fic for venusinthenight: so that you will hear me
Title: so that you will hear me
Recipient: venusinthenight
Author: k_e_p
Characters/Pairings: Shirley/Jane; Jane/Robbie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Mentions of stalking
Summary: She needs Jane to know.
Shirley doesn’t go to Jane’s wedding.
She explains to Jane, apologetically, that she cannot attend because Jose has decided that this is to be the day that she must visit him. It is a stipulation of his surrender, she explains. Shirley must visit him once a month, on a day of his choosing. Jane, teary-eyed, says that she understands. The work comes first, she agrees. The work always comes first.
Watching Jane leave their shared flat, Shirley wonders why that must always be true.
******
It is not true, of course. Jose had requested her presence, but Shirley could easily have refused. Scotland Yard can’t actually force her to honor Jose’s ridiculous demands, and they wouldn’t try, not after the fiasco with Lester and Biggs and whoever else felt it necessary to humiliate and discredit a rival (woman) detective.
But she agrees because the idea of watching Jane get married makes her stomach twist into the knots, makes her mouth dry up, makes tears-- tears!-- spring to her eyes. She walks to Scotland Yard, her eyes swimming, and comforts herself with the knowledge that at least she doesn’t have to watch her Jane handed over to a man.
Shirley knows herself well. She has loved Jane Watson since shortly after they met. She loves Jane’s laugh, her favourite sound in the world; she loves Jane’s smile, so bright and cheerful and warm; she loves Jane’s enthusiasm for their work, her striving intellect that never, ever stops; she loves how adventurous Jane is, how easily and quickly she leaps into the fray. She loves Jane, and she cannot see her married.
So she goes to visit Jose.
She allows him his simpering, something she has always found loathsome, and tries to force herself back to her normal stern solemnity. She doesn’t want him to think her tears are for him. It doesn’t work, she thinks. Jose looks at her like he always did, every time she said no. He crows about how she must love him now that he’s in jail, which is so incredibly illogical that it actually causes her pain to hear. It isn’t just silly; it’s a poor understanding of the facts.
He recites poetry to her, and all she can think is, Oh, if I had known these words, I could have told Jane…
She listens to the beauty of the words Jose is reciting to her, words she doesn’t understand but can feel, deep in her heart, and regrets so much.
******
The thought comes to her after she kisses Jane goodbye and watches her climb into her matrimonial car. Robbie watches her with gentle, sad eyes. He might understand, she thinks. He lost Jane once before; he knows how it hurts.
She runs into Lester soon after, her idea swimming in her head, and gently sends him away, explaining that she needs to acquire ancient Basque poetry. He walks with her anyway, but she doesn’t hear a word he says, her mental ear trained on the phrases Jose spun into the air, gossamer, fragile things, like moth’s wings. Moth’s wings that could tell the one she loves how she feels.
The thought distracts her the entire way home.
******
“Bah!” she shouts, flinging yet another book away from her. She leans back in her chair, digging her fingertips into her eyes.
The week has been a long one, and not one book has produced what she needs. Apparently, no one wrote down ancient Basque poetry, at least judging from her fruitless searches.
“Shirley?” a timid voice says-- Jane’s voice, coming from over by her work station.
The typewriter has been largely silent this week as Jane has focused on packing her things, preparing to move into her new home with Robbie. Shirley’s mouth tastes foul with bitterness and regret. Jane moved into 221B with her years ago. It is their home. It is the only home she has ever wanted to share. But it is happening, and she cannot fight it anymore. Not the way she once would have fought, carelessly (carefully) waving the sordid facts of Jane’s beaus in front of her until Jane realized they were unsuitable for her.
That was, Shirley knows, selfish. But Shirley is selfless in every other aspect of her life. She saw too many cases at the law firm that were full of pointless tragedies, ones she could have stopped if she had known about them. So she gave up her comfortable home and her easy life to serve others, to help people before they became a file on her desk at the firm, and became “Mr. Holmes of 221B.”
“Shirley?” Jane asks again, firmer this time. Shirley jolts, realizing she has been lost in her head with pointless reminiscences.
“I am sorry, Jane; yes?”
Jane’s smile is wide. “You were a million miles away. Is a new case giving you trouble? Would you like me to take a look at it?”
She reaches for the book Shirley had just thrown onto her desk. “No!” Shirley says sharply. She doesn’t want Jane to know that she’s reading poetry, of all things.
It’s too late. Jane studies the cover, then glances at the spine as if it will give her more answers. Shirley places her head in her hands, sighing, while Jane flips it open.
“Spanish poetry?” she asks, her voice airy but clearly surprised.
“Yes, I…” Shirley trails off, unsure if she should lie (and if so, what to say) or tell the truth.
Jane, I love you, desperately, with all my soul, and can never say it. The poetry is to tell you, so that you may know but never understand.
“Are you learning this to speak to Jose?” Jane asks, supplying Shirley the perfect lie.
“I… yes.”
Jane sighs and perches on the edge of Shirley’s desk. “You know you don’t owe that reprehensible man a thing?”
“Of course,” Shirley says, tipping her chin up. “But I wish to understand what he’s saying, at least.”
“But you know Spanish.”
“He recites ancient Basque. I had hoped these books might have something in them. They don’t.”
Jane studies her for a moment, and then leans over, placing her fingers on Shirley’s arm. She can feel the press of them through her blouse. “You know that I am not leaving the agency, correct? And that our friendship can never be shaken, not by marriage nor distance?”
Shirley looks at the hand on her arm. “Our friendship will remain strong,” she says, knowing that is the truth. Jane may not love her in the way that she wants, but she does love her, and they have been through too much together to ever truly part.
Jane smiles once more, and presses a quick kiss to Shirley’s forehead. “Good. Now, come help me. I need to know which dresses are suitable for Mrs. Jane Summers, and which need to be donated to charity.”
It hurts Shirley’s heart, but she smiles and stands. “Of course. I live to serve.”
******
Jose disgusts her. He is a man who harasses women, a man who cannot accept a simple no, or even a complex no, and she will never love him. He can remain in prison, choosing to believe that she is attracted to him now that he is behind bars, if that is what he wants.
“I do not love you,” she tells him when she next visits, three weeks after Jane’s wedding. Jane will be leaving their shared apartment next week, for good. Shirley is running out of time.
“And yet, here you sit,” Jose replies, a smile on his lips.
She shakes her head. “I do not love you, Jose. I could not. I never will.”
She maintains firm eye contact with him until his smile begins to fade. “Then why have you come? I have told you: pretending to be smart, to be kind, are nothing, but it is a sin to pretend love.”
“I have never pretended love for you,” she says sternly, the voice she uses for clients who will not accept the reality of a woman detective. “I have always spoken the truth to you. I do not love you, and cannot.”
She sees him inhale, preparing another argument, but she cuts him off, lifting her chin defiantly. “I love Jane Watson. It is her, and only her.”
It is the first time she has said it out loud, and it is freeing. Jose looks at her, incredulous. “Jane Watson? The pale English woman who follows you around like one of your English poodles?”
“Poodles are German,” she corrects automatically, and then shakes her head. “If Jane follows me, it is because she chooses to do so. She is a willful woman; I could not impose myself upon her.”
If she could have imposed her will on Jane, she would never have married Robbie, though she does not tell Jose that part.
Jose sits in silence for a long time, staring at her. Shirley stares back at him, hoping he will let her go and end his obsession.
“Then why,” he asks again, still sounding angry, “have you come?”
“I do not love you,” she says, “but I need something from you. I need to know where I can read the Basque poetry you recited the last time I visited.”
Jose laughs. “You want me to help you? Me, a man spurned by his love? No, my dear Shirley,” he says, spitting the phrase out in a hoarse English, “I shall not help you woo your English lady.”
Shirley purses her lips, and nods. It was a desperate attempt anyway. “Very well,” she says. “You will not see me again. Live well, Jose.”
She leaves the prison, chin held high, and despairs.
******
“Is this one yours?” Jane asks, holding up a book. Shirley, sitting in front of their other shared bookshelf, looks over.
“No,” she decides, though she truly isn’t sure. Separating their book collection has been a horror, though she comforts herself with the knowledge that she at least has an excuse to visit Jane, should one of her volumes turn up missing.
“Hmm, I’m not sure it’s mine, either. I’ll put it into our ‘both’ pile.”
Shirley nods her agreement, and goes back to sorting through the pile of paper on her lap. It’s the culmination of three years together, odds and ends that they wanted to save, for one reason or another, which never had a place of their own. Legal documents and newspaper clippings, letters from family and clients, receipts and the odd scribbling that they needed. Three years, in one ridiculously large stack of paper.
She sets aside an unpaid hat bill of Jane’s, and looks at the next piece of paper. The paper is different from the paper she and Jane use in their office, and it certainly isn’t the paper that any of the shops in England use. Chilean, she decides, and as she deduces that, she realizes exactly what it is.
While visiting Santiago, on behalf of her law firm, Shirley had encountered a young man studying French at the University. He was a poet named Ricardo, and they had become friends, of sorts. They had strolled together, and he had practiced his French with her, and she had admired his poems. When she left Santiago, he had given her a few drafts of his works, the ones she had loved the best. She believes he was published shortly after she left.
This is one of the poems he gave her. A gift, he told her, to pass on.
“I think this one is yours, Shirley. Can’t imagine what use I would have for the first edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England,” Jane says, pushing a thick tome into her lap.
Shirley shoves the paper into her vest pocket, and smirks, handing the book back up to Jane. “Perhaps you should consult it before you next suggest burgling a suspect’s home.”
Jane sniffs indignantly, dropping the book onto the floor with a dramatic thud. “I only suggest that fifty percent of the time. The other fifty percent is entirely you. I think you enjoy wearing a mask.”
Shirley chuckles. She can’t deny it.
******
The day Jane leaves, Shirley feels like she’s choking.
She watches Jane as she puts the last of her books, culled from the ‘both’ pile, into her valise. Jane is wearing her pink frock, the one Shirley has always thought brought out the hue in her cheeks, and the new hat Shirley bought her, a wedding gift.
She looks lovely. Shirley clutches the paper in her hand.
“Well,” Jane says, looking around their sitting room, which is no longer really theirs.
“Well,” Shirley agrees. She likes to think she sounds calm and cool, like she does when meeting a client, but she thinks she probably sounds like she’s drowning.
“I should be going. Robbie is waiting for me,” Jane says.
“Yes.”
They stare at each other for a moment. She wants to dig them out of this moment, but she only has one more thing to say, and she can’t say it.
Abruptly, Jane reaches forward and drags Shirley into a hug. “I am going to miss you so much,” she says into Shirley’s neck. Then she pulls back, eyes wide and wet. “Not that I’m leaving! I’m not leaving. I’m just… I’m going to miss your infernal violin playing at ungodly hours, and watching you put your hair up, and rushing out to solve a case before anyone else in the world is awake. I’m… I’m going to miss us. The us we have been. For the past few years. They were…. they were good years.”
They were good years. The best years of Shirley’s life.
“We’ll have more good years,” she croaks out.
Jane brightens, pulling Shirley into another hug. “We will. Of course we will. This isn’t really good-bye, after all.”
“No.”
Jane gives her another tight squeeze, and then steps back. “Well then. Off I go! My husband is waiting for me.” She giggles and blushes, and then covers her mouth, hiding her smile. “I’ll see you in a few weeks, Shirley. I’ll be back to work after we’re settled in.”
“Yes,” she says. She can barely speak around the lump in her throat.
“All right. Well. Good-bye, Shirley! I will see you soon!”
Jane picks up her valise and opens the door. The sun is bright, and gleams on the bits of her blonde hair that are peeking out from underneath her hat. She looks radiant.
“Jane, wait!” Shirley says, stepping forward. Jane pauses, turning back to her.
“Yes?”
Shirley stares at her, willing herself to have courage, the courage that has evaded her these past few years. She opens her mouth to recite the words she taught herself, only to find her mind blank. She can’t recall something like that ever happening to her before. Shaking, she looks at the paper clutched in her hand, and carefully unfolds it.
“I want you-- I want you to know something,” she stammers, and then, refusing to take her eyes off the page, she recites the words Ricardo gifted to her years ago:
Ahora quiero que digan lo que quiero decirte
para que tú las oigas como quiero que me oigas.
El viento de la angustia aún las suele arrastrar.
Huracanes de sueños aún a veces las tumban.
Escuchas otras voces en mi voz dolorida.
Llanto de viejas bocas, sangre de viejas súplicas.
Ámame, compañera. No me abandones. Sígueme.
Sígueme, compañera, en esa ola de angustia.
Pero se van tiñendo con tu amor mis palabras.
Todo lo ocupas tú, todo lo ocupas.
Voy haciendo de todas un collar infinito
para tus blancas manos, suaves como las uvas.
She finishes, and licks her lips. She looks down at the words, Ricardo’s handwriting safe and familiar.
When she finally looks up, Jane’s eyes are wide.
“I wanted you to know,” she says again, and nods.
It is safe, this way. Because she needed to say it-- she could not live with herself if she never said it. But she could not ruin Jane’s happiness. And Jane is happy with Robbie, she knows, and seeing Jane happy makes Shirley happy, too, in its own way.
She wanted Jane to know. But she did not want Jane to understand.
And Jane does not know Spanish.
“That’s beautiful,” Jane says after a long moment. “What is it?”
“A poem,” Shirley says. “A friend wrote it. I wanted you to know it. It is too beautiful not to share.”
“It is,” Jane agrees, and doesn’t take her eyes of Shirley. She stretches out her hand, her lovely, smooth white hand, and says, “May I see it?”
Shirley hands it to her. Jane glances at it, skimming it quickly. “Chilean paper,” she says, handing it back to her.
“He was a Chilean poet.”
Jane nods. She is still staring at Shirley in an unnatural way, and she shifts on her feet. “You should go,” Shirley says. “Your husband waits for you.”
It seems to spur Jane, because she finally looks away from her face and back out the door. “Yes,” she says. “He waits for me.”
They hug again, Shirley holding on tighter and yet feeling freer for having finally said what she needed to say. Jane steps back and tugs on her gloves, carefully adjusts her hat, and then picks up her valise again.
“I will see you soon, Shirley,” Jane says, and it sounds like a promise this time.
Shirley smiles. “Yes.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Shirley is closing the door when Jane grabs it, suddenly, and pokes her face back in. “Shirley?”
“Yes, Jane?”
“Did you know that Spanish and Italian are very closely related languages? If you know one, you can usually read the other. And I am very, very good at Italian.”
Jane’s smile is wide and her eyes are bright, and she shuts the door behind her before Shirley can truly comprehend what she means. Shirley stares at the door until she hears Jane’s motor drive off, the horn honking as she pulls away from the curb.
She looks down at the paper in her hand. Ricardo’s poem is in Spanish. And Jane is very, very good at Italian.
Shirley steps away from the door, pressing her hand against the smile threatening to erupt over her face.
So That You Will Hear Me, by Pablo Neruda, entire poem- quoted section italicized
So that you will hear me
my words grow thin sometimes
like the footprints of seagulls upon the beaches.
Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.
And I watch my words from off in the distance.
They are more yours than mine.
They cling to my old sufferings like ivy vines.
They climb that way upon the clammy walls.
And you are to blame for this cruel game.
They are fleeing from my familiar, darkened cave.
For you fill up everything, you fill up everything.
Before you, the solitude you occupy was populated
by those more used to my sadness than you.
Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
so that you will hear me as I want you to hear me.
The wind of agony still drags them along.
Sometimes hurricane dreams still overthrow them.
In my painful voice, you can hear other voices.
Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, my love. Don’t forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, love, on this wave of agony.
For my words have been stained by your love.
For you occupy everything, you occupy everything.
I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.
Recipient: venusinthenight
Author: k_e_p
Characters/Pairings: Shirley/Jane; Jane/Robbie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Mentions of stalking
Summary: She needs Jane to know.
Shirley doesn’t go to Jane’s wedding.
She explains to Jane, apologetically, that she cannot attend because Jose has decided that this is to be the day that she must visit him. It is a stipulation of his surrender, she explains. Shirley must visit him once a month, on a day of his choosing. Jane, teary-eyed, says that she understands. The work comes first, she agrees. The work always comes first.
Watching Jane leave their shared flat, Shirley wonders why that must always be true.
******
It is not true, of course. Jose had requested her presence, but Shirley could easily have refused. Scotland Yard can’t actually force her to honor Jose’s ridiculous demands, and they wouldn’t try, not after the fiasco with Lester and Biggs and whoever else felt it necessary to humiliate and discredit a rival (woman) detective.
But she agrees because the idea of watching Jane get married makes her stomach twist into the knots, makes her mouth dry up, makes tears-- tears!-- spring to her eyes. She walks to Scotland Yard, her eyes swimming, and comforts herself with the knowledge that at least she doesn’t have to watch her Jane handed over to a man.
Shirley knows herself well. She has loved Jane Watson since shortly after they met. She loves Jane’s laugh, her favourite sound in the world; she loves Jane’s smile, so bright and cheerful and warm; she loves Jane’s enthusiasm for their work, her striving intellect that never, ever stops; she loves how adventurous Jane is, how easily and quickly she leaps into the fray. She loves Jane, and she cannot see her married.
So she goes to visit Jose.
She allows him his simpering, something she has always found loathsome, and tries to force herself back to her normal stern solemnity. She doesn’t want him to think her tears are for him. It doesn’t work, she thinks. Jose looks at her like he always did, every time she said no. He crows about how she must love him now that he’s in jail, which is so incredibly illogical that it actually causes her pain to hear. It isn’t just silly; it’s a poor understanding of the facts.
He recites poetry to her, and all she can think is, Oh, if I had known these words, I could have told Jane…
She listens to the beauty of the words Jose is reciting to her, words she doesn’t understand but can feel, deep in her heart, and regrets so much.
******
The thought comes to her after she kisses Jane goodbye and watches her climb into her matrimonial car. Robbie watches her with gentle, sad eyes. He might understand, she thinks. He lost Jane once before; he knows how it hurts.
She runs into Lester soon after, her idea swimming in her head, and gently sends him away, explaining that she needs to acquire ancient Basque poetry. He walks with her anyway, but she doesn’t hear a word he says, her mental ear trained on the phrases Jose spun into the air, gossamer, fragile things, like moth’s wings. Moth’s wings that could tell the one she loves how she feels.
The thought distracts her the entire way home.
******
“Bah!” she shouts, flinging yet another book away from her. She leans back in her chair, digging her fingertips into her eyes.
The week has been a long one, and not one book has produced what she needs. Apparently, no one wrote down ancient Basque poetry, at least judging from her fruitless searches.
“Shirley?” a timid voice says-- Jane’s voice, coming from over by her work station.
The typewriter has been largely silent this week as Jane has focused on packing her things, preparing to move into her new home with Robbie. Shirley’s mouth tastes foul with bitterness and regret. Jane moved into 221B with her years ago. It is their home. It is the only home she has ever wanted to share. But it is happening, and she cannot fight it anymore. Not the way she once would have fought, carelessly (carefully) waving the sordid facts of Jane’s beaus in front of her until Jane realized they were unsuitable for her.
That was, Shirley knows, selfish. But Shirley is selfless in every other aspect of her life. She saw too many cases at the law firm that were full of pointless tragedies, ones she could have stopped if she had known about them. So she gave up her comfortable home and her easy life to serve others, to help people before they became a file on her desk at the firm, and became “Mr. Holmes of 221B.”
“Shirley?” Jane asks again, firmer this time. Shirley jolts, realizing she has been lost in her head with pointless reminiscences.
“I am sorry, Jane; yes?”
Jane’s smile is wide. “You were a million miles away. Is a new case giving you trouble? Would you like me to take a look at it?”
She reaches for the book Shirley had just thrown onto her desk. “No!” Shirley says sharply. She doesn’t want Jane to know that she’s reading poetry, of all things.
It’s too late. Jane studies the cover, then glances at the spine as if it will give her more answers. Shirley places her head in her hands, sighing, while Jane flips it open.
“Spanish poetry?” she asks, her voice airy but clearly surprised.
“Yes, I…” Shirley trails off, unsure if she should lie (and if so, what to say) or tell the truth.
Jane, I love you, desperately, with all my soul, and can never say it. The poetry is to tell you, so that you may know but never understand.
“Are you learning this to speak to Jose?” Jane asks, supplying Shirley the perfect lie.
“I… yes.”
Jane sighs and perches on the edge of Shirley’s desk. “You know you don’t owe that reprehensible man a thing?”
“Of course,” Shirley says, tipping her chin up. “But I wish to understand what he’s saying, at least.”
“But you know Spanish.”
“He recites ancient Basque. I had hoped these books might have something in them. They don’t.”
Jane studies her for a moment, and then leans over, placing her fingers on Shirley’s arm. She can feel the press of them through her blouse. “You know that I am not leaving the agency, correct? And that our friendship can never be shaken, not by marriage nor distance?”
Shirley looks at the hand on her arm. “Our friendship will remain strong,” she says, knowing that is the truth. Jane may not love her in the way that she wants, but she does love her, and they have been through too much together to ever truly part.
Jane smiles once more, and presses a quick kiss to Shirley’s forehead. “Good. Now, come help me. I need to know which dresses are suitable for Mrs. Jane Summers, and which need to be donated to charity.”
It hurts Shirley’s heart, but she smiles and stands. “Of course. I live to serve.”
******
Jose disgusts her. He is a man who harasses women, a man who cannot accept a simple no, or even a complex no, and she will never love him. He can remain in prison, choosing to believe that she is attracted to him now that he is behind bars, if that is what he wants.
“I do not love you,” she tells him when she next visits, three weeks after Jane’s wedding. Jane will be leaving their shared apartment next week, for good. Shirley is running out of time.
“And yet, here you sit,” Jose replies, a smile on his lips.
She shakes her head. “I do not love you, Jose. I could not. I never will.”
She maintains firm eye contact with him until his smile begins to fade. “Then why have you come? I have told you: pretending to be smart, to be kind, are nothing, but it is a sin to pretend love.”
“I have never pretended love for you,” she says sternly, the voice she uses for clients who will not accept the reality of a woman detective. “I have always spoken the truth to you. I do not love you, and cannot.”
She sees him inhale, preparing another argument, but she cuts him off, lifting her chin defiantly. “I love Jane Watson. It is her, and only her.”
It is the first time she has said it out loud, and it is freeing. Jose looks at her, incredulous. “Jane Watson? The pale English woman who follows you around like one of your English poodles?”
“Poodles are German,” she corrects automatically, and then shakes her head. “If Jane follows me, it is because she chooses to do so. She is a willful woman; I could not impose myself upon her.”
If she could have imposed her will on Jane, she would never have married Robbie, though she does not tell Jose that part.
Jose sits in silence for a long time, staring at her. Shirley stares back at him, hoping he will let her go and end his obsession.
“Then why,” he asks again, still sounding angry, “have you come?”
“I do not love you,” she says, “but I need something from you. I need to know where I can read the Basque poetry you recited the last time I visited.”
Jose laughs. “You want me to help you? Me, a man spurned by his love? No, my dear Shirley,” he says, spitting the phrase out in a hoarse English, “I shall not help you woo your English lady.”
Shirley purses her lips, and nods. It was a desperate attempt anyway. “Very well,” she says. “You will not see me again. Live well, Jose.”
She leaves the prison, chin held high, and despairs.
******
“Is this one yours?” Jane asks, holding up a book. Shirley, sitting in front of their other shared bookshelf, looks over.
“No,” she decides, though she truly isn’t sure. Separating their book collection has been a horror, though she comforts herself with the knowledge that she at least has an excuse to visit Jane, should one of her volumes turn up missing.
“Hmm, I’m not sure it’s mine, either. I’ll put it into our ‘both’ pile.”
Shirley nods her agreement, and goes back to sorting through the pile of paper on her lap. It’s the culmination of three years together, odds and ends that they wanted to save, for one reason or another, which never had a place of their own. Legal documents and newspaper clippings, letters from family and clients, receipts and the odd scribbling that they needed. Three years, in one ridiculously large stack of paper.
She sets aside an unpaid hat bill of Jane’s, and looks at the next piece of paper. The paper is different from the paper she and Jane use in their office, and it certainly isn’t the paper that any of the shops in England use. Chilean, she decides, and as she deduces that, she realizes exactly what it is.
While visiting Santiago, on behalf of her law firm, Shirley had encountered a young man studying French at the University. He was a poet named Ricardo, and they had become friends, of sorts. They had strolled together, and he had practiced his French with her, and she had admired his poems. When she left Santiago, he had given her a few drafts of his works, the ones she had loved the best. She believes he was published shortly after she left.
This is one of the poems he gave her. A gift, he told her, to pass on.
“I think this one is yours, Shirley. Can’t imagine what use I would have for the first edition of Halsbury’s Laws of England,” Jane says, pushing a thick tome into her lap.
Shirley shoves the paper into her vest pocket, and smirks, handing the book back up to Jane. “Perhaps you should consult it before you next suggest burgling a suspect’s home.”
Jane sniffs indignantly, dropping the book onto the floor with a dramatic thud. “I only suggest that fifty percent of the time. The other fifty percent is entirely you. I think you enjoy wearing a mask.”
Shirley chuckles. She can’t deny it.
******
The day Jane leaves, Shirley feels like she’s choking.
She watches Jane as she puts the last of her books, culled from the ‘both’ pile, into her valise. Jane is wearing her pink frock, the one Shirley has always thought brought out the hue in her cheeks, and the new hat Shirley bought her, a wedding gift.
She looks lovely. Shirley clutches the paper in her hand.
“Well,” Jane says, looking around their sitting room, which is no longer really theirs.
“Well,” Shirley agrees. She likes to think she sounds calm and cool, like she does when meeting a client, but she thinks she probably sounds like she’s drowning.
“I should be going. Robbie is waiting for me,” Jane says.
“Yes.”
They stare at each other for a moment. She wants to dig them out of this moment, but she only has one more thing to say, and she can’t say it.
Abruptly, Jane reaches forward and drags Shirley into a hug. “I am going to miss you so much,” she says into Shirley’s neck. Then she pulls back, eyes wide and wet. “Not that I’m leaving! I’m not leaving. I’m just… I’m going to miss your infernal violin playing at ungodly hours, and watching you put your hair up, and rushing out to solve a case before anyone else in the world is awake. I’m… I’m going to miss us. The us we have been. For the past few years. They were…. they were good years.”
They were good years. The best years of Shirley’s life.
“We’ll have more good years,” she croaks out.
Jane brightens, pulling Shirley into another hug. “We will. Of course we will. This isn’t really good-bye, after all.”
“No.”
Jane gives her another tight squeeze, and then steps back. “Well then. Off I go! My husband is waiting for me.” She giggles and blushes, and then covers her mouth, hiding her smile. “I’ll see you in a few weeks, Shirley. I’ll be back to work after we’re settled in.”
“Yes,” she says. She can barely speak around the lump in her throat.
“All right. Well. Good-bye, Shirley! I will see you soon!”
Jane picks up her valise and opens the door. The sun is bright, and gleams on the bits of her blonde hair that are peeking out from underneath her hat. She looks radiant.
“Jane, wait!” Shirley says, stepping forward. Jane pauses, turning back to her.
“Yes?”
Shirley stares at her, willing herself to have courage, the courage that has evaded her these past few years. She opens her mouth to recite the words she taught herself, only to find her mind blank. She can’t recall something like that ever happening to her before. Shaking, she looks at the paper clutched in her hand, and carefully unfolds it.
“I want you-- I want you to know something,” she stammers, and then, refusing to take her eyes off the page, she recites the words Ricardo gifted to her years ago:
Ahora quiero que digan lo que quiero decirte
para que tú las oigas como quiero que me oigas.
El viento de la angustia aún las suele arrastrar.
Huracanes de sueños aún a veces las tumban.
Escuchas otras voces en mi voz dolorida.
Llanto de viejas bocas, sangre de viejas súplicas.
Ámame, compañera. No me abandones. Sígueme.
Sígueme, compañera, en esa ola de angustia.
Pero se van tiñendo con tu amor mis palabras.
Todo lo ocupas tú, todo lo ocupas.
Voy haciendo de todas un collar infinito
para tus blancas manos, suaves como las uvas.
She finishes, and licks her lips. She looks down at the words, Ricardo’s handwriting safe and familiar.
When she finally looks up, Jane’s eyes are wide.
“I wanted you to know,” she says again, and nods.
It is safe, this way. Because she needed to say it-- she could not live with herself if she never said it. But she could not ruin Jane’s happiness. And Jane is happy with Robbie, she knows, and seeing Jane happy makes Shirley happy, too, in its own way.
She wanted Jane to know. But she did not want Jane to understand.
And Jane does not know Spanish.
“That’s beautiful,” Jane says after a long moment. “What is it?”
“A poem,” Shirley says. “A friend wrote it. I wanted you to know it. It is too beautiful not to share.”
“It is,” Jane agrees, and doesn’t take her eyes of Shirley. She stretches out her hand, her lovely, smooth white hand, and says, “May I see it?”
Shirley hands it to her. Jane glances at it, skimming it quickly. “Chilean paper,” she says, handing it back to her.
“He was a Chilean poet.”
Jane nods. She is still staring at Shirley in an unnatural way, and she shifts on her feet. “You should go,” Shirley says. “Your husband waits for you.”
It seems to spur Jane, because she finally looks away from her face and back out the door. “Yes,” she says. “He waits for me.”
They hug again, Shirley holding on tighter and yet feeling freer for having finally said what she needed to say. Jane steps back and tugs on her gloves, carefully adjusts her hat, and then picks up her valise again.
“I will see you soon, Shirley,” Jane says, and it sounds like a promise this time.
Shirley smiles. “Yes.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Shirley is closing the door when Jane grabs it, suddenly, and pokes her face back in. “Shirley?”
“Yes, Jane?”
“Did you know that Spanish and Italian are very closely related languages? If you know one, you can usually read the other. And I am very, very good at Italian.”
Jane’s smile is wide and her eyes are bright, and she shuts the door behind her before Shirley can truly comprehend what she means. Shirley stares at the door until she hears Jane’s motor drive off, the horn honking as she pulls away from the curb.
She looks down at the paper in her hand. Ricardo’s poem is in Spanish. And Jane is very, very good at Italian.
Shirley steps away from the door, pressing her hand against the smile threatening to erupt over her face.
So That You Will Hear Me, by Pablo Neruda, entire poem- quoted section italicized
So that you will hear me
my words grow thin sometimes
like the footprints of seagulls upon the beaches.
Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.
And I watch my words from off in the distance.
They are more yours than mine.
They cling to my old sufferings like ivy vines.
They climb that way upon the clammy walls.
And you are to blame for this cruel game.
They are fleeing from my familiar, darkened cave.
For you fill up everything, you fill up everything.
Before you, the solitude you occupy was populated
by those more used to my sadness than you.
Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
so that you will hear me as I want you to hear me.
The wind of agony still drags them along.
Sometimes hurricane dreams still overthrow them.
In my painful voice, you can hear other voices.
Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, my love. Don’t forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, love, on this wave of agony.
For my words have been stained by your love.
For you occupy everything, you occupy everything.
I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.