Chapter Text
“So.”
Mac swung her legs over the side of the chair, her trousers riding up a little to reveal dark socks and shiny brown brogues, and settled back into the velvet cushion. The tumbler in her hand was large, solid, its contents glowing amber in the flickering firelight, and she raised it appreciatively to her lips before fixing her friend with what could only be described as a look. “Did this one make it to sunrise?”
“Of course not”. Phryne Fisher sounded almost proud as she mixed her drink with a flourish and sashayed back to the chaise. “Darling, you know me better than that. Drink, dance, bed, out.”
Mac raised her eyebrows, and Phryne smirked at her over the top of her glass, her green eyes dancing as she sat back with a dramatic cross of her legs. She too wore trousers, but Mac knew for a fact that those trousers were silk, made-to-measure, and the equivalent of her own monthly pay packet. There were trousers, and then there were trousers. And of course, being Phryne’s trousers, these were definitely the latter. She ran her hands slightly ruefully down her own tweedy legs before she registered what Phryne had said.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting all Aunt Prudence on me.”
“And what’s wrong with your poor aunt?” Mac tried to sound as indignant as possible on Prudence Stanley’s behalf, but failed miserably and ended up snorting into her whisky instead. “No, I am not. Just….”
She tailed off. Only a close friend, she reflected, someone who knew Phryne Fisher inside out and back to front, would have caught the slight sadness in her eyes as she joked about yet another conquest being booted out of bed after a night of drinking and dancing, without even waiting until morning.
Only a close friend would know why that sadness was there. And only a close friend would know not to mention it.
Not directly, at least.
“You are being careful?” Mac shrugged as Phryne fixed her with a look of frank amazement, and buried her face in her tumbler. “Just checking. You have been….” She paused, pretending to search for the right words and knowing that Phryne wasn’t in the least bit fooled.
“Pushing it a bit?”
“Every night for ten days is good going, even for you.”
Phryne acknowledged the point, raising her glass in a silent toast to late nights and young men, but made no reply and for a few moments they sat in companionable silence.
It was moments like these that Mac treasured. The simple pleasures of peace and quiet and Phryne in the same space didn’t happen very often, but they always reminded her of what the two of them shared. She loved the vibrant whirlwind, of course she did, but these more private, more intimate times were different. They took her back to childhood, to summer days when she and Phryne roamed the sweltering streets from dawn til dusk, just the two of them, Phryne pinching apples from stalls and leaving her to act as lookout or provide a distraction; to winter nights when Phryne had slept over at hers and they had cuddled together under the covers, sharing a torch and a book, Phryne always impatient because she was the faster reader and could never wait to see what happened over the page. And she had always looked out for Phryne, never letting her be caught with stolen apples or illicit stories on her watch.
Some things never changed. Only tonight, she was looking out for her friend in a different way.
“Maybe you could try letting them stay on the train for more than one station stop.”
Phryne raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. The laughing look on her face suggested that she thought Mac might have had a touch too much whisky, but that she would humour her.
“Explain?”
“Well.” Mac kicked off first one brogue and then the other, making a show of getting even more comfortable as if she was about to tell a child a story. “Remember my uncle? He came to visit once….”
“The one with the kilt?”
“Indeed.” Mac swallowed her whisky.
“The one who wore nothing under the kilt?”
“The very same. And trust you to have found that out in ten minutes when we’d all been wondering for years.”
“Beside the point. What was his name again?”
“Douglas. Although everyone called him Charlie. I have no idea why.”
“As in Bonnie Prince Charlie?”
“Never”, Mac declared with a resolute wave of her tumbler. “Bonnie Prince Charlie is a Scottish hero. Uncle Doug was a lecherous old fart who just liked to drink.” She contemplated her glass. “Although I suppose I owe him something. He did have good taste in whisky. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, one night when he was particularly drunk and I was upset over that little squirt Mary Little - remember her? - he told me that life was like a train station. He told me I was the driver of the train, and I could choose where it went and who came along for the ride. I had a first class carriage, and a second class carriage, and a goods van. I had a platform, and a waiting room. And I could choose who went where depending on their ticket. If I really liked someone and they really liked me and they showed that they really liked me, then I could give them a ticket and they might get to travel in first class. Long haul. If I wasn’t sure about them, I could stick them in the waiting room until they either produced a ticket or left the station altogether. Which is where Mary came in. Second class was for people who only made it…well. Short journeys, you know. A night or two. Or, in your case, an hour or two.”
She paused to let Phryne’s snorts of laughter subside, but couldn’t help her own lips twitching.
“So you’re saying I have a train full of second class passengers?” Phryne’s laughter was infectious, and Mac bit back a smile, pretending to try and remain serious. “No, I think you at least deserve a first class ticket.”
“I’m honoured.”
“And what about Dot? Mr B?”
“Ok. Definitely first class”. Mac conceded the point as she remembered the delicious chicken pie and garden vegetables that Phryne's butler had spoiled them with for dinner…not to mention the fudge cake. “What about Burt and Cec?”
“I would say first class too, but they’d be happier in the goods van.”
“True.”
“See?” Phryne’s delighted voice was triumphant. “Who cares about second class when you have first class full and raggers keeping the goods van going?”
“Fair point.” Mac paused, allowing her laughter to die down before she quietly dropped the real point of the conversation. “And what about Jack?”
For a long moment there was silence, Phryne's smile dying on her lips and her eyes giving themselves over to that sadness that Mac had glimpsed earlier in the evening. She looked beautiful, Mac thought suddenly. Firelight and whisky and gentle melancholy.
“What about him?” Phryne’s eventual reply was quiet, almost a sigh, and Mac’s eyes held her friend close as she spelled it out.
“Where is he in the station?”
There was a long pause before the whispered admission, and Mac thought that she had never heard her friend - her indomitable, headstrong, charming freight train of a friend - sound so defeated.
“I don’t know. Outside, I suppose”.
“Is that where you want him?”
“Of course not, but he walked out, Mac. He chose not to work with me anymore. I don’t have a choice.”
“I’m not just talking about work”, Mac murmured quietly into her whisky, but Phryne did not respond. “Since when do you just lie down and take what other people hand out anyway?”
“He’s a grown man.”
“I had noticed.”
“He can make his own decisions.”
“I had noticed that too. But this time - if you'll excuse the French - he has made one almighty cock up in walking out of that station entrance.”
Her language was rewarded with a glimmer of mirth in Phryne's eyes.
“He has, hasn't he?”
“Yes, darling. He has. And the question now is”, Mac drained her tumbler and stood up to pour herself a refill, “What are you going to do about it?”
Phryne looked at her helplessly, and Mac shook her head.
“You really have got it bad”.
“I have not.” Mac smirked, her words having elicited the exact reaction she knew they would as a suddenly-indignant Phryne sat bolt upright. “I just happened to enjoy working with Inspector Robinson, that’s all. But if he no longer requires my help, then that’s his loss. And perhaps I….care….cared….for him. A little. But..."
“A lot.”
“A medium-sized bit.”
“You’re in love with him. And he's in love with you. You're both just too daft to say so."
There was another pregnant pause, before Phryne uttered a curse that would have made a sailor proud and anyone apart from Mac blush, and slumped back into the chaise, her drink slopping against the side of her glass.
“Careful. Waste of a drink if you spill it.”
But Phryne either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
“So what do I do?”
“Is that an admission?” Mac sat back down, a smirk on her lips, and Phryne shot her a glare.
“As good as you’re going to get.”
“I thought so. Well, you could perhaps start by offering him the first class ticket he dropped on his way out.”
Phryne looked up at her with terrified eyes, and Mac’s expression softened. They both knew what they were talking about, and they both knew that Phryne had spent most of the last ten years running in the opposite direction from anything remotely resembling it.
“What if he doesn’t want it?”
“Then he’s the biggest idiot this side of the Pacific. And if he doesn’t, then I promise….” She racked her brains for something suitably dramatic, “I promise I will come to the Green Mill with you every night for as long as it takes you to dance and drink him right out of your system. Ok?”
Phryne gave a choked giggle. “You must be confident.”
“I am.” Mac didn’t add that she knew fine well that Phryne could spend every night for a year at the jazz clubs she was normally so fond of, and still not have Jack Robinson entirely out of her system. But at least, she thought, it had made her smile. And she was confident on this one. Very confident. “So. Are you going to talk to him?”
Phryne nodded, slowly. “Perhaps….tomorrow.”
“Ok, love”. Mac sat back, and they lapsed into another long, gentle silence. It had, she thought, gone better than expected.
She only hoped that Jack Robinson didn’t let her down and prove to be the biggest idiot the Antipodes had ever seen. She hated the Green Mill.