you called me the hyacinth girl
IV
June, 1920
She walked between the pews with hyacinth in her hands.
Her hair curled, her dress silk, her footsteps slow against the floor. Her breathing was not regular; she could see in the line of his shoulders (suited so finely, so handsomely) that he wished to turn around. The world felt vibrant, hummed with her excitement, organ song hitting her square in the chest before the wonder in his eyes did.
They would be called graceful, elegant, refined; poised at the altar, resplendent on the dance floor, mature in a way they hadn't been eight years ago.
_
And then they were alone, in front of Crawley House, the motor having left ages ago. Alone, their heads leaned back against the front wall, heads fuzzy with too much champagne, staring at the starred sky.
“Well,” Matthew said.
“Well.” Mary turned to him, pivoted off the wall toward his shadowed form. In the dark, her dress and the white of his shirt glowed, like they had at their denouement, in the shadowed dip of land; he smiled, and his teeth too flashed bright. When she kissed him, properly kissed him, she ran her tongue over their edges, felt their uneven stagger, the point of his canines giving way to the flat plain of his front teeth. He bit down, softly. She hummed against his mouth and moved away.
She stopped at the gate and looked back at him, eyebrow raised, her hair coming undone against her neck. “You're supposed to carry me inside, Captain Crawley,” she said.
He stepped toward her. “Oh, I don't know. We've never been ones to do things by the book.” His voice was deliberate, hands behind his back at he walked slowly toward her; she could hardly see his eyes, but she knew from the incline of his head the look they held, the smirk they echoed, eyelashes low over his pupils. As he leaned down to her, a piece of hair fell over his forehead, brushing her temple as she leaned to meet him. “Have we?” he whispered.
He was so very close, his hands skimming over her waist, and somehow they had reached the front door; she stood against it, his hand on the doorknob, awkward across her. “We really should go inside, Matthew,” she breathed. “I'm sure it's past midnight.”
“Then we've been married fourteen hours.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Though, as you say, not quite in any way society would call proper.” Her fingers skimmed the back of his neck, the edge of his hair, his hands either side of her against the door. “And surely you want to follow some rules,” she whispered, feeling warmth curl in her torso at his gaze, tilted from under his eyebrows. She could hear him breathing, and she lay her palm flat on his chest to see what rhythm it set with his heart.
“Of course,” he finally said. A benediction. “I'm a dull boy from Manchester, remember?”
“Ah, but you've learned to shine, Matthew.” Her eyes gleamed as they widened, teasing. Her fingers curled against the flower in his boutonnière. “You're Perseus.”
_
He woke feeling drugged, sluggish, heavy exhaustion set in every limb. He would not open his eyes, not yet, even though he could feel light on his eyelids, its yellow glowing through them. For a moment he could think he was back in France, could think it was some hideous nightmare when he felt the undulation of breathing under him; was he lain above an injured man, was that glow the blast of a near explosion, the sharpness at his cheek the buttons of this man's tunic? He forced his eyes open but did not see green wool matted and congealed with mud.
He shifted and it was Mary's collarbone sharp under his cheek, her hip against his stomach, arm hooked over the back of his neck and fingers brushing the top of his spine. Her fingertips began to stir small circles on his back, and he gave a small hum, turning his face and body in toward the sheets until he was tucked at a somewhat uncomfortable angle against her, arm stretched across her middle to find the palm of her right hand dangling over the edge of the bed.
She ran her fingers up to his hair, a thick disarray of blond that tickled against her jaw, his stubbled cheek scraping her shoulder as he looked up. His eyes were slits of bright blue. She smiled, twisting his hair again. He breathed deeply through his nose, and muttered something like 'hello', where she felt it through her sternum, the buzz of his voice and the curve of his smile and his breath as he laughed against her skin.
Was this what it was to live? This cherished thing, watching the muscles in his forearm twitch as he tapped a pattern along her wrist; was this what it was, to wait for the other to wake quietly, to see every stage of alertness, to not quite be able to voice a greeting out of immediate slumber?
_
She wondered, if he'd been in New York with her, if it would have been like this, bold and sumptuous; if it would have been as romantic, without the smell of the sea clinging to his skin or the bold clang of St. Mark's marking their mornings. If she would have been daring enough to cut her hair to the latest fashions just to see the look on his face, the surprise and annoyed desire caught in his features, in his eyes, his fingers running her hair's length all too soon and rendering him speechless. If he would have kissed her like this, easy and languid and ferocious all at once, tracing her through the loose hang of her dresses, mapping again and again what he already knew by heart.
They had not had Paris. He had not wanted to see France again so soon.
Instead, Venice. Here, they could have everything of one another, a notion more thrilling than any city's folly; she could know exactly how his shoulders were set beneath fabric, the span between each of his ribs, the trail of hair down his stomach. She could know each shade of blue his eyes could turn, and which kind of kiss or smile would accompany it. She could know the spread of his hands, flat and gentle when they danced, tense through a crowd, slipping and curling in passion but always at the same place, the same curving end of her spine. She could know exactly how he behaved when he thought no-one was looking, the boyish, endearing honesty of him.
She didn't need any city for that.
Though Venice was a lovely place to have.
__
July, 1921
A boy. A boy. An heir.
A raven-haired, porcelain-skinned, azure-eyed boy. She had decided to call him William, outside of Matthew's knowledge; when he came striding into the room, disarrayed, in waistcoat and no tie, hair on end from worried hands, she told him. He sat on the edge of the bed, clutched her hand like a man looking for penance at the side of a saint, and wept. His palm found the hard ribbing of her braided hair (she'd grown it out again soon enough, for him, though he'd never specified he wished her to), and somewhere beneath the shadows of his bent head, she could see he was smiling.
__
August, 1928
“Well done!” Matthew cried, applause ringing out over the pond where William surfaced, a triumphant grin on his face.
“Careful, we could have an Olympic champion on our hands,” Mary said, staring at him leant back against the dock, looking up at her in amusement. She stood beside him and watched William slip under the water again. Matthew's hand lifted and he lightly touched the back of her ankle, palm curling at the edge of her heel.
“Bare feet,” he whispered. “Scandalous.”
She felt loose-limbed and nonchalant, rolling her ankle out toward his touch with a smirk. For a moment she only felt his fingers skim that small patch of skin, the sun hot in her hair. William appeared over the dock's edge, in bright silver cascades of water, and Matthew's hand retracted.
“Willow, your lips are blue,” she said. She gave Matthew a reproachful look. He sighed and stood, lifting the boy with him; William laughed in awe when he found himself on his father's shoulders, and Matthew walked ahead of Mary, picking gracefully over the uneven ground, evidently not caring that his shirt was stained dark with water. He took a run at the small hill outlying the trees they'd come past, and William swayed dangerously, laughing, 'Pa' caught somewhere under Matthew's own low laugh.
Mary followed behind with her shoes in her hand and the grass cool under her feet; Matthew waited for her at the top of the hill, and she set her shoes down when she met them, holding his hand for balance as she slipped them on, his other holding William's knee. The heat hit her in waves, the humid stillness of it, offset by the cool still radiating from William's skin.
His toes had left neat drips of water down Matthew's shirt, the shoulders soaked, his hair mussed by small hands; he smiled and she wanted to kiss him for it, for not caring about his dishevelment, for noticing the flush in her cheeks and pressing a slick palm to the back of her neck; for returning that hand to hers and keeping hold of it all the way to the house.
The suffocating summer cocooned her as they walked, and Matthew measured his pace to hers, languidly, fingers a sure intertwining press. William's head lolled, hair dark and highlighting copper in the sun, hands slack at his sides as he fought the day's fatigue. Water dried against her neck, leaving humid tendrils of hair to tickle there; fractions of cricket song clicked in the dry fields, buzzing up through her feet, and she was sure.
“I'm pregnant,” she murmured.
__
December, 1930
This happened, often, she knew. When he was alone and contemplative, which somehow seemed more prevalent in the extremes of seasons; she had learned to recognise his far-away gaze and not treat it with cautious avoidance, but gingerly pull him away from his thoughts. She wondered if he thought of snow in France. She wondered if he thought of the Christmas' he'd spent there, unimaginable to her.
She saw it. That's what mattered to him, she saw it, and did not patronize him. She knew it was always slightly dangerous when his shoulders straightened like that, or he looked at her foggily, as though through a not-quite clean window. She knew, and came up to him whispering his name, louder with each repeated syllable, until she felt his rapid heartbeat and was too close for his breath to appear misty with cold.
She was here. He was not. And she could see it.
The trees swayed heavily, his sight-line fractured and broken by their movement, and he could smell the tannins of black loam, feel weak sunlight, watch it filter through black needle-thin spikes. Soil grated into his clothes and boots, brass on black, face and hands pressed to the dirt bank that hid him.
Was he speaking? His mouth moved, but a low drone covered his words; black dots in the sky - angled, severe contraptions that he was mimicking the sound of, tilting his head back further as they moved overhead. His helmet fell, and when he twisted to retrieve it Charlotte stood beside him, smudging dirt on her face, mud tangled and cracking in her russet hair. Was that who he was speaking to? No no, she must get down, they will see. He wished he could afford to cry, to speak to her. Darling, you must move now, quietly, crouch beside me. His hand beckoned; her eyes were black with fear, and he could not breathe.
Matthew.
He could not cry.
Matthew, Matthew, Matthew.
He could not breathe.
“Matthew!” Sharp. A hand on his heart. “Matthew.” Mary's face was above him, snow blindingly bright around them, stinging his eyes. Her footprints indicated she'd been standing where he'd projected Charlotte; the cold snapped in his lungs and he pushed her away more harshly that he intended. She straightened in affront, stepping back from where they were huddled under the cedar.
“I'm - I'm perfectly fine,” he said. He shifted and the bark scraped and caught on his coat. “I just - ”
Mary stopped him with a light press of her hand to his arm. “You don't have to explain,” she whispered.
“Yes, I do. I've never thought of... any of you there, so I do have to explain. It was Charlotte.”
Her hand stayed, head tilting; she gave a tiny nod and pressed her lips together. When he was finished, his body vibrating with the words, she put her lips to his, not fully kissing him, and whispered: “She's perfectly happy, she's fine. It's Christmas... we're fine... ” It was as though her words could transfer faster to his mind if she said them this closely, fingers circling against his, his own hand coming to rest at the back of her neck.
“You're cold,” he whispered, feeling the slight damp in her hair, her nose to his cheek.
“It's December.”
His breath shook against her mouth. “Yes,” he said, voice low and caught in his throat. “True.” She kissed him properly then, body leaning over his, but he pushed her away as gently as possible, and she moved to the edge of where the snow had not reached, perching there at the edge of the radius with her back to him. In the weak light, she was caught out pale, and he stared at a small tendril of hair curling against her neck.
“Mary,” he said, after a long while, pressing the pad of his thumb into a corner of tree's bark until he felt the wood's dull, aching press against his bone. “Is this all right, are we... I know I shouldn't be - I'm sorry.” He rolled his thumb and it caught awkwardly, from flesh to bone beneath to flesh again.
“Oh, Matthew,” she said, and it was cool and silken, detached. “You don't need my forgiveness.” He was suddenly back in the night he proposed, her arms held around her in much the same manner, face lifted to the drifting snowflakes.
He went to her and pulled her back against him, pressed his face to her shoulder; felt her lean into him, hands moving to smooth over his. They heard, from the far off silhouettes, Robert's voice laughingly admonish William, Charlotte's high squeal above it. He could hear Mary breathing, here, in the insularity snow provided, shoulder rising and falling against his chest. “I love you,” he murmured, delicately, into the shell of her ear.
__
February, 1939
Everything seems so golden one minute, then turns to ashes the next.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He gave a quiet smile when she came to sit on the bench next to him. Everything was sombre, the black and grey of his suit, but he was trying, in his features, with a wide-eyed faux innocence, to act normal. Exhaustion seeped through her and settled her limbs, rendering her immovable.
“I imagine you mother is - ”
“Resting.” She barely recognised her own voice, rough and full of static, grating like a needle at the record's end. Matthew's head tilted toward her, cocked at an angle of precise concern, his eyes wide and doleful. Mary gave the thinnest veil of a smile, pressing her palm against his knuckles where his hand lay between them. She watched his hair flicker in the breeze, brought forward to graze his brow.
“Come here, you look like William,” she said, pushing it back gently. Matthew's eyes flickered shut, and he breathed out in a steady stream.
“I've telephoned him. He's coming up from Cambridge on the first train in the morning.”
“Good. I'm glad you did that. He should be here.”
He nodded. “Was Edith there with you when... ”
“Yes. God, I'll have to write to Sybil.”
Matthew's eyes pressed closed with the tremble of realized duty in her voice. “Darling, I'm so, so sorry,” he whispered.
Their hands were still twined on the bench's smooth wood; Matthew leaned to her, but her fingers stopped him, holding his jaw and running her thumb over his mouth. “Oh, Matthew,” she whispered. “It wouldn't do for the Earl to kiss a girl in black.”
His head fell in her grasp, breath hitting her fingertips. “I wasn't going to kiss you,” he said, voice primal, somewhere deep in his chest; his face lined with a weary sort of sadness. She could feel his pulse under her thumb. In dusk, he was turned gold and silver-green, the blackening mass of the cedar above them stirring with wind. His eyes reflected her own small features pinpointed against the hulk of the house and the sky above it, pale to yellow to red, and for the first time all day, she took a full lungful of air.
We never quite notice the sunsets.
There was still orange light in the spires from a fading sun, and she watched, one by one, as the lights in the abbey were flicked on, first downstairs then up, his pupils contracting to meet them.
In the morning, she knew, they would not be able to deny any of it. In the morning, Cora's eyes would be bloodshot, a letter to Sybil would be written, and William would arrive; she was sure she could face it all with one more night of sleep.
_
part V