Chapter Text
Eight Years Later
In the ancient building, the sonorous tones of an organ ring out in the tune of Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. Otis’s eyes are fixed on Maeve as she advances up the aisle. Her footsteps are steady and confident, her head held high.
Her academic gown billows majestically behind her, and when she pauses at the top of the steps to shake the Dean’s hand, the joy in her smile is blinding.
Afterwards, a raucous party convenes at the pub. All the old gang are there (with a single, noticeable exception), and the mood is hectic and high-spirited. There are hugs all round.
Eric and Adam flank Maeve, and insist on opening doors for her with an officious, hand-on-hearted bow—”After you, Doctor Wiley”.
Simon enquires how Maeve and Otis are settling in at Harvard, while Ruth—still looking sunburnt from her and Simon’s recent escapades in the tropics—clutches her husband’s arm with drunken urgency.
“Harvard? You didn’t tell me about this!”
“Well, naturally Maeve here got a postdoc in Harvard right after finishing her PhD, so they’ve been settling in there for the last two months. Flew back especially for graduation, and to see us of course,” Ruby explains, with none of the acid that used to tinge her voice when she spoke of Maeve.
Maeve looks amused. “I did message you, Ruth, but I rather had the impression that your phone went missing when you eloped.”
“Oh, that must be it.” Ruth looks a little sheepish. “Yes, actually, I left it in a drawer in the hotel in Suva on our first night, and I meant to get it out on the morning we left for Tonga, but then Simon and I got up to something very interesting involving a silk scarf and an electric toothbrush—” (At this, little ripples of laughter make their way around the table) “—and I forgot all about it. I had a dreadful time getting it back. But it was a lovely trip. I think people should take honeymoons more often.”
“So what you really mean,” Simon remarks drily, “is that more people should be serial monogamists.”
A confused silence follows these pronouncements, broken by Otis explaining, in a therapist-y sort of way, that a serial monogamist is exactly what it sounds like.
“Oh, no.” Ruth shakes her head so vigorously that she loses her balance and has to be hauled back up by Simon. “I mean, people should just take honeymoons without needing to get married. Or they should do, like, those wedding vow renewal things.”
“Isn’t that just called a holiday?”
“No.” This is said in the obstinate tones of the moderately intoxicated. “A honeymoon is quite… quite different. First of all…” But at this point Ruth is distracted by the arrival of the hot chips, and loses her train of thought entirely.
While nibbling delicately at an arancini ball, Ruby asks Maeve to remind her what her PhD was in, again? (The reception of George Eliot in 20th century writers.) Adam interjects, surprisingly, to ask what is an Aeolian harp?
Following the second confused silence of the evening, Adam explains that he once overheard someone reading Middlemarch out loud, and there was a description of someone as having “a voice like an Aeolian harp, or something”.
“Oh—yes.” Maeve’s face lights up, as it generally does when talking about her favourite Eliotic heroine. “That’s Dorothea. She’s actually a really interesting character, because—”
Eric, slinging an arm over Otis’s shoulders, commences an unsubtle interrogation of his own.
“So I went to see Jean the other week, and she said that the new practice got flooded. What happened?”
“Oh—yes, we were trying to install a toilet—Ruth, that’s my beer you’re dipping that chip in—where was I?”
“Toilet,” Eric interjects helpfully.
“…trying to install a toilet, I mean I’d got a plumber in to install a toilet, except he ended up crying on the floor for three hours about his ex while I therapised him, and we didn’t realise he’d left the tap on in the other bathroom, and it flooded and completely ruined the carpet—”
Eric guesses sagely, “And then you turned it into a grand metaphor about how he shouldn’t repress his feelings.”
“No. Well, actually in the end he fixed the damage and didn’t bill me, and he’s now a regular client. How is my mum, anyway? I mean, I’ve seen her, and we’re staying for a few days before we fly back, but she doesn’t really tell me things. Which is a bit ironic really, considering how long it was the other way round.”
“Very independent woman, Jean.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I think she’s good, truly, Otis. Anyway, Jakob would tell you if there was something major going on.”
“That’s true.”
“She seems to be enjoying retirement. Except, I’ve seen her study and she seems to be working on about five papers and a book. What’s the deal with that?”
Otis grins at this. “I’ve learned academics don’t retire. They just pretend to, so they have more time to write books.”
“Heh.”
At this juncture, Stephen arrives, late and rather dishevelled, wrestling a sodden umbrella back into more inside-suitable dimensions. “It’s pouring out there,” he pants, sweeping his fringe back from his eyes and spattering half the table with secondhand rain.
There is a second round of hugs.
Ruth asks Maeve, in what she clearly thinks is a discreet undertone, how her family is doing.
“Pretty well, actually.” Maeve’s smile is genuine. “Elsie was at the ceremony, but she’s got a friend at Christ’s, so they’re having a sleepover. Anna and Mum both wanted to come, but it’s a limit of two guests, and in the end we decided I’d take Elsie and then drop her back tomorrow. I’d have taken Mum, but she’s been really tired lately, and it just seemed better… Anyway, she’s still clean, she’s working… she gets fatigued a lot, but the job’s flexible so it’s okay.”
“Aw, I’m so glad, babes.” Ruth hugs her, clumsily. (Ruth and Aimée have maintained their friendship ever since their first meeting, and certain verbal similarities have begun to develop.)
The table vibrates as half the group’s phones ping simultaneously. Ruth and Maeve both scramble for theirs.
Ruth has hers in hand first, and promptly drops it into the aioli.
As Maeve reads the message, a big smile spreads across her face. She shows Otis, who is peering over her shoulder.
The photo is of a tired-but-happy-looking Aimée in a hospital gown. A baby lies on her chest, with the characteristic wrinkled skin and old-man frown of the newly born. It’s captioned, “Everyone, meet baby Lincoln!”
Afterwards, the rain having subsided, a somewhat attenuated group head back to a hotel on the outskirts of town. Simon and Ruth are staying with Stephen, who is still doing his PhD and inhabits a typical student sharehouse, but Eric, Adam, Otis and Maeve have all elected to stay the night in the same hotel and head back to their hometown on the morrow.
Eric and Adam soon sprint off drunkenly into the distance, leaving Otis and Maeve to follow at a more sedate pace.
He takes her hand. “How do you feel, Dr. Wiley?” he teases.
Her smile, when it comes, is warm under the glow of the street lamps.
“Content.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“I’m proud of us,” Maeve corrects, squeezing Otis’s hand.
They skip gaily toward the hotel, joined hands swinging between them as though they were in school again.