Fic: The oldest, yet the latest thing (Part 1) V
Well, at least the tea has been a great idea, Jimmy has to admit.
Barrow is regarding him quietly over his whisky glass, greyish blue eyes half-closed, as if trying to work something out, as if debating with himself whether to say something or not. Then he shakes a cigarette out of his battered packet, lighting it and inhaling with a small sigh. (Talking and smoking seem to go together with him.)
Jimmy watches those deep red lips close around the cigarette, press against the paper wrapping with a barely audible sucking sound and release a long plume of smoke.
Then Barrow asks almost offhandedly, “So, that’s where you’ve been going on your days off, eh?”
“Yes,” Jimmy replies hoarsely; over the course of the day, his voice has somehow turned even rougher than it usually is. By now, it sounds almost as hoarse as back then, when it was breaking during adolescence.
“And that is also the reason why you didn’t want to move to France,” Barrow observes, directing another grey cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.
Jimmy just nods unhappily.
At that, Barrow gives a low chuckle and throws him a sidelong glance, smiling wryly and shaking his head to himself. “Never pictured you as a father.”
“Well, I didn’t either, if that helps,” Jimmy grinds out bitterly.
Barrow just raises an eyebrow at his sudden outburst.
“It’s not like we wanted it to happen,” Jimmy sighs, trying to calm down. “We just weren’t … weren’t …”
“Careful?” Barrow prompts nonchalantly, arching a sarcastic eyebrow and letting another plume of smoke curl up from his lips.
One part of Jimmy wants to shout, ‘Well, there’s one thing you won’t ever have to worry about!’
But he manages to keep himself in check and just nod glumly. (No reason to show Barrow that he is seething on the inside right now. And much less reason to bring up that … that affliction Barrow suffers from. This conversation is embarrassing enough as it is.)
“Where is the boy’s mother?” Barrow asks the only sensible question one should be asking at this point.
“She’s dead.” Jimmy is shocked at how little he feels as he says it.
But from across the table, Barrow suddenly throws him a look over his whisky glass that seems almost warm when compared to the way the man’s cold eyes usually pierce everyone. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right,” Jimmy says, thinking, ‘You’d be shocked to find out just how all right it is,’ and feels guilty all of a sudden, guilty for not feeling anything, for not missing her.
Barrow’s voice sounds quite a bit softer when he asks, “What happened?”
“I don’t know if it was my mother who gave her the flu or if it was the other way round … Ironic, actually, to think that about a dozen people in our street died of it and Eddie survived. All these strong, healthy adults didn’t make it, but a little toddler, just a few months old, survived.” Jimmy feels his ribs clench helplessly at the thought and quickly takes another sip of his warm tea.
“Explains why you and Mrs Petersen are still scared,” Barrow says, casually flicking some ash off his cigarette.
Jimmy gives a shaky laugh. “Bit paranoid, I s’ppose.”
But Barrow just shrugs.
“I had only been back from the war for a few days when she died,” Jimmy continues. “And since we had got married in such haste - shortly before I was called up - we never really got to see that much of each o-”
“You were married?!” Barrow asks, nonplussed.
“Well, yes, of course. What did you think? That this is an illegitimate child I’m hiding there?”
“Well, you are hiding him,” Barrow points out with another shrug. “What do I know? Maybe that’s the illegitimate son of some duchess you’ve managed to bed somewhere.”
“I’m hiding him because no employer would’ve hired me if they knew,” Jimmy hisses. “I’d be in the soup if Carson ever found out … It’s hard enough as it is, what with me being unable to get into his good graces. If he ever finds out about it, I’ll be getting my marching orders … And don’t be silly! A duchess? We’re not the kind to embark on affairs with duchesses and the like.”
For a moment, just a split second, it looks as if Barrow might say something in reply to that last remark, but then the man just bites that perfect red lip of his and remains silent, quickly sucking on his cigarette again, cheeks hollowing at the strength of the drag.
The lip of the teacup feels smooth under his thumb, Jimmy realises absently as he rubs it for some reason, watching the mesmerising abandon with which Barrow (that dashed bastard!) is smoking. Then he clears his throat, suddenly remembering what they have been talking about.
“No duchesses or anything like that,” he elaborates quickly. “Nothing illegitimate about it whatsoever. She was a neighbour of ours. The daughter of a seamstress.”
“Did you love her?” Barrow asks softly.
“No,” Jimmy replies with a challenging look at the other man. ‘Don’t you dare judge me for that!’
“And you married her?”
“Oh, come on. It’s quite common for people to marry out of duty instead of love.”
“Don’t really see why,” Barrow mutters under his breath.
“What was I supposed to do?” Jimmy continues hotly, not paying any attention to the other man. “She was only seventeen when … when I got her into trouble. I couldn’t have very well left her to her own devices, now could I? I had to do the right thing.”
”Oh, my! James Kent is a man of honour,” Barrow mocks under his breath.
It takes all of Jimmy’s willpower not to punch the man in the face right there and then. (Or to smash the heavy ceramic ashtray over his head … anything to wipe that smirk off his face.)
“Oh, do stop it!” Jimmy scowls. (Being scoffed at by a smug invert isn’t exactly at the top of his priorities for the day.) “She’d told me she would get rid of it. What was I supposed to do?”
And just like that, Barrow’s grin fades away. “That,” he points out calmly, “would actually have been illegal.”
‘Well, you would know about things illegal,’ Jimmy thinks, managing to bite back the words and shrug.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Barrow snorts. “I won’t pretend it bothers me terribly where their ‘innocent little souls’ go when they’re being done away with. But how did she want to go about it?”
“She was only a few weeks along. Said she knew about this back-alley abortionist who’d do it with a coat hanger.”
Barrow at least has the decency to wince, but otherwise he remains silent.
“But I just … I just …” Jimmy gulps for air for a moment. “I just couldn’t have that happening. I told her right on the spot that I’d marry her. Said I would take care of her and our child for the rest of our lives. Just turned out the rest of her life was quite short …”
All traces of his earlier grin have disappeared from Barrow’s face as he puts out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You’re a father and a widower!” he states the obvious, shaking his head in wonder.
Then he cocks his head to one side and measures Jimmy with a strangely contemplative look.
After a minute or so, the man abruptly averts his eyes, tearing them away from Jimmy’s face and staring out the window, at the way the raindrops are trailing down the stained-glass pane. “How old were you back then, anyway?” he asks quietly.
“I turned twenty shortly before Eddie was born.”
Jimmy isn’t sure at first if he hears the other man right because, suddenly, Barrow draws a deep breath, distant grey eyes still gazing outside, and says in a low voice, that might or might not be breaking, “God, Ji-James!”
“I half hoped for it to go the other way,” Jimmy continues quickly, intently peering into his teacup.
“Other way?” Barrow looks over to him sharply - a new, still unlit cigarette stuck between his lips - then lights the thing with a deft movement of his ungloved hand.
“For me to die in the war,” Jimmy elaborates, “and for her to receive a widow’s dole to feed our child. But then the war was over sooner than we had expected, and I had survived it unharmed.”
For a few moments, nothing can be heard other than the rain pattering against the window and the soft sucking sounds as Barrow inhales smoke from his cigarette.
“Eddie was born while I was away. Not even a full seven months after our wedding,” Jimmy continues quietly. “So my mum just went and told the neighbours he had been born a bit prematurely … I didn't even get to see him until he was three weeks old when I had 72 hours of leave. The next time I saw him was when the war was over. He was already able to sit up and even stand for a bit. And not too long after that … everyone fell ill …”
They remain silent for a few moments, Barrow smoking and Jimmy draining the last of his tea. Somewhere behind them, the soft sounds of snoring can be heard; apparently, the dog has fallen asleep.
“So, is all of this the reason why you’re so anxious to get promoted as quickly as possible? Is this why you are so ambitious?” Barrow enquires eventually, swirling the amber liquid around in his whisky glass.
For a moment, Jimmy feels as if something got stuck in his throat. “Yes,” he admits finally. “What little inheritance I had is almost gone. And that dragon of a landlady keeps raising the rent for that rathole Eddie lives in … Mrs Petersen’s been going without pay for some weeks now.”
“And here I believed you were just self-absorbed,” Barrow says casually. “I thought you were snapping at everyone because you’re easily irritated and detached from us all … Now it turns out you’re just distracted … distracted and worried. You’re desperate to get ahead to support your child.”
“Not that I’m particularly good at that,” Jimmy says bitterly.
Barrow throws him another unreadable glance over his whisky glass. “You know … when I said I didn’t picture you as a dad, I didn’t … I didn’t mean to imply you were a bad father,” he says quietly.
“You might as well,” Jimmy replies unhappily, trying to ignore the stinging in his eyes. “Because I am. A bad father, I mean.”
He is surprised when he sees how resolutely Barrow is shaking his dark head. “If you think that, you’ve never seen a truly bad father,” he says quickly. “When I look at you, I don’t see that. At all. … What I do see, however, is a young struggling father … too young to have this kind of burden on his shoulders, but desperate to make it work. A young father, that’s what I see.”
“Not just someone who looks like he could be the boy’s older brother?” Jimmy mutters, wedging his too-short thumbnail into a gap between the boards of the wooden table, studiously avoiding to look at Barrow.
“That too,” Barrow admits with a barely perceptible smile. “In a way, yes. But that’s actually quite-” The man suddenly bites his lower lip, obviously stopping himself from saying something. “It’s not a bad thing,” he corrects himself quickly. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent.”
They remain silent for a minute or so, the underbutler smoking another cigarette and looking as if that were the most interesting thing in the world.
“You know,” Barrow finally breaks the silence, “he’s a lovely little chap.” And there it is again: that rare, private smile Jimmy has seen on the man’s face earlier.
“I know,” Jimmy chokes out, his heart swelling with pride and pain at the same time, his eyes stinging badly.
Barrow is still smiling that unfamiliar, warm smile. “There's just this one thing, James … Please tell me my ears don’t stick out like an elephant’s.”
“I really don't know how he got that idea in his head,” Jimmy laughs, an inexplicable sense of carefree lightness overtaking him as he squints his eyes at the other man’s ears. “They look perfectly all right to me … But you know how children can be sometimes; they live in a world of their own and see things … differently.”
They both laugh quietly, shaking their heads.
And suddenly, Jimmy knows that however cross he might be with Barrow for helping him out so much today, for the umbrella and the coat and the bus fare, for making Jimmy squirm at the thought of being in Barrow’s debt even more now, however much he hates to feel so beholden to the man, however much Jimmy is embarrassed by all that the underbutler has done for him, he cannot for the life of him bring himself to feel the same way about the fact that the man has helped Eddie so much today, has examined the boy and calmed him down and just generally been there for him. He cannot bring himself to resent Barrow for doing any of this. As much as all the other things have hurt Jimmy’s pride, this is the one thing that doesn’t annoy him in the least, the one thing that he feels nothing but helplessly grateful for and immensely relieved about.
It is at this point that Jimmy realises that he really wants to hug the other man. (From wanting to punch him in the face to longing for the man’s embrace in under thirty minutes, that’s Jimmy down to a tee!) If it weren’t for Barrow’s obvious discomfort with touching him, Jimmy would probably actually consider doing it. And not only to show his gratitude, but also because he really needs it all of a sudden. Because suddenly, there is this strong yearning for a friend, a true friend, to lean on, this inexplicable longing for an embrace from someone with strong arms and broad shoulders, this shocking need to hold someone (or maybe even be held by someone) for a brief eternity, eyes closed and forgetting his sorrows, to just be in the now, to belong somewhere for a change. And Barrow seems to fit that bill perfectly, what with his tall, broad-shouldered frame and the absolute calm he exudes.
At that, something flashes through Jimmy’s mind: what if Eddie’s elephant analogy wasn’t so far off, after all? Maybe the boy just reacted (unwittingly) to some hidden quality in Barrow that has nothing to do with actual elephant’s ears and all the more with some vibe Eddie picked up on without actually meaning to. Aren’t elephants supposed to be intelligent and calm and patient? Aren’t they supposed to be wise creatures that quietly endure all pain and suffering, yet never forget … and still somehow manage to remain the truest friends one will ever find in one’s life? Maybe Eddie saw something there that Jimmy didn’t … couldn’t until now. A little four-year-old boy and he picked up on something that his father had previously missed …
“It’s hard to imagine he was this small when I first held him,” Jimmy states as a follow-up to his unvoiced thoughts, indicating the size of a tiny parcel with his hands. “And by now he’s …” Jimmy trails off.
Barrow’s quiet smile gets even warmer, and Jimmy suddenly remembers how he hadn’t even been able to hold his newborn son until the women in the house had shown him how to do it. ‘Careful with his head,’ they had said to the overwhelmed young father in his sweaty, dirty uniform. And he had smiled and marvelled at the tiny little person in his arms.
He startles out of his memories, noticing that Barrow is watching him. But just as Jimmy returns his gaze, the man averts his eyes, quickly stubbing out his cigarette and draining the last of his Scotch in one long swallow.
And that’s when Jimmy actually notices it … Why is the man drinking whisky, anyway? And in the middle of the day at that! Why isn’t he drinking a nice ale or something? Isn’t whisky at this hour supposed to be reserved for some sort of emotional turmoil?
It’s at this point that Jimmy realises that maybe, underneath that cool veneer of his, Barrow is astonished after all, that deep down the man is far more moved and affected by all of what he has seen today than he is letting on.
🚬
Continued here