Work Text:
September, 1922
We have made arrangements with the Rydals to take over Fox Corner, ran the latest of Mara's letters.
'Good,' said several people in chorus around the Larkrise breakfast table, Faith Blythe not least of them. The women had been friends since unversity, when they roomed together. At the time it was a money-saving scheme convenient to both of them. That was before they got to be friends, and doubly before they both married one of the Blythe boys.
It was also before Shirley and his half-fairy bride had hied off to Scotland for honeymoon, and Faith and the denizens of Larkrise had begun entertaining a very real suspicion they wouldn't come back. So had Susan Baker, who complained volubly over the phone that she didn't believe Scotland did the 'Susan Brand' of fudge, and so her little brown boy was almost certainly bereft.
Apparently, Faith's concern wasn't shared by quite everyone.
'Told you so, Kitten,' said Teddy Lovall, with the merest hint of satisfaction to Catherine Forster, reporter. Opposite him, Kitty rolled her eyes.
Faith didn't even try to stifle her laughter. She did wonder exactly how much quieter her home life would be if she hadn't agreed to board not only Jem's colleague from the station house, but also Kitty, enthusiastic reporter for The Kingsport Chronicle.
'You never did,' said Kitty. 'And you owe me that story...'
Faith let them bicker. They were always bickering. So, the answer to that question was significantly quieter. On the other hand, Faith wouldn't change it. Jem seemed to agree. He likewise ignored their bickering lodgers in favour of placidly feeding scraps of bacon to God Tuesday, blue dachshund par excellence. Currently, he was unlawfully ensconced on Jem's knees, his blue nose courting the tabletop with cunning aforethought.
'Someone,' said Faith, because one of their quartet had to be practical, 'should act for them on this side of the Atlantic. Do the boring stuff, you know? Lawyers and that. I'll write back and put us foreward.'
'You do that,' said Jem with the unconcern of one who hadn't been listening to a word his wife was saying. Tuesday took the opportunity to snatch a whole piece of bacon from his benefactor's plate. Jem let that go, too.
'Jem?' said Faith. 'Your borther? This housing scheme?'
'Hm?' said Jem. 'Oh, yes. If it brings them home faster, by all means. Though,' and he grinned the Blythe grin, all Puckian mischief and charm, 'I'm pretty sure Scotland has fudge. I was telling Susan. They call it something else, though. Slate?'
'Tablet,' said Teddy with the authority of one who could actually bake. 'Totally different texture.'
Kitty nudged Faith with her elbow, and improbably smeared ink thereon in the process. Faith had no idea how it happened. No matter.
'What else does Mara say?' asked the ever-curious reporter.
In fact, Mara wrote lots else, about gorse, and the neighbours, and how very happy they were, but Faith never got the chance to disclose it, because by then her infant son was clamouring for attention. Faith handed Kitty the letter, plucked the baby from his chair, and lef the others to negotiate the epistolary tangle that was Mara's latest.
Larkrise, October, 1922
We could have done with your eyes on Jem's latest case, wrote Faith in the latest of the letters to Scotland. It happened at the Kingsly farmstead in Goderich, which I hadn't realised was even in Geordie's jurisdiction, but is definitely part of Shirley's veterinary arm. I remember that because…
On like that she went. All about Inspector Geordie Carlisle's continued wonder at the workings of rural life, and the latest misadventure of little Christopher, God Tuesday, the Carlisle gremlins and Teddy. She glossed lightly over the hole Mara and Shirley left in their going; The way she and Judith missed that other, sane person to weather an evening of Gilbert and Sullivan with, their presence around the coffee table, lightly batting back and forth theories about the murder of the hour.
Oh, she thought about it, but as she said to Kitty, it wouldn't be fair. Once, Faith had been the one in Europe on the receiving end of all the endless I miss yous, and she had been grateful, but it was complicated, because as much as she had missed Una and the others, the V.A.D. had been exactly where she was supposed to be at the time. Patently, Scotland was where Mara and Shirley belonged, at least for the moment.
So, she left the newleyweds to their happiness. The girls of Swallowgate had never held each other hostage to societal obligation, and Faith, of all people, wouldn't start now. Leave the wish you were heres and the haste ye backs to other people who meant them just as much.
Kitty hummed over her typewriter. The keys clacked contrapuntally to the crackling fire. 'It could be a holiday home,' she mused as Faith handed her a mug of sloshing Red Rose.
'On a vet's salary?' asked Jem/ 'A rural one at that? Not bloody likely.'
Teddy yelped and clapped his hands over the baby's ears. They ended in laughter. Trust Jem to see to that.
Nov. 1922
They arrived just as Faith was straightening out the Fox Corner kitchen under the dictatorial instructions of Judith Carlisle. Of course they did. And this was no small undertaking Shirley and Mara interrupted. There were military campaigns run with less precision and attention to agonizing detail than the reconstruction of the Fox Corner kitchen per the whims of the local Inspector's wife.
So, there was Faith, with her hands submerged in soapy water, and Judith Carlisle beside her, rinsing the crockery. The one rosey-haired and golden-eyed as ever, the other tall and brown and brooking no nonsense. But there were laugh lines at her eyes and mouth, and Faith coaxed more of them into existence with every passing second, aided by her young son.
Naturally, mired in this hopeless position, Faith heard the others before she saw them. Jem's almighty yelp of surprise was the giveaway. It was followed in rapid succession by an indignant exclamation.
'I thought pranks were my territory!'
This should have eliminated the last vestiges of Faith's surprise when icy hands descended over her eyes and a voice from behind her said in nursery-rhyme lilt, 'Leave those, a charaid, they'll only end up at some church bazaar or other.'
The R of bazaar had all the burr of a thistle. Faith would have known the speaker anywhere.
'You're not meant to be back!' said Faith. She ducke out from under Mara's hands and whirling to face her. 'You never wrote – we weren't expecting you until Christmas! We thought – '
'Never mind all that, Parrot,' said Mara, somehow managing to manoeuvre Faith away from the sink, even still in her travelling coat. 'We're here now.'
'Clearly,' said Faith.
She let herself be led into what was, admittedly, the other woman's sitting room, and tried dazedly to recall the contents of Mara's latest letter. How the North Sea boiled and bubbled mid-thunderstorm, how barren the gorse, the smell of the earth...Definitely nothing about ambushing her long-suffering sister-in-law and friend of years standing.
'Well, go on then, you,' said Mara as she half-pushed, half-fell with Faith onto the sofa, 'would you have the nerve to cheat Susan of her little brown boy come Christmas?'
Faith went to scrub her eyes, forgot her hands were spackled with soap, and then winced when little flecks of soapy water slid past her eyelids and stung her.
'Well?' said Mara when Faith only winced.
Faith considered that she had once given Lida Marsh her only good pair of stockings and gone bare legged to church, and that she had further cleaned house on Sunday under the horrified nose of Elder Clow. Accidentally, but even so.
'No,' said Faith. 'No, I don't suppose I would.'
Then Faith laughed a laugh as golden as her hair, and said, 'I want t o hear all about it. You cheated me out of a wickedly fun letter. You know I could have kept that secret for you.'
'And Jem?' asked Mara. 'Kitty? Teddy Lovall? He never could, if the others might. He always rubs his nose when he's lying.'
'You know that, and I know that, and Judith and Geordie surely know that,' said Faith, 'but when you think Sergent Lovall talks to Susan Baker of Ingleside, I don't know, Ariel.'
She swatted Mara with those still-soapy figners and left bedewed fingerprints behind her. Then she collapsed backwards against the sofa and succumbed helplessly to mirth.
Enter Judith Carlisle, tea tray in hand, about as unfazed as a comatose canine confronted with a burglar. So, not at all like God Tuesday, then. The older woman didn't so much as startle as she set a tray of unsolicited tea down, oblivious to the young women laughing like loons in front of her.
'You knew, I suppose,' said Faith, seeing her.
'Only where the key was,' said Judith. 'But you try being married for over twenty years to a policeman, and then we'll chat. You get used to an awful lot. A couple of unanticipated guests showing up on their own doorstep before time doesn't begin to make the list.'
She helped herself to Mara's coat, shoulders first, and said as she lifted it off of her shoulders, 'If I'd had warning, there would be food in the larder for you.'
'Naturally,' said Mara.
There was a rush of cold air as the front door swung open, and a stamping of feet on the mat as Jem's voice called out, 'You'll never guess who I've found!'
'Bet I can,' said Faith, drying her hands on her skirt. 'It's the people who live here, and all. Mara tipped your hand.'
Jem grumbled his way into the sun room, shedding snow and layers as he went. He stood rubbing his hands together over the tea tray, which had, Faith saw, bread and butter on it, despite Judith's gentle admonitions about insufficiently warning her to procure food.
'You won't have eaten, of course,' Judith said, begining to slice the bread.
'Not like that,' said Mara, and deftly took over. She crossed the bread before slicing it, because of course she did. Faith hadn't lived with her in years, but she remembered that, because when she wrote home about it, her father had been fascinated, Rosemary positively blase, and Susan Baker absolutely scandalized by what she dubbed Romish tomfoolery.
What Mara notably didn't do was contradict Judith. Judith noticed. She seized the teapot and said, 'You're coming for dinner tonight. Don't argue. We'll do you a proper meal. None of that awful stuff they serve on boats. My gremlins will be thrilled to see you.'
Shirley said something about it being Teddy Lovall the little gremlins were partial to as the tea steeped. It was a floral-scented offering of golden colour that permeated the muskiness of the house, so lately empty, and seeped readily into Faith's fingertips, still chilled and papery after their submergence in water.
'I think you'll find Tibby's rather keen on you too,' said Geordie amicably, and accepted his wife's offering of a teacup.
Chaos ensued. Everyone had questions, and everyone felt theirs had a right to be answered first. Geordie was at his Inspector's best, and Judith admirably holding her own against him. Jem, still with his adventurer's instinct, tried to steer the conversation, and Faith to talk to Mara. All the while teacups rattled against saucers in cheery counterpoint and dust eddies ran riot in the winter sunlight. Here and there the sloughing of the pine branches against the window or the bark of a fox broke through the reunion, cementing them all solidly in Kingsport. It was good, Faith thought, accepting a second slice of bread, to be all together like this again. One minute she had been convinced that Jem had had the right of it, that Scotland had swallowed their friends, and now they were back and it was as if they had never been anywhere else.
Presently Mara regained control of the teapot and inquired mildly of her interloping company, 'I thought you were after a story?'
Gentle laughter as they desisted. Teacups were replenished, Judith went for more bread, and the travellers were let go long enough to surface a quantity of tablet from a nearby case. The beribboned box went all-hands-round ('Mind you save some for the gremlins!' from Shirley), and by degrees Mara and Shirley told them about Scotland, the house, the MacDairds, the landscape. It was not much that hadn't gone into letters, but it was different, Faith thought, to hear about it in person, with the sweetness of homemade tablet on her tongue and the lilt of Mara's teuchter, not yet worn smooth again, in her ear. Their pleasure in the memory of the place had the deceptive lull of a sea current. Impossible not to be swept up and under by the pull of it. Faith listened and thought it was not unlike inhaling the sun.
Pilgrim, old cat of Swallowgate, emerged from the depths of some unsuspected corner and proceeded to mince delicately across the tea tray, lingered to lick the butter, and settled finally on Mara's knee. Absently, Mara raised a hand to his head and petted it, waiving for the time being, her usual objection to his tenure in her house. Faith smothered a smile in her teacup and affected not to watch as Pilgrim stretched out, stomach exposed and purred contentedly.
Once or twice Faith caught Jem open his mouth and close it again without speaking, and supposed that he too was trying to work up sufficient nerve to ask what no one else dared; Why come back? Across the settle Faith raised her eyebrows at him, mutely inquiring in her turn, Does it matter? Jem shrugged his answer, and Faith nodded. It was enough to have them back, to be laughing and talking over tea, the purring of the cat and the air full of the smell of tablet, lye and furniture polish. Not long ago, after all, Kitty had squinted over the latest news from Scotland and said almost fiercely, 'They're not allowed to stay.'
Nor had they. The sun came slantwise through the window, illuminating the patches of rusted fur Pilgrim had long ago acquired, and Geordie began to enumerate the virtues of some new operetta the Crown Imperial was staging. Faith noticed only dimly. Let the world throw at them ever so many convoluted operettas, murders and the chaos of children. Her family were back. There was no more need for letters.