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igenlodeRight, I sincerely hope this works, since I'm still unable to log in to fix broken syntax or do anything other than post new articles... If this lasts much longer I shall be forced to join the great majority on Dreamwidth. Which would be a pity, because there's a lot of history (most of it not mine) on LiveJournal.
Oh, and I haven't mentioned the site's new and endearing habit of apparently loading every page twice with about twenty seconds' delay between them, so that you have just typed several sentences into the browser form before the page rerenders and wipes everything...
So here we're into what is basically the epilogue of the story, from the point of view of Gustave who is essentially an optimistic and sunny-natured child, and who is busy forgetting all the less pleasant parts of the last couple of days. It's basically Raoul-and-Christine fluff being observed through the largely oblivious eyes of their ten-year-old son :-)
I tried to model my Edwardian boy's PoV on the various heroes of E. Nesbit's pre-War stories, which deal with such prosaic matters as comforting crying little sisters, explaining to grown-ups how your best clothes came to be soaked through, and various imaginative pursuits that made perfect sense at the time but get you into no end of trouble when reality intrudes. Although Gustave doesn't really have to deal with anything more than traumatised parents :-p
(Apparently I don't have a tag for Gustave. Well, under the circumstances I can't very well insert one retrospectively :-( ) [Edit April 2017: finally going through and inserting tags via Dreamwidth, two years later!]
Chapter 9: A Hero of Our Time
Mrs Morrison had been a lot more friendly this morning since their luggage had come. But Gustave couldn’t help remembering the way she’d looked at Mother last night as if she didn’t approve of her or of Father at all. He was polite, of course, and let the landlady ruffle his hair and smooth down his new jacket and tell his mother what a fine boy he was in a New York English so broad it might as well have been Flemish so far as they were concerned. But he was glad when the carriage she’d sent for finally arrived and they could load everything up again and get ready to leave. He wasn’t sure he entirely liked Mrs Morrison or her house.
It had been fun to sleep in his clothes and be tucked up at the foot of his mother’s bed and wake up in a strange little room with the sounds of the street outside. He could see it was the sort of adventure you got tired of quite quickly, though. And when they’d heard a heavy vehicle stopping outside and footsteps running up the stairs to come banging on their door, he’d seen his mother go white as a sheet.
It turned out it was only their luggage being sent round from the hotel they’d been in before. He’d wondered how anyone could have known where they were, and Mother had looked as if she knew and didn’t like it a bit. But she’d jumped up and gone running downstairs with nothing but her coat belted round her, and his father, who’d caught hold of Gustave before he could follow, had had a look on his face as if he were being torn in two. In the end, though, he’d stayed behind to keep Gustave safe in that high room, sitting side by side on the bed with the coverlet pulled around Gustave’s shoulders in complete silence as they strained to hear the voices drifting up from below.
Gustave had thought he’d heard Miss Giry outside. He thought Father had heard it too, for his hand had tightened in response. But they must have been wrong, Gustave decided, for Mother had come back to them laughing and crying all at once, with her words tumbling over each other, and not looking frightened at all; and there had been no sign after all of the lady from last night in the hallway when he’d ventured down at his father’s heels to fetch up some fresh clothes and retrieve the Vicomte’s razors.
It was after that that Mrs Morrison seemed to have decided they were respectable people after all, even if their trunks and cases were rather old ones. He thought Mother’s stage dress was absolutely lovely, and he knew Father thought so too; but he had to admit that the warm blue merino they’d brought upstairs for her suited her just as well, and didn’t make people stare so. And even if sleeping in his undershirt had been exciting, it was nice to have clean clothes to get dressed in.
“Darling, do stand still—”
The hire-carriage was waiting for them downstairs, and Mother was busy trying to tidy everything up before they left the room. There wasn’t a lot she could do to make Father’s face more presentable, though. “Oh dear, you look positively piratical...”
Father wasn’t quite laughing — he’d told Gustave it hurt — but you could tell from his expression that the bruises didn’t matter to either of them in the least. They certainly didn’t matter to Gustave. He was sure Father must have been in some tremendous fight last night, but he didn’t hold himself as if he had anything to be ashamed of. He looked as if he’d been on the losing end of a brawl; but for the first time in years he had the bearing of a man who’d won his own battles.
It was the small things that had changed. The way his father was looking at him now as if he was seeing him, Gustave de Chagny, instead of a mirror he didn’t much like. The way he and Mother kept touching each other in little, casual ways when they didn’t have to, instead of the way he used to yank at her as if he was afraid she might somehow get away.
Gustave wasn’t sure they knew he’d noticed. He was nearly ten, after all.
But something important had happened last night — something that had been going wrong for years had gone very right — and both his parents seemed to think it was something to do with him. He couldn’t help smiling back.
“Leave it, Christine...” His father had been waiting patiently while she tried to arrange a scarf round his neck to hide the worst of the marks there. Now he caught her hands in his, stooping his head to them briefly with a rueful expression. “We’ll be travelling inside. No-one will see.”
He brushed another kiss across her fingers and let them go, reaching for his hat. Beneath it on the dresser was the envelope that had come with the luggage this morning; all the laughter drained abruptly from his face, and he froze for an instant, staring down. “I suppose we can’t leave this behind... though I’ve half a mind to.”
It was a large envelope with Mother’s stage name on it, and she’d had it in her hand when she’d come back upstairs. Gustave hadn’t seen who’d opened it, but the flap was torn across now. Perhaps it was the explanation of what had happened about Miss Giry this morning?
Father looked as if he didn’t want to touch the thing. Gustave darted in to pick it up for him, and got snapped at. “Leave it, Gustave!”
His hand jerked back just as Father’s went out, and somehow between them the envelope went sidelong onto the floor. Scraps of torn paper spilled in a trail at their feet. Gustave flinched.
“Papa, I’m sorry—”
There would be shouting and it was all his fault... But his father sounded exasperated rather than angry.
“I told you to leave it.” After a moment he sighed, and ruffled Gustave’s hair. “Go on, then. You’d better tidy up.”
It was all the encouragement Gustave needed to drop down on hands and knees and start scrambling after the mystery package. He did try not to read the pieces. Not too obviously, anyway. But it was heavy paper, and in a familiar style...
“Mother.” He sat back on his heels, looking up at the two of them, puzzled. “This is your contract — isn’t it?”
“Yes, darling.” His mother sat down on the end of the bed. She was smiling at him, but her beautiful eyes were sad. “You see, I didn’t sing.”
That made a sort of sense, he supposed. Perhaps it was the usual way these things were done. Father always dealt with Mother’s contracts; he would be the one to ask. But maybe not right at this minute.
He had quite a pile of scraps collected. The easiest thing was to hold the envelope open to tip them in along with the rest. And he couldn’t help seeing that there was another piece of paper there that wasn’t torn... or avoid reading just a little of it.
He looked up, frozen. He couldn’t have read that right. Could he?
“Mother. There’s a banker’s draft in here for”—he tried to convert from dollars; failed—“for an awful lot of money. An awfully large lot of money.”
“His money.” His father’s voice was quick and low, not meant for the boy’s ears. “His dirty payoff, sent by the Giry girl’s hand — Christine, you know how I feel—”
“You were willing enough to stake for it two nights ago.” There was an edge to his gentle mother’s whisper that Gustave didn’t understand, and his father flushed up with dull colour; but she relented. “Oh my dear... can’t you look at it that way? He took a gamble, that’s all, and you— we— won.”
“But it isn’t that, is it?” A murmur of bitter intent. “It’s a claim on the boy. He still believes — wants to believe—”
“Mother?” It came out high and uncertain, and there was a sudden silence. Gustave swallowed and stood up. “Mother, have I—”
“Darling, it’s all right...” She put an arm round him and pulled him close, taking the envelope from him gently. “Let me take that... there we are. It’s just my old contract that we don’t need any more, and some money because of what happened — what nearly happened — last night.”
“To me?”
His mother hesitated, the way she did when he asked the wrong questions, and he looked across at Father, remembering blood and bruises. “To him?”
“To all of us,” Father said slowly, and Gustave could see him wondering how much to say. “Gustave...”
But Mother shook her head quickly, and he sighed. “Maybe you’re right... Gustave, it’s a long story and when you’re older you’ll need to know. But it all started before you were even born. As for the money: it’s a lot of money because what nearly happened would have been very bad. For us all, but especially for your mother, and Mr Y cares a lot about that. And it makes me angry because— because Mr Y and I never liked each other very much, and I never wanted to be beholden to him for money, or for anything else. I don’t want us to be in his debt, Gustave. Does that all make sense to you?”
Gustave digested slowly and nodded. It wasn’t the whole truth, but Father was being honest with him about that. Mother’s arm was holding him tight, and Father was treating him like a real person whose opinion actually mattered... The warm, safe feeling that had been growing in him since yesterday had come back full force. But he couldn’t help remembering other arguments.
“We still need the money, though, don’t we?”
For a moment, as his parents looked at each other, he thought he had said something wrong. Then his mother let go of him and started laughing, and he could see his father struggling against a smile.
“Truth from the mouths of infants...” It was ruefully said, but the smile won. “Come on then, young man — before we keep that carriage waiting long enough to eat into Mr Y’s generosity. Confound you, Christine, must you laugh quite so much? We all know Gustave is in the right of it...”
But Mother, still laughing, had jumped up and wrapped her arms around him with what sounded more like a sob. Gustave, already halfway to the door, looked back to see his father turn her face upwards gently. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be waiting.
He went downstairs quickly and with a certain amount of unnecessary noise. He wanted Mother to be happy, of course... but some things weren’t entirely comfortable.
The driver outside looked at him rather doubtfully, but when Ma Morrison said something to him in her quick American dialect, he opened the door to let Gustave climb up into the vehicle with the one small bag Mother had given him to carry himself. The interior smelt of foreign tobacco smoke and stale upholstery, and he thought of scrambling out again to talk to the horse; but it was cold out there, and probably the horse would only understand New York English, anyway.
He hoped his parents wouldn’t be too long. After all, it wasn’t kind to keep horses standing in the street. His governess had said so when he’d kept the pony-cart waiting to go down to the village last winter.
But it was only a minute or two later when he heard voices beneath the window, and Mother and her skirts came rustling in to squeeze onto the seat beside him. Gustave wriggled back into the corner and hung on, returning her smile with a beam of his own. In another instant with a word to the driver Father had swung himself in to sit opposite, and they were moving off sedately up the road with the springs creaking a little under the weight of the cases on the roof.
“And that’s that,” Father said almost under his breath, as the house receded behind them and became lost among the rows of anonymous house-fronts, windows staring blind-faced across the street. “One more journey, and then we’re free. Free of him... free of the past. Free to try again...”
His eyes met Mother’s across the half-dark of the carriage interior in a shared relief and promise, and for a moment he looked barely older than Gustave himself. Whatever had passed between them in that brief time upstairs alone together, it had wiped the worry from his father’s face and made his mother very happy; and it was almost worth any amount of embarrassment for that.
He leaned forward and caught hold of Father’s sleeve, remembering last night’s rescue: shared excitement and refuge amid a confused blur that was more than half fantasy already. “It wasn’t all bad, though, was it, Father?”
A month ago — a week ago, even, on the Persephone’s decks — he would have been shaken off without a word, or with a demand for Mother to keep him quiet and out of the way. Instead he got a lopsided schoolboy grin with a hint of mischief.
“Not altogether bad. In fact, parts of it”—a glance at Mother, eyes dancing—“were very enjoyable. And if it hadn’t been for the question of shared rooms and waking up boys in the night—”
“Raoul!” Mother’s hands had flown up to her mouth, and for a moment Gustave thought that if she could she would have clamped them over both his ears. She was giving Father the look she used when someone let slip one of the words Gustave wasn’t supposed to know. Which was silly, of course, because he’d learnt them all long ago from the stable-boys, and he thought Father had a pretty good idea of that... but a de Chagny knew better than to use stable-talk in front of a lady. Especially when she was his mother.
Whatever Father had meant, it had certainly made her go very pink indeed; and Father looked a little abashed, so perhaps it was something a de Chagny shouldn’t say in public after all. But the colour in her cheeks reminded Gustave of the old days he could just remember when he was small and she and Father teased each other... and when she reached out a hand and murmured “Raoul...” again, he somehow didn’t think she was angry at all.
His father’s fingers closed around hers in a movement that was private between the two of them, and Gustave, losing interest, wriggled up instead on the dusty squabs to get a better look out of the window. They were driving down a busy street, and the sidewalks were jostling with coats and coloured dresses all streaming past shop-fronts and canopies, or pausing for a few minutes’ conversation while the rest passed heedlessly around them. They weren’t like the holiday crowds he’d glimpsed on Coney Island. These New Yorkers were in a hurry, rushing on serious business is a serious city with their packets and baskets and armfuls of papers, and all of them knowing exactly where they were going, even if it was only down to the laundry for a parcel of pressed shirts or out from the office for a breath of fresh air.
An electric cab glided past in weird silence, a well-dressed elderly couple just visible beneath the squat black hood across the back, and Gustave, fascinated, twisted round in his seat to try to keep it in view. It was like the marvels in Mr Y’s workshop...
“Father!” He slid back down on the cushions again, and leaned forward. His father stopped holding hands with Mother and looked over at him instead. Gustave slipped his own hand into his father’s warm fingers across the carriage, watching it disappear inside that protective grasp. “Father — I was going to have a tour of Phantasma. Have I missed my chance with Mr Y?”
He knew what the answer was bound to be — they were heading away from Coney Island, after all, off to find a ship that would take them home — but he hadn’t expected the Vicomte’s stifled reaction. The hand around his tightened briefly, hard enough to hurt, then was pulled back with a half-voiced exclamation. Beside him his mother had drawn in a sharp breath.
Gustave wriggled bruised fingers cautiously, not understanding. “Father?”
His father took his hand again and patted it with an air of apology, laying it on his knee. He hesitated. “Gustave, I— I don’t think that was ever a very good idea. He’s not a very nice—”
“Your father means that it wouldn’t have been very nice for Mr Y, darling,” Mother broke in firmly, though she had flinched. “Not after you screamed when he let you see his face. I know you didn’t mean it, and you’re old enough to understand now that he can’t help the way he looks — but you hurt his feelings, Gustave. It wouldn’t be so easy for him to be with you after that. Life is hard for people who are born different.”
Clasped in her lap, her hands were twisting her ring round and round in the sign that meant there was more to this than she was telling him, and Gustave nodded slowly, not certain where this was going. “Like Miss Fleck.”
He’d been fascinated by the cage of callipers on the little ærialiste’s leg; but swinging above the ground in her feathers and sparkling black, with her strong trained hands gripping and spinning her from rope to bar to rope, she was less crippled than anyone he’d ever seen. The rest of Mr Y’s kingdom had seemed as promising, full of dark mysteries and delights conjured by its master in his magician’s mask. Only... his face had been real and hideous, all the more horrible — though Gustave could not have articulated the concept — because of its pitiable distorted humanity. It was not like the delicious shivers of imagination: the secret terrors of the dangerous and wild that promised excitement beyond the cossetted walls of his mother’s domain. There was no magic in it. Only the broken-down revulsion of a thing gone wrong and yet somehow still alive and looking back at you, and itself afraid.
He’d expected enchantment. He’d received crawling reality. He’d panicked, and fled, and his mother had come.
Gustave hadn’t thought about how the man might feel afterwards. He’d tried not to think about it at all, and almost succeeded in forgetting the workshop and that promised tour. In fact if he’d had the choice, it occurred to him now, he’d rather have gone exploring with Miss Fleck, if she would take him. But he’d last seen her upside down on a short swing and very busy practising.
The last thing he’d intended had been to hurt Mr Y, though. He remembered suddenly that the masked man was Mother’s old friend, and felt more guilt seep over him. (But even Mother had shrunk back from that uncovered face when she’d come to find him, indignant memory protested. It wasn’t all his fault.)
“Do you... do you suppose he hates me?”
“No...” His father choked off something that was only half a laugh. “God— no, Gustave, that’s the last thing you’ll ever have to worry about...”
“Raoul, don’t! He’ll leave the boy alone — he gave me his word—”
“As he vowed last time to respect you?”
Painful silence within the vehicle. Out ahead, the hooves rang muffled on wooden paving blocks. Father’s hand gripped tightly on the edge of the seat, and all Gustave could see of Mother’s face now was the high-set curve of one ear beneath the soft masses of her hair.
“Mother.” She turned a little, and he saw the movement of a tear down her cheek. He swallowed. “Mother?”
Another tear fell, and Father muttered something savage at his own expense, leaning across to wipe it away. “Forgive me, Christine—”
“It’s true.” Barely a whisper. “It’s true... I trust him again and again, and with every promise comes some new deceit. Last night—”
“Last night? Listen to me.” Father’s eyes were intent on hers. He held her gaze with a tiny shake of the head. “I wouldn’t change last night for all the world. I wouldn’t change any of this. Don’t you see? I have you— and you too—”
He had slipped from the seat to kneel amid the welter of her skirts, one arm around her waist. His other hand closed on Gustave’s shoulder and gripped there almost fiercely.
“If it weren’t for him, I would be drowning now at home in my own folly, letting everything I cared for slip away. So don’t ever apologise for trust; don’t ever apologise for loving, or believing the best. If it took those deceits to strip down the barriers between us, then I shall owe him more than I can repay for the rest of my life. But it took your love and hope and forgiveness to find the way”—he pulled back a little, tightening his hold on Gustave—“both of you—”
The carriage made an abrupt turn from the smooth street onto a pitted road. Already off-balance, Gustave found himself sliding sideways as his father was rocked back on his knees; he clutched instinctively at Mother’s skirts, but another rut beneath the wheels sent the vehicle lurching back the other way and completed the mischief. Breathless and unprepared, his mother was flung forward off the seat, and Father’s arms closed about them both tightly to keep them from the dusty floor.
Gustave clung close, breathing the warm fresh scent of his mother’s cheek, still damp from tears; Father was laughing in helpless gusts that shook them all, trying to wedge himself upright against the seat as the motion tumbled them hopelessly together, and his embrace was a joyous unquestioning shield that would never end. Face pressed into the familiar stiffened wool of his father’s coat, Gustave could remember only sunlit afternoons of long ago when he’d been swept up suddenly for some childish triumph and held high against his father’s shoulder as laughter swept them both.
He looked up as his father managed to untangle himself, steadying Gustave back onto his feet.
“Oh Papa, I do love you.” It came out with the unselfconscious simplicity of that earlier time, and he flushed, feeling foolish; but his father, turning him round and brushing dust from his jacket, appeared to be considering the statement with all the gravity it deserved.
“There you go... better sit down quickly and hang on. The strap’s by your elbow... that’s it.” He had pulled Mother up to sit beside him on the forward seat. Now he set one arm firmly round her waist and slid his free hand through the strap below the window before looking back at Gustave. His expression was very serious — Gustave remembered guiltily that laughing hurt — but his eyes were dancing.
“I’m afraid I seem to be rather fond of you too, Gustave. You don’t mind, do you?”
Gustave said nothing at all, but bounced experimentally on the carriage seat with all the bursting delight that the dignity of one who was almost ten years old could allow.
He looked quickly back at Mother. But Mother didn’t look as if she would reprove him. She didn’t look as if she’d even seen. She had her head on Father’s shoulder and she was looking up into his face... and Gustave had the oddest of ideas that if she had been just a little bit younger she would have been bouncing up and down herself in sheer shining happiness without any regard to the proper behaviour of a married lady — or a Vicomtesse.
The carriage slowed and steadied as they swung back into a file of other traffic. Beyond the window Gustave caught sight of a brightness in the distance fringed with a dark forest of funnels and masts that drove everything else for the moment out of his mind. He jumped up again, trying for a better view, and heard the longdrawn cry of a great ship above the constant clamour of hooves and wheels.
“Mother — the sea! The sea!”
“The river, I think,” Father said, interest kindling. But the distant water had vanished again behind the city that still surrounded them, and he sat back after a few seconds’ vain attention. “I can’t see... But we must be nearly there. Christine—”
She had turned within his arm to look out as eagerly as Gustave himself. Now she glanced back, questioning, and he drew her close as if that shining look had flown from her face into his without a word.
“Christine— it will be all right. For Gustave — for him — for all of us, I promise. Everything will come out all right.”
Of course even Gustave knew that you couldn’t possibly promise that: Mother’s soft ”Oh, Raoul...” held more than a hint of laughter. But it was the Father he wanted to hear, the father he remembered from the old days of enthusiasms and rash excitements — the father who could see the bright future around the corner and bring it down to warm you just by believing in it.
It had all gone wrong when Monsieur Boncarré died, and Gustave had been too little to understand how or why; only that his Papa who had been such fun to be with had gone away, and no matter how he tried he couldn’t bring him back. In the years since, he’d grown up a lot.
Enough to hug a long-lost promise close to his heart in the knowledge that — in every way that mattered — everything was going to be all right for them now after all.