Work Text:
26th February, 2018, 8:15 pm
“Nellie, sweetie.”
“What’s it, Mom,” Nell rasps from where she is draped on the futon, belly upwards, like a sloth. Rasps, because a) nasopharyngitis (eleven days, a personal record, damn it) and b) when her mother goes Nellie, sweetie in that hideous imitation of Carla Gugino, it usually implies that she needs something of her. Which in turn means that either a) Lady has forgotten to shit in her litter bowl and Nell has to sacrifice her Sunday evening scooping up doggy poop off the kitchen floor or, worse b) it’s time to listen to Sansa’s Snark Review of the Week.
“Can’t I speak to you without-” once it begins, it’ll be hard to stop. She has her own eleven-day record too, in that way.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I love you more than my whole life, now what’s it.”
Sansa Stark (the one, the only) pouts at that dismissal, but pulls out a sheaf of Covent Garden stationery anyway. Great, we are doing reviews after all. “Alright, listen to this.” she clears her throat.
“This reviewer would delve into Satan in Ink and pick it apart, but that would imply the book actually has some sort of depth worth delving into. The chief problem lies not so much in the language-which for the record in itself is worse than anything E.L James could’ve concocted in her Walmart BDSM fantasies-”
“You’re on fire,” Nell shakes her head in disbelief, sitting up for better hearing. Her mother presses her lips together, a vain effort to hide her self-satisfied grin, but continues, savouring every word:
“..it lies in the characterization of its two main leads. Elin Aratris and Artamus Yescan, who, aside from sharing the worst names to ever grace kids born in the 21st century-discount Renesmee Carlie Cullen- also suffer from the same authorial affliction: they are both flatter than blueberry pancakes insofar characterization goes, with as little as two personality traits each. Two, that is, if you can call high cheekbones a personality trait.”
A dead silence, then Nell ugly-laughs. Her mother looks up, and the mischievous sparkle in her blue eyes is reflected in Nell’s own, deep grey gaze. “Should I unleash it upon the world?” Sansa asks, softly swirling the coffee in her mug. “Isn’t it too harsh? Do you think I’ll get Twitter hate?”
“Won’t be the first time.”
“No. I still wonder why I got those death threats over Elinor’s Roses; it was one of my milder critiques.”
“Milder,” Nell guffaws. She takes out her phone, scrolls through her bookmarks. “Ah. Here we go. Mouldy Bouquets and Restraining Orders: My review of Elinor’s Roses. By Sansa Stark, 8th of May, 2017.” She dramatically alters her voice, newsreader-style, reading aloud: “There’s precious little to tell apart protagonist Elinor from magnesium oxide. They are both white, unappealing, have some strange bonding going on, and attract wet things from everywhere in the surroundings. At least MgO is resistant to mould. But after plodding through Margaery Tyrell’s new shiny-backed bestseller, all 600 pages of it, I unfortunately can’t say the same for our Fae Princess.
“I was being kind. I wrote nothing about how she’d mentioned flaming amethyst orbs some seventeen times by Chapter 4 itself.”
“You’re so hard to please,” says Nell, though she secretly thinks that’s one reason why most bestselling authors these days clamour for her mother’s attention. It’s been that way ever since Sansa Stark, critic extraordinaire, ripped apart the Fire and Blood trilogy by best-selling author Viserys Targaryen, and he dragged her to court over how she’d claimed his work to be vile, misogynistic, torture porn for the average cishet male who likes frat partying and masturbating to anime girl roleplays on YouTube.
When she’d been placed before the jury, all Sansa Stark had said was, “but did I lie?”
It made her an overnight sensation. What had initially started as a humble, freelance book-review blog, grew alarmingly big, alarmingly quick, with hefty commissions from this media outlet and that London daily. Her classmates had a good laugh out of it, and Nell would be lying if she claimed she didn’t enjoy the sparks of her brilliant, acid-tongued mother’s fame rubbing off on her. Still, sometimes she wonders how it must feel to be on the receiving end of it.
“Is it ethical?” she’d asked her mother one day. Sansa was seated before the mirror, getting ready for a night-out with the crème de la crème of her circles. (It had become a regular thing, since she’d grown famous, these social gatherings. Nell had tagged along on some occasions before getting utterly bored, and choosing Lady and Harry Potter over champagne and orchestrated tinkly laughs) “Making millions from such vitriolic pieces?”
“No, but it’s good money,” came the reply. “Everybody loves shitting on others.”
“Why not write something positive for a change?”
“I review YA novels.”
“Mom, we’ve talked about this.”
Sansa had put down her lipstick-bright red, like her hair-and said with some fire, “Why this new brand of morality, Nellie? People like reading funny stuff. I make them laugh. The authors get their checks anyway. It’s win-win everywhere. So, what’s your problem?”
My problem is that someone had put in time and love to make that shit up, she would’ve said. But as it were, she said nothing. Ultimately Alayne Stark had to face the truth: it was economical, what her mom did, and if she loved what the profits granted her, she could learn to love the means.
That was then. Sweet summer days, when she still had a working moral compass. Now, Nellie just relishes it all. She goes with whatever draft her mother works, sometimes even putting in a jibe or two of her own.
So, when her mother asks her “What could be the final line to wrap it up, d’you think?”, she replies, as if she’d known her lines for years, “In conclusion, maybe the best thing about Satan In Ink is the unintentional irony in its title.”
“Truly, my proudest moment as a mother.”
2nd march, 2018, 3:45 pm
Spring. ‘18. It’s very warm for a March day, and Nell says the same to Eddie, as they walk home from school. They attend different schools; Nell studies at St Judith’s, a convent in a tree-lined, quiet, respectable block of heavily Catholic residential quarters. Uncle Robb thinks convent schools are the site for all kinds of immoral delinquencies, which is why Eddie, actually Eddard, goes to a state institution three streets down St Judith’s.
He would think so, her mother had snorted when Nell told her this. Our Reverend Father had once caught him blowing Theon in a storage closet in their senior year.
(Things Alayne Stark didn’t need to know, part 1.)
“The three of us are going for a boating-and-luncheon thingy to Richmond, this Sunday. Very chill, we’ll probably doze off half the times, you know my parents,” Eddie cocks his head affectionately, a very mini-Robb gesture. “Want to join us, Nell? Aunt Sansa can come too.”
“Sorry, Ed, not this Sunday. Mom has a work meet. Maybe sometime later.”
“Nell, your mom roasts writers. What’s her work meeting like? Strapping Viserys Targaryen to a chair and exposing each of his fetishes? Cause I’d like to see that.”
“Eddard.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. You come alone.”
“I’m busy.” Bad liar. She isn’t busy. But she doesn’t want to be the hanger-on while Eddie and his dads embody the picture of familial bliss. Not when her own family life is near-existent, fighting for time alone with her famous, beautiful, impatient mother. Eddie has two dads; Nell barely remembers the one she had, her birth father who’d been wedded to her mom briefly, before an accident on the highway snapped his spine like a dry twig, as her mother was fond of saying. Alayne had been two. Sansa had been all of twenty-one.
There are pictures of him, of course, and she has seen his final resting place, in the churchyard down their street. But it’s more of an effort in remembering, as opposed to a natural longing for a missing parent. She has accepted his death dispassionately, just as she’s accepted her mother’s questionable wrath towards fantasy literature. (Dispassion. Lovely word. Diss your passion. Motto of the day)
She bids goodbye to her cousin at the head of the street where he lives with Uncle Robb and Uncle Theon in a nice, Victorian-roofed bungalow. Nell has spent much of her childhood in that bungalow, cooped up with her uncles and cousin before the television, for a Harry Potter marathon. As she watches Eddie leave, scrawny five foot thing with a duffel bag thrice his size, she wishes she’d accepted his offer after all. Her house is so…empty, sometimes.
The rest of the journey is alone.
4:05 pm
Nell is fumbling for her house-key (Sansa won’t be back home until after six) when Lady gives a soft growl and she looks up to see a U-Haul turn the corner and cross into their street.
That’s for house number 3, then. The residence beside their own has been vacated only a month or so, after the previous owner, a retired Naval Captain passed away in late December. Nell hopes it’ll be a big family moving in, with lots of children. Or many pretty girls living together. No tax on dreaming. She surveys eagerly as the furniture is brought out (Utilitarian. Expat-chic. Mostly leather) but there’s no hint about who, what the new neighbours might be. What am I expecting anyway? A drum-kit? Life-size Plague Doctor Plushie? A black car drives upto the next door-gate, parking right behind the U-Haul. Not a Maserati, not a Buick, but a fucking Volvo. Nell is disappointed. Definitely vegan yoga teacher. But then the driver steps out.
Jesus Christ.
She ducks for cover.
8:00 pm
“His name,” her mother tells her over very black, very hot coffee, “is Jon Snow.”
Nell arches an eyebrow. “And you know this…how? He only moved in today.”
“I’m an adult. I have my means.”
Nell rolls her eyes in incredulity, whether at the first part of the statement or the second, she doesn’t care to explain. “He’s very handsome, mom.”
“Eugh.”
“You only say that because it’s a principle of yours to eugh every man I’ve ever praised.”
“Never eughed your grandpa.”
“Did I ever call Grandpa very handsome?”
“You should. He is.” Sansa grunts. It isn’t a very Sansa noise. Then she dismisses the subject altogether, for safer waters. “Today, I got a new series, you wouldn’t believe it. Brie has come apart ever since she suggested it to me,”-Bri being Brienne, her mother’s associate and longtime friend, who teaches women’s studies at a university near Hampstead- “she told me Honey, if you ever want to know how the literary embodiment of an aneurysm could be, all you have to do is read the first couple of chapters in this book. I did, and guess what? Brie was right.”
“Tell me.”
Sansa sits up excitedly- why can’t she be this enthusiastic about going to the films or meeting someone?- and asks, “Remember Joffrey?”
Of course. Joffrey was her mother’s ex back in 2015; he’d lived off their money for a solid ten months, claiming to work on “the novel of a lifetime”. Her mother had met him at a literary circle picnic on a fine spring day and ended up falling for his apathetic but somewhat handsome face (and his swanky new Cadillac). They’d had a very intellectually stimulating affair, discussing books and reviews and the relevance of retconning in comic book culture, until her mother had discovered that the magnum opus novel that her Joff was composing was a vapid sexual fantasy, demeaning and gratuitous, the heroine loosely based on Sansa herself. Names were called. Utensils were thrown. Lady was used as an offence-and defence-weapon.
Nell had escaped to Eddie’s and stayed there for a whole week. “Yeah I remember him.”
Her mother opens her bag and withdraws a paperback. “Got this from the library today. Took me back to the Dark Ages.” It’s a lurid medieval fantasy- a young redheaded woman, her mouth open slightly, doing the devil’s tango with a half-naked muscular blond, while soldiers in caged armour spar in the backdrop. Nell tsks, because she sees what her mother does, the obviously non-coincidental resemblances in appearance. But the title…heaven help.. “Tits and treason?!?” He must’ve been desperate. Her mother only howls in glee. “I know. God, how many views do you think this’ll get?”
“Break your Fire and Blood record, probably.”
Sansa claps her hands. Nell looks at her ruefully. Sometimes the mother-daughter ends can get quite fuzzy in this household. “Eddie invited me to a picnic on Sunday and I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“Wanted to hang out with you. Alone. Watch Black Panther maybe.”
“Aw sweetie,” her mother seems distressed. “I just…there is this seminar at Brie’s uni-it’s on Virginia Woolf- and I been invited to present a paper there. But I-”
Virginia Woolf can choke.
“It’s fine.”
Her mother looks at her, upset. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Compromise. Empathise. She wishes she could throw a few utensils herself.
“You’re the kindest person I’ve ever known. I am a bad mom, and you’re an angel.”
“Now you stop with that,” Nell says, reaching over to pat her mum on the belly. Sansa is near tears; she cries very quickly over matters of family and food. It’s what makes Alayne unable to nurse her grudges too long, because…because under her tough quill-of-doom façade, her mother is such a softie.“Tell me, when are we going to meet Jon?”
“You sound like Mrs. Bennet.”
“Answer the question, then, Miss Stark.”
“You go. I won’t be dragged dead to his courtyard.”
“Why? Has Joffrey made you a misandrist?”
“You wish. The only thing Joffrey made me was financially broke. But. We dally. After the To-let sign was put away, I made some enquiries. This guy, this Jon guy…”
“Was a sex offender.”
Sansa widens her eyes in faux horror. “Worse,” she breathes. “He is working on a series called The Night King. Alayne, we have a YA novelist for our neighbour.”
Oh, perfidy.
4th March, 2018, 9:30 am
“Need a hand?”
Alayne looks up. The unfairness of genetic good looks glances down at her from across the property barricade. “Good morning, Jon.”
“A good morning to you too, but how’d you know my name?”
“Secret cameras.”
“Atrocious.”
“I’m Alayne Stark. You can call me Nell. Are you single?”
“Yes. And too old. For a school-kid.”
“Asking for my mum.”
“Who is-?”
“Also single, and too old for school-kids.”
“Gods, I can’t keep up. Kids my days were sluggish at best.” He smiles at her as she holds the gate open for him, and it’s the warmest, eye-crinkliest smile she’s ever seen. Grey eyes like hers, dark hair that falls in happy, floppy curls over his eyes and very high, very aristocratic bones. Nell has never seen aristocratic bones to be honest (Frogmore doesn’t count) but she knows he looks like one of the immortal princes her mother loves to hate.
They sit together and Jon helps her accomplish the task she’s been struggling with for the last half-hour: extracting a shard of glass from Lady’s soft pink paw. Her dog is surprisingly quiet, very serene in Jon’s arms. Perhaps not that surprising because Sansa has convinced her Lady is the gentlest dog in all of England. Still. “You’re good at this. Got a pet?”
“Yes, a husky. Ghost. Old boy is laid down with a sprained limb at the vet’s.” he looks at her. “What was your mother’s name again?”
“Nice try. Sansa.”
“No,” here it comes here it comes. “Sansa Stark???? The one who reviewed Fire and Blood?” When he sees the answer in her smirk, he lets out a long sigh. “She is like the boogeyman of our circle. Sleep- or the Sansa shall creep into your dreams and rate you 1.5 on Goodreads.”
“Ha ha. I’ll be sure to let her know that.”
“And here I thought we were becoming friends.”
She smiles. “I’ll let it be a secret. On one condition.”
“No exclusive scoop on my unwritten works.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Nell laughs. “Lend me your Night King books.”
Damn, he’s good.
That’s what Nell thinks, as she goes through all five books in the series through the week. Crystal-bright writing, a plot that is so magical and spine-chilling and richly interwoven with folktale-ish themes and characters, it feels like walking through a beautiful, enchanted forest on a full-moon night. She is breathless by the end. Breathless and thoroughly floored.
“Not to mention the female characters in his books are so…” she struggles, trying to find a word that wouldn’t make her mother sneer, “…so well-crafted.” Not her best attempt, but oh well.
True to form, Sansa ignores it entirely. “You’ve been bonding with him. A lot.”
Guilt. Nell has. In fact, she admits to herself, she has been spending most of her time in the backyard talking excitedly with Jon about the books, what went into the characters, who were his inspirations?-even at the cost of the few precious hours she gets with her mom. But she loyally says, “He’s very nice. Very patient.”
As he truly has been with her. Not just that first day when he volunteered to drive Lady to the vet’s, but on innumerable other occasions, lending her books, laughing at her bad dad jokes, listening to her garble on and on about work assignments and her stupid lab partner and the gorgeous Kiki Cafferen who Nell has been enamoured with since fourth grade when their hands had touched in math class. He listens to everything. Like a dad. No, you didn’t think that, Nell chastises herself, mortified. You don’t know him. He’s not your father.
“Maybe he is a creep,” Sansa says.
“Mom….for God’s sake,” sometimes this endless cycle of suspicion can be frustrating. “He is not a creep. Or, before you ask me, a war criminal with a forged name. He is a sweet guy with a mountain husky and a talent for writing good books. And he likes you too, he asks about you all the time.”
“Fear.”
“No! He admires your…determination. He called you fiery.”
“What a cliché. The fiery redheaded woman taking down a system.”
“That’s what you are.” She hasn’t fibbed not once. Sansa Stark is a radiant burning light, the candle for many moths to plunge into. And Jon Snow, while not very moth-like in his approaches, has steadily asked more and more about her mother with every passing meeting. Tell me about her work. Did you get your love of reading from her? Did she really call Joffrey Baratheon’s novel the worst idea to emerge from the heart of England since the machine gun?
And more often than not, no boyfriend, you say.
Sansa simply scratches Lady’s ears before idly remarking, “I’ll bet he’s a Humbert in the hiding. Waiting for a Charlotte to get to the Lolita.”
“Gross.” But later when she comes down to the kitchen to grab a snack, Nell finds her mother is busy Googling the subject of their discussion, immersed in reading his Wikipedia page. It’s a small victory, but Nell will take it.
19th March, 2018, 10:00 am
“You did what?!” Sansa Stark has merged into one red mass: red hair, red dress, red lips and a very red face. All she needs is a trident, for that perfect cosplay.
“Oh, come on. I thought you hated drama queens.”
“Alayne Stark, this is no trifling matter.”
“It is. Look at you, swollen like a helium balloon. I didn’t set up a date, did I? It’s just a picnic. And I’ll be there too. You know, to keep the chastity.”
“I’m…” Sansa struggles, and opens and closes her mouth like a beached whale for a while, before plopping down helplessly onto the futon, legs splayed before her. “Why?”
“Because chastity is important.”
“Nellie.”
“Oh mom,” Nell bends down and takes her mother’s pretty, manicured hands. “Come on. It’ll be fun. He is really a good guy. You’ll see. It’s easy to get along with him. He can take jokes, and criticism. And to top it all off-”
“He opposes factory farming.”
“I was going to say he is very good-looking. Did you see his collarbones?”
“No, what the hell?!”
“Mom, I’m tired, being the only company for you and for myself.”
“You have your friends.” But she sees her mother’s concerned frown. It makes her feel worse about the little, mostly true false manipulation. Nell shrugs, like you know what I mean.
Her mother presses a hand to her forehead before exclaiming, “Fine! Whatever. We’ll go on that silly picnic. But he drops “strong women” once into the conversation and I drive home.”
“Deal.” She’d have to warn Jon beforehand, but that’s cool. He isn’t the type to bloviate about these things anyway.
“Deal.” Sansa is looking at her curiously, and it occurs again to Alayne, just how young and beautiful her mother is- the gentle slope of her forehead, the dimples on both cheeks, the long sweep of her lashes. Much prettier than Nell can ever hope to be, thanks to having lost the genetic lottery and thus being saddled with a long face and grey eyes for the rest of her life.
She is about to muse this aloud but her mother says, “Sssh. I’m thinking what to name my review of Tits and Treason.”
“Boobs did a Betray.”
“I’ve never told you how much I loved you, did I?”
Nell laughs. “Are you going to tell me that every time I sink lower and lower?”
But there’s no flippancy in Sansa’s eyes when she says, “Yes, maybe. Love works like that.”
21st March, 2018, 8:30 am.
It’s not often that he gets a break from his banal day job as a script typist. (The venture has been a conscious professional choice which allows him adequate time to devote to other, more stimulating works.) But this is one of the better days. It’s sunny, for the first time in weeks, and it feels like spring proper now, not just a weak-tea version of the dead winter. Jon looks around himself, the picturesque balcony with the potted orchids and calla lilies, Ghost snoozing at his feet, the papers scattered on the small table finally beginning to give atleast an impression of coherence. Yes, this is one of the better days. He presses his index finger upon the bridge of his glasses, looks down at the last sentences he’s scribbled upon his notepad.
Daughter of the sea, hair woven with stars. Your mother wants you back.
Hair woven with stars feels pretentious. He strikes it out. Starlight, starry, woven with stars- no more astronomical/celestial references.
Someone is on the balcony next door. Not young Nell Stark.
Jon permits himself a smirk when he sees who it is. Boogeyman alert. The prettiest boogeyman he’s ever seen, but a fiend, all the same. He watches her walk through her own balcony, watering the plants, clipping off stray branches, occasionally half-smiling at some new bloom, a half-blown white rose, a cluster of petunias. The pet Samoyed he’d seen the first day, Lady, follows her, nuzzling her legs. Sansa’s hair is twisted into a wreath behind her head, and loose curls of it drape her face. She looks like a subject of a Waterhouse painting.
“Good morning ma’am,” he calls out cheerfully.
Sansa freezes. She turns to him cautiously. “Hello.” That’s it, no salutation of any other kind.
“The Vernal Equinox has delivered. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Very lovely,” Sansa replies, as flatly as if he’d asked for the time. She sounds ready to dial up the cops already. “Are you writing?”
He’s taken aback at this sudden show of civility. “Slogging is more appropriate,” he smiles. “I’ve barely done anything that’s constructive in the last five minutes.”
“Are you working on a new series?”
“Yes. Something more romantic, more medieval than my last one. You know.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fall on the London Porter he’s kept beside him as his instrument of survival. He sees the red mouth thin, the brows rise slightly. Mentally, Jon adds it to the list of unmentionable offences he must avoid on Sunday. ‘Strong’ women, fantasy literature, Fuller’s beer, useless flattery…he’ll run the list by Nell when she comes back from school.
“Sunday will be fun,” Sansa says coolly. “Can’t wait.” She leaves, and it’s as if a spirit has passed.
That wasn’t half-bad.
Only much later will Jon realise that her curiosity did not stem from civility or attempts at amity.
It stemmed from the desire of the predator to size up its prey. Before leaping into the actual, fatal attack.
25th March, 2018, 11:00 am
“I’ve always been a great admirer of your work, Miss Stark.”
“Oh? The part where I put down your contemporaries?”
“Always enjoyable, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“Not so much when you’re on the other end.”
“Couldn’t relate.”
“That’ll change.”
“Alayne, it’s been ten minutes and your mother is giving me death threats.”
“Tragic,” Nell comments, trying not to snort, as she sits a bit apart from them, watching them spar. Same old, same old. Back when she was four, she had adopted two kittens, Eli and Ana. Born of different mothers, the kittens treated each other as ticking time bombs, their bodies snapping into alert mode every time one or the other made her entrance into a room. They were always watching, always observing – at mealtimes, between naps, even when she was petting them, snarling softly, but never full-fledged squabbles. Eddie had told her to rename them Stalin and Truman instead.
Now, sprawled on the verdant grasses of Richmond Hill, Nell watches as Jon Snow and Sansa Stark put Eli and Ana to shame. She doesn’t bother to interfere- it would only spoil the sheer ludicrous beauty of it. So she turns her attention to the lush greens around her, and the pets, Lady and Ghost, unlikely pair obviously, both tranquil and drowsy in the gentle heat.
“But then, I suppose,” Jon muses, half to himself, half to his audience, “negative criticism sells more, isn’t it? It’s easier to write too, in a way.”
Thinly-veiled, below-the-belt. Sansa replies sweetly, without so much as batting an eyelid, “Of course, you guessed it. Business is all that matters. Just like your brethren use sex, self-insert fantasies and words like dystopia to peddle works which are otherwise devoid of even a scrap of literary merit.”
“Fair point. But not all books use sex and dystopia.”
“Yes, some romanticise illnesses and some pit girls against each other. My bad.”
Jon laughs. He just laughs, right into Sansa’s face, shakes his head in disbelief and lies back down on the grass. Sansa remains sitting upright. A butterfly flits around her, eventually settling on her hair. Stunning, Jon thinks, the effect. She is made of briars but she looks like a rose.
“Are you always seeing the bad in things?”
“If it pays.”
“Okay. If I paid you fifty thousand pounds right now, could you point out everything bad about this picnic, this spring day right now?”
“Sure. I’ll start with the company then.”
“Miss Stark,” Jon chuckles. “I pity the person who’ll fall in love with you. Envy them; yes, but also pity them.”
For the quarter of a millisecond, Sansa reddens. The colour goes quickly, as she composes herself. Nell pretends to be studying a patch of tulips. That was the smoothest thing I’ve ever heard.
They go boating on the Thames, and afterwards, Sansa unwraps the food she’s prepared for the occasion- tricolour potato salad, lemon yogurt cups, shrimp spring rolls...all of Nell’s favourite things. Jon adds his own fare to the meal-grilled salmon skewers and blueberry brownies (“You’ll find I’m an average writer and an exceptional cook”), which, Sansa is forced to admit, are pretty mouth-watering. An old couple rowing across the river wave at them and they -all three of them-wave back. Nell finds herself wondering if they appear to be a completely normal family to strangers. If to unfamiliar eyes, they are, at that moment, little else but a mother, father and a daughter just enjoying a Sunday by themselves. If it’s a fantasy that she’d like to water and tend and grow until it becomes real.
1:45 pm
Golden afternoon. Silver water. Blue of hyacinth bulbs. The silver showing beneath Nell’s eyelids as she sleeps.
Everything is silent. The world seems to have melted around them, in a splash of colour.
“She is a very intelligent child.”
Sansa turns her head. Jon lies a few feet away from her, playing with a frond of grass. “She has your sharpness.”
She laughs. “I’m not sharp, I’m cynical. The only thing I could ever give her is my name. She gets the rest from her father.”
“Her father.”
“My late husband, Harry. Very late to be precise. Almost fifteen years now.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Well I am not.” Fools who don’t wear helmets get what they deserve.
His expression is no longer playful. “Is it okay to ask what had happened?”
“A road accident.” Sansa shakes her head. “I got over it quickly.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, more quietly.
“I’d become enamoured with him since college, he was the bad boy, biker sort. Aloof, always playing hard-to-get.” Sansa sniggers at the memory. “Gods, I was driven to the edge. I was always the “preppy chick” cliché, if that means anything. But he singled me out, and I felt flattered. We never actually dated in that sense. It was largely drugs, and joyriding and sex.” She doesn’t mention too many expectations, what-ifs, suffocating silences. “And then I discovered I was pregnant. I was barely twenty-one. To his credit, we got married. I’d really thought he’ll fly the coop.”
“Was he a good man?”
“N-yes... I’m not very sure anymore. I was too young when I met him, and I was too young when he died. Harry was good in many ways, and equally cruel in others. I’ll always be grateful to him for my Nell. That’s about it, although I guess I might as well thank the broken condom. I mean, three days after the accident, I turned up at a literary meet, sherry glass in hand. Still. He was the first man I’d fallen for. Straight out of the books. Fancy clothes, messy fair hair, and gorgeous eyes.”
“What colour?”
“Sorry?”
“His eyes.”
“Um, deep blue.” She smiles at this question after her bland litany. “Why?”
“I’m allowed to judge. Though I’d thought you’d say green.”
“Why? Are you trying to psychoanalyse me? See if that’s what stemmed my YA-centric hatred?”
“No, just assessing your type,” Jon answers demurely. She smiles and playfully throws a clod of dirt at him. It occurs to her that Jon has a very warm smile. Nell has told her before, but it’s the first time she sees it for herself. The effect of it is gentle, not disorienting. The sun after a storm. She is temporarily unnerved by the sensation that zings through her skin, only to be snapped out of it when she sees her new acquaintance scribbling something on the notepad he’s carried with him.
“Are you using my tragic back-story as writing material?”
He grins. “Yes.”
“Insensitive.”
“Do you like limericks?”
A man full of surprises. Sansa runs her hand over the soft, silky ground, debating and then she says, “Yes.”
“Ok.” He sits up, tucks the pen behind his ear-giving him the appearance of an overenthusiastic professor about to embark on a particularly exciting lecture-and reads from the paper,
“There lived a widow merry
With a smile the red of cherry,
When her ol’ man died,
She'd barely cried-
And said, “Pour me a sherry.”
“Actually, my lipstick is ruby-red, not cherry.” Well, she has to say something, to keep the dopey stupidly-happy smile away from her face.
“See, this is why you’re nobody’s muse,” but he smiles as he says it. His beautiful, after-storm smile.
“What’s so funny?”
“Non disclosure.”
“You think I’m ridiculous.”
He holds her gaze. “Yes,” he says, quite sincerely. “You are ridiculous. But I also think you might just be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
He’s fine, her mother has said. Which Nell takes to be an excellent compliment, because when was the last time she’d deigned to praise the opposite sex?
Still, she hopes Jon takes it slow. She may play it cool, but Sansa Stark still has millions of old memories festering at the back of her brain. Nell doesn’t remember, but Uncle Robb does and he’s told Eddie, who, by an oath of honour is bound to transmit all the deets to his cousin. Your mom jokes and jokes about it, but after Uncle Harry died, she hadn’t eaten for a whole week, and had stayed locked up in her room, crying. Grandpa had to break the door down because we thought she’ll do something reckless.
Something reckless- yes, that would be her. Nell has seen her fall for men at a rapid rate- wretched, undeserving or plain stupid men-fawn adoringly and then break her heart over them, every few months. Too much, too soon could pick at the scabs, make them bleed afresh. But Jon is different.
Since that day at Richmond Hill, her mother and her neighbour spend an unholy amount of time together. The former drags her along to every single one of the visits, and Nell knows the role she self-consciously plays in the scheme of things- a chaperone to keep things from seeming anything but friendly teatime socialising. Since the weather is fine, they make small trips- Hackney’s fields, Highgate, Kew Gardens-and the routine is pleasantly familiar: the duo engage in knife-edged banter, mostly on books and art, while Nellie drinks in the beauty of springtime London, then they share meals and walk trails together. And there are other, subtle clues like that one time her mother laughed at something Jon had said and then leaned against his shoulder, only for the tiniest breathe. Or that time they were spotting jet-trails in an azure sky, and Jon had taken her mother’s hand. Sansa had practically sworn off breathing for five golden minutes. She sees them inch closer to each other, a result of the mildly intoxicating influence of spring and l’amour. These picnics are the only star-trails Nell wishes upon.
Then, one Tuesday, a parcel arrives for Miss S. Stark, quite a heavy one, bound in brown paper. Her mother with a prompt that’s mine whooshes it away to her room, but Nell could’ve sworn the receipt said The Night King, Illumicrate Box (quantity:1).
With a grim smile, she thinks- the plot thickens.
1st April, 2018, 10:00 am.
Quite a cold day, even by April standards. Jon is working, not at the typewriter, but at the washing machine (A bachelor’s gotta do what a bachelor’s gotta do), when he hears the doorbell ring.
“Washing day?”
It’s Sansa. And she is alone. He almost asks her where Nell is- then decides against it. “Yes, too much dirty linen.”
“That’s a pity.” She holds up a bottle of vinho verde. Holy shit. “Got this straight out of the ice-bath. I was hoping we could hang out.”
“Another round of dining al fresco? Shouldn’t we call Nellie?”
“Nellie wouldn’t like where we are going today.”
Jon looks down at Sansa, at the impish shine in her beautiful eyes. “Consider me duly intrigued.”
10:30 am
“Okay, wow, you’ve outdone yourself,” Jon says. Sansa bows.
He’d expected a park of some kind. Flowery and very romantic, with and without the capital R. He’d not expected to be standing next to Sansa Stark in a fucking cemetery, under sunshiny Shoreditch skies. “Nobody’s been buried here for at least two centuries, relax Mr. Snow.”
“Does that line work with everyone?”
“Well, I haven’t brought anyone here until today.”
“I’m honoured.” He is, in a mildly amused way. Especially because it’s Sansa, and she is nothing like anyone he’s ever known.
Bunhill Fields had originally been used as a burial ground for the Saxons. Back when cartloads of bones, that had made the honorary journey from St. Paul’s Cathedral were unceremoniously dumped into the area, it had a different, more sinister name: Bone Hill. Some of England’s best- poets, ministers, statesmen- had been laid to rest here. All burials had been stopped after 1854; two years post the legislation of 1852 which allowed cemeteries to refuse burials when they were chock-full. Since then, the place had been reconverted to a public garden, briefly charred by air warfare in the Second World War, now as much a spot for Sunday picnickers as for those with a sense of the morbidly romantic.
Jon wonders which category they fall into.
“You read Blake?”
“Quite a bit, actually. My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt. A sentimental favourite, that one.”
“Good, mine too,” Sansa grins. “He is buried here, by the way. Blake. But also John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and good old Dr. Richard Price.”
“And to think I knew London,” Jon muses in genuine surprise. “Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath a care.”
“Any care.”
“Sorry. Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care. But for another gives its ease, and builds a heaven in hell's despair.”
“I prefer the pebble.”
They begin the hunt for Blake, with some slight difficulty, as it quite suddenly starts to rain- fat drops of warm spring rain, pelting their faces and blurring their vision. But they find his grave anyway, the recently erected plaque at the exact spot where he was buried, as well as the approximation made ages ago, marked by a plain memorial stone. Both of them come to the mutual agreement that the latter looks better, less distinctive but somewhat more personal. Sansa reads the inscription on his tomb, an excerpt from Jerusalem. As she murmurs the words, golden string, Heaven’s gate, he sneaks a glance at her face. She is very beautiful. A singularly unsurprising fact, but the lack of surprise doesn’t make it untrue. “Sansa-,” he begins, unsure of what to say.
“I read your books.”
A double take. “You did?”
“Yes. All of five of them.” she adds, disdainfully, “Blake’s grave is ugly but at least it’s better than Defoe’s, that one resembles an erect penis.”
“How did you like it?”
“The erect penis?”
“Please.”
Sansa shakes her head, sniggering. She saunters away from him, looking more stunning that a woman of her caustic nature has any right to be.
“Wait for my review,” she says.
12:15 pm
It’s still overcast when they reach Primrose Hill. This time it’s Jon who acts as the guide, as they navigate their way through the summit area, one of many drenched Londoners. But unlike the rest, they aren’t groggy. At least, Jon isn’t. He has been floating two inches above the air.
They finally reach the plaque he’s wanted to show her. A small etching. I have conversed with the spiritual Sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill. Simple, elegant.
“That’s beautiful.”
“I know. I’d read about this when I was a boy. My mother brought me here quite frequently; it has been her favourite spot in the entire city. The plaque wasn’t there back then, but Blake had been the one to bring us both here.”
Sansa pauses. It’s personal, what he’s showing her. And it keeps her from saying anything acerbic. Not that she has anything of that sort to say.
She notices, for the first time, that his eyes are the exact same colour as the skies before the rains. Shuts it away, the thought, in a soft, warm corner inside her heart.
“What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes you are. You are giving me a 1-star-on-Goodreads face.”
“I was making a haiku in my head.”
“Go on.”
“Dear Jon, your eyes sing
Of the storms. I am shipwrecked at
The shore. Lead me home.”
“Is that seventeen syllables?”
“Depends on how you look at dear.”
“I am. She is very scary, and very red.”
Sansa groans. “I was thinking of giving The Night King 2.5 stars, but now. Now.”
He blinks, and then she laughs aloud, the most maddening, most magnificent sound Jon Snow has ever heard. What do you know of the spiritual sun, William Blake? What have you seen of beauty?
Later they walk to the memorial which commemorates Sylvia Plath, and Sansa makes a reference to some indie movie she’s seen about a young poetess and maybe it’s the smugness with which she dispels her information or the knowledge that she’s going to lay out his beloved works on the dissecting table soon, or maybe it’s just the sliver of sun in her hair that makes him pull her to a stop and kiss her, in the half-world between shadow and light. There is a momentary pause when she pulls back and considers him, and, and there is she is, the phoenix, born of the spirit of Lazarus, fire burning her in her crown, ice in her eyes, and she presses herself against him, kissing him back, not just with desire but with cruel, unconcealed hunger.
7:00 pm
Nell watches from her window. As her mother walks to the gate, flushed to the neck and drenched to the bone. She sees the lights in the next door house flick on, which means Jon is home too.
Excellent.
“Had a nice time?” She asks.
"Yes, we had a picnic in a cemetery."
“Jesus. What did you do?”
“I’ll tell you later. For now, I got a review to write.”
10:00 pm
Jon is at his table, Ghost at his feet, trying to think of a suitable way to dispose of the conflict in chapter 18, when his phone buzzes, uncomfortably loud in the stillness of the night. He knows instinctively who it is. Rain-drenched, red-haired hater of daydreams. He smiles at the thought, looking down at Sansa's message.
-“In case you are wondering, it’s still a 2.5 from this reviewer. Try harder, next time.”
Rain-drenched, red-haired hater of daydreams, floating in a sea of the dead.
Not bad, but he has done better.
Jon puts aside the manuscript he’s working on, and grabs a fresh sheet of paper. Something new this time. A red woman in a garden of bones. And her lonely worshipper, a universe and one backyard away.
He begins to write.