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Christmas in England, in Phryne’s experience, was almost uniformly awful. English December blew with damp, grey leaves that splatted on one’s shoes and puddled or slimed the walk. It was fogged with glum rainclouds that either emptied rain in dispirited heaves, or merely hovered over one like a melancholy widow over a coffin. And that was to say nothing of the actual business of the holiday. Christmas in Melbourne had been hot and sticky, sunshiny and wonderful, with new hats and ice lollies and cold turkey when there was money, and bouquets of wildflowers and shrieking dips in the sea and penny candy even when there wasn’t. Christmas in England was her father drowning in port, her mother fretfully arguing with Cook about the state of the dinners, and Phryne cajoling her way into every schoolfriend’s party she could find, just so she didn’t have to sit alone by the fire and think too much. Phryne hadn’t expected anything different when she found herself in England in 1929, with the end of November crawling ominously towards her, and her mother had started to make sentimental appeals about: “Just one more Christmas before you return to the Antipodes, Phryne, pet.” There had been some slammed doors in the townhouse and some atrocious scenes, foreboding the worst.
But now, with Jack here, with his kiss still searing on her lips, and his battered bags jammed into the back of the car that her mother had insisted on them taking down to Southampton, to “see about your father’s ticket darling, I’m getting nowhere with the telephone,” she was feeling that perhaps Christmas would be, if not enjoyable, then perhaps tolerable for the first time in many years. That is, until her mother started talking. She hadn’t heard the beginning of it – she had been rather too giddy to pay attention to whatever prattle her mother was using to distract the driver from gathering fodder for his next foray down to the pub to gossip about the Missus and her no-good wastrel of a husband and the Fast Woman that was her daughter. But the penny dropped when the car turned down an unfamiliar street some blocks from her parents’ winter residence in Guildford.
“Mother, where on earth are we going?” She clenched at Jack’s gloved hand reflexively as Mrs. Fisher replied with an all-too-studied carelessness, the slicked black-and-grey of her mother’s pinned hair, snug beneath Very Proper Hat all that was visible of her face as she stared resolutely out the window.
“Pet, have you not been listening? Your poor beweathered guest here has his own lodgings, and we need to get him arranged before we go home for the party tonight.”
“Mother! What on earth kind of hospitality is this? Jack not staying with us? Impossible!” The car pulled to the kerb, and the two men got out to let mother and daughter sort things out between them. The driver hurried to fetch out the bags with his face like a mask. Jack considered staying, but the fire flashing in Phryne’s eyes and her abrupt gesture reminded him that this was a battle she had fought for herself many, many times. As he closed the car door, he caught a snippet of a phrase falling from Mrs. Fisher’s lips “...just like your father…” He shook his head, feeling the ejection almost like a shove to the sternum.
It was an appalling row. Phryne and her mother had come closer to blows than she could ever remember, save for one hideous, window-shattering fight where her mother had determined to do nothing for Janey’s birthday. But this one was almost as bad. Quite literally the only thing that had held her mother back from violence was that Margaret had been sitting on her own coat when her arm began to rise of its own accord, and that moment of restraint had been enough for Phryne to come to her senses and exit the vehicle. She was breathless and furious, unwilling to meet Jack’s face.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” she said, speech clipped. “My mother and I don’t see eye-to-eye at the best of times, and her financial straits being what they are, she’s being more stubborn than usual.” She gave one last fiery glance at the car, and the driver tipped his cap politely, all but leapt in, and sped away. “Barber will be back with the car later on to pick you, as you are now, formally, invited to my parents’ Christmas party. Do you have a dress suit?”
“Surprisingly, I do, but,” he said, a little hesitant. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on…”
“No, no,” she insisted, slipping her hand into his once more, though with less verve than before. “If we have no visitors, we intrude on each other, and that,” she growled in the direction of the retreating car, “is the result.” Jack nodded his understanding. It wasn’t precisely the arrival he’d expected, but the journey itself had defied the stories he’d told himself as well. Looking up at the unilluminated window above them, undoubtedly still cold while whoever Margaret had paid got around to bring up his bags and light a fire, then around at the sky that was just starting to dim with snow-laden clouds, he made another Fisherine decision.
“Then, I have you to myself for the moment,” he rumbled. “Would you, care, Miss Fisher, to be my escort? I’m a man alone in a strange and dangerous city, full of all sorts of hooligans, and no badge to protect me.” A smile glinted in her eyes once more, and he caught himself feeling all sorts of foolishly happy as he offered her his elbow.
“I can’t promise to make it less dangerous, I’m afraid,” she said, with a shake of her head that made her earrings jingle. “But I think we can find ourselves some fun on this dreary day.”
She was as good as her word, though it took a little time. The afternoon wore away in an even wash of glum cloud that threatened snow, with sharp nips here and there of chill wind that slipped between the low drag of his hat brim and the turn-up of his coat collar. She bought him a scarf and tucked it in neatly, but where once there had been fire in that action, it was now a solemn acknowledgement that things might very well be serious. Jack found that their conversation was a curious, piled-bubble affair. The natural alchemy of their being together was still present, but his uncertainty, her melancholy, and the simple lapse of time gone by meant that subjects were easily addressed and laughed about, but in between there were long silences that he was never quite sure of the tenor of.
It wasn’t until they were shoulder to shoulder, leaning on the railing that ran along the Basingstoke canal, watching birds bob on the water and a few enterprising boats bumping their way toward London that she broached the subject of her parents again. “Father will,” she said, “be happy to see you, all things considered.” She looked far off, not seeing the clouds of factory smoke blending seamlessly into the iron sky.
“The Baron has forgiven me?” Jack was wry.
“He’s probably going to try to recruit you as one man to another,” she scoffed. “He’s been complaining about feeling outnumbered.” She scooped up a rock from the frozen ground and pitched it toward the water, where it landed with a mild ploonk. “Between my wresting the finances from his clutches and mother being quite free to watch him like a hawk, he’s had no scope for his usual nonsense.”
“As opposed to being in your aeroplane?”
“He tried,” she said. “I threatened to do a barrel roll over the Indian Ocean.” Jack couldn’t help it. He snorted, and the look of surprise on her face made him outright laugh.
“Do you know,” he said between chuckles. “That was almost exactly the rumor.” She shifted to face him, curiosity engaged. “Well, one of them,” he amended. “Your father’s charm had clearly reached its limits.”
“Were there any others?”
“Most of them involved the Russians, I believe,” he replied, and now she was glimmering with a smile. “Although one did come through Constable Jackson’s informant. Something about the sheila detective nosing herself an opal mine and disappearing nearabouts Coober Petty.”
“Now that would be one I wouldn’t mind being true,” she said. “A few opals to shore up the finances and a handy mineshaft for Father.” She heaved as un-Phryne-like a sigh as he had ever heard from her – a puff of cloud with tears at the back of it. “I’m sorry Jack,” she said. She shrugged, but didn’t pretend. There was no need for it. “Christmas here is… difficult. My parents are not making me miss Wardlow any less, for all their banging on about goose and tapers and snow. All the same,” she added, slipping a red-gloved hand into his pocket to clasp his own, “at least one of the things I thought I would be missing is here.”
“Well then,” he said, squeezing those brave fingers tight. “Why don’t we go find some more?”
“Jack?”
“I’ve been craving some saltwater taffy,” he whispered conspiratorially, close enough to her ear to feel the tickle of her hat feathers. “You don’t suppose we could find a shop?” The look that lit her face, he thought later, was all the better for the cloud it had superseded.
The gleaming panes of shop windows now were portals to exploration and excitement. The road presented a glittering array of amber and gold panels of electric light, lamplight, and candlelight cast on the snow, turning the murk into mystery beckoning them to each in turn. They found a candy shop and sifted it fine for the proper sweets, then tasted their bounty on the sidewalk. If any didn’t make the grade, the remains were easily distributed amongst the children swarming about the man driving the postal wagon. They found oranges and a cracker pack each, then went hunting for proper cotton stockings – not the oversized woolen affairs that were for winter children with much chillier feet. Jack obtained a pair of socks knit with a rather fetching circles pattern in green, and Phryne’s were, of course, a daring crimson. In the toy shop, Phryne ducked away with patently obvious secrecy, and Jack used the moment to have the present he’d bought for her wrapped, with a few quick additions to the bundle. When she returned, it was clear she’d done the same. Arm in arm, they crossed back over the river, more starry-eyed than either realized. When the account of What That Fisher Woman Did went around later, Mr. Coleman the tobacconist, would not be persuaded for anything that they weren’t on their honeymoon and doing the Christmas shop for the kiddies from the man’s first marriage.
Jack dropped her at her parents’ doorstep with the parcels, which were handed carefully to Barber to be secreted away in her room.
“I’ll organize things while I dress,” she said solemnly. “We’ll do it properly after dinner, when my parents forget where I am during the party.” Baroness Fisher was watching, hawklike, from a side room, and Jack wasn’t entirely sure she would be forgetting so much so much as the color of his shoelaces. And was she making notes? He shook his head and snugged his new scarf tighter about his ears.
When he arrived at the party, it was beginning to pick up speed. The Fishers arrayed in splendor were intensely vibrant – a fire stoked almost too high, a song heard from right in front of the band, a drink poured more stiffly than one expected. The lights blazed, the music insisted on being heard in every corner of the downstairs rooms. The Baron scooped Jack from the stoop almost before the footman had collected his coat, whisking him up into the chaos like a pilot boat to navigate a dangerous passage. A drink was pressed into his hand, and he was toured from room to room with barely a chance to register the contents or occupants. Brass grates, leaping fires, fine carpets, carved furniture, low conversation, all spun past like film in a reel. At some point, the conversation he was supposed to be having began to demand more attention, and his hearing dialed once more in on the Baron. “The rumor is,” Henry was saying, “my sister-in-law is rather more eager to have Phryne stay here.” A trim couple in gray velveteen and precisely-cut wool strolled past, pretending not to eavesdrop. Jack felt the world tilt slightly, but his glass had been barely touched. The Baron continued, addressing his comments to one of the several people orbiting the billiards table in the room where they had landed. “I suppose she’ll run roughshod over me for a few weeks more, before our card parties resume. Unless you intend to pop the question, eh Robinson? Ball and chain to anchor the dear girl? But then we’d have a copper in the family.”
The wattage of the room turned on Jack, and he felt, once again, the curious sensation of occupying a most Fisherine space indeed. “I’ve already arrested my father-in-law once,” he said, setting down his drink lightly. Henry swallowed hard and his smile became fixed. “I don’t know I’d care to do it again. But I’ve no darbies of any sheen with me in any case .” Jack noticed the betting chat and slips that had been sprinkled about the room were swept away in a spontaneous tide of small talk about the weather and roads, while Henry, seeming satisfied that Jack was not about to make any grand declarations, (or accusations) wandered away to flirt with the woman trilling “Bye Bye Blackbird” in the parlor. Whoever the Aussie was, the room seemed to have decided, it was better to keep things up to the line until after cognac and cigars, when he would hopefully leave them all be. Jack straightened his shoulders with an armored firmness and looked up. Phryne was on the stairs, wrapped parcel in one hand, a knowing, grateful look in her eye. Delicately, she tilted her chin towards the door on her right, then vanished inside.
Jack counted to a hundred, looking resolutely out the window at the snowflakes that had begun to swirl down in artful patterns, in and out of the light spilling from the glazed panes. Margaret passed by, noted that the detective was acting impeccably, even if her husband was not, and moved along to deal with a maid weeping in a side room. But as soon as the long hem of her dress had passed through to the opposite side of the house, Jack vanished up the stairs. Barber, more attuned to such things, moved decorously through, collected the empty glass, in order to dispose of the evidence, and continued on to the parlor. The master of the house was getting ready for a fine display of old-fashioned Christmas lechery, and damage control was likely to be necessary.
Upstairs, in Phryne’s room, the fire was blazing. Two stockings, one green, one red, had been pinned above it, rounded at the toe with oranges, and taffy bursting exuberantly from the top. Phryne had arranged a small table with summery sandwiches of cress and cucumber, though as a concession to the weather, there was a teapot, rather than a pitcher of lemonade. “Presents first or stockings?” he asked casually, draping his suit coat over the top of her chair. From the opposite chair, she produced their parcels.
“This for me, that for you,” she said. But her hand trembled as she held the little box he’d had wrapped in the shop, the golden ribbon glittering aggressively in the firelight.
“Is everything all right?” He sat across from her, eyes searching.
“My parents…” Phryne swallowed hard, and her foot, tucked beneath her, wobbled unconsciously. “They’ve all but convinced me that this is a ring box. That you’ve come to collect on promises unspoken, take over as lord of the manor, if you like. Mother asked about a trousseau as soon as you’d left the doorstep.”
“The only way a respectable fellow such as myself would come after you?”
“I… not in so many words.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to disabuse them of that notion,” he replied. “I’ll have you know, I convinced the entire steamer I was a jewel smuggler. Or was it a spy for the Czar? Hard to recall. I’ve been a rogue, all things considered.” Jack paused, watched her face rise from an inward-looking dread to meet him with curiosity and joy. “Whatever lie runs round the world ahead of us, Phryne, the truth is the thing we will seek out together.” He nudged her hand, and she tore through the wrapping to reveal his present. Under the little lid lay, not the golden band she had been dreading, but a piece of crystal, winking softly in the firelight, with a necklace chain attached.
“A magnifying glass?”
“To better see the detail on the other one.” He gave her a knowing look and her shoulders straightened with delight. The larger of the two packets was more battered, and wrapped in heavy brown paper, rather than colored Christmas foil. “I had that printed before I left, and it’s been riding about in my jacket pocket.”
In the shallow box, a piece of tissue covered a stack of printed parchment. The illustration on each sheet was of a woman on a mountain, facing away from the reader and looking out over a ruined city. She was bare to the waist, and her familiar bobbed black hair revealed every muscle of her back and arms as she leaned against a single Grecian pillar coiled around with flowers and vines. Scripted in the sky was a single word – Fisher. Phryne lifted the cards as if they were crystal, and did indeed pull the magnifier from its box to look at the drawing, the delicate watercolors vibrant despite the long journey.
“I was owed a favor by an illustrator friend,” Jack said quietly. “And I wanted something that was… you. For all you are and all I know of you as. And since they are bookplates, you can put them in any tome you like, and make the story your own.” The laughter that spilled from her was the most welcome sound he had ever heard.
“Open yours,” she said, and he did as he was told. A book emerged from the wrapping, bound in half-cloth.
“Swiss Family Robinson?”
“It’s a double edition with Crusoe,” she said, still giggling. “Rare as all get out. And because some days all I really want to do is run off to an island and tame ostriches and live in a treehouse, and sometimes I hope you’d like to do the same.” She looked as if she had more to say, but as she spoke, there was a series of shouts and the crashing of glass from outside. Both Jack and Phryne rose and hurried to the window, but it was iced over. Impulsively, Jack flung up the sash, and a whirl of snow blustered in, bringing with it the shouts from below. Out on the street, lit by a heroically struggling lamp, Henry was brawling.
“Take that, you poltroon!” From what they could see, it appeared the band leader had taken offense to Henry’s attitude with the singer. The Baron’s nose was bleeding, and the band leader’s light hair was standing awry from having been put in a headlock. Another thud sounded, and cheers went up from the party guests watching on the lower floor as the bandleader crumpled into the snow. From across the street, the hansom boys waiting began to hoot as well. “In my own house, I shall speak as I please!” Henry said.
“I knew I should have hired a string quartet,” Phryne grumbled. But before she could shout to try and break up the fight, a snowball whisked past her cheek and pelted Henry on the back of the head. Startled, he sprang back from his victim, looking about for the source of this new assault. Jack looked sidelong at Phryne, brushing off snow from his hands as shouts and snow began to fly below, the elegant party degenerating into a sozzled snowball fight.
“I think we should let your mother clean that one up,” he said. “We haven’t finished presents. Would you care to lock the door?”
“Immensely,” she replied. The snap of the bolt sent a chill down his back that had nearly nothing to do with the still-open window, and when she return, the laughter bubbled out of her yet again.
“There’s snow everywhere,” she said, pulling down the sash and drawing the curtain. “You have it in your hair.”
“So do you,” he said, looking her over. “Could you…?” She began to brush him down, but her hands grew slower as she drew nearer to his face. Jack held his breath, willing the snowflakes in her eyelashes to stay. They adorned her like tinsel, like stolen diamonds. Her hands curled around his, lifting them to her mouth to warm them. He drew a thumb across her cheekbone, wiping away a drop that could have been melting snow and could have been a single tear.
“Happy Christmas Phryne?” He gave her a gentle smile.
“Happy Christmas,” she whispered, just before his lips met hers.