Owl to Susan Sto Helit (closed RP for Susan and Charles Macaulay)

[charlesmacaulay]

((Backdated to just after Henry Winter and Camilla Macaulay's wedding.))

Comments

[usethepoker]

Susan would not have needed to take care of herself, if she hadn't wanted to, but she'd chosen to go out into the real world, like a real person, even if she wasn't exactly normal. A job was more than just regular wages, after all.

She could likely understand, though, that such self-reliance just wasn't possible for Camilla, at least for any extended period of time. Camilla was strong, in her way, but it wasn't the kind of strength that would get you very far in the ordinary world--perhaps it went with that aura of rarified taste. It was almost a kind of fragility, in its own way.

"I can't imagine that," she said, pulling her wand out of her boot to light her cigarette and pausing midway through. "Being one of the ones who can't. You'd be forever at the mercy of other people, which is something I can't even begin to comprehend."

She tucked the pack back into her pocket and actually lit her cigarette. While she didn't know just what Lent was, it sounded like some sort of holiday, so it made sense even if the reference itself was lost. "It's all a matter of give and take, really. So many cultures teach that you should give, always give, and that anything you have for yourself should be given by someone else. What they ought to tell you, and don't, is that there has to be some part of you that's just yours. The people who don't do that are oftentimes the ones who can't make it on their own." Charles might think Camilla couldn't take care of herself, but Susan had a hunch that Henry couldn't hack it without Camilla, either. They were mutually dependent, and Susan now had a relfexive aversion to dependence.

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles tried to drown his bitterness in his cocoa. It didn't work. Cocoa just couldn't beat whiskey for that. He had to give an unpleasant little chuckle. "You know what my sister would say to that? She'd say, if we have it all figured out, why are we the ones sitting in a dreary dive on our own, and they're the ones having the time of their lives on a Mediterranean holiday?"

Somehow the bitterness only hardened his face in a way that made it not at all ugly, only more solid, an appealing hardness that firmed his boyish good looks into something stronger.

[usethepoker]

Susan wasn't bitter, anymore. What she was, was tired--the sort of tiredness one might feel while recovering from major surgery, which in a way she was.

"Ah, but you see," she said, gesturing with her cigarette for emphasis, "we're not alone. We've wisely foregathered with one another, rather than mourn the fact that we're still stuck in dreary Scotland while they're off in the sun. And," she added, eying her cup, "they almost certainly don't have cocoa. With minimarshmallows." Somehow, that really did seem like an immense advantage, and she laughed, quietly. "So in a way we're way ahead of them."

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles would be bitter till kingdom come. He didn't always have to show it, that was all. Right now he was being a little self-indulgent.

"Point," he said. "Or rather half a point. Because if Camilla happened to decide on a whim she wanted cocoa, right at this moment, what do you think would happen?"

Henry would probably move heaven and earth to get her some damn cocoa, that was what.

"Still I award you an A for effort," he decided, with a sudden grin. "We have indeed wisely foregathered, and one man's dive is another man's palace. I'd take this place over Madam Puddifoot's any day." Charles didn't know Camilla had in fact gone to Madam Puddifoot's, nor that she'd taken Susan there. He just guessed it would be the kind of place Camilla would want to go. (Admittedly it would also be the kind of place Nana would want to go. But some of Camilla's prejudices had come from Nana, too -- had been in place long before Hampden.)

[usethepoker]

Susan had to admit the other half-point. It must be nice, to have someone who would be so devoted to you, though on the other hand it could well prove smothering in unending amounts.

"True," she said, upending her mug and wiping away another marshmallow mustache with immense dignity. "And don't even get me started on Madam Puddifoot's. Camilla and I went there for tea, once, sight unseen--I wasn't even really human at the time and I thought it was awful. I think Camilla did, too, though she was much too polite to say so. I've noticed that she's never even remotely rude, but she can get this sort of stricken look, usually when she's confronted with something mind-bendingly awful. Which, believe me, Madam Puddifoot's was. Nobody should be allowed to put ruffles on lampshades."

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles set down his mug with a clunk. "You actually went there?" Ruffles on the lampshades ... oh, he could see in his mind's eye that look, the stricken look Susan was describing. When someone meant to be tasteless, Camilla would go cold and blank to freeze them out, but when she was sure they didn't mean it and they just didn't have the taste God gave a warthog, then she got embarrassed on their behalf.

"You really did, didn't you?" He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed this hard. "She made you stay, too, I bet. Couldn't just turn around and walk out when she saw what she'd gotten into."

[usethepoker]

"We did," she said, trying not to join his laughter and failing. "And she did. I really don't think she wanted to, but somehow she just sailed onward, right through the most bizarre assortment of tea sandwiches I think I've ever seen. Incidentally, where on earth did she pick up a liking for cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches? I like each on its own, but why someone would ever think to combine the two... Well. Perhaps it's just a cultural difference." The diplomatic way of putting it, at least.

[charlesmacaulay]

"You don't like cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches?" His astonishment wasn't feigned for humor. It was genuine. The twins assumed everyone liked cream cheese and marmalade.

[usethepoker]

Susan laughed. "Not together, no," she said. "Then again, I'm not really fond of tea sandwiches in general. They don't fill you up--all they do is make you hungrier."

[charlesmacaulay]

"That just goes to show you haven't had a proper cream-cheese-and-marmalade sandwich. It ought to be on really thick bread, ideally wheat or even pumpernickel if it's around. It's substantial in its own right," Charles insisted, wide-eyed and earnest. "Tea sandwiches are little flimsy thin things. A good cream cheese and marmalade sandwich is anything but."

[usethepoker]

Something about his earnestness made Susan smile. There was something almost childlike about it, even though there was nothing childlike about Charles himself. It was a different sort of earnestness than Camilla's, certainly, even if in some ways they suggested one another.

"I might have to try a piece of one, maybe," she said, somewhat doubtful. "Though I think it might wind up with nougat on the 'not a chance' list." There were few things Susan genuinely hated, but nougat was one of them.

[charlesmacaulay]

As quick as that, Charles was up from his seat and over at the bar, having a word with the barman. He appeared to be having an almost showily surreptitious conversation with the man -- whether for Susan's benefit or the man's might be hard to say, but all evidence pointed to the latter, considering that when the man disappeared into a back room for a moment, Charles threw a quick look and a wink over his shoulder to Susan.

Whatever twin-magic he'd worked, Charles returned to the table with a grubby checkered cloth in which was wrapped the queen of all cream-cheese-and-marmalade sandwiches, made to the specifications he'd just mentioned: a thick crusty dark bread, probably what the barman himself liked, spread thickly with cream cheese and with a tart golden citrus jelly. It was in fact bitter orange marmalade, which Charles believed made the cream cheese seem sweeter. He'd become a connoisseur of marmalades.

"There." He placed it on the table before Susan with a triumphant expectant air. "I'm throwing down the gauntlet."

[usethepoker]

Susan stared at the sandwich a moment, and let out a peal of honest, unreserved laughter. "Oh, well, if it's a dare, I suppose I have no choice," she said, unwrapping the cloth. She took an experimental bite, hoping she wasn't about to be utterly sickened. Much to her surprise, it was rather better than the anemic sandwiches she'd had at Madam Puddifoot's. It wasn't something she'd choose to eat every day, but it wasn't grotesque, either.

"Not bad," she said. "Though I don't think I can eat the whole thing." It really was a huge sandwich, and while Susan had a capacity for food that seemed rather astonishing for her size, there was no way she could eat it all.

[charlesmacaulay]

"Don't worry, we won't let it go to waste." Charles took it from her and tore off rather a sizable chunk before handing the rest back. Sticky-fingered, grinning, he munched at his hunk of dairy-and-citrus bliss. It was childlike, in the way Camilla could sometimes seem too -- childlike without being childish or twee, somehow. Innocent.

[usethepoker]

All right, it was quite impossible to remain in a brown study when the person across from you has just taken a giant bite out of your sandwich. Susan snorted into her cocoa, very nearly sending it out her nose, and managed to laugh and cough all at once.

"Well, that's one way to solve the problem," she said, wiping her mouth on her handkerchief and taking the sandwich back. The piece she took was not nearly so large as Charles's, but she was certainly doing her part. She tried to imagine Camilla doing such a thing and failed, but certainly she must have at some point, having grown up with Charles. Then again, if one took into account Camilla's ability to climb trees like a monkey, it made it easier to picture.

[charlesmacaulay]

"So, the verdict?" Sandwich in one hand, he extricated his handkerchief from an inner breast pocket with the other, and laid it out as an impromptu placemat on which he could then set the sandwich down. "I could live on this stuff, personally. I think Camilla and I both did, for weeks on end. Especially when papers were due."

Cream cheese and marmalade were the flavors of a happier time.

"My feelings won't be hurt if you don't like it, of course," he assured Susan. "More for me that way. But if you end up not liking Lucky Charms either, I might start to think it's personal."

It was a light little joke -- he clearly didn't have any personal attachment to Lucky Charms cereal (though his relationship to cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches might be perceptibly fraught). Susan's reaction to the sandwich, cocoa-spluttering and all, had launched him into a more effusive and jovial mood.