Home Repairs
Chapter Nine: The Way of Dispossession
by L. Inman
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment.
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of
possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
She was halfway down
the dusty road before her breath forced her to slow her quick, pelting
steps. How many hasty retreats had she
beaten? Too many to count. But this time there was no sense of freedom
to bring her relief. She was merely
going out into an outer room of the nightmare; there was no door beyond it.
Back to
It was with a sense of inevitable
doom that she heard the sound of car wheels on gravel in the distance behind
her. The sound grew in her ears till the
car passed her—a beaten-up old car that looked like it had been used to
transport gardening implements from one side of a farm to another. To her dismay, it stopped several yards ahead
of her, and the door popped open. She
did not wait for him to get out, but continued doggedly up the lane.
“Elisabeth,” Rupert said. Then, when she did not stop: “Elisabeth!”
She tried to keep going, but then he
added: “You forgot your robe,” and she
stuttered to a halt. With her thumbs
hooked in the straps of her knapsack, she waited without turning round for him
to approach.
He came to her and into her sight,
almost immediately holding out a doubled plastic grocery bag, through which she
could see the rich rose color of his gift to her. She did not move, and he held it out more
insistently.
“I can’t,” she said, unable to look
at him.
“You can, you know,” he said. “A gift’s a gift. Besides,” he added, bitterly, “isn’t it your
custom to take souvenirs of the places you run away from?”
At this she raised her head. “That’s not fair.”
His face was taut, the lines hard
around his mouth. “Isn’t it? How is this different from any of your other
great escapes?”
Anger rose and nearly choked
her. “Escape to where? There isn’t any escape. And thank you very much for accusing me of
cowardice, when it’s taking all the nerve I have to do this.” She stalked ahead of him and onward.
“What could be so bad,” he called
after her— “what could be so bad that you’ve got to hide up in—where,
“I can’t tell you,” she said, trying
and failing to keep her pace.
“That is unmitigated bollocks,”
Rupert said, with emphasis. “Suddenly
you’re squeamish about meddling, after all these months? You nurse me in your flat, you buy up my
library, but now you can’t meddle?
Nothing but your own selfishness could explain that kind of
inconsistency—”
Elisabeth broke, and stopped to turn
back and face him. “Not even the
Harrowing?” she said, forcefully.
He had been following her as he
argued, but now he stopped short, looking blank. A dusty silence settled between them for a
moment, into which the cheerful song of a meadowlark poured. Finally Rupert said, in a slow, dubious
voice:
“What do you know about that?”
“Not very much,” Elisabeth replied
evenly. “Enough to be dangerous.”
By the thoughtful look in his eyes,
she could see that he had for a moment ceased to be a rejected lover and was
now a field Watcher gathering signs.
“When?” he said.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged
helplessly. “I don’t even know if, anymore.”
He drew a long breath. “But soon.”
“If it happens. And I don’t want to be anywhere near it.”
He met her eye, frowning,
evaluating. “You don’t want to be of any
use in…a thing like that?”
Of use to whom? she nearly said, but held it back. “I don’t want to endanger your chances,” she
said. But still she could see that he
was disappointed, that he was rethinking her status as an equal in his
world. She said, her voice
scratching: “Don’t you see, Rupert? You need to be able to go to it—to risk your
life—without being distracted by me.
Could you do that if I was at your side?”
“If I can’t,” he said slowly, direct
to her eyes, “I could no more do it apart from you than with you.”
It was a challenge, she knew that
much.
“I’m going back to
He gave a small nod, registering
acceptance; but her proposal had not taken the disappointment from his eyes.
At last he jerked his head toward
the ramshackle car behind them. “I’ll
take you to the station,” he said quietly.
She hesitated briefly, then followed
him to the car and settled herself awkwardly in the passenger seat, with her
knapsack between her feet. Rupert held
the door for her; but before he shut it, he held out the bag containing his gift.
With a lump in her throat, Elisabeth
took it.
*
Despite being the last to fall asleep the night before, Rupert was up the earliest of anyone in the house. In the fuzzed consciousness of paltry sleep, he made coffee, and while it was brewing went into the frigid conservatory to let out the cat, who was crying at the door.
The actions of pulling a mug out of the cupboard and filling it with coffee were fraught with his memories of the night before, but he did it, with a methodical slowness. He had not yet had the courage to look in the mirror. With his coffee, he went into the study and stood at the French doors, looking out on the world. The temperature had dropped like a stone since the weekend; he could feel the cold air leaching through the glass. Perhaps they would have an excuse to light fires, since the chimneys were now clean and the stacks inspected.
It was an idle thought: even the homely comfort of a fire could not penetrate the marrow chill inside him. He felt as one might who was trapped by an earthquake, looking up at the remainder of the structure over his head and waiting for it, too, to collapse. Which it would: if not this minute, then the next.
The thing to do was keep busy and not think about it.
A black shape emerged from the dry grass in the back garden and trotted unerringly up the shallow steps to the porch before him. For a moment Rupert stood unmoving; then the cat’s mouth opened in a miaow which could be faintly heard through the glass. Rupert opened the door, letting both the cat and a brief gust of wind inside.
Immediately the cat started rubbing against his shins and calves, purring. “All right,” Rupert sighed, at the third circling pass, and started to putter back toward the kitchen. The cat galloped lightly ahead of him and was sitting by his dish when Rupert gained the door.
Feed the cat. Put away the dishes in the drainer, including the three cups they’d used in the middle of the night. Breakfast: he had had a vague thought of cooking eggs and bacon, which would likely tempt Elisabeth and Buffy out of bed—but now his stomach roiled at the very thought of it. Instead, he forced himself to eat some cold cereal, went into the scullery-cum-utility room at the back to exchange his robe for a flannel shirt, jeans, and thick socks out of the dryer, and headed back to the conservatory to pull on his work boots and make his escape out into the cold.
It seemed as good a time as any to begin the construction of the shelving unit he’d had planned for the utility room; currently their domestic accoutrements were constantly getting in among the tools and paintbrushes, and vice versa. He’d already measured the space for it; all he needed to do was mark the lumber and cut it. Which he proceeded to do, dragging out the relevant pieces and mounting them one by one on the sawhorses to measure and saw. Measure twice, cut once. That was what Xander had said; advice he had followed nowhere except in the act of building. But planning was so dreary and exhausting—he was tired of measuring, of counting costs, of strategizing, of chess. But thinking about it made the weight over his head seem heavier, so he shook the thoughts away and plied his saw with strong, rhythmic strokes that warmed him against the sharp breeze.
When he had cut the boards that would become the outer frame of the shelves, he stopped, sweating. He was too tired to finish the job. Was this a function of despair, or was he just getting old? Aching, he gathered his tools and put them away in the conservatory, then dithered over the cut boards for a moment before deciding finally to put them back under the tarp for the time being.
The few moments he’d spent in the conservatory were enough to tell him that the others were up and about. There was a clatter of crockery in the kitchen that sounded like the making of tea and toast. For a moment Rupert wished he’d stayed inside; he could have been the one making tea, and serving it to Elisabeth—but he had ducked away, as he had that day in the training room, with the meditation that had gone so wrong—he’d left Tara to tend to her, had shied away from touching her, from picking up the pieces, and of course Elisabeth herself always wound up picking up the pieces, because he was manifestly not good at it—the crystal shards stuck to his palm as the china shards had fallen out of his reach, and he always left it to her to do, and then when he got back he would find her shivering and ill in her bathroom, and then what did he do but force her to look in the mirror? But still she had stood, magisterial in the kitchen doorway, giving the lie to their mutual self-accusation of cowardice—on her end at least. She knew herself better than he knew her—she’d said that despite appearances, she stayed with intolerable things out of brave stubbornness far more often than she quit them to run away; and this was exactly what she’d done, stayed with him, intolerable him, because she loved him, and took out the change in bad dreams.
Rupert shook his head to clear it, but it didn’t clear. He found his steps carrying to the kitchen almost against his will. Perhaps by the time he reached her he would have assumed a shadow of the same strength she had found.
In the kitchen, at the table, Buffy was sitting, dressed in fleece pants and a sweater, eating buttered toast with a cup of coffee at her elbow. She stopped mid-chew as he entered; looked him briefly and searchingly in the face, then went back to eating. At the counter Elisabeth, also dressed, was winding the string of her teabag around the back of a spoon, to squeeze the last drops of tea into her cup. He stood silent; and then she glanced round at him.
There was nothing magisterial about her look—to the contrary, her face was haunted by a hollow pain, a frightened remorse; and she snatched her gaze back to the tea miserably, before she could meet his eye.
He couldn’t even think. For a moment he stood frozen to the spot, staring at her as she moved slowly to stir sugar into her tea. Then he cleared his throat.
“I—er—” He stopped, cleared his throat again and found something to utter. “I—need to go to the lumber yard—some fastenings….” He stopped again and drew breath with an effort. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back—sometime this afternoon.” He couldn’t think of a non-awkward way to take leave of them, so he turned abruptly and went to get his coat and keys without saying goodbye.
On the porch he took in several breaths of the freezing air, in an attempt to clear his head; then strode quickly for the car.
They would think he was making an escape, and probably he was; but this had got beyond him.
*
In the kitchen, they listened to the start of the engine, then the retreat of Giles’s car down the lane. Slowly Elisabeth stirred milk into her tea.
Buffy stared at her for a long moment, but when she didn’t look up, threw caution to the winds and spoke.
“So,” she said, “where’s he really going?”
Even then Elisabeth did not look up. She took the slow spoon out of her teacup and put it down to sip at the tea. “At a guess?” she said quietly. “He’s probably going to see Anne.”
“Your priest friend?” Buffy looked at her dubiously, but Elisabeth only stared out the window, misery etched on her face, and sipped her tea.
“I’ve hurt him,” she said, after a long silence, “and he doesn’t know what to do about it.”
It seemed to Buffy that this whole thing was about Giles’s guilt at having hurt her, but maybe it all came to the same thing in the end. No way to perform any surgeries at all, without twisting the knife.
Abruptly Elisabeth put down her tea, only half-drunk. “I think I’m going to have my shower now.” But instead of making her exit, she stood restively where she was, with her hand on the counter, her thumbnail drawing lines on its surface. It was time enough for Buffy to form her resolution.
“Elisabeth…I think I’m going to spend tonight at the flat. I…think you guys need to be alone tonight.”
Elisabeth gave a quick shake of the head. “Oh—no, that’s not nec—”
“You guys need to have a chance to talk,” Buffy said firmly.
Elisabeth turned her face away. “I don’t know if he wants to talk,” she said, in a small voice.
“Well,” Buffy said, “if your priest friend is any good at giving advice….”
Without looking round, Elisabeth nodded several times. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll…well, we’ll get you a ride into town.” She nodded again, then with a visible resolve moved forward and went out of the room.
Buffy blew out a hard breath, pouching her cheeks, and wondered if being grown up meant you had no one you could talk to.
*
In her kitchen at the vicarage, Anne Langland checked over the satchel she had packed, stopping occasionally to take a sip of her nearly-cold tea. She had a hospice visit, two sickbeds to attend, and one home visit for tea and direction, to a parishioner who had been recently ill and unable to drive into town. It was always like this near Christmas; or perhaps the addition of Christmas preparations made the clamor of need more noticeable. Her next task would be to put on her shoes and coat and get the car out of its tiny garage. Anne dumped the remainder of the tea down the sink, took her satchel out to the foyer, and went to find her shoes.
She had just slipped them on and was shrugging into a cardigan when the doorbell rang. Anne sighed. If it was a church emergency, it would have to be managed by someone else. Quickly she strode to the door and pulled it open.
On the doorstep stood a very haggard Rupert Giles, clutching his unzipped jacket together against the sharp wind. He met her eye and paled.
“Please can I talk to you?” he said hoarsely.
A small silence fell. Then: “Oh dear,” Anne said.
He said nothing else, but silently begged her to help; so she took a quick, deciding breath and said: “Let me make a phone call.” She stepped back to let him in.
But he hesitated on the threshold. “You’re going out,” he said, interpreting at last her fully-dressed state. “I can’t disrupt your—”
“It can be rearranged, don’t you worry,” Anne said. “Go have a seat in the front room.” As he moved ahead of her, she read the drooping set of his shoulders: he was quite near collapse if not in the midst of it already. Briskly she shut the front door and went to use the kitchen phone.
When she returned, bringing with her a glass of cold water, she found him in one of the corner chairs, bent with his hands clasped low between his knees. He did not look up at her approach. Anne pulled a small endtable close to him and set the water on it. “Drink this,” she commanded, and moved a chair for herself.
With his eyes still cast down, Rupert obeyed. He drank half the water, and when he set it back down a little color had returned to his face.
“What’s happened?” Anne said, though she almost didn’t want to know.
“Oh,” he said, in a small voice she’d never heard him use, “I don’t know where to start.”
Anne sank back in her chair. “Oh, my dear friend,” she sighed, “why not start where it hurts the most?”
*
It surprised Buffy not at all when Elisabeth, instead of working on her thesis, attacked the dirt in the house with a desperate fury. She started in the kitchen: Buffy silently got out of her way, and as she set herself the task of organizing the miscellaneous work materials in the conservatory, she could hear water running and the sound of fervid scrubbing. When she crossed round to the front of the house to get the trowel Giles had left there after putting in the solar path lights, she saw that the diamond panes of the kitchen window were fogged with the heat of Elisabeth’s efforts.
It seemed to her a perfect symbol of what they were all doing.
The conservatory was, unfortunately, clean and organized in less than an hour. Elisabeth had, from the sound of it, carried operations to the bathroom upstairs: she heard intermittent sounds of water running in the bath, and if that weren’t clue enough, the cat came trotting down the staircase to get away from the commotion.
Buffy stood, looking around at her handiwork. The paint cans were all against one wall, stacked according to color, the opened ones on top. The tools were against the other wall. The remaining lumber was neatly set aside to clear the footpath to the door, and the ladder had been nested in the corner, next to the large hand sander and the shop vac. She needed something else to do; but if she cleaned a room, it meant Elisabeth couldn’t clean it, and Elisabeth needed the distraction more than she did. She decided to look for something Elisabeth would be disinclined or unable to do.
In the livingroom—which Giles had called the front parlor—there needed only sweeping and window-washing; the floor had been sanded and oiled, and only one wall was left with the old wallpaper still on; that had been designated a group task for after Christmas. Buffy screwed up her mouth thoughtfully in the doorway, then went back down the hall.
Needles had fallen from their garland to the floor, but that was a task Elisabeth would want for herself. In the study there was only Giles’s desk and the armoire containing (Buffy looked) his herbs and talismans, two stakes, a small crossbow (unbolted), and a half-empty bottle of scotch. Buffy gave a deep sigh and leaned her head back to contemplate the ceiling. The dust-grimed frescoes, Giles had said, were a delicate project that might take a couple of years. A couple of years, she thought. Yes, there was more than a year’s work here.
But the chandelier could be cleaned at any time.
Buffy remembered hearing somewhere that one could clean a chandelier by taking off all the drops and washing them, without toiling on a ladder, but toiling on a ladder was precisely what appealed at the moment. So she went and pulled the ladder from its new niche in the conservatory, nicked a drop-cloth off a shelf on her way, and set them up beneath the chandelier. Then she took a small pail and went into the kitchen, now full of shiny surfaces and neat rows of tins and appliances, to fill with soapy water.
She had chosen well: it turned out to be a very relaxing task, to stand with feet planted firmly on a high rung of the ladder, removing drops one by one and washing them in the pail of suds, then drying them with a towel and rehanging them. As she worked, she occasionally wiped at the tarnished frame; though the tarnish could not be removed with soap and water, the dust could.
“My goodness,” someone said suddenly.
Buffy started, then carefully looked round to avoid upsetting the ladder: Elisabeth was standing below in the doorway, a broom in one hand.
Elisabeth didn’t waste any more words on her surprise at seeing Buffy up a ladder. “Thank you for doing that,” she said. “It needed doing.”
“It’s a pretty chandelier,” Buffy said. What on earth had happened to her? She had picked up Giles’s English habit of oblique conversation. Of course, before this, she had fallen out of the habit of carrying on any conversation at all. Before this, any conversation at all had been like rearranging useless bandages on an open wound. And now that they had no literal wounds to be preoccupied with, the figurative ones were becoming less and less bearable.
Lost in her thoughts, Buffy had forgotten that Elisabeth had been standing there; but when she looked down, she saw that Elisabeth had gone. In the hallway she could hear the sound of sweeping: the pine needles.
With a silent sigh Buffy got back to work.
*
Despite the fact that telling the most painful impact of the moment—Elisabeth’s dream—made Rupert’s narrative wander, Anne was able to get most of it out of him in less than an hour. Buffy’s accusation and his recriminations, his increasing weariness, the fight he picked with Elisabeth about his drinking habits, all of them came haltingly but simply; he was in too much pain to elaborate upon them. By the time he was finished he was shivering from the mere trauma of self-disclosure. Anne made him drink the rest of the water, and then got up to get him more. At the doorway she stopped and turned to him.
“If you and Buffy, and you and Elisabeth, have chosen honesty, then what do you fear now?”
He answered at once, huskily, “That it won’t be enough. That it won’t change anything.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
He looked away and held himself more closely. “If the truth is…if the truth is, I can’t but make her miserable….” He did not finish the sentence, and did not clarify whether it was Buffy or Elisabeth he meant, or both.
Anne could not reply. She was all too familiar with the temptation to claim all blame to obscure her own helplessness; and Rupert was past the point of benefiting from admonishment. Silently she went back to the kitchen for the water.
But Rupert had anticipated her. When she returned, he said, “Tell me: what must I do? I can’t think.”
“Then you must rest,” Anne said. Then, “Come.” She tipped her head for him to follow her. Slowly, shakily, he rose from his chair and obeyed.
At the door of the guest room, she gestured him inside and went in herself to place his water on the small table by the rocking-chair.
“I must go,” she told him, apology in her voice. “I have visits that can’t be delayed. But you should rest here as long as you need. Don’t try to think—it’s not time for that.”
He simply looked at her, forlorn, like a little boy. Anne gave in to her maternal instincts so far as to say, “And for heaven’s sake, eat something before you go home. There are plenty of sandwich makings in the kitchen.”
He gave her a faint smile in reply. She resisted the impulse to touch him, and walked—calmly, she hoped—from the room.
As she regathered her things and took her car keys from the table drawer in the foyer, Anne found herself revolving an even further change to her plans: Pyke’s Lea was not far out of the way of her second visit. Reading between the lines of Rupert’s unlinear story, she sensed that Elisabeth needed as much succor as he, though she was more likely to have a clear narrative to give.
Anne gave a private, fervent, frustrated sigh, though she hardly knew what distressed her the most, and stepped resolutely from the vicarage.
*
The phone rang, and Brian winced. “What fresh hell is this?” he muttered, and tossed down his pen onto the paper he was editing. He followed the pen with his reading glasses and went to answer it.
“Hullo?”
“Uh…is Brian there?”
“Speaking.”
“Hi. This is Buffy Summers.”
“Eh?...Oh! right. Good morning…er, afternoon.”
“Hey.” Buffy hesitated. “I…I was going to spend some time in town
this evening, only Giles has gone with the car.
So Elisabeth suggested we get in touch with you and ask if I could get a
ride to the flat this afternoon, to save Giles from having to go right back to
“Oh? Well,” Brian said, gallantly, “I should be happy to do that. Where is Elisabeth, by the way?”
“She’s in the shower.” Buffy said it with the nonchalance that marked the amateur liar. Brian smelled trouble.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Oh, nothing very much, just getting some cleaning done before Christmas.”
“No,” Brian said, “sorry, I meant, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” This was even more nonchalant. Brian snorted.
“Well, I
give you fair warning,” he said. “The
fare for a ride to
“I can’t believe it—”
“What?”
“British people really do talk like that. I was beginning to think Giles was putting it on to tease me.”
“Well,” Brian said indulgently, “not all British people. Geeks, mostly.”
Buffy groaned.
“Swots and
“All right! All right! I’m sorry I said that. Okay?”
Brian laughed. “What time shall I pick you up?”
A pause, as if for looking for a clock. “Is four-thirty good?”
“Certainly. Four-thirty it is. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.”
“Till later, then.”
Brian put down the phone and went grinning back to his paper.
*
Rupert opened his eyes. He was still in the pale green bedroom, cradled in the rocking chair Anne had ushered him to. He glanced at the bedside clock across the room, and was amazed to realize he had fallen asleep.
The vicarage was quiet, and felt empty of all presence save his: he could hear his own little movements—the creak of the chair, the rustle of his clothing. Above the bureau hung a small icon of the Magdalene with her scarlet egg; a glass votive candle-holder stood on the bureau’s surface beneath it, with a dark smudge of smokestain on the inside surface. The room was homely, with a white quilt over the antique bed and a faded green rug under his feet.
And Anne had been right, of course: it was not the time to think. It was, regrettably, the time to feel—but he had come to such extremity that feeling was blunt force, unrecognizable. His next move would be to go home; to go home and find Elisabeth and talk to her, seriously and thoroughly. He knew exactly what he wanted to ask her, and sensed vaguely that in earlier stages the feeling driving his questions would have been anger; now, it was simply urgency. Too, in some distant portion of his mind, he recognized that he had agonized over the likelihood that he had really damaged her, and then been affronted when he realized it was true. There wasn’t an obvious way to deal with that. Perhaps Elisabeth herself would have a notion.
If she wanted to talk to him.
He felt it was time to leave, but a few minutes passed before he made an effort to stir from the chair. When he did attempt to rise, he had to pause for a moment and gather strength all over again.
After a pause in the bathroom to relieve himself and wash his face, he made his way down the hall and out to the foyer of the vicarage. The light of day was not going to last much longer; in fact, it would be close to evening by the time he reached Pyke’s Lea. This quickened his footsteps to the door, which he locked behind him, hoping that Anne had taken her key with her.
He stood on the front step and drew in a shaky breath.
It was time to go home.
*
Buffy pinned up her wet hair with a little more attention than she’d given it the last few days. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to telling Brian about what had been going on—it felt like a betrayal waiting to happen—but she wasn’t going to look shabby while doing it.
And she wasn’t going to get shitfaced, if she could help it.
She donned jeans, boots, and—not the red sweater this time—a light-blue one that she’d swiped from Dawn. (And serve her right, after all those years of raided closets and stained outfits.)
She glanced at the bedside clock—a little after three-thirty. She wasn’t sure how long it’d take Brian to get out to Pyke’s Lea, or what his car looked like, so she thumped lightly down the stairs, to find Elisabeth and ask.
But as she reached the kitchen, she realized that Elisabeth wasn’t alone. Through the doorway she saw the back view of a woman in a blue windbreaker, with short ash-blond hair: Elisabeth, facing her, was pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes closed.
“I can’t believe I was so arrogant,” she said, with the flat weight of suppressed tears in her voice. “I told him I could stay with him, but—what if he can’t stay with me?”
“You fear he’ll try to play the hero?” the other woman said gently. She had a clear, supple English voice; and Buffy realized suddenly who this was.
Elisabeth took her hand away and looked aside miserably, toward the window. “I don’t know—I don’t know.” She gave her head a small shake. “I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Well, certainly Buffy’s proposed plan is a good one,” her friend said mildly. “I dare say without any distractions in which to take refuge, you should be able to talk with him to some purpose.”
There was humor in her voice, but Elisabeth looked at her, stricken. “I think I’ve really screwed up,” she said.
As Buffy watched, the woman’s hand hesitated, then reached to touch Elisabeth’s shoulder. Elisabeth unconsciously reached to support her friend’s arm, and sighed toward the window once more.
“Don’t be afraid to go forward,” she said. “The best thing you can do for him is to trust your own strength.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me say I don’t have any,” Elisabeth said, reluctantly.
“Well, you could say it—but it’d be complete rubbish, as you very well know.”
The woman turned, half-smiling, but stopped when she saw Buffy; Buffy found that she had drifted to the doorway and leaned against it, biting her lip.
“Oh! Buffy,” Elisabeth said suddenly, “I’m sorry. Were you wanting to…?”
“No, I’m all right,” Buffy said hastily. “I just was going to ask how long it might take Brian to drive up here.”
Elisabeth glanced over at the clock. “Oh, he won’t have left yet. Perhaps…well, first I’d better…Buffy, this is Anne Langland. Anne—Buffy Summers.”
“Yes, of course,” Anne said, stretching forth a slim hand for Buffy to shake. She was the youngest person Buffy had ever seen in a clerical collar—Caleb, she told herself, did not count—and certainly not very much older than Elisabeth herself. “I’ve heard a great deal about you,” Anne said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Buffy said, then added awkwardly, “I mean—I’ve heard a lot about—I mean, good to meet you.” She flushed hot and said, “Uh, Elisabeth, maybe you could re-introduce us, in Italian? My English just went on the fritz.”
Anne smiled.
“Anne,” Elisabeth said, “is headed to another home visit, but she’s going past the flat. Maybe you could catch a ride with her? and save us dragging Brian out here.”
Buffy did not like the idea. Little as she had wanted to spill her guts to Brian about what had been happening, she at least thought of him as more or less a known quantity. There was something very disconcerting about this priest—there was no bullshit about her, which could either mean something very good or something very bad. But as she caught Elisabeth’s eye, she remembered suddenly why Elisabeth had avoided at all costs talking to Brian on the phone today.
“Okay,” she said, with what she hoped was a light shrug. “But we’d better call him and give him the heads-up.”
“I can do that.” Anne pulled her cell out of the pocket of her windbreaker.
“You’ve got Brian in your speed-dial?” Elisabeth said, voicing Buffy’s thought.
Anne sighed. “I’ve got everyone in my speed-dial. What parish priests did before wireless technology, I can’t imagine.”
They watched Anne as she identified herself to Brian and outlined the new plan. Faintly, Buffy heard him reply: “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing out of the way. You’ll get the full report soon, I’m sure.”
“Well, I want to talk to Buffy for a moment, please. Is she there?”
Buffy reached out and took the little phone Anne handed to her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hello,” Brian said. “Am I correct in guessing that Anne isn’t just there to pay a casual call?”
“Well,” Buffy said, darting an uncomfortable glance at Elisabeth, who was intently studying her own shoes, “no, not really.”
“And Elisabeth is actively avoiding talking to me?”
“Well….”
“She always does when she’s upset. Hell,” Brian sighed. Then, tentatively, “Are you still interested in a bite at the Mohel?”
Buffy gave it a pause for thought, though it didn’t really need deciding. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“Right,” Brian said. “Why don’t I call for you at the flat an hour hence?”
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Buffy said. “Nobody uses the word ‘hence’ seriously in a sentence.”
“Well, I have to keep up my reputation,” Brian said, solemnly. “Till later, then.”
“Bye.”
Buffy folded shut the phone and handed it back to Anne.
“I take it you’re the one deputed to give the report,” Anne said, smiling as she pocketed it.
Buffy glanced at Elisabeth, but Elisabeth was looking at her gratefully. “Yeah,” she replied finally. “Looks like. Well, I’m ready to go whenever.”
“Excellent,” Anne said, with a brisk gesture.
“I’ll get my jacket.”
*
Anne paused in the doorway as they were leaving to give Elisabeth a brief, tender hug, which Buffy politely pretended not to see; then Anne led the way to her car, which as it turned out was very small indeed, though neatly kept.
As they
pulled out of the lane onto the road toward
“So you’ve
been spending some time in
“
But it didn’t. “I made a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Square once, to hear the Pope give his blessing,” Anne said, without elaborating.
Buffy blinked, then frowned. “I thought you were Church of England,” she said, puzzled.
“I was raised Catholic,” Anne said, negotiating a turn. “But when I felt the call to ordination, I had to make a very painful break.” She allowed herself a small sigh. “I feel it most round Christmastime; it’s such a family-centered holiday.”
Buffy sighed, thinking of Hank and Denise and “the boys.” “For better and for worse,” she said aloud.
A small wry smile touched the priest’s thin lips. “Indeed.”
Buffy wanted to ask her if Giles had indeed gone to see her—presumably he had, since she had then stopped at Pyke’s Lea—but she feared what Anne might tell her. So she sat silent for the rest of the journey; and Anne did not press her to make small talk: she seemed to be in a thoughtful reverie of her own.
When they pulled up at the flat, Buffy said: “Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Anne said. Buffy opened the door and got out; Anne leaned across and added, with a humorous look that was not quite a smile: “And tell Brian to behave himself.”
Buffy’s discomfort slipped a notch. She grinned. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
She shut the door, and without waiting to see Anne drive off, hurried through the cold up to the door of Elisabeth’s flat.
*
For the first time in what seemed like forever, Elisabeth was alone in the house. She went and took a shower, which filled the silence for a short while; then dressed in her most comfortable fleece pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that Rupert had abandoned to her possession. With her hair in a damp bun, she went down to the kitchen with the thought of making tea—only to discover that she had made it, and left it steeping for an hour and a half. With a noise of disgust she dumped out the tea and washed the cup.
But she hadn’t the heart to make a fresh one. Instead she stood, drearily staring at the countertop with its tea tins and sugar bowl.
She was still staring when she heard the sound of tires in the drive, then footsteps, then keys at the door. Instantly her breath contracted, and she moved closer to the counter as if for support.
Quietly, Rupert shuffled into the room. She forced herself to look at him, and saw that he was looking at her with the same air of wincing trepidation. Their eyes met, and for a long minute the silence reigned.
Then, “Hallo,” he said softly.
“Hi,” she answered.
He shifted on his feet. “I—er….” He glanced around, as if suddenly absorbing the full import of the house’s silence. “Where’s Buffy?”
Elisabeth said, “She caught a ride with Anne back to the flat for the night. Her own idea.”
“Ah,” he said, and she saw him relax a little, now that she had freed him from the need to explain his absence.
“I—I was going to make some tea,” Elisabeth said timidly, glancing over at the kettle. “D’you want to make some before we talk, or—?” But looking at him, she saw that his eyes were fixed on her face. “No, then,” she answered herself. “Yes. I think you’re right.”
At this he glanced around him, as if looking for the right venue for what had come upon them; and she was freed to go forward and take him by the hand. Without thinking more than a footstep ahead, she drew him with her out of the kitchen and down the hall, inevitably, to the study.
There was still no furniture in it save the desk and its chair, but that mattered little. Without ceremony Elisabeth sank to the floor under the chandelier (sparkling now, thanks to Buffy) and crossed her legs tailor-fashion. After a second’s hesitation Rupert sat down himself, facing her an arm’s length away.
She was on the verge of asking awkwardly whether he’d like to start, when he stirred himself suddenly and said: “I need to ask you one thing.”
Her heart beat harder; she nodded.
His eyes were suddenly very direct. “When you said you could stay, did you do it just to make me feel better?”
She shook her head at once, flushing, because she deserved that. “No,” she said.
“Then why? What makes it true?”
His gaze was so nakedly, avidly sharp that her eyes watered, meeting it. “This,” she said, hardily. “This makes it true. I couldn’t—” she looked away and brushed back a tendril of her hair— “I couldn’t have done what we were doing much longer—soldiering on and lying to one another.” She swallowed against the hot threat of tears. “I didn’t like the person I was becoming—a placating person, a small, begging person—colluding in that awful silence—and I felt I was making you into something equally horrible—”
She stopped. After a moment she dared to look up at him; his mouth was very sad, but he nodded.
“If we can be honest—if we can look each other in the eye at the end of the day—that’s what I need,” she said.
He nodded again.
“And—” she swallowed again— “I should start by telling you the truth about my dreams.” Her gaze failed and she dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap. “I do dream about…what happened that night, but…it changes at the end. At the end the—the First is there, as me.” She plaited her fingers hard together. “And then I’m looking at it all from the First’s point of view, and—hating the me that’s being hurt—feeling that—that me couldn’t possibly be humiliated enough to satisfy me. The horrible part is not—” she looked up— “not you, Rupert. It’s…being made out of hatred, and the bitterness of knowing no one will save me from it.”
Rupert cleared his throat, but his voice when it came was low and steady. “That’s why it is about me,” he said. “I ought to have saved you from it.”
Elisabeth shook her head. “No. I should have saved me from it. I put on your betrayal the extra weight of…failing to save my soul, when that wasn’t—your job. That’s the real wrong I did you, whether you knew it or not.”
Now he was looking down at his hands. “I should at least have wanted to,” he said, in a very soft voice. “I did, for a little. But I gave it up.”
His words, low and shamed, were an acceptance of the compassion he had thrown back in her face that night, and she ached to reach for him, to touch him and grieve for him and herself. But it was not the moment to do that, not yet. Elisabeth bit hard on the inside of her lips and forced her breathing to even.
In the silence, he spoke again. “Can you forgive me?”
He did not look up; she half-reached for him, and his eyes came up to hers.
“I did,” Elisabeth said. “I do. I will.”
He lowered his gaze and nodded, but no relief came into his face.
“Rupert—” But she could frame no question to ask him, and ended by waiting for him to speak.
“I would have tried to walk away, at the end,” he said, at length. “I wanted to. To disappear. But I already knew it wasn’t any use. There’s nowhere I can go that isn’t…. And staying—I’m not any use to Buffy now, you know. Half the advice I could give means nothing in this new world, and the other half she wouldn’t take.” He stared at the pattern of the rug, his face hard and closed.
“Just as well,” Elisabeth answered quietly. “That’s not what you were made to do.”
He gave a weak snort. “Nor fight, nor manage computer files. If I were younger—”
Elisabeth ignored that, and said: “You weren’t made to give advice. You were made to give yourself. You think that’s not of value?”
Suddenly he put his long hands over his face. “But I’m tired,” he said, “I’m just so tired.”
As she watched, his shoulders began to shake, though he made no sound. Was this the time to touch him? It didn’t matter anymore: even as she thought it, she was putting out hands to shore him up, to scoot her backside closer, to invite him into her arms. He bent, slowly, and hid his face in the hollow of her shoulder; his hands knotted themselves in a gripful of her shirt, and he let her bear up his weight as her arms went around him.
Eyes closed on her own tears, she rested her lips on his hair and held him, unmoving, not even rocking. He wept as noiselessly as he had the night before, but now he was shivering with it, with an effort either to hold back or bring more forth, she could not tell which. If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you, registered briefly in her consciousness, but she let it pass without growing into thought. He choked on a breath, and though he shook harder, he could not stop his voice from rising in a half-strangled keen; after a moment he gave up and let his voice do what it would. At the sound, she moved one hand to cradle the back of his head and shut her eyes tighter.
He wept as she had done, as how a child confesses a shameful secret, though the secret did not even need guessing. As she held him, the preoccupations of self fell away and her world became only the feel and movement of him in her arms, the convulsive clutch of his hands on her shirt, her own thick swallowing.
His keening passed; he relaxed into her and subsided in soft chuffing sobs. Now she opened her eyes, sniffling, and moved her hand to stroke down his hair, once, and then again.
He coughed through the spume of tears and spoke, in a soft, hopeless voice: “I hate what I’ve become.”
“I know,” she whispered, choking. “I know you do.” Then she urged him to sit up so she could look him in the face, and reluctantly he did.
“But you do understand, don’t you,” she said, laying her hand along his cheek, “you do understand that there’s no version of you I won’t love—one way or another. Any you; every possible you.”
“I know,” he said, and fresh tears spilled over her hand. “That’s why I wanted to give you better.”
She tried to say his name, but wept instead; kissed his tears off her fingers, and touched her brow to his: and his hand came up to touch hers where she caressed him. Presently she pulled away.
“But you won’t,” she choked, “you won’t try to save me from yourself?”
He sat up further and swiped at his nose with one hand. “No,” he said, “I promise I’ll make you suffer.”
She laughed at this, as he had meant her to, and he managed a small smile.
After a moment, Elisabeth drew a long breath and overcame both tears and laughter. “Oh, Rupert,” she said. “I had such a terrible revelation. I didn’t understand how much I hurt you when I left you for your own good—until I feared you might do it to me.” He smiled sadly, and she said to his eyes, “I’m sorry.”
He replied in the same kind: “I forgive you,” and something hard taut in her was released. She accepted it with a shivery breath.
Rupert wiped his face neatly, and began to get to his feet with steady, calm movements. “You can make it up to me,” he said.
“Oh?” She looked up at him from where she sat, and he reached down to her.
“Drink with me?” he said, offering his hand.
What felt like her first smile ever dawned in her face.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
*
Brian let Buffy set the tone for the evening. It was a courtesy he felt he owed her, though
if it had been left to him he would have got straight to the heart of the
matter. He had an idea that Buffy was of
the same sort of disposition, but tonight she was pensive and slow to
speak. She picked at her fish and chips,
eyes downcast: he took the opportunity to make a study of this strange
girl. Long straight hair,
As if feeling his scrutiny, Buffy looked up, and cast him a wisecracking grin. “So what happened to the inquisition?” she said.
Brian blew out his cheeks and reached for his pint. “Let me see if I can guess,” he said. “Some fault line or other gave way, and now Elisabeth and Rupert are at some sort of crisis. They’ve been exuding tension for weeks now, so it’s no surprise really.” He took a long sip of his ale, casting Buffy a glance over the rim.
Buffy made a face that said, That’s about the size of it, and added, “It was pretty hard not to see it coming.”
“Are they on the rocks then?” Brian inquired, with a fine nervousness.
Instead of answering, Buffy tilted her head back and frowned at him. “Do you want them to be?”
He heaved out a long sigh. “I dunno. Six months ago, I would have said, yes, absolutely. Now I don’t know. I thought he was bad for her then, and I’m not so sure my opinion’s changed.” He might as well be frank.
She was still squinting at him thoughtfully. Suddenly she threw him a blunt question: “Are you in love with Elisabeth?”
Brian sat back
in his seat to turn that one over, and catch his breath. “No,” he said finally. “But…well, she’s my only best friend, you
know. I had mates at home, back in
But Buffy’s thoughts tended in a different direction. “And Giles,” she said, “is my only Watcher.” She rose from the table. “Shall I get the next round?” she asked, with a mocking delicacy.
*
Before hitting the liquor, even before leaving the study, the first thing Elisabeth and Rupert did on getting to their feet was to come together in a quiet embrace, without awkwardness or hesitation. With her eyes closed, Elisabeth nestled against his breast, breathing as softly as he; his strong, steady heartbeat against her ear belying his claim to debilitating age. For once there was no hurry, no apprehension of the horizon of their tenderness, no more fear of losing what they had barely grasped.
Presently she lifted her head and looked up at him; he opened his eyes. “Have you eaten?” she asked him.
He shrugged and quirked his head. “Anne suggested I make myself a sandwich before I left the vicarage.”
“And did you?”
His lips twitched. “No….Have you eaten?”
“No,” she said, “I couldn’t.”
“Well,” he said, but there was really nothing more to add.
They went together into the kitchen, and without words gathered together some things for tea. Rupert put on the kettle; Elisabeth dug into their Christmas provisions and pulled out a strong Cheddar and a wedge of buttery soft cheese.
They took their tea in the dining room (Elisabeth nudged her laptop to the other end and pushed her books and notes messily after it): cheese, hunks of crusty French bread, an apple Rupert had sliced, and heavy mugs of strong black tea. The meal felt oddly as if it were their first time facing one another across the board; they stole glances at one another, silently handed one another the cheese knife or pushed across a bit of apple. There would have been little occasion to speak even if they had wanted to: as it turned out, weeping had given them a ravenous appetite.
At last Elisabeth sat back, dropped her last crust of bread onto her plate, and heaved a sigh. He put down his mug and sighed in agreement.
“Shall I get the drinks?” Rupert asked after a moment, casting her a shy look.
She gave him a little smile. “Please.”
She saw the reason for his shy look when he returned from the utility room bearing a wooden box and a small aged-looking bottle. “I was saving these for Christmas,” he said softly, “but I think we may as well open them now.”
In the box, Elisabeth found when he set it down, were four elegant balloon glasses nestled in fine straw. And the bottle—
“This
appears,” she said, a slow smile curving her mouth as she smoothed the label,
“to be an outrageously expensive
“That is because it is,” Rupert said archly. “What d’you think: shall we partake?”
“Let’s,” she said.
*
“You tore it up with Giles in the bookstore?” Buffy said. “No wonder Elisabeth was pissed.”
Brian grimaced. “Well—yeah. Though I felt pretty ill-used at the time, you know, because I came off worst—black eye and a fat lip, and he got at my throat.”
“Yeah,” Buffy said, “we all had some of that left over after the battle.”
“That was what Elisabeth said—said I was a complete fool to pick a fight with a bloke who’d just been fighting demons. But thinking didn’t really enter into it, you know. I took care of her, you see, when she was—when she was so ill. I didn’t do nearly as much as I should have, but he—he was making her—he was dragging her into his—” Brian broke off.
Buffy’s eyes were quiet and steady on his face. “Yeah,” she said, “I get that. I think some of the same thoughts were going through my mind when I punched Elisabeth across a graveyard.”
Brian stared.
“She didn’t tell you?...No, she wouldn’t’ve. When I first met her, I was…suspicious. I was just as anxious to protect Giles from Elisabeth as you were to protect Elisabeth from Giles.”
“From Elisabeth?” Brian almost laughed. “But she’s—she’s—”
“—not exactly helpless,” Buffy finished for him.
Brian dropped his gaze. “I know. That was what really made her angry with me, of course.”
“Well, duh,” Buffy said, more comfortably. She took another sip of ale.
*
Rupert poured them each a snifter of the
She found him watching her furtively as she rolled the fine liquor over her tongue and swallowed. “Well?” he said, unable to contain himself.
For answer she finished off the little swallow and slid her glass across to him for more, and smiled. As he refilled her glass, she asked, “So are we planning to save any of this, or are we going to drink it all?”
He tilted the bottle to give it a calculating look before pouring his own portion. “I could be prepared to drink it all, if you wanted to go that far.”
“I’m game,”
she said, and sipped appreciatively. The
It went down as smoothly as it lay on the palate, warming her; for a long moment they were entirely occupied with swirling it, tasting it, taking in its scent.
As she neared the end of her first glass, Elisabeth let her thoughts drift. They were melancholy enough; but it wasn’t till Rupert spoke that she realized she’d been staring down the table at her abandoned work.
“It’s not going well, is it?” he said.
She woke to herself; sighed, and shook her head. “Sometimes,” she said in a low voice, “I wonder if I’ve got what it takes.”
“To finish your thesis?” Rupert asked, delicately.
“To be an academic.” She cast her gaze down into the gemlike clarity of the liquor in her glass. “All I do is make hay out of my personal experiences—not—”
“—spin it from gold?”
Elisabeth gave him a brief smile. “Like Rumpelstiltskin in reverse. I fear it’s…I fear it’s one of those things the First used the truth to lie with.” She looked away again.
His reply was quiet. “It said you weren’t worthy of academia?”
“It did its best,” she said, “to convince me I was a sham in every respect.”
A faint humor crept into Rupert’s tone: “Like Antonio did to Isabella.”
She snorted a laugh. “‘More than our brother is our chastity.’ You’re not wrong.” She flashed him a glance of renewed apology. “And I see your point—I should ask who the real sham is in this equation….But it doesn’t do anything about—how tired I am.” She stared hopelessly at her laptop, at the books piled higgledy-piggledy on the table. “I wouldn’t even be still at it if some crazy Eccentric hadn’t ponied up an endowment to cover my scholarship….” She stopped, staring inward. Then turned to look sharply at him: he was gazing avidly down into his glass—confirmation enough, if any were needed.
“It was you,” she said. “You were the crazy Eccentric.”
He made no answer at first; but as she waited he lifted tentative eyes to meet hers. “Are you angry?” he asked, softly.
She thought it over, meeting his gaze. Finally she shook her head, and he relaxed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You needn’t,” he said. “I owed it to you.”
“But, the thought,” she said—
“—was Brian’s. He insisted.”
She fell silent, and waited for him to explain.
“He phoned me and said,” Rupert told her, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “that he didn’t care if the world ended that afternoon, I was going to make sure your future was secure.”
Elisabeth was shaking her head even before he finished. “That is so typical,” she said.
Rupert said: “I think you should let Brian off the hook.”
She looked up quickly. “You say that?”
“I say that. He’s your friend, and he loves you. And he was quite right.”
“I don’t want to be protected,” Elisabeth said, in halfhearted protest. But—She always avoids me when she’s upset, she had heard Brian say on the phone to Buffy. It was hard to ignore the pang of conscience: did she think having friends meant only ever being the steady one? Especially when in practice she resented having to be so?
“I think he knows that now,” Rupert said. “He could have behaved quite differently over the exorcism business, you know. He’ll do all right at our sort of work. I’m satisfied.”
At our sort of work, he had said. She looked him in the face, half wanting to make him repeat it, to make him confirm that she belonged in his world. But You were made to give yourself, she had told him, and that was all she, too, had to give.
Elisabeth pushed forward her glass. “I think I need some more,” she said.
With a sympathetic smile he passed her the bottle.
*
“The trouble is,” Brian said, staring into his half-empty glass of ale, “the trouble is that I’m no bloody good at calculating.”
Buffy finished off her own glass. “I dunno. You seem to do all right.”
“Well,” he amended, “flying by the seat of one’s pants works fairly well for most things—but when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.” He hesitated, but went ahead anyway and told her the story of the girl-vampire he’d nearly taken to bed: how he’d scoffed at Elisabeth’s insistence on arming him with a cross and a stake early in their acquaintance, and received with private worry her lectures on the dangers of giving people verbal invites—only to wind up driving in a frenzy to London and showing up on Olivia’s doorstep still clutching the cross. Elisabeth had gone into action with what seemed to him at the time a meditative curiosity, as how one might begin one’s first experiment with a chemistry set—performed the spell to seal his home against the monster, and dashed holy water over it when it came the next night for its prey. Brian had not forgotten what it felt like to stake that girl-shape in the chest—the fear to strike at a human form, the explosion of the body into silent dust, and the frisson of evil that had gone through him as the demon passed. When he looked up at Buffy he expected her to laugh at him, as Elisabeth had certainly done more and more with each telling of the story. But Buffy’s eyes, fixed on his face, were grave. It occurred to Brian that she must have heard countless stories like this one—only most of them not with happy endings.
“Well,” she said, confirming his speculation, “you’re still here. That’s something. It’s the only thing, really, in the end. My friend Xander—”
“The pirate? Yeah, I’ve met him,” Brian said, with a faint smile.
Buffy looked startled, but recovered quickly. “Well, then you know what I’m talking about.”
“Is survival really all, d’you think?” Brian asked wistfully, after a moment of communion with the ale. “Or is there no room for panache when it all burns up?”
“Panache?” Buffy said, with a faint air of dejected bitterness. “I was kinda worrying about moral fiber.”
“Well, that, too, I suppose. But don’t tell anybody I went around talking up morals.” He grinned at her.
At this Buffy did smile. She had a nice smile—the mischievous highlight to her usual serious expression.
“That reminds me,” she said. “Anne told me to tell you to behave yourself.”
“Damn,” Brian said, and Buffy laughed.
*
“I feel a bit stupid now,” Elisabeth said, resting her cheek
on her hand and swirling her third glass of
Rupert sighed. “Well, if you’re stupid then so am I; I did the same thing.” He lifted his glass, polished off the last swallow, and reached across the table for the bottle.
“I mean, we are grownups, right?”
“Supposedly,” he said, pouring.
She gave him a lazy smile. “Have I told you? When I was little I thought that everybody got a little booklet or something when they reached a certain age, that told them how to behave like adults.”
“Damn,” Rupert said. “Then I missed getting mine.”
She dissolved into a silent giggle, and he snickered.
“It’s not funny, is it,” she said with a sigh.
“No,” he replied. Still smiling, he took a long sip at his glass.
She looked up at him: eyes downcast into his glass, his expression had regained some of its lightly-held self-possession; the set of his shoulders again free of the habitual fear that plagued her own stance. “Oh, Rupert,” she said, eyes stinging, “I missed you so.”
At this he looked up; his eyes were still grieved, but she could read in them the humorous calm she had always trusted. “It’s the more dreadful, is it not,” he said quietly, “that I was right here all the time?”
“Yes.” She gave it to him in a rueful sigh. “We lost all the comfort we once had in each other…well, except for….”
Faint color came into his face, and he glanced down shyly. “Bed,” he ventured, a little smile at his lips.
“Yes.” Elisabeth blushed. They had never discussed bed when not in it. She added, a little bolder: “And that might have been better still if we hadn’t depended on it so much.”
He raised his eyes to her and nodded. “Or,” he said, “good in an entirely different way.”
She was ruminating on what that entirely different way might be like, when he added, “A way I’d like to get to know. With you.”
She could not look at him: a terrible happiness had taken hold of her, painful as the grief that had caused her drought of tears. But then she came to a slight panic and looked up. “Are you talking about…tonight?”
“Oh God no,” Rupert said, and she started to laugh. “I’m completely knackered.” He looked over at her as she laughed, a rare open tenderness in his face. “And seeing you smiling again is giving me happiness enough at present,” he added.
She stopped laughing and mirrored his look back to him. After a moment she lifted her glass, to finish it, and poured herself another.
*
“Want another?” Brian asked Buffy.
“No
thanks,” Buffy said. “I’ve cut myself
off. I limit myself to one major
drunkfest per visit to
“Eh?”
So Buffy had to tell him the story of the scotchfest, and, flushing, the sequel in which Elisabeth put them to bed together (“Oh Lord,” Brian said). In return Brian told her a few stories about his youth in which alcohol played a significant part. She told him how she’d made the acquaintance of beer and got in touch with her inner Neanderthal; Brian nearly fell out of his seat laughing. When he heard the reason why she had been consoling herself with microbrews, Brian told her, “Nearly everyone has a fucker like that behind them.”
“Including you?” Buffy asked.
“We-ll,” he winced, “I may have been that fucker a time or two, but I like to think I’ve grown up a bit. I suppose I got what was coming to me with that female vampire.”
“And you haven’t dated since,” Buffy said.
“I didn’t say that!” Brian said. “I’ve dated.”
“Yeah,” Buffy said, very dryly.
“And what about you then?” Brian folded his arms.
“Me?” Buffy raised a hand and ticked off on her fingers. “Vampire: lost his soul the only time we were together. Id-boy, as Will calls him: God knows where he is. Probably dead. Military commando: broke up with me.”
“Cripes,” Brian said.
“Then there was another souled vampire: got immolated in the last battle. I haven’t really ventured out much since then. Casual dating and the Slayer: not very much with the mixing.”
“The non-casual dating sounds harrowing enough.”
“Tell me about it.”
But Buffy seemed happier for having put her troublesome relationships in a laconic, humorous list. In fact, she seemed altogether cheerful compared with how she looked when he had picked her up. Brian was pleased.
“After I finish this, shall I walk you home? Though, hell, you’re the Slayer, probably you ought to be walking me home.”
“All right.” Buffy smiled.
*
Elisabeth reached out a hand across the table. Her movements were getting sketchy; Rupert, of course, looked fine. He made no move to encourage her but looked pleased all the same when her finger reached his cheek and stroked it briefly.
“D’you know what made me fall in love with you?” she asked him, smiling.
He lifted his chin. “My distinguished good looks?”
She laughed at him. “No, your distinguished good looks are why I went to bed with you.”
He giggled. Well, perhaps he was a little bit less than sober. Elisabeth was emboldened. “I fell in love with you,” she said, “because of your generosity.”
He stopped giggling and fixed her with a slightly troubled look; Elisabeth hastened to reassure him. “Oh not generous in what you give me. It’s yourself you give. So few people do, you know. No pretenses, no decoys, no false fronts, no skimpy measures.” Even yet the words were doing no justice to her heart, no matter how she rephrased.
He dropped his gaze. “Well, I wouldn’t say I never try it on. Especially lately.”
“And you see how well that worked for you,” she said, and they both chuckled. “No,” she went on, “you give yourself as a matter of course, mostly—and that made me trust you; and then you gave me even more, and that makes me…exalted.”
He looked down at his empty glass with an unhappy little smile. “God,” he said, “no wonder you thought you might have to leave. Myself was the last thing I wanted to give you, since I came back.”
“I know,” she said, in a small voice, and he looked up. “But you’re still ahead of me. I never do. I haven’t got the knack for that kind of generosity. I’m always afraid of going bankrupt if I give anything—affection, time, influence…moral high ground….”
“It’s not an unreasonable fear,” he said gently.
“No, but ‘whoever would save his life will lose it’—I belong to such an exasperating faith. It wants me to do the very things I would avoid at any cost.”
“And having such a fear,” he went on, “isn’t the same thing as succumbing to it. Go on, I dare you: quote Carlyle.” Rupert smiled.
“Don’t laugh at me—it’s really frustrating.”
He smiled wider.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he said, “only—this is going to sound fearfully sentimental.”
“Tonight’s the night for it,” she said dryly, and he made a face of agreement before going on.
“It’s one thing that made me fall in love with you: You fight. You fight even angels and make them bless you.”
“And sleep on pillows of stone to look for visions?” she said, amused, but he shook her amusement off, quite serious.
“Not visions; truth. Nothing less will satisfy you. That is what I trust.”
“And why it scared you when I lied to you,” Elisabeth said, chastened.
He nodded,
and they met eyes on it for a moment.
Then he cleared his throat and reached for the bottle. “Well,” he said, “we’ve knocked hell out of
this
“Oh, no. Any more and you’ll have to carry me up to bed over your shoulder.”
“I suppose you’re right. I’m not exactly up to being Rhett Butler in any sense.”
“‘Frankly, my dear—’” Elisabeth giggled.
“—I don’t give a flying fuck,” Rupert said, pouring the last snifter into his own glass. “Maybe you’ll have to carry me upstairs.”
“I think I saw the block and tackle in the conservatory.”
“Fuck off,” he said, affectionately.
“I’ll drink to that.” She upended her glass and drained the last drops of liquor in the bottom.
*
“Well, thanks for the dinner and the beer,” Buffy said, on
the doorstep of the flat. She had
unlocked and opened it, and the foyer light she’d left on shone out into the
late-night chill. Buffy thought that
either she’d gotten used to the cold of
Brian grinned. “No problem. I enjoyed it immensely.”
“Kinda cheered me up too,” she admitted. Across the street, someone’s Christmas lights blinked on and off, outlining their front window and giving the edges of Brian’s sandy hair a multicolored glow.
His face went serious for a moment. “Will you—you’ll call me, won’t you, if anything—”
“I’ll let you know what goes down,” Buffy assured him.
“Thanks. Well, I suppose I’d better take myself off home….” He gestured lamely at his car parked down the street. But he continued to look at her, diffidently, without moving from his position one step below her. At that level, he was only a little taller than she.
Buffy understood clearly now why he was Elisabeth’s best friend, with his keen insight, his roguish humor—and his brisk honesty calculated to disarm all inequalities. To his friends he would be solicitous, but never condescending or falsely worshipful. It was damned refreshing, and Buffy appreciated it—appreciated him, with his languid tousled appeal.
“Look—” It was dark, but she could tell he was flushing, all the same. “As man to man—or man to woman, I should say, but it doesn’t have the same ring exactly—could I, under these particular circumstances—”
Buffy gave one snorting note of laughter, took hold of his coat lapel, and kissed him. After a brief moment she half pulled back to gauge his reaction.
“Well,” he said, “that cuts to the chase rather nicely,” and kissed her back.
He was a pleasant kisser, with a boyish eagerness tempered by mature art. Buffy couldn’t remember ever having kissed someone simply for fun, without being surrounded by a cloud of earnest romance or a miasma of need. He brought up a hand to support her elbow gently, and she leaned into him, just lightly enough to be comfortable.
After a lingering moment of diffidence, he pursued the kiss more fully, and she responded in kind. An honest warmth released her breathing, and as the kiss drew to its close and ended, she gave a sigh of unmitigated relief.
Brian stepped back with a softened grin. “Thank you,” he said. “You have made a bloke very happy.”
“Likewise,” she said, returning the grin. “And—Brian—”
“Yes?” he said, pausing in the act of turning away.
“I wouldn’t let this slip to Giles if I were you.”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
Buffy laughed. “No.”
He grinned once more and started down the steps. “Goodnight then.”
“Goodnight.”
Buffy turned and went into the flat, shutting the door gently behind her.
It was high time she went to bed. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve: and she hoped to God there’d be something to celebrate.
*
As it happened, Rupert did not need Elisabeth to get out the block and tackle or even support him up the stairs to bed. But they both went up rather slowly, putting one numb foot carefully in front of the other and being extra solicitous of elbow and shoulder as they entered the bedroom and moved round one another to undress.
But as they were getting into bed, as Elisabeth was reaching for her nightstand lamp, he turned to her with an altogether sober look.
“Elisabeth?”
“Yes?”
“What should I do if you—if you dream again?”
She stopped, completely blank. “I—”
“What do you want me to do?” he clarified.
“I—” She stopped again and bit her lip. “Do you think…do you think you could still hold me?”
He hesitated a moment, and then nodded slowly. “Yes. I think I—I think I could do that.”
“It really does help,” she said. “And not because it makes me forget. That was unkind.”
“But honest,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” she said, accepting the implied rebuke. And added, “I promise to make you suffer.”
He smiled, though sadly, at her echo of his words, and she turned out the light to settle down.
“Are you sure you don’t need the light?” he asked, pausing in his reach toward his own nightstand.
“Quite sure,” she said, wriggling into comfort under the covers. “I have the country quiet and the stars; I have my own house and home; and I have you.”
He turned out his light, and sank down to nestle under the covers, facing her as she faced him. A twilight of wakefulness gathered between them, and he told her softly, in the darkness, some of the things he had told Buffy under the canopy of drink, things made now doubly safe to reveal in their homely darkness. When she neither bridled in horror nor soothed him with platitudes, he relaxed, and spoke freely; and listened too to what she had to tell. They grew sleepy; and as the night deepened, heavily shadowed in the dark of the moon, they drifted toward peace. And neither of them knew who fell asleep first.
*