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The first time had started by a chance encounter at a pub. Verbal baiting. Childish taunts coming from women the age they were. Too many drinks for either of them to count. Neither had trusted the other their address and so they had ended up in a cheap room that rented by the hour, and Mary had even ponied up the money for the night.
They hadn’t stayed that long, and Gertrude hadn’t hung around long enough to see if Mary got her money back.
After the third time of meeting up though they pretended it was mostly random, Mary said it was a waste of time as they left yet another cheap motel. Gertrude thought things were over after that. It came as quite a surprise when a key and a sheaf of paper were left on her desk a few days later while she was out for lunch. The paper bore an address two hours south of London in Bournemouth, and a date a few days away written on the lower left corner. Gertrude arranged that afternoon for a day’s absence.
While the drive wasn’t the most convenient, meeting certainly became easier than worrying about being seen, or finding a room to let. Both their gender, and those they worked for and the things they did, made meeting in London difficult, but Mary had removed that obstacle. Sadly she couldn’t remove the obstacle that they were both difficult in their own unique way. Especially with one another.
One visit Gertrude arrived to find the walls covered in carefully printed words, a half dozen languages by her own count and the medium she wasn’t even going to hazard a guess at. Two days later, after smiling tightly at Mary as she left, Gertrude returned with two gallons of neon white paint and a roller. A bit bright to cover up the writing but not nearly as disturbing as the crimson red walls that greeted her the next time she arrived. Also crimson red ceilings, doors, and even the floors had been painted in that same shade.
Countering with midnight black that the flat still reeked off when Mary arrived, Gertrude found a peace there between them. Though perhaps it was not the shade of the paint but something else entirely that led to the pair finding peace in their now dark and dim escape.
Most certainly it was more about biting words and sharp teeth. Skilled tongues that did so much more than exchange hot and wicked words. Determined fingers and lives that allowed for stolen moments and indulgent treats and the lack of morality that meant neither of them truly considered who they were, quite literally, in bed with.
For months the two pretended everything they shared was all about pleasure and defying the authorities in their lives and had nothing to do with the intimacies they shared. Intimacies that went beyond sexual pleasure. Yet despite all the sort words and bad jokes and shared ideas after hours of orgasms and passing out content together, it was easy to pretend.
It was less easy for Gretrude to pretend she wasn’t confused though the day she arrived to meet Mary and found the police all over the building off the Triangle in Bournemouth. Quickly turning on heel, she used her vat resources back at the Institute to get details she hadn’t seen in person.
Reports of a cult killing in a flat painted black. A girl found partially flayed in a flat rented by an obvious alias. That was the first moment that Gertrude had learned Mary rented the place under a name that should have set off bells but maybe that was only in the circles they kept. Robert Smirke. Why not just put it under Jonah Magnus if she was going to be like that, after all. The victim though was never identified.
Gertrude waited to hear from Mary. She sent several messages to her. Yet even as she reached out to her, she had no expectation to hear from her again. In truth it was several years later before Mary reached back, but by then Gertrude already knew what had happened that day. Well, she knew why Mary withdrew, though Gertrude never learned why the girl had been killed. Or even if that had been Mary’s work. Perhaps another, working for those that they all seemed to answer to, had done so to ensure the pair never used the flat again.
For whatever the reason the girl had died, Mary had certainly know before Gertrude did that she would be called into several days later, still caught up in her own confusion and given a curt speech to the effect that the former Archivist - and back then she did not hear it as it was. More than position but a title - was gone, and Gertrude would be taking their place as head archivist. Not asked. Not offered the position. It was hers now. A mantle that it would take several years for her to truly understand.
With that whatever had been between her and Mary was over. At least now it made sense. Not why it had happened, which would confound her until her last days, but why it had to end as it had. Dallying as they had been was one thing. Another when Gertrude was Archivist and could, as she eventually learned, use what she was to find out all of Mary’s truths. All she ever wondered was how Mary knew before her, and what hand she may have had in ensuring Gertrude’s new position.
After a time though Gertrude let it go. It was the past, after all, and something to never be repeated. She might hardly think about it at all until the day she read a statement about a loft off the Triangle in Bournemouth. One that had been apparently repainted and let once more to a man with a coffin.
A shame, years later then, that as Jonathan had done the same, that he hadn’t looked beyond what he was searching for in the records of the management company. Perhaps he would not have found the use of Robert Smirke nearly as amusing as Gertrude had.