting used to English weather,” she said aloud, and Giles angled a little grin her way before reaching for the pub door.
Inside, the weather was the topic of choice for nearly every conversation within earshot. It was going to snow. No, it wasn’t, it was going to ice. No, it wasn’t, it was going to miss Oxford altogether and just be bloody cold. Well, in any event the trains would certainly be fucked; don’t count on getting where you need to go on Christmas. The trains were always fucked at Christmas, what was he talking about?
“What’s a ploughman’s?” Buffy asked, frowning at the menu board.
“Bread and cheese and pickle,” Giles answered. “Comes with a salad here.”
“Then I’ll have that,” Buffy said.
They got their food (Giles had recommended that Buffy get cider with her choice), and Buffy paused in inspecting her plate to look at his. Giles had a boat-shaped dish topped with puff pastry, and a generous dollop of a squashy green mass.
“What,” she said, pointing with her fork, “is that?”
“It’s mushy peas,” Giles said, with a telltale hint of mischief in his tone. “Go on, try some.” He pushed his plate forward.
“Uh, no thanks. I’m more concerned about this—” she indicated an amorphous dark glop on her own plate— “at the moment. What is this?”
“It’s the pickle.” Giles was enjoying this game, she could tell.
“Pickle!”
“Yes, it’s the branston pickle. What, did you think everything bearing the name of pickle must be composed of small cucumbers and served from a jar of anemic green vinegar? It’s good. Try it.”
Gingerly, Buffy prodded the branston pickle with her fork and gave it a taste. It wasn’t bad; a little bit like chutney, but definitely English and weird. Fortunately, the other things on the plate were less weird: two kinds of cheese, one Brie-ish, the other Cheddarish, a large hunk of thick brown bread, some fruit, and a small bowl of salad.
Giles, meanwhile, had cut into his meat pie and was forking up a gravy-soaked bite of pastry.
“So,” Buffy said casually, after they’d put in a good ten minutes of eating time. “When exactly are you going to tell me about the sitch?”
“What sitch.” That he didn’t make a casual question out of it was, Buffy thought, a sign that he was not committed to shutting her out. She hoped.
“The sitch that led me to spend last night at the flat to leave you and Elisabeth alone. The sitch that I spent three hours talking with Brian about in this pub last night. The sitch you’re stonewalling me on right now. That sitch.”
“Oh, that sitch,” Giles said. “Right. There are so many sitches to keep track of, I was having trouble identifying which one you were referring to.” He took a bite of mushy peas.
“Giles, don’t be a smartass,” Buffy said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, lips twitching.
“
“Oh did she.”
“Yeah. She demanded to know what I’d done to you.”
At this Giles did look up. “What you’d done? Nobody’s done anything to me.”
“Well, she was having a hard time otherwise explaining the magnitude of your not-fine-ness.”
Giles made a face. “Who asked her to play the nosey-parker with my vibes?”
It was the
same question she’d asked
“That is some very specious reasoning, Buffy,” Giles said, taking the high road. Damn him.
“Well, at least I got you to confirm that you’re not fine,” Buffy retorted.
“Which you already knew.” Giles scraped the last bits of puff pastry from around the sides of the dish.
Buffy cocked her head and gave him a look. “Oh, come on, Giles,” she said, softer.
At last he met her eye. “Honestly, Buffy, what don’t you know? I’m not fine; I’m not dead. There’s nothing to do but go forward.”
And Elisabeth? Buffy wanted to ask. But the honesty of his eyes on hers made her say instead: “Can I do anything?”
He smiled: a smile which told her more than any words she could pry out of him; and it started an ache in her heart. “You’re already doing it,” he said.
She took a sip of her cider to ease the lump in her throat. “You can do something else for me,” Giles added.
She put down her cider glass; he was looking mischievous again. “What?” she said, warily.
“You can give me your branston pickle. I hate seeing good food go to waste.”
Buffy gave a great snort and pushed her plate across to him.
*
Elisabeth found Anne in the nave, wielding a screwdriver among the half-erected pew torchieres. “Doesn’t the Altar Guild do that?” she asked.
Anne looked up and flashed her a smile. “The Altar Guild,” she said, “are all gone to pick up the flowers—and the candles, which got delivered to St. James’s by mistake.”
“Tempt not the wrath of the Sons of Thunder,” Elisabeth said.
“Indeed.”
“Can I help?” Elisabeth asked, tentatively.
Anne sized her up. “Why don’t you bring those glass cups and fasten them to the tops?...They’re the ones in that box there.”
Elisabeth found the box, hefted it gently, and brought it over to the row of finished torchieres. For ten minutes there was only the sound of their work in the unlit nave, the changeful daylight slanting through the windows, stained mosaic and grisaille.
“I hear it might snow,” Anne said presently.
“Oh, don’t get my hopes up,” Elisabeth said, and Anne laughed.
“Dreaming of a white Christmas, are we?”
“I can’t even remember the last white Christmas I saw,” Elisabeth said.
“They’re not all that common round here,” Anne agreed. “So where are Rupert and Buffy?”
To pause was to betray. “They’re having lunch down at the pub.”
“And you’re not having lunch?”
“I’m—I’m not—” Elisabeth stopped, and sighed. “I wanted to let them talk.”
“What will you do for lunch then?”
Elisabeth shrugged without looking round. “I’ll grab something.”
“You could grab half my sandwich,” Anne said. “I haven’t eaten yet.”
“Oh…I couldn’t….” Elisabeth turned, and Anne gave her a look.
“It’s a big sandwich,” she said. “And there’s tea.”
Elisabeth shut her mouth.
Upstairs in
Anne’s office, Elisabeth sat at the little table while Anne got out her lunch
and divided it between them on a napkin.
She pressed the lever on the electric kettle, set a cup at each of their
places, and then sat down herself.
“Which would you prefer?” she asked, holding up the box of teabags,
“Earl Grey or
“
The impromptu lunch proceeded in a comfortable quiet, which was not what Elisabeth had originally come for, but which was as balm to her soul. Her conscience had been troubling her about her tendency to come to Anne only when she was in need of help—and was this the obverse of her avoiding Brian on the same occasions?—and it was a relief to find that she could still sit down to lunch with her friend without being overcome by the guilt.
“Thank you for feeding me,” she said.
“You’ll be returning the favor tomorrow,” Anne said, pleasantly. Then she looked up. “We’re still on for tomorrow, I take it?”
“Yes, plan’s still on,” Elisabeth told her, as she had told Buffy. “We’re a go.”
Of course, when giving this assurance to Buffy she had been able to get quickly off the phone and thus avoid the look she was now getting from Anne.
“How is he?” Anne asked.
“He’ll be all right, I think.” Elisabeth believed it more strongly than she had two hours ago, but she couldn’t bear to let her mind dwell on the topic. She took a fortifying sip of her tea.
“Did you get to talk?”
Elisabeth looked up, preparing words to deflect her from the subject; but looking at Anne’s face, she realized that Anne was not asking out of teacherly detachment, or to draw her out for her own good. Of course: Anne had dealt with Rupert yesterday in his shellshocked state; had involved herself deeply in their struggle; had probably carried more of the problem’s weight than either of them guessed.
Elisabeth
drew a long breath. “Yes,” she
said. “We did. Some.
Mostly we cried and drank
Anne said tentatively, “Would you call that…an auspicious development?”
Elisabeth looked away and nodded. “He…told me some of what happened to him. And I, I told him the truth about my dreams.” Her throat suddenly ached hard. “It’s better to have the truth. It is. But….”
Anne waited, eyes fixed sympathetically on her face.
“He’s got to go through it,” Elisabeth said, getting hold of herself. “I can’t do anything about it. And I can’t…I can’t lie to him and pretend it doesn’t hurt me to watch him, but I can’t give him that to carry with everything else.”
“Not all of it, certainly,” Anne said.
Elisabeth looked up. “I should let him carry a little, then?”
“Well—” Anne hesitated— “can you trust him with a little of it?”
Unexpectedly, grief rose in a wave and took her. She pulled her glasses off to drop to the table, and put her hands over her face, nodding. For a moment her very being was taut, impacted, with the release of isolation she’d imposed on herself since before the Plumbing Disaster: she had not known till this moment how much it had cost her to maintain her surface serenity. It was a long minute before she could even get enough composure to whisper, “I’m—sorry—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Anne said tartly. “It’s about bloody time.”
Elisabeth choked on a laugh. She took her hands away to see Anne giving her a small wry smile. She had not moved; but as Elisabeth started wiping her face with her hands, she reached over calmly and retrieved the box of tissues that stood on her desk.
“D’you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Do you have time?” Elisabeth swiped at her nose with a skeptical sniff.
Anne glanced thoughtfully at the clock above them. “For the short version,” she said, with another small smile. “Then I’d better get back to decorating.”
Elisabeth gave her a tear-streaked smile.
*
Before she left Anne’s office, Elisabeth took out her phone and called Brian.
He answered on the fifth ring, his “hello” very fragmented indeed.
“Brian? It’s Elisabeth….Where are you? Why’s the signal so bad?”
“I’m on the road?” He sounded impatient.
“On the road?” she repeated, stupidly.
“To
“Oh! I forgot. You’re going up to see your parents. But you…you are still coming to have Christmas dinner with us. Are you?”
“Are you still having it?” Even in the static, she could hear the utter dryness of his tone.
“Yes, of course we—yes. We’re still having it.”
“Well, then, I’m coming.”
Elisabeth sighed heavily. “You’re mad at me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Brian—”
He gave a gusty sigh. “All right. Maybe a little.”
“I heard what you said. I mean, to Buffy. On the phone. About me avoiding you. You…you’re not wrong about that.”
There was a silence; Elisabeth wondered if the signal was breaking up, or if he was just that angry. But then, “Well. You haven’t always been able to trust me not to fly off the handle,” he said, in a low voice that reminded Elisabeth suddenly to breathe.
She answered in the same tone. “I owe you the chance, though.”
“Then will you—will you tell me what happened?”
Elisabeth
opened her mouth, but he added, “When I get back to
“Okay,” she said, relieved. She wanted to tell him, but reliving the pain three times in one day was a bit much.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Okay. Drive safe.”
“I will. Merry Christmas.”
“You too.”
“Cheers.”
The signal ended. Slowly, Elisabeth shut her phone and sighed, casting a desultory glance around Anne’s office. Then she opened it back up, gathered herself, and hit the speed dial for Rupert’s cell.
*
Rupert shut off the stand mixer and gave the bowl a sniff. He frowned, then dipped a spoon to taste. More bourbon, he decided. Then he’d add the rest of the cream.
He had asked Elisabeth, uncertainly, whether it wasn’t overestimating their capacities to have eggnog and mulled wine and hot tea after the service, but the scent of the wine beginning to emanate from the crockpot, mingled with the taste of cream and sweet liquor, were filling his senses with holiday, and he decided she was right.
Upstairs, he could hear Elisabeth and Buffy laughing and talking. Elisabeth’s request to borrow Buffy’s hairdryer had turned into an offer by Buffy to do her hair; so now they were encamped in the bathroom with a multitude of feminine accoutrements. Elisabeth did not often make such concessions to femininity, preferring a utilitarian approach to grooming and wardrobe; but on special occasions, he had discovered, she took great care and even pleasure in making herself smart.
Rupert finished the eggnog and put it to chill in the fridge. A whistling rattle of wind at the eaves reminded him to lay a fire in the kitchen fireplace, so he knelt to do so, then rose slowly and went upstairs, dusting his hands.
“It smells good, Rupert,” Elisabeth called to him as he passed the bathroom. He smiled, and continued into their bedroom to change his shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, they convened in the foyer to don coats under the strings of white lights he and Buffy had hung. Elisabeth buttoned herself snugly into her wool frock coat, tucking in a red scarf and raising the hood over the upswept hairdo Buffy had given her. Buffy, however, shrugged herself into her fleece jacket and left it unzipped. He gave her an amused look as he bundled up himself, but Buffy looked defiantly unconcerned, so he forbore to say anything, and caught up the car keys with a a faint whistle between his teeth.
The wind
had picked up to a keenness both of sound and cold as they went out to the
car. Rupert put the heater on, though it
wouldn’t warm up properly till they arrived at the
He smiled to himself as they reached the steps of the church and Buffy made for the door in a quick dart, visibly shivering. He held the door as she let go of it, gesturing an older couple in ahead of him, and then followed himself where Buffy and Elisabeth had gone.
The voices of the people around him were spiced with laughter, some of it very dryly aimed at the weather; the church smelled of fir needles and burning candles; ahead of him, Elisabeth was going up the nave, her head upraised in a gesture Rupert knew without having to look at her face. He hung up his coat quickly and followed her and Buffy up the aisle.
Elisabeth chose a pew in a spot he recognized as her usual choice—near the front on the left—and ushered them in before her. As if they had done it every Sunday of their lives, Rupert sat down comfortably, laid his cap in his lap, took the order of service she handed him, and settled back while she knelt to pray.
This was another thing he could expect to do many times, if their partnership held. Rupert raised his eyes to the dark rafters of the nave overhead. The nave, a ship of fools. Two fools, at any rate. Here at this moment, it felt like peace.
On his other side, Buffy had sat down with rather less ease and was now looking around warily. Her gaze settled on him, and he gave her a little smile. He had not been with Buffy in a church for purposes of actual worship, that he recalled; this made a nice (if slightly ironic) novelty.
The processional began, ringing and joyous; Rupert stood with the congregation and gave himself up to the service with the same spiritual motion he had used in the morning, embracing Elisabeth in their room. The words and the music hit him with a shock like the dark sea at a cold sunrise bathe (it’d been a long time since he did that; too long), and he felt briefly as though he had barely managed to keep his feet, though outwardly his stance was calm and secure.
By the time they all sat for the sermon, he felt primed and ready for what was coming: all the little candle flames in the church pointing the way to warm joy. Anne rose and mounted the little steps to the pulpit, and he saw that when she made the sign of the cross, she finished it with an unconscious gesture—a gently cupped hand as if receiving and giving both at once. He smiled and glanced over at Elisabeth: she was sitting up, her shoulders set forward in the academic’s attitude of attention, her eyes fixed rapt on the priest.
Sing to the Lord a new song…proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. Christmas, more than anything else, Anne said, was a celebration of time. God will save us; God has saved us; God saves us right now. The news always comes as a shock; though we know the victory has already happened, we see little to encourage us, little to promise us that our efforts to live by that invisible victory will bear any fruit. But we must remember, Anne said, that it is grace that sews together the fabric of past, present, and future; grace, not threat, that makes us able to live as we should right now.
Without turning her head or changing expression, Elisabeth reached into his lap and took his hand. Rupert responded in kind, and they sat like that for the rest of the sermon, listening together.
They released one another at the offertory anthem, which was (Rupert smiled to himself) Bach. A Magnificat, though he couldn’t remember which one. He sat, letting his gaze drop focus, and let the ribbons of music draw his thoughts. Beside him he could feel Elisabeth, equally unmoving, listening with every fiber. From her to Bach, from Bach to Mary, from Mary to the icon Anne had given Elisabeth….He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation….
Generations; on his other side the no-longer-one-girl-in-every-generation was lost in her own thoughts. As they rose for the eucharistic prayers, Rupert nudged her, and Buffy, startled, got belatedly to her feet.
It no longer seemed to him anomalous, what he was doing: watching Elisabeth genuflect and go forward, he felt as if (to use Anne’s metaphor) the grace of the moment had pulled a stitch gently taut, between the world he had worked so hard to save, and his living in it. And Elisabeth, her face closed in prayer, radiated a gratitude as she returned to them that lifted his heart.
There were more hymns as communion ended, finishing with “Silent Night”; then they rose again, and the organ pealed into “Joy to the World”. Every voice was lifted to a near-shout as the altar party recessed, Rupert wholeheartedly included, and as the congregation was dismissed, the voices broke into greetings and laughter.
Still taking it all in, he moved into the aisle, letting Buffy and Elisabeth edge in behind him, bantering along with everyone else. He led them down to the doors of the narthex, where the priest was shaking hand after hand and laughing. She took his before she really saw him, and then she smiled. “Happy Christmas!” she said through the din.
“Happy Christmas,” he replied in a low shout. “You still coming to the house tomorrow?”
“Of course! Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Anne was growing hoarse, so he moved on to get their coats while Anne shook Elisabeth’s and Buffy’s hands. When they followed him into the narthex, he held Elisabeth’s coat up for her to shrug into, which she did, casting him a sidelong smile.
The three of them stumbled out into the cold; their fellow churchgoers stumbled out with and around them, and dispersed into the night, laughing on their way to warm homes and Christmas cheer. Behind him, Rupert could hear Elisabeth chivvying Buffy with a maternal note in her voice that made him nip a smile in the bud: “Here, have my gloves. No, take them. Really!”
Rupert
looked up into the close clouds overhead.
The lights of
He turned to Buffy and Elisabeth, smiling. “Well,” he said, “shall we go home?”
*
Elisabeth was waked from a drowsing sleep by the faint sound of snow against their bedroom window. Behind her Rupert lay close, sleeping soundly. For a long minute she lay quiet, feeling the security of their warm covers against the drafts of the house and the near-silent wildness of the night outside. Inside, she was still well-fortified with mulled wine and Rupert’s eggnog, and come to think of it, she was probably going to have to venture outside their nest to visit the bathroom. But before stirring, she closed her eyes for a moment and savored the images of the evening: the wonder of the service, the snow that began as they drove home, the glint of Rupert’s glasses in the kitchen firelight as he bent over his guitar to pick out carols. There had been “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming” (as she peered out the diamond-paned windows at the accumulating snow for the umpteenth time) and “The Holly and the Ivy,” and “I Saw Three Ships” and “Once in Royal David’s City”. Then Buffy had asked for “Away in a Manger” and “The First Noel,” which she sang with wine-induced gusto. They finished with “Silent Night” again: Elisabeth and Rupert traded off on the harmony verse by verse till he let the guitar fall silent, and all of them sat quiet and replete, ready at last to go to bed.
Elisabeth opened her eyes and eased gently out of bed to pad out to the bathroom. When she returned, she couldn’t resist going to the window again, to watch the snow come down. She fingered aside the muslin curtain and looked out to see a transformed Pyke’s Lea.
She thought, not for the first time that night, how good it was to be here, in this house, at Christmas. This was the first Christmas she had spent in this dimension that bore any resemblance to those she had once known with her family: she missed them, and she felt them a little, and which caused which she could not tell. And now that she and Rupert had been uncemented from their fear, the more ordinary fears of beginning a new family with someone had come to the fore; and the joys too.
But she was not the only one awake tonight. Below, in the front garden by the orchard, she saw a figure moving under the shifting swirl of falling snow. The figure was gathering snow from the ground and launching it in graceful missiles: Buffy. There seemed something angry, something desperate, in her movements, and for a moment Elisabeth felt a qualm of unease; but there was deliberate method too, and she remembered how little time Buffy had had to herself, to work things out without constantly being focused on threat. Too, it couldn’t have been comfortable dealing with the crisis between herself and Rupert, whichever way it would have turned out.
Behind her, Rupert stirred in the bed. She heard him pause as he realized she wasn’t with him; then he turned over. “Elisabeth, it’s only snow,” he said, in a petulant moan. “Come back to bed. It’s cold.”
“Buffy’s out there,” Elisabeth said.
A pause. “Is she okay?”
Below, Buffy had stopped throwing snow and spread her arms and head back to meet the oncoming flakes. Elisabeth watched a moment, and said, belatedly: “Yes.”
“’s cold,” Rupert repeated.
He couldn’t see her smile in the dark. Sedately, Elisabeth moved back round to her side of the bed and crawled in to curl where she had been before, though the spot had long since grown cold. With a small sigh Rupert nestled against her back, threading the covers over her shoulder; she relaxed into him and closed her eyes as their combined warmth spread through their nest.
The wind sharpened briefly, and Elisabeth, comforted by the sound of snow dashed against her window, fell asleep.
*
Light, implacable and pale, brought Rupert awake. The first thing he saw was Elisabeth’s face, eyes calm shut and chin tucked down; she had turned over to face him and was now curled down at the bottom of her pillow. A strand of her hair lay forward over her brow and across the pillow; unable to resist, he stirred a hand free of the covers and smoothed it back with sleepy fingertips. At his touch she took in a sudden deep breath and smiled without opening her eyes. He touched the smile, upper lip, lower lip, and corner, and moved his finger to smooth her hair behind her ear.
She smiled wider. “Merry Christmas,” she murmured, eyes still shut.
He cleared his throat gently. “Merry Christmas.”
“What time is it?”
He lifted his head to squint at the clock on her nightstand. “Little after eight,” he answered, putting his head back down closer to hers.
“Mm.” Her eyes fluttered open. “’s bright out.”
“Snow,” he said, and she nodded.
His fingertip traveled gently up and over to stroke the round of her shoulder where her shirt had rucked up. She met his eye, full awake now, and moved her hand under the covers to touch him in return.
“Thank you for last night,” she said. Her hand smoothed down the rumples of his T-shirt over his side, and then again: a gesture of affection.
He smiled. “Thank you.”
She inched closer to him. “So, what’s the plan for this morning?” she said. “Breakfast, then presents?”
He couldn’t help a little grin. “Presents?”
“Of course presents,” she said. “What, did you think you weren’t getting any?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s safer not to assume.”
“Oh, bah, humbug,” she said. She was looking him directly in the eye now, and her fingers below were easing under the elastic of his boxers. He narrowed his eyes at her, but couldn’t stop his lips from twitching. She moved closer to him as her hand curled round in a soft grip, the expression in her face gravely flirtatious which was in itself liable to stir his pulses.
“So, Rupert,” she said. (Her thumb moved, again and again in long slow strokes.) “Have you been a good boy this year?”
“No,” he answered honestly. For a brief second their eyes met on it, then her lips twitched into a fresh smile.
“Well,” she said, “honesty has its own rewards.” And she ducked from under his hand on her shoulder and slid beneath the covers.
He submitted to her gentle efforts to expose him to her; and was more than ready when she’d got his boxers down to his knees: the warm touch of her breath on his skin, the breath-stealing caress of her lips and tongue—
It was exactly what he wanted, but he also wanted something else: he wanted to hold her, to feel her close and meet her eyes again. He found himself reaching down to find her shoulder and stop her: she stopped, and with his fingertips he urged her upward. He turned onto his back and she crawled up over him; her face as she emerged from the covers was concerned.
“What’s wrong?” she said, gently.
He shook his head, for a moment at a loss for words. It wasn’t till he had his arms round her and she had laid her smooth cheek against his rough one that he murmured: “I want to hold you.”
To his relief there was a smile in her voice when she replied. “Never knew you to turn one of those down before.”
“It’s not generally likely,” he admitted, shutting his eyes in a brief grin.
She raised her head to look at him; he stroked back her hair.
“I remember the first time you did it,” he said.
She chuckled and laid her head back down again. “You were so astonished.”
He had to laugh. “I was.”
“When exactly was that? I’ve forgotten.”
“The second time I came to you,” he said promptly, “and we ran out of condoms.”
He felt her laughing. “Oh, of course.”
“I was just searching for a diplomatic way to make a tentative suggestion, and you gave me this little look, and went right down.”
“Took me a little while to develop a technique.”
“It’s a very good technique,” he said reverently, and she laughed again and kissed the angle of his jaw.
He shut his eyes and stirred her hair with his fingers. Yes, this was threading the needle of what he wanted.
And she, too, wanted something: her hands came awake to explore him beneath her, to find the hem of his T-shirt. He moved his head to kiss her hair; in response she put her lips to his ear. “If you don’t want to be sucked,” she murmured, “what do you want?”
“It’s terribly conventional, I’m afraid,” he said, his breath quickening.
“Rupert: this is Christmas. The most conventional public holiday of the year.” He caught a flash of her hazel eyes before she pressed a delicate kiss to his jaw. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “What do you want?”
“I want…you to hold me.”
Accordingly she rolled away and drew him with her, so that they finished up with him nestled upon her; for a moment he laid his head down on her breast and rode the swell of her breath.
“Anything else?” she said. He raised his head: there was mischief in her face, and he returned the expression, pursing a small narrow grin.
“I want to be in you.”
“I think we can do that,” she said, gravely. “Anything else?”
He rose up, so that their faces were close, and held her eyes. “Oh, a number of things,” he murmured. “I’ll tell them to you. One by one.”
She drew a sudden, shivery breath and smiled: all the answer he wanted.
*
“Just five more minutes,” Buffy muttered, burying her face harder in the pillow.
But the paw was insistent, dragging at the covers till they fell away from her shoulder.
“Aw, come on,” she groaned.
“Hrmnow,” the cat said.
Buffy gave up. “Fine. Fine!” She turned over. “Merry Christmas to you too.”
He started purring in her face, looking way too satisfied.
Buffy sat up and stretched. From the window was coming a strong white light; with a yawn she got up to investigate, pulling aside the light curtain.
Her window panes were edged with snow, a phenomenon she had never seen outside those cheesy Christmas cards, and the orchard was blanketed with a smooth breast of white. Peering closely, she saw that the disturbance she had made in the night was almost completely covered over; it must have snowed steadily almost till morning. It was still cloudy, but the clouds were light and visibly in motion; as she watched, a breeze trembled the bare branches of the orchard trees, and snow dropped to the drifts below.
“It’s all Bing Crosby out there,” she told the cat.
She yawned again, pulled on the borrowed cardigan, shoved her feet into some socks, and headed downstairs. On her way she saw that the door to Giles’ and Elisabeth’s bedroom was standing open: the bed was empty, unmade and rumpled. Good. Maybe there’d be coffee on.
Giles was sitting at the kitchen table when she came in, one finger loose in a coffee cup handle. Behind his chair Elisabeth stood with one hand on his shoulder; the other he had covered with his where it rested against his robed chest. His head was tilted back, her lips buried in his hair, both their eyes closed; and they were at rest, perfectly still except for their breathing.
Buffy stopped in her tracks, her “Merry Christmas” dead on her lips; she was about to tiptoe away, but Elisabeth’s eyes blinked open and saw her. She raised her head and smiled.
“Good morning,” she said. “Merry Christmas. Want some coffee?”
She was about to demur, but then Giles opened his eyes too. “Merry Christmas, Buffy,” he said, with that not-quite-smile of his.
“Merry Christmas,” she said to both of them, and went to get herself a coffee cup.
*
The forenoon unfolded gently: they ate breakfast, cleared and reset the table for dinner, got cleaned up and dressed, and set about with the cooking. Elisabeth and Buffy made a salad, to be tossed and dressed later, then stirred up a casserole; Rupert busied himself with putting in the beef roast and making pastry. When no more damage could be done in the kitchen, they left things to bake and went outside to play in the snow.
Elisabeth sat up from making a snow angel just in time to see Buffy paste Rupert in the back of the head with a snowball. He let out a cry of shock and indignation, and turned quickly to retaliate. Elisabeth rolled to her feet, shedding snow, and scooped up ammo for a snowball of her own. Hers missed him; he whirled and shouted, “No fair!”—then ducked, barely missing Buffy’s next missile.
They were losing breath with laughing when they heard Brian’s car plowing its way gingerly up the lane. As it trundled toward them, Elisabeth murmured to Buffy beside her, “Now we’ll see how it went with his parents last night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Take note:
if his accent sounds extra
Buffy grinned. “Right.” She bent to make another snowball.
The car plowed to a stop. The driver door pushed open and Brian got out, holding up a bottle with a ribbon round its neck. He lifted his voice to shout at them.
“Hey up, I’ve got—” That was when Buffy’s snowball took him neatly across the top of the head, knocking off his cap. Elisabeth staggered over a few steps laughing at the openmouthed look of him staring at his cap on the snowy ground. Then he looked up at the both of them with an expression of war. “Oh, right, then,” he said, and put the bottle back in the car.
The passenger door opened, and Anne got out into the snow. She had no cap to knock off, but wore a thick red muffler and her windbreaker. “Looks like you got your white Christmas after all,” she called to Elisabeth.
“Boys against girls!” Buffy cried, bending down for more snow.
“What!” Brian was indignant. “There’s three of you and two of us, and one of you’s a Slayer! How fair is that?” He would have said more, but stopped instead to duck behind the still-open door to avoid another potent Slayer snowball.
“You’ve got bigger hands,” Buffy said, as Anne laughed and darted across to where they were.
“It was never going to be fair, you know,” Rupert said. Brian gave him a hard-pounding-this-gentlemen look and shucked off his coat with alacrity.
The sun came out as they warred, turning the breast of snow to diamond where they had not disturbed it for ammunition or retreat. They were quickly sunblinded, and presently Rupert called a halt so that he could go in and check on his pastry. Brian retrieved his wine and coat from the car, and they all trooped inside, their socks wet and their clothing coated with grains of melting snow. Anne pulled off her trailing muffler and shook snow out of her hair.
“Didn’t get you too rough, did I?” Brian inquired solicitously.
“Of course not,” Anne said, and, “You wish,” Buffy said at the same moment.
Elisabeth darted upstairs to get everyone dry socks, shaking her head to clear the green retina-burn from her vision. When she came back, Rupert had donned his apron, and Brian had anchored his bottle between his shoes and was busily manning the corkscrew.
Getting dinner on the table was an easy chore with five of them to share it. The kitchen was large enough for them to meander in and out carrying things, getting one another’s wine glasses mixed up, telling stories and laughing (Brian had them in stitches about the disastrous flaming pudding of 1984 and his grandmother’s laconic response—“Ee, it’s not a proper Christmas without the fire brigade, now, is it?” and Buffy and Elisabeth exchanged looks); and by the time everything was on the table and they were each standing behind the chair they would occupy, Elisabeth found herself drawing deep breaths of gratitude: this was what she had wanted for Christmas. At the other end of the table, Rupert glanced expectantly over at Anne; she in turn looked over at the others and found them also looking at her, so she said promptly, “Thanks be to God for these and all God’s mercies,” and everyone said, “Amen.” Without waiting any longer, they all sat down to dig in, laughing at nothing in particular.
It was very good food, and there was a lot of it. They passed helpings and second helpings, and told stories between bites, and joked with one another. When they began to sit back, groaning pleasantly, Elisabeth suggested serving out coffee and dessert, but, “Oh, no,” Brian moaned. “Wait till I can do justice to it.”
“Well, then,” Buffy suggested, “let’s open presents.”
Elisabeth laughed. “Oh, of course. Presents! How could I forget?”
“Ours are in the boot of my car,” Brian said. “I’ll go and get them.”
He rose, and Buffy said, “I’ll help.”
“Where are we going to open them? The study?” Brian said, half-turning to Elisabeth as Buffy pulled her napkin from her lap and pushed back her chair.
“There isn’t any furniture in there yet,” Rupert said. “But there are chairs and a fire in the kitchen.”
“I’ll start clearing the table in there.” Anne rose briskly.
“Good idea,” Elisabeth said.
But as she was about to follow Anne into the kitchen, Rupert captured her hand and drew her away with him in the opposite direction.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into the conservatory, which was filled with the pale, cold light of all the snow outside the windows. The day had waned, and the shadows of the snowdrifts were turning a deep, delicate blue.
Rupert opened one of his toolboxes and brought out a smallish bundle. “I wanted to give you this alone,” he said, unwrapping the outer layer of oilcloth and presenting to her a package wrapped thickly in tissue paper.
“An oblong shape with square edges,” Elisabeth said as she accepted it. “My, what could it be?” She smiled up at him, but his faint expression of diffident anxiety did not alter.
Gently, she worked a thumb under the edge of the wrapping and tore it away layer by layer. It was a book, of course, but as she uncovered it she found that the cover was smooth, supple and bowed in the way only well-cared-for vellum could be: not just any book. She smoothed the tissue away from a ridged spine and let it fall away to the floor. As she did so, the pages fanned briefly and she caught a glimpse of gold and blue paint.
“Oh, Rupert, you didn’t!” she breathed—a brief, startled glance upward caught a smile beginning to edge into his face—and leafed the book gently open.
Even as her bookscout’s mind noted the features—vellum cover and pages; written, not printed manuscript; language English and Latin; content, Book of Hours—her eyes stung.
“You can’t find these in this condition anymore!” she said, cradling the spine in her hand and tickling the pages further open to view the details of the illuminations.
“No,” he agreed. “—Well, it’s very difficult.”
She looked up. “You didn’t trade a favor from a demon for this, did you?”
“Not a demon, no.” He smiled wider.
Elisabeth closed the book gently and went up on tiptoe to kiss him. His hand found her free one and clasped it.
That was how Buffy found them three minutes later, when she bounded into the back hall. “Hey, you guys, we’re starting to—oops. Should have interpreted that get-a-room quiet a little better, huh.”
They broke apart laughing; Rupert said with an indulgent glare, “We did get a room, thank you.”
Buffy shot them a wry grin. “Come on, you two.”
They came, grinning sheepishly.
*
Buffy, Anne, and Brian had piled all the gifts on the kitchen table, and Anne had started the coffee pot. As he went to the counter to unwrap the pie and pastry, Rupert watched from the corner of his eye as Elisabeth sat down next to Anne at the hearth and began, with a shy enthusiasm, to show her his gift. He had known she would like it: but he was relieved to the pitch of hosanna all the same.
Buffy sat by the pile of gifts and passed them to their recipients one at a time; each gift was opened while the others, pie saucer on knee and coffee in hand, watched. Elisabeth opened a gift from Buffy—an opulent but light pajama set in a rich French blue, with slippers to match; Anne gave Elisabeth and Rupert a large electric kettle for the house; Buffy passed Brian a very heavy gift from Elisabeth which turned out to be Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—“all six bloody volumes, and you had to rub it in, didn’t you?” he said; she grinned, and he leaned over to kiss the side of her head. Rupert took a serene sip of his coffee and felt himself very magnanimous.
Buffy passed Rupert a gift, wrapped in a semi-large clothing box. “That one’s mine,” Elisabeth said. “I’m afraid it’s not anywhere near as nice as what you got me.”
If they had been alone Rupert would have made reference to a number of spectacular things which she had already given him, but as it was he contented himself with casting her a veiled look across the way—which she read perfectly and returned.
Rupert unwrapped the box and opened it. Inside, in a nest of tissue paper, was a selection of shirts: one with a blue stripe, one a warm ivory, one a solid pale blue; and a very soft sweater of a grey that edged on green. He looked up to smile at her.
“There’s more,” she said.
Indeed there was: underneath the sweater was a book, a book he recognized. A Short Listing of Tripedal Ritualists. He dropped his head in a silent laugh.
“Look inside,” Elisabeth said, so he opened the front cover to find that she had laid in a note. This book is representative of the collection to which it belongs: which you shall dispose of as it pleases you.
He stopped laughing. After a moment he looked up, wet-eyed, and said softly, “Oh, Elisabeth.” He recognized the dry twist to her mouth that meant she was holding emotion in check, and he said to her eyes, “It will be ours.”
She relaxed into a bright-eyed smile.
There were more gifts after that; Buffy had thoughtfully given him a hammer: “I thought about getting you a sword, but I thought you were more in a building-things place, so I called Xander and asked for his input.” The hammer was clearly one meant for carpenters, and very high quality; along with it, Buffy had given him a small teak box carrying herbs he recognized as useful for spells of creation (“Willow’s idea,” Buffy said), and an Italian cookbook written in Italian (“Dawn and I picked that out,” Buffy said). In his turn Rupert watched Buffy open his gift, which was an old-fashioned pocket watch, wrapped in a fluffy warm red scarf: Buffy made a moue-face at him, but then smiled gently, which told him that the message was not lost on her.
It was full night when Brian and Anne began to get ready to go home. “Are you sure you can make it?” Elisabeth said, concerned. “I mean, if the roads are bad we can make shift to put you up for the night.”
“No, no,” Brian assured her, “it’s only the lane that’s difficult.”
“I could have driven my own little car,” Anne said, “had I but known it.”
Thus reassured, Elisabeth let them go, carrying away their gifts and wishing Merry Christmases all down the walk. As he shut the door, Rupert caught Buffy behind him stifling a yawn. “Tired?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Buffy admitted. “I think I’m going to go straight to bed.”
“Did somebody say ‘bed’?” Elisabeth said, coming out of the kitchen with her book, which she had rewrapped in the oilcloth. “That sounds much more appealing than washing dishes, I have to say.”
Rupert groaned in agreement. “Let’s do that tomorrow,” he said.
Elisabeth went down the hall toward the study, singing softly, “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me….” He turned his gaze from her to Buffy, who was smiling gently at him under the fairy lights.
“Merry Christmas, Giles,” she said.
“And to you,” he said, smiling back.
*
Rupert sat down on Elisabeth’s side of the bed, ostensibly to set the alarm; tomorrow they were going to use their Boxing Day to plan an assault on the study, so that they could get the shelves ready to receive their books. There was a great deal of work to do (“Good,” Buffy had said as they all mounted the stairs to go to their several rooms), and it would need all three of them to plan.
But his attention was only nominally on the clock in his hands; his thoughts and his pulses were all with Elisabeth in the bathroom. They had met eyes as she gathered her robe to go for her shower—a brief touch, but enough to reinforce the feeling that had been shimmering between them, delicate and powerful, since the morning. Or the night before, depending how you looked at it.
He heard the bathroom door open, and a moment later Elisabeth appeared and shut the door quietly behind her. She did not come to him directly, but headed for the closet. Rupert curbed his disappointment and said, “I’ve set the alarm for 7.”
“Sounds good,” Elisabeth said, her voice muffled among the clothing. “Did you feed the cat?”
“Yes, I put some food down for him. And a little gravy.”
“He’ll like that. It was a very good meal.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“The whole day was.”
“Yes,” he said, and turned to look at her, for her voice was clear again.
And wonder of wonders, she was wearing the rose kimono and a gentle smile. Whatever came out on his face in response made her drop the smile and come swiftly to him, and his arms were around her, his hands smoothing fabric and skin, and she was kissing him, and she was kneeling astride his lap, her fingers buried in his hair.
“Oh, I’ve wanted you all day,” she breathed against his mouth: and he drew in a sharp breath.
They fell back upon the bed and rolled, getting their sleeves tangled; Rupert pulled back enough to untangle them and then drew her close again, chuckling.
“Ouch! that tickles,” she said.
“Oh did it? Well, then I’ll do it again.” He rolled her backward to get full advantage, and she gave a childlike laugh that nearly undid him. He buried his face against her collarbone. “I love it,” he whispered, “when you laugh like that.”
“Only you,” she answered on a breath, “can make—”
He kissed her then, taking his time about it. She kissed him back in full measure, bringing up a hand to stroke his cheek.
Presently she pulled away, so that they lay face to face across the bed. There was mischief in her face again. “I started something this morning,” she murmured, “that I didn’t get to finish.”
He tried in vain to repress a grin. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” he said.
“Well then,” she said, and pushed him over.
He lay back acquiescently and closed his eyes, waiting for the exquisite feel of her hands smoothing away the fabric from his skin, followed by delicate, lingering kisses. “This—” he breathed— “has definitely—” he let his hands fall open upon the bed— “been the best—ohh…Christmas—in recent—”
“Shh,” Elisabeth said.
“—memory,” his lips said, voiceless.
She had come to the point now, and her clever fingers were working their way between his thighs, down and back, unerringly to a place they knew by instinct, and he gasped when they found it. That was the other thing about her technique, of course: she was always refining it. It was now, however, impossible for him to remark upon that aspect of the matter. With a long sigh Rupert gave himself up to the pleasure of her gift.
Later, he lay with eyes still closed, Elisabeth nestled against him, humming.
He stirred himself to say: “Sleepers wake again?”
“Mm?” She lifted her head.
“Were you humming Bach again?”
“No…Do you want me to?”
He looked over at her and smiled.
She said idly: “I don’t normally think of Bach as bed music.”
“No?” he said. “I would have thought otherwise. Besides, he had all those children.”
A small silence fell. Elisabeth reached to trace the bridge of his nose.
“Thank you for my present,” she said softly.
He met her eye. “Thank you for mine,” he answered in the same tone. “All of them,” he added, and she smiled.
“I want to give you things,” she said, nestling down again. There was a note in her voice that made him cradle her closer.
“And I want to receive them.” He stroked her arm, straightening the hem of the silk where it had pulled from her shoulder. “Do you know that I love you?”
He had spoken the words almost as a song, to smooth her past whatever moment of worry had crept in; but she choked on a sudden sob.
“Yes,” she said, “I know you love me.” She took a gripful of his T-shirt and curled hard against him, fighting in vain not to cry. “I know you love me, Rupert….I know—”
Now he understood. Resisting the urge to smother her grief against him, he put his lips against her hair and held her, quietly, as she gave in and wept.
It didn’t take long for her to finish. Presently she sniffled and lifted her head away from his. “I’m sorry,” she said, swiping at her nose.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, and she started to laugh.
He helped her wipe at her face, reached to tuck her damp hair behind her ear. “Shall I get us some tea?” he said.
She gave him a wry look and nodded.
He began to push himself up. “Will you stay put this time?” he asked her, with a faint smile.
She scrambled up to sit against the headboard. “Yes,” she said, in a tone half arch and half rueful. Rupert sat up, resumed his boxers and his robe, bent to kiss her forehead, and went.
When he returned a few minutes later with two cups and saucers, she said, “That was fast.”
“I used our new kettle.”
“Oh, excellent.” She received her tea and his while he got into bed and settled on her other side.
They sipped in silence, comfortably shoulder to shoulder; for once there was nothing unspoken haunting the quiet between them, and when they had finished their tea, Rupert took their cups and set them over on his nightstand, then gathered her close and leaned his head back gently.
“All right?” he asked her, after a moment.
“Mm-hmm.”
Another silence, then he said: “I’ve been thinking about the study. It’s big enough to do training in, but I don’t want swords and things flying about near our books. I’ve been thinking perhaps we should look into building a small training house in the back meadow. We could use it for all kinds of things, of course; and it’s a fairly quiet spot, so it’d be good for having guests, too. It came to me when you said that about having Anne and Brian to stay. One doesn’t want to cling to things, of course. Lord knows I’ve set myself up for tragedy enough times…but still, it wouldn’t harm anything to grow a bit of an establishment—would it?”
“Mm,” Elisabeth said.
“I was thinking too, about the conservatory. We could grow herbs in it, for kitchen and magickal use. I’m not much of a gardener, but I think it could be done….You’re right, you know; a new thing isn’t the same as nothing. I knew you were right, but I couldn’t realize it before….You mustn’t worry…Elisabeth…?”
He opened his eyes and looked down, though he had already interpreted the still weight of her against him, the steadiness of her breathing.
Elisabeth had fallen asleep.
Gently he began to move her, until she responded by sighing down upon the bed; he tugged the rumpled covers up and over her, then reached to turn off the light before settling down. Once the light was out and he was snuggled in behind her, Rupert found that he was easily as exhausted and drowsy as she. As the wind picked up and rattled at the panes, his eyes fell shut and he murmured one more time to her unhearing ear: “Merry Christmas.”
And a partridge in a pear tree, he thought, just before he fell asleep himself.
*