Chapter 1: Sidney
Chapter Text
‘The two Wives over there,’ Caro murmurs with a nod over Sidney's right shoulder, managing to capitalize the noun without breaking a sweat. ‘Can't make up their minds whether they’re more scandalized by the fact you’re on the arm of an older woman or relieved that I’m saving you from the dangers of single life.’
‘If only they knew,’ Sidney grins, handing Caro the gin and tonic he's just retrieved from the bar. He leans over to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘Cathy asked me to tell you she needs some assistance in the ladies.’
‘Does she now?’ Caro takes a sip of her drink and covers her mouth with one hand, wincing. ‘My -- goodness.’
‘There's a reason Geordie’s sticking to beer,’ Sidney says sympathetically. ‘And, sorry to say, I believe she actually needs your help. Something about a broken shoe strap?’
‘Oh, Lord--’ Caro knocks back the rest of the drink with a grimace and hands him back the glass. ‘I did tell her not to wear that pair.’
Sidney accepts the empty glass from Caro and steps aside to let her pass him on her way to the ladies’. He watches her dark curls, half a head above most of the other women in the room, weave through to the far side of the reception hall and vanish through an open doorway.
‘Even-odds they'll be up to something?’ Geordie's voice at his elbow startles him.
‘It's not a fair wager,’ Sidney points out. ‘I've been standing next to Caro all evening and believe me I know what she thinks of Cathy’s dress.’
Geordie makes a noncommittal noise. ‘I’d say the problem is more likely to be the other women in the room. Though God only knows Cath’s told me some stories…’ He shakes his head. ‘What they've gotten up to in fitting rooms would terrify you.’
Sidney chokes on his beer. He shouldn’t be surprised, at this point, by how brazen Cathy and Caro can be. Nor should he be surprised by the twinge of jealousy he feels, at their surety that they can and will get away with it.
Geordie touches Sidney’s elbow with his fingers, lightly, to get Sidney’s attention. When Sidney turns to look Geordie nods toward the open French doors to their left. ‘You look like you could use some fresh air.’
‘A smoke at the very least but--’ Sidney nods over Geordie's shoulder. ‘Your public approaches.’
‘What?’ Geordie turns around and only Sidney hears the sigh. ‘Don't think you're getting out of this.’
‘Wouldn't dream of it.’ Sidney presses his hand to the small of Geordie’s back for a too-brief moment, then steps forward to shake the Chief Constable’s hand -- again.
The Brownian motion of the crowd and the conversations gently moves Geordie and Sidney apart until Sidney finds himself much nearer the band -- where the trombonist hasn’t caught on to being flat -- and listening to a tall woman he with elaborately-styled grey hair. She's a parishoner, though rarely attends services, and he's distracted by the fact that he can't remember her name though she obviously assumes they are known to one another.
‘...so this must be a pleasant change for you,’ he hears her say and realises with a start that he’s expected to carry on his side of the conversation in a way that goes beyond a polite nod or two.
‘It’s -- a very well-organized event,’ he manages, hoping the noise of the band will cover the doubt in his voice. He can think of at least two dozen things he’d rather be doing, but he hadn’t been able to say no once Cathy and Caro combined forces. And it’s for Geordie they’ve come, after all.
‘Well.’ The woman -- what is her name? -- waves a hand at the surrounding crowd. ‘A change from the regular run of policemen.’
‘The regular...?’
‘A university-educated man like yourself can’t find very much in common with constables and detectives, I would have thought,’ she says, with an audible sniff in her voice. ‘It’s very kind of you, really, to give so much of your time to them.’
‘I find policemen actually have much in common with the clergy,’ Sidney says pleasantly, past the ringing in his ears. Though he knows Mrs Jewett -- that’s the name, Mildred Jewett, from the hospital board -- won’t hear it, his voice is taking on the bland, vacant tone that creeps in when he’s masking the urge to punch something.
The sniff comes again, and now he remembers it distinctly from an argument had the year before about bringing Dickens to the children’s ward Christmas party. Leonard had won in his usual way by nodding and smiling and and doing exactly what he had planned to all along and Dickens had been the star of the evening.
‘What an odd thing to say,’ she remarks, the corners of her mouth expressing disapproval.
‘Not at all,’ Sidney says. ‘Constables, you see, are often called upon to assist people in their worst moments -- just as we in the church do.’
‘Sidney!’ Cathy’s suddenly at his side, a gloved hand on his sleeve. ‘Good, I've found you.’ She’s looking slightly flushed. ‘Geordie has a question for you -- do excuse us, Mrs Jewett,’ she says, tugging him away.
‘What is it?’ Sidney asks, as soon as they are out of earshot and Cathy smiles over her shoulder at him.
‘Nothing at all -- but you looked like you were going to murder her and I know the feeling.’ She stops once they’re a convenient distance from Mrs Jewett, who has been almost immediately pulled aside by Sir Edward, and mimes a dramatic shudder. ‘I was on a church committee with her once -- decorating for Easter. Never again.’
Sidney laughs. ‘Mrs M would disapprove of you saying that aloud,’ he says. ‘But privately agree with you.’
Cathy shakes her head. 'Women like that,' she says, firmly. 'Already think they’re so important. Doesn't do them any good to be put in charge of things.'
Sidney looks around the room, thinking, suddenly, of a young Cathy standing quietly by as Caro -- nearly as young, but with money and connections -- is handed from one prospect to another all evening long. How many hours Cathy has spent watching the Mrs Jewetts of the world arranging matters as if Cathy’s preferences -- or Caro’s, for that matter -- were immaterial? As if she and Caro would have nothing in common.
'Is it better, or worse?'
'Is what better or worse?' Cathy asks, rising up on her toes in search of either Geordie or Caro in the crowd. Sidney looks around but can't immediately see either of them.
'Having Caro...here, at things like this. Wouldn’t it just be easier, being Mrs Keating for the night?'
Cathy smiles, a smile that he can tell is partly for his benefit and partly a private smile meant only for herself. 'I'm never just Mrs Keating,' she says, as if patiently reassuring one of the children. 'And it helps on nights like this to have the reminder.' She leans in. 'And I think you'll find Geordie could use the reminder as well.'
Sidney, with the advantage of a few more inches, can just see Geordie’s head by the open French doors onto the terrace. He leans closer to Cathy on the pretense of brushing a leaf out of her hair. ‘Why, Mrs Keating, what could you be suggesting. And how are your shoes?’ he adds, as a genuine afterthought.
Cathy laughs. ‘Fine.’ She puts out one foot -- the heels that match the dress are gone, replaced with the flat black slippers she had worn in the car. ‘Caro was right as usual; there was no fixing that pair. And you know damn well what I’m suggesting.’
She fumbles in the reticule dangling from her wrist and pulls out a somewhat crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter. ‘He always needs one about this time in the evening,’ she says, handing them over. ‘And never remembers.’
Sidney accepts the cigarettes and lighter, setting his empty glass down on the tray of a passing waiter.
‘Do you --?’ he begins, but Cathy is already making her way back toward the middle of the room. He shrugs to himself and turns back toward the French doors to find Geordie.
His skin is prickling with that uncomfortable feeling that starts to come over him when they've been in the same room for too long with the impossibility of any physical contact -- even if just an ankle pressed to a shin under the pub table, a hand on an elbow, or the back of a wrist brushing his as they stood side by side. They can pass entire days, this way, silently reminding each other I’m here.
Keeping close to the wall and avoiding eye contact he manages to make it over to the doors without exchanging more than a polite nod with anyone -- and there’s Geordie, who looks up at him with relief.
Geordie’s eyes glint and he presses Sidney’s elbow, pushing him decorously towards the nearest of the French doors.
‘Ah, Inspector Keating--!’
‘What the hell have I done to deserve this,’ Sidney hears Geordie mutter and swallows a laugh. ‘Go on -- I’ll come find you.' Geordie’s fingers grip for a minute, then release as Geordie turns back into the room.
Sidney slips out the door and finds himself on a wide paved terrace. In the light spilling from the room behind him, he can see plants in heavy-looking stone pots set at the corners and here and there along the wall that divides terrace from lawn. There are a few other people out here -- he can see the gleam of a cigarette end -- but he can’t see any faces, so he takes base advantage of the fact and goes straight for the shallow stairs that lead down onto the lawn.
There’s a broad gravelled path extending out into the darkness of the lawn from the base of the steps; a slightly narrower path runs parallel to the terrace, a low hedge of something thick and green separating gravel from lawn. There’s a stone bench a few meters along the path, backed straight against the retaining wall of the terrace, and he sinks onto it, pulling out the crumpled pack of cigarettes and the matches. Whether or not Geordie needs one, he certainly does.
‘Christ--’ Geordie is suddenly dropping down beside him, neatly slipping the cigarette from his fingers and taking a long drag on it. ‘All we did was figure out one forgery case.’ He takes another pull on the cigarette, then hands it back to Sidney, smoke coming out with the words. ‘You’d think we’d found the crown jewels.’
'Are they lost?'
‘Who knows.’ Geordie steals the cigarette back before Sidney can get more than a lungful of smoke. ‘Ugly things anyway. Ever seen ‘em? Not worth the bother if they did go missing.’
Sidney laughs and leans back against the cool stone wall of the terrace. In the semi-darkness, the noise of the party muted by distance, he feels comfortable letting his hand come to rest on Geordie’s thigh.
He feels the muscles under his hand relax, feels Geordie shift on the bench beside him. His fingertips graze the inseam of Geordie’s pressed trousers and he lets himself drift on the pleasant, unhurried tingle of his own response.
It’s one of those evenings, then, he thinks. When the relentless lack of privacy led them down a long and winding path of deferred promises -- almost kisses, almost caresses. Intimacies gestured toward, saved up for stolen moments like this, and -- always, finally, he’s beginning to trust -- for such time when they’re behind closed doors.
‘Caro hasn't been the only one looking, you know,’ he finally says as Geordie hands back the stub of cigarette.
‘Hasn't she?’
‘Turns out you don't look half bad in a well-cut suit.’
Geordie snorts. ‘Better look the part, given the money it cost me.’
‘You don't --’ Sidney stops, teasing his fingernails along the seam of Geordie's trousers. ‘I’m not saying you look like a kid playing dress-up,’ he says. ‘I’m saying I look over at you and I can’t stop thinking about how much I look forward to undressing you.’
‘Oh.’ Geordie takes another mouthful of smoke and threads his fingers through Sidney’s, rubbing his thumb in deliberate, heavy circles over the back of Sidney's hand. ‘Well. If that's how you feel about it.’ He gestures, leaning in towards Sidney as he does so. ‘Give us another fag; you got most of the last one.’
‘I did not--’ Sidney protests as he shakes out a cigarette and lights it, this time deliberately holding it between finger and thumb and ostentatiously passing it to Geordie untouched.
Geordie takes a deep lungful and lets it out slowly, a light grey trickle in the air above them. His hand presses heavily on Sidney’s for a minute, then lifts away; as Sidney is about to fumble to find it again, Geordie’s fingers come back, this time a light trace around his wrist, the outlines of the back of his hand, the pad of Geordie’s thumb pressing between each of Sidney's fingers.
Sidney lets himself shiver at the touch, knowing Geordie is full aware of how maddening Sidney finds it when Geordie plays with his hands like this and he can’t do anything about it.
‘You're terrible,’ he murmurs, stealing the cigarette from Geordie’s mouth.
‘Oi!’ Geordie says, without heat. ‘I wasn’t done with that.’
‘Yeah,’ Sidney says, taking a drag himself before glancing around to make sure they’re alone. ‘But I can’t do this when you have a cigarette in your mouth.’ He pulls Geordie closer and leans in to give him a brief but deliberate kiss.
Chapter 2: Caro
Chapter Text
‘Why, Mrs Hopkins,’ Caro says, after a moment of internal debate with the angels of her better nature. The angels lose. ‘How lovely to see you and your husband here. Sidney has told me so much about you.’ She extends her hand in greeting.
She has to give Amanda Hopkins credit: it only takes a beat for her smile to come back -- albeit slightly fixed -- and for her to put out a hand. Caro does see her eyes flick downwards and knows she’ll see Caro’s nails short and unpolished, quite plain in comparison to her own. Her grip, however, is surprisingly firm and Caro lets her credit tick a point higher.
‘And you must be -- Mrs Keating’s friend.’
‘For many years.’
‘You're -- interested in our local police force?’
Caro waves a hand, ‘Oh, I’ve learned a bit here and there from Geordie -- from Inspector Keating through the years. But I’ve actually come with Sidney this evening.’ She looks around as if trying to pick him out of the crowd, though she knows for a fact he’s slipped out into the back garden with Geordie.
‘With ... Mr Chambers?’ Amanda’s tone is politely inquiring, though the line of her mouth suggests that she isn’t certain whether to be disappointed. Caro recognizes the reflex, one she’s seen any number of times at her mother’s parties: married women who haven’t quite realized they no longer have a claim on the men they are not married to.
She decides to spare the woman from herself. ‘Now Sidney tells me you’re a curator? Tell me -- what drew you to that particular line of work?’
Amanda’s face brightens -- the first unstudied moment of their interaction -- and then shuts down again with an expression Caro isn’t quick enough to name. ‘I was. After the war. I always loved going to the galleries, even when I was a little girl. I went to school with Si--with Mr Chambers’ sister, Jennifer, and we had a very energetic arts mistress.’
Caro smiles. ‘I had a very energetic sciences mistress. I think I spent more time in her room than anywhere else in the school.’ Well, apart from Cathy’s bedroom.
‘She had been a restorationist herself before she turned to teaching and…’ Amanda shrugs, that unnamable expression still on her face. ‘I was interested from the first.’
Caro nods. ‘What museum are you with now?’
‘None. I -- left my job when I got married.’
Caro sighs, inwardly, and snags two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter who’s circulating the room in preparation for the long and tedious presentation speeches.
‘I understand it can be hard, balancing the needs of a household with the demands of a career,’ she says, handing one of the two glasses to Amanda. ‘Do you ever consider ...volunteering?’
‘No, I --’ Amanda looks both trapped by the conversation and in desperate need of having it.
Why does she do this to herself, Caro wonders. She can never leave well enough alone when confronted by women like Mrs Keating simply giving in.
‘I should introduce you to a friend of mine,’ she says. ‘Dee Forrester? She runs the D'Forest Gallery, on Fitzroy Street. They occasionally have the need for restoration work, and Dee likes to send business to other professional women, when she can.’
She wonders if Cathy has an eye out for Sidney and Geordie in the all-too-likely case that they forget Geordie actually has to be present for the main event. A covert glance at her watch tells her that -- assuming everything is running fashionably late -- they have a quarter of an hour at least before Geordie is up.
‘Oh, I --’ Amanda looks torn. They always do.
‘Here,’ Caro reaches into her reticule and extracts a card. ‘Do give me a call. Perhaps we can arrange a lunch.’
Amanda holds the card as if it might burst into flames in her fingers and, before she can say anything, her husband appears at her side.
Caro snaps her bag shut and turns her smile bland. She has met Guy Hopkins before and has no time for him. He reminds her far too much of a young man her brother once brought home between terms: always smiling at everyone with absolutely no distinction between persons. Not to be trusted.
‘And what are you girls gossiping about?’ He slides a hand under Amanda’s elbow and takes the card out of her hand. ‘Thinking of buying a new piece for the house, dear?’
Caro takes a sip from her champagne flute while Amanda dithers; if appealed to, she'll help -- if not, then Amanda can sink or swim on her own.
‘I -- Mrs -- Miss Mackenzie was -- telling me about a friend of hers who runs a gallery.’ Amanda snatches the card back out of her husband’s fingers and makes it vanish into an invisible pocket. ‘I thought I might drop by the next time I'm in London.’
Guy laughs, slightly too loudly, and squeezes her arm. ‘What, with little Grace and the nurse in tow?’
Caro sets her empty flute down on the table just behind her and watches Amanda’s face.
‘Well,’ Amanda says, straightening herself almost defensively. ‘Perhaps you could spend the day with Grace.’
Guy laughs again and Caro recognizes her signal to exit before she breaks his nose.
She slips away from the site of marital discord and detours to the ladies. Washing her hands at the sink, she frowns at herself in the harsh electric light. ‘Stop making other women's marriages your damn business, Caroline,’ she says under her breath. Being near them is like a rash she can’t help but scratch. There’s nothing quite so maddening as an unhappy woman who won’t do something -- anything! -- to change her circumstances.
Cathy is forever telling her not to be so harsh. But Cathy has a reserve of patience that Caro has never possessed. Patience and a willingness to believe that most people will sort themselves out if given enough kindness and understanding.
Shaking her head, Caro reaches for one of the folded hand-towels in the basket by the sink and drops it in the laundry hamper on her way out the door. Back in the hallway, she finds Cathy standing behind a potted plant checking the watch she has tucked in her reticule.
‘Please tell me the business portion of the evening has nearly started,’ Caro says. ‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’
‘I saw that Amanda Hopkins had cornered you,’ Cathy says, looking up. ‘Was it very dreadful?’
Caro shakes her head. ‘I thought we were getting somewhere until her husband showed up, and then it was all simpering and no backbone.’
‘Poor darling,’ Cathy says, reaching out for Caro’s hand. She tugs until Caro takes a step or two, joining Cathy in the shelter of the palm fronds. ‘Are we out of sight?’ Cathy asks, with a quick glance behind Caro’s shoulder.
‘Unless this pot has eyes,’ Caro responds, looking out toward the main room. ‘I can hear the M.C. shushing the band.’
‘Excellent,’ Cathy says, reaching up to put a gloved hand behind Caro’s neck and pull her down for a kiss. Caro can taste the champagne on Cathy’s tongue, just a hint of cheese and mustard from the platters circling the hall. Cathy smiles against Caro’s lips, a guarantee their lipstick will need touching up. This particular party pastime used to be easier before either of them allowed to wear makeup.
Caro disengages herself, reluctantly mindful of greater responsibilities. ‘Not that I’m not appreciative, but do you know where your husband is?’
Cathy laughs. ‘Right there where he should be.’ She nods over her shoulder towards the large open room. After a moment, Caro picks Geordie out at the edge of the crowd, close to the French doors. Sidney steps in from the terrace as she looks, a respectable distance from Geordie to those who don’t know his right hand will have brushed up against Geordie’s left as he stepped by. He cranes his neck to look around the room as Geordie leans over to say something in his ear. Likely looking for her, Caro realizes, just as Cathy says, ‘Well, that’s our cue,’ and steps out into the doorway. ‘We don’t want Mrs Hopkins thinking our Sidney is available for one single moment.’
He’s our Sidney now, is he? Caro thinks. And to her own surprise she finds she agrees.