Chapter Text
Hester is not particularly fond of the vicar.
He’s one of those slightly pompous and fundamentally lazy older men who like to hold forth with religious platitudes that lack severely in either foundation or explanation, and Hester may have a somewhat lacklustre grasp (and interest) in theology, but when one spends all day with men of a similar stripe it is hard not to recognise bluster when one hears it. One could wish that one’s spiritual guidance might be tempered with a little better understanding or sense, but her lodgings sit squarely in the parish and the hymns align well enough in taste to her own, and some of the old ladies take Hester under their wing when she shows up which makes her feel liberatingly young for a change, so she’s never taken it upon herself to look further afield (in fairness to the vicar, his failings seem somewhat endemic to the breed so there may be no help for it). She’s little enough free on a Sunday morning as it is.
So she’s a little surprised to find the slightly rote and dusty religious feelings of her heart waking, this particular Sunday morning. Something about the readings with that distinctive overly-careful diction to account for the echoes, or maybe the steady and dogged march of the hymns (the distilled humanity of a hundred plodding singing voices of every ability), or maybe just the season into which they now embark, nudges open her chest to a hazy remembrance of uncomplicated faith. It is the first Sunday of Advent, the altar guild have done their best with limited resources for decorating the church, all eyes are turned to Christmas, and unexpectedly, Hester finds herself free from work long enough to be sitting in a pew next to the elderly Betty and Mabel in their woollen Sunday best, helping them turn the superfine paper with their arthritic fingers to the right page in the hymn book.
“I’m so glad you were able to come today,” Mabel says, her bony hands sharp and frail as they shake hands during the Peace. (Mabel is a perfectly unremarkable height for a lady of at least seventy-five and consequently Hester has to bend almost double to better hear her.) “How have you been?”
It’s not a question Hester particularly wants to answer, today, because John is in Tehran.
(John is in Tehran for the conference, 4000 miles of U-boats and anti-aircraft flak away, and he is standing in the same rooms as Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin and top brass of the Allied powers, and the whole world knows they’re there. All week there’s been intelligence chatter from the Russians about risk of assassination attempts – how compelling a target it must present for the Nazis.)
“I’ve been well,” Hester says, reflexively, and then “And also with you” to a tall, thin man from the pew in front who extends the Peace to her.
Mabel pats her thigh as they resume their seats (which Hester bears as politely as she can although she dislikes being manhandled so on principle), and whispers over, “You seem like you have a lot on your mind, my dear.”
(Three days ago John was likely on an Allied ship off the coast of Northern Africa. Two days ago an Allied ship sank off the coast of Northern Africa, killing one thousand men (the numbers appal) whose families may even now be being notified. This time next week John may, once again, be on an Allied ship off the coast of Northern Africa.)
(And… a few weeks ago:
“I want you to have a key to my house.”
Hester pauses, disbelieving, buttoning her coat to leave John’s house in the evening. John is beside her, pulling on his own to escort her back in the black-out, and he’s carefully not looking at her when he says it.
“John,” she says, half chiding and half confused.
“I mean it. Please – you don’t have to use it, but I would feel better to know you had the option. I worry about you in the black-out and there are times I'm late when we meet.”
It’s faintly scandalous and Hester is in fact faintly scandalized. It’s one thing to visit John’s home for dinner, they are trying to skirt that fine line of neither advertising nor strictly concealing their relationship, which limits options on the town, while the sun (not to mention weather) has been against them for weeks in terms of options outdoors. Her own lodgings invite far too much comment. But this is some new level of intimacy and some shade of kept woman, of no better than she ought to be, to have free access to a man’s property without his hand to accompany it, no matter their actual conduct – it makes her cringe to think of people finding out. It’s nothing she would ever have dreamed of for herself, and she’s found these past months with John that dreams she’d thought long dead were just dormant, little changed.
“John, I couldn’t possibly. It’s not appropriate –”
Gently - “If I thought you would accept anything else, I would offer you that instead. Am I mistaken?”
It's quietly devastating. Not entirely a surprise, and the sentiment behind it is so welcome, but.
Once upon a time, Tom had gone down on one knee for her in the lush grass of his garden, so handsome and youthful (in the shroud of his uniform) and had asked her to share a lifetime with him. John stands on the colourful tiles of his front hallway, matter-of-fact, another man in another war in another uniform, and presses her to accept a key because he fears she wouldn’t accept more. She’s dreadfully afraid he’s right.
He takes her hand in his and she lets him, lets it happen. A body-warm key to her palm and then automatically to her keyring to keep it safe, but she can’t look at it, can’t think about it, can’t forget it. He walks her home speaking determinedly of other things, as though nothing at all was said.)
(And now, John is in Tehran.)
Up front, the vicar extends a long taper to light the first candle of Advent, and that guttering flicker of religious feeling remembers for a moment the warmth of Christmasses past, of a trusting childhood and Nativity Plays and lights in the darkness of the year. The flame is so tiny from this many rows back, delicate and brightly alive.
The key is a heavy presence in her pocket, though, and it's been several decades since Hester dared to trust that tragedies might pass her by. There will be no lights this Christmas in the darkness – blackout starts at half past five. Tomorrow she will be at work, and she will be put together, beyond reproach, an impeccable example of morale.
“Just the usual,” she says to Mabel, and parrots some detestable platitude about the war effort.