Chapter Text
Things Come Unraveled
I am the wind that wavers,
You are the certain land;
I am the shadow that passes
Over the sand…
There came the faint, sweet notes of a nightingale. Night, spangled with bits of flashing silver, pressed up against the windows like dark blue velvet as the long, pearly twilight settled over the lake. John could hear, beyond the tinkling of glasses and the talk of the Beckfoot guests, the faint stirring of wind on the surface of the water and the plash of waves meeting the current of the Amazon River. He wanted to lose himself in it, to rush outside and stare up at the stars, to breathe great gulps of night air, to wash this horrid taste of disappointment out of his mouth.
He couldn't do any of it. So he stood where he was, a uniform with a champagne glass in hand, staring dismally across the room at the flashing flood of reflections in the mirror over the drawing room fireplace… and Nancy's face, upturned, but not towards him.
"They make a beautiful couple, don't they?" one of Mrs. Blackett's friends said noisily. The bubbles in her champagne were rising steadily like bits of gold leaf, shining in the lamplight. There was laughter from the other end of the room where Nancy stood like a Grecian goddess in a dark green velvet gown, talking to one of her friends. Cyril. That suave one with the white coat and the carnation in his buttonhole. There were others like him circling round, like gulls that have spotted something dead in a harbor.
"They're not engaged, yet," John said abruptly. His own champagne was forgotten in his hand.
Once again, against his will, John's mind feverishly replayed the past fortnight. He had wound and unwound it so many times, he'd begun dreaming about it, charging through the night like a ship on the wrong course. It had started out well; he had come up on leave from Portsmouth. Susan, Titty and Bridget had followed shortly after. Roger had come last, catching a ride with Timothy Stedding, who apparently had been concealing a lifelong adoration of seaplanes. They'd landed one of his own design on the lake, and it was moored at the end of the Beckfoot promontory.
It was Nancy who puzzled him. When she met him at the railway platform it had almost been like old times. He had been anxious about seeing her again, but when Nancy appeared in voluminously pleated linen trousers, an old straw hat, and an eccentrically colored Hermès scarf round her neck, she'd been the image of a bohemian who had been interrupted digging for a Viking hoard in her garden. He hadn't missed the light that kindled in her eyes when she spotted him and was barely aware of his own smile in return.
"I told mother not to wait on tea," she informed him the minute she was within hearing distance. "The D's came in yesterday. We thought you might like to see them."
"I wouldn't mind," John replied.
There had been no helloes; it was as if a bar of music that had been stopped in the middle when they had last said goodbye had just started up again. Nancy had taken his overcoat from him, and they both stopped simultaneously to gaze at the lake, shining with white light between the rooftops of the village below.
"Shall we?" Nancy asked, looking up into his face. John only grinned and Nancy laughed. She tapped his hand as if she'd scored a goal, then they walked down to the shops to find Peggy, who had been running errands. All three, with John's sparse luggage, and Peggy's parcels, piled into Amazon and cast off, flying past all the old places that had been the world to them many years before, and in the between times had grown smaller. And unreachable.
As they left Rio, they doubled back to Dixon's landing place across from Wild Cat Island, and John had played ship's boy, pulling Amazon's nose up the beach and making fast. He fought against the sense of unreality that enveloped him as they climbed the narrow footpath that led up the sloping field to Dixon's farm. Chickens clamored at them as they entered the yard and goats came near on dainty hooves to see if the brass buttons on an officer's coat were good to eat. Nancy had laughed and bent down to scratch the ears of one of them, only to have her hat snatched off her head.
"Unquestionably improved," She noted with delight when Peggy, the goat wrangler, finally got it back, damp and chewed.
The rafters of the farmhouse kitchen were lower than John remembered them, and Mrs. Dixon more hunched and wizened than she had been, but her eyes flashed between him and Nancy and twinkled like stars as if she could hear the unhearable music that bound them together. Nancy had caught her glance, too, and turned a piercing gaze on him. He had wanted to say something to her, but the words would not come, and were finally drowned out altogether by Dorothea's effusive welcome.
"Penny for your thoughts, Skipper," Nancy said as they walked back down the slope after an hour of tea and cakes and various pies.
John had pulled up short at the sight of mist rising from the lake as if a long, cool wave of ghostly memories were blowing softly towards them. Time had been something that had always fascinated him; he had dissected watches and admired the constant shining movement of the balance wheel, swinging backwards and forwards on its ruby pivot as if caught in an eternal present… but the watch, and time itself, never turned backwards.
"I think there are some places where time stands still," John said glancing back at her. There had been a flicker of something in her face, but what it meant, he dared not guess.
At Beckfoot, the welcome had been just as warm, perhaps warmer. Mrs. Blackett had seemed inordinately pleased to see him, and Jim Turner opened a bottle of cognac he had been saving 'just for this occasion', before driving John round to Holly Howe in rattletrap's equally dilapidated successor. "Glad you're back," he'd said in parting… and then the engine died, and John had to push the car across the farmyard to get it started again. Captain Flint was laughing like his namesake as he drove off into the night.
After the balance of the Walkers arrived, a week of exploring and sailing went by, with a few of Swallow's crew loaned to Amazon to even out the weight. It had been like old times… so much so, that John almost wondered if they'd ever grown up at all, if they weren't caught in a never-ending childhood contained between the shores of that great and silent lake.
And then, quite abruptly, things had changed. Their camaraderie vanished; the music scraped and ended as if Nancy had deliberately lifted the needle off a gramophone. It wasn't so much that she had turned into Ruth, but more that she transformed into a Jackeline or a Theresa; something beautiful and almost dangerous… and it coincided with the arrival of this fellow, Cyril.
He wore bespoke from Savile Row, drove a Bentley, and he seemed to look on blue uniforms with gold bands on the cuffs with disgust. He'd come up especially for Nancy's twenty-first birthday party and had installed himself at the grand hotel that stood lording over Rio.
"She's fawning on him," Titty had said with horrified loathing.
John didn't want to call it fawning, but he couldn't help but admit that the word was fitting. He wasn't sure if the change was wrought by being nearly twenty-one, or by a new dress Nancy's Aunt Maria had brought her from Harrogate. As unlikely as either was, he wanted to think it was one or the other of those things… not the overwhelming, cologned presence of Cyril.
The fellow seemed to pop up everywhere. John had barely been able to ask Nancy if she wanted to race out of Horseshoe Cove like old times before Cyril rounded the house and butted in with condescending tones. And Nancy flatly turned the invitation down with a distant expression on her face, as if she didn't really care… when only a few days earlier she hadn't cared about anything else. John had once crashed a motorbike into a wall while avoiding a flock of sheep; her rejection felt something like waking up from that.
"Perhaps she's not feeling very well," Susan, always practical, suggested.
"She's fuller of beans than I am," Roger pointed out. "I ran into her this morning in the front hall; she was fairly springing."
"Something has happened," said Titty, turning to watch Amazon a few boat lengths away, with Cyril, a dashing and attentive passenger, and Peggy on the bottom boards looking thoroughly bored. A note of anxiety quivered in her voice as the luff of Amazon's sail fluttered. "She never lets her sail shake like that."
"I think she's a bit preoccupied," Roger mentioned when Nancy's clear laugh rang across the water. "Look out for your steering, John. You almost gave me a whack with the boom."
"Sorry," John said and nothing more. He was thoroughly miserable, like a second-best suit that is always left in the closet. Whenever he saw Nancy swinging along on Cyril's arm, he felt somehow shabby and irrelevant. He shined his shoes until they glowed, but he couldn't help wondering if there were scuffs he'd missed. Nancy, on the other hand, always did everything well when she put her mind to it. She wore an evening gown with as much surety and confidence as she sailed Amazon. Perhaps more.
But John wasn't one to give up easily. If he had to stand and watch from a distance, he'd do it with as much indifference as he could muster. Even wallflowers can have style.
"They make a beautiful couple, don't they?"
That was enough to make him wince with real pain. They did make a stunning couple; Nancy, slim and beautiful, on the arm of her rich and conceited Cyril. Though, Cyril was rather short, and perhaps, John thought seriously, he used a bit too much hair oil.
"They're not engaged, yet," John replied shortly. "Please excuse me."
He made his escape, creeping along the wall. Gosh, he really was a wallflower, wasn't he? He made the refreshments' table without mishap and settled next to Peggy where she was pouring gin into the punch. He swigged his champagne, then took one of the cups she offered him.
"Thanks," he said.
"It's not so awful," Peggy said, seeing his face. "It can't go on too much longer. Nancy hates cocktail parties."
John gazed across the room at the green figure of Nancy; she had a white topaz bracelet that glittered with varicolored light as it danced on her browned wrist, her hand never still. He watched it, almost mesmerized before he shook himself. "She's making an awfully good show of enjoying herself."
Peggy looked up at the hint of bitterness in John's voice. "She can't like him," she said, but her tone sounded as forlorn as an owl at midday.
"Where on earth did you dig him up?"
"Harrogate," Peggy replied. "His mother is a particular friend of Aunt Maria's. We, neither of us, could stand him. At least, I couldn't… and I thought she couldn't, either."
"Do you think…" John trailed off, his voice low, "Do you think she'd really marry him?"
Peggy looked up at him with large eyes, "She's gone completely mad. I don't know what she'd do."
They both turned to look at her and Nancy faltered for a moment when she caught their gazes. The next moment, she had her confidence back again… there was something strange… John couldn't quite put his finger on it; something wasn't as it seemed. He could feel it in his bones. It was almost as if Nancy were playing a game… a strange and complicated one… but a game all the same.
Only a week before, he had given her a rare pocket watch he had rescued from a gloomy little antiques shop tucked away in London. The white porcelain face showed the month and the day, and the phase of a gold-leafed moon on blue enamel. The movement had been the most complex he had ever mended, but he knew she would understand and love it as much as he did. "It's a minute repeater," he had explained. He could not forget how her eyes had sparkled while she clasped it in her hands, listening as it chimed the hour and the minute.
He was still pondering when there was a stir at the other end of the room, and he saw Nancy move towards the piano and sit down. Cyril was opening sheet music, but she shook her head and took another song out of the cabinet. There was a pause, then her fingers were moving over the keys. No mistakes. It was Ruth playing, not Nancy. John had the sudden sensation that something was slipping out of his hands and no matter how he held on, he would eventually lose his hold.
"Thème Variée, Opus 89, by Chaminade; that's one of Aunt Maria's favorites," Peggy noted, then another, darker thought came to her, "...Gosh, she really isn't herself if she's trying to butter up the G.A."
It was a lovely song; bright, hopeful… sometimes triumphant, with darker undertones… the sort of song that could simultaneously make joy deeper, and grief more painful. It asked questions without giving answers; perhaps it was content to live like a sparrow fluttering in a hedgerow without any thought for tomorrow. John had been watching Cyril, who was standing ready to turn pages, and was surprised when Nancy had to turn the first page herself. Cyril wasn't paying any attention to her. Slightly confused, John glanced round to see what he was staring at. The only candidate was Titty, standing by the window talking to Mrs. Blackett. John looked from one to the other; Titty was clearly oblivious, but Cyril was fixated on her.
The song was nine pages long, but Cyril only remembered to turn the last one; the rest of the time he spent ogling. Sometimes it was Titty… sometimes it was Susan… once it was Dorothea, who had become quite pretty since she'd cut off her pigtails. At last, it shifted to Peggy.
"I'd like to pull his nose," Peggy mentioned.
"I'd like to murder him," John replied grimly. Peggy stared up at him in shock. It wasn't like him to be violent, but, as she glanced across the room, she decided it wasn't like Nancy not to be Nancy, either.
"So that's Miss Turner is it?" said Timothy. "Jim's told me about her. And that's why I hardly knew them when I saw them looking at the flower beds. Dressed up like that. Not much of the gold prospector about Nancy when she's . . . Yes, I know. Of course it isn't her fault."
-The Picts and the Martyrs
To Be Continued...