Work Text:
June, 1933
'This,' said Teddy, hefting the last of Kitty's possessions into the car, 'is a terrible idea.'
'It's an excellent one,' said Kitty, closing the boot.
'Terrible. Who's going to take over the police beat?'
'Probably a nice young man who asks fewer questions than I do. It will do wonders for Geordie's nerves, you watch.'
Geordie glowered theatrically. Teddy harrumphed. 'And terrible things for my career,' he said.
'You'll get your promotion,' she said instead, pulling him into a hug.
'I've got to pass the bloody exam first,' said Teddy indistinctly to her hair.
'Which you will, with flying colours and write to me about,' said Kitty, then thwacked him on the back for good measure, because he knew better than to use words like bloody where Sophy Blythe was liable to hear them and appropriate them. He looked sheepish even as Kitty surfaced from the hug.
'You've got to write them too, you know,' said Faith, pulling Kitty into a hug of her own. Teddy nodded. 'Real letters,' he said, 'not shorthand.'
'Once,' said Kitty. 'I did that once, writing to Ingleside under duress.' Briefly she considered the merits of sticking her tongue out at Teddy. If he could swear, she could jolly well pull faces in good conscience. But there was a Cabbagetown rowhouse waiting for her, and a column in The Globe that was going to have her name affixed to it, and really, when Kitty thought about it, she was altogether too near greatness for anything so childish as making faces. Certainly she was much too grown up.
'It's going to be remarkably dull without you,' said Jem. 'Though I take your point about Geordie's nerves. Bet The Chronicle suffers in his stead though.'
Kitty laughed, then nearly toppled over as two chubby arms snaked their way around her knees.
'Don't go!' said the owner of said arms with remarkable ferocity for so cherubic and golden an appearance.
'I think,' said Mara, 'that translates roughly as; you are not allowed to go. Was that your turn of phrase, a leannan?'
'You were in Scotland,' said Kitty, indignant.
'And we came back,' said Mara, apparently pointedly. Kitty knew better; had long ago learned the twitch of the mouth that meant Mara was suppressing a smile.
'Because, you know,' said Kitty conversationally, as she endeavoured to step out of little Isobel's embrace, 'you stuck ever so close to home.'
'I didn't leave the province, anyway,' said Mara, and this time it took considerably more effort not to make a face.
Then Teddy said, 'You still haven't told me how I'm supposed to survive those Christmas functions without you.'
'You'll make do,' said Kitty. 'Maybe even stop making eyes at Miss Jennings at the courthouse and actually ask her to accompany you.'
Teddy turned a glorious shade of pink and Faith made a noise that Kitty took for a badly disguised laugh. Mara had ceased to bother about keeping a neutral expression and was smiling.
'You can write and tell me how that goes, too,' said Kitty, merciless.
'Kitten, really,' said Teddy, in credible imitation of Judith Carlisle, as he managed to stretch the word from one to three syllables.
'He'd complain if you were any different, you know,' said Jem, appropriating her elbow and pulling Kitty close. Notwithstanding the birches surrounding them and the dust of the car, he still smelled of his oddly sterile surgery, of carbolic rinse and whatever else it was that cluttered a morgue. Kitty had never liked to ask.
'Take care, won't you?' said Jem now, and Kitty rolled her eyes.
'It's a city,' she said. 'Just like this one. I'll be fine.'
'Yes, but I seem to remember someone telling me the police there were terribly corrupt,' said Teddy solemnly. 'Can't think for the life of me who it was though. Don't suppose you remember, Kitten?' This time Kitty did stick her tongue out. Teddy had earned that one. As if she couldn't still remember her own excitement over Ken Ford covering the story that was the corruption of the Toronto Police Force – and Teddy knew it. The grin that split his face proclaimed this better than an electric beacon. At her feet, Isobel dissolved into peals of laughter so violent she was forced to release Kitty, and she staggered backwards at the unexpectedness of her freedom.
'And you wonder,' said Judith, catching and snaring Kitty in an embrace, 'why she's considering writing you less than honest letters. Stick to the shorthand, darling, won't you? Stop them all haring off to your defence at no notice. It's outwith Geordie's jurisdiction, but I take leave to doubt they'd consider that.'
Exclamations of indignation followed from Teddy and company, and laughter from the women.
'We would never,' said Geordie, apparently severely, though his eyes were shining like traitorous stars. It took every last well-trained nerve honed over years of hideous interviews for Kitty to stop herself twinkling right back at him.
'No,' said Kitty. 'I would never. About the shorthand, I mean.' 'Besides,' said Kitty, grinning right back at Teddy, 'it's not as if anyone here can read shorthand or anything.'
'I can write it,' said Helen, delighted, as if there was a chance anyone would ever forget.
'I know,' said Kitty, disengaging from Judith to pull Helen, limbs and all, into a hug, inhaling one last time that smell of sun, sand and camphor that seemed to be forever stuck to Helen Blythe. Shades of Jem in this one, she thought – God help Larkrise. 'I know you can, duckling. Just not at school, yeah?'
'Once,' said Helen, and did stick her tongue out. Kitty laughed. Helen said, 'I still say it's faster.'
'It is,' said Kitty, and pulled on Helen's plait. 'And for the record, I'm still impressed you learned it from watching me. It took me ages to conquer shorthand.'
Helen grinned, leaned into the hug, and said, voice muffled, 'I can write my letters in it though, right?'
'I'd expect nothing less,' said Kitty and gave her one last, final tug on her plait. Out of the corner of her eye she just caught Jem leaning with calculated casualness on the carhorn so that it squealed and the others jumped. Tuesday, heretofore lounging lazily in a sunspot roused the alarm. Car! His bark said. Car! The one that's always here, but still! You should know! Car, car, CAR!
'Not to be terribly practical, or anything,' Jem said over the racket, 'but we've got a train to go for, and the one time we aren't on time, you can bet it will be.'
There was a mad scramble for final hugs, for kisses, and shouts of parting words as Kitty climbed into the car next to him.
'I'll miss you,' Mharie McNeilly said, pulling her close. Kitty squeezed her tight and said, 'Look after them for me, will you?'
'Always,' said Mharie, and she was laughing, because there was always something laughing in Mharie, but Kitty knew she meant it all the same. They'd be just fine.
Christopher shuffled forward and stuck out a hand – too old, somehow now, for hugs, then recalculated at the eleventh hour and crushed Kitty's ribs painfully. Sophy barralled into her stomach, and Judith handed her a box of something sweet-smelling and, from the stain on the top, obviously jam-rich, Shirley tucked a copy of The Chronicle under her arm, 'As a reminder,' he said with a grin, and there was a last frantic dash from the children to climb into the car after her. Impossible, of course, for them all to go to the station, which was why the goodbyes were happening here, at the bottom of the Larkrise walkway. Iain kissed her cheek, Isobel waved madly from the confines of her mother's arms, and Tuesday's barking more frantic ever. Gerodie shook her hand, squeezed her shoulder and said he'd be on the telephone to the Toronto Station House at the first opportunity to give them fair warning of just who and what was coming their way. It was all too much. Kitty squeezed her eyes tight shut, then opened them again on consideration, because damn it she was not going to cry. She was going to watch them until she couldn't see them anymore, so help her god. That was just the way it was. The car lurched in time with Kitty's stomach, sending the newspaper onto the baseboard, and rocking Judith's baking precariously. Then they were rolling down the lane, the earth crunching under the wheels of the auto as shouts followed them down the road.
'I meant it about the writing!'
'I meant it about the telephone!'
'Oh, never mind him! Live Toronto for both of us!'
'I'll send you the recipe for – !'
'Come back soon!'
'Don't you dare take up the Toronto police beat, Kitten.'
That was Teddy, running down the road behind them, Tuesday yapping at his heels, arm upraised in some improbable combination of salute and wave. Kitty twisted round in the car so that she could see him, cupped her hands to her mouth and said, 'And I meant it about that Detective's exam! I want to know when you sit it!'
At the station, Jem made a fuss of unpacking her trunks and cases – 'I swear you came to us with considerably less,' his half serious line – before haling a porter, slinging an arm over Kitty's shoulders and walking with her over the bridge to the departures platform.
'Strictly off the record,' he said as they went, 'I'm with Teddy about this being a terrible idea. We're going to miss you horribly.'
'Strictly off the record,' said Kitty, with a grin for him, because so help her she wasn't going to be soppy now, of all times, after wanting this so long, waiting for exactly this job, 'I tend to agree. I mean, it's a better paper, and a bigger city, and the stories are going to be wonderful, but – and this you can quote me on – the lot of you are mine.'
'Glad to hear it,' said Jem. Then the train was there, a whoosh of steam, and soot, Kitty'snose full of the smell of burning coal and crushed railside flowers. If she craned her neck she could just see where men sat, legs hanging hazardously, over the edge of that last compartment, and wondered where they were bound, what the story was there. Jem must have seen her look, because he was wearing a Cheshire Cat's grin as he pulled her into one last hug.
'Go on,' he said, pushing her towards the throbbing heart of the train, the swirl of black smoke and the noise of the engine, 'be brilliant.'