__Conquests__
By Eazy Does It
Julia had always had something about her, there was no
doubt. Something blunt and smooth in the way she
talked and always told the truth, in the way she would
stand in front of Wesley and protect him with kind,
unknowable eyes, and a warm and quiet squeeze of the
hand. At least that's how it was when there was
something about her _and_ him, and he had a feeling
there wasn't anymore, because today she was holding
his gaze simply because she was strong and would never
let bitterness make her do any less. The fact that he
couldn't tell how she felt about him now, and what
that meant, jolted him back to the London skies and
the trickle of rain on his face.
In the time it took him to bend down and pick up the
suitcase he had dropped to greet her (perhaps that was
worth something, that the need was there to hold each
other), words from the debriefing session he had just
attended crept back into his mind - gentle words in
most circumstances but even more so given the
magnitude of his failure and that everything he had
promised seemed to have been a lie. The news Julia had
given him should have taken all his thoughts away from
the Council, but the mere mention of his father had
always been enough to conjure up memories of failures,
and there was no reason why the habit of a lifetime
should change now. It was absurd, really, almost funny
in a dark and frightening way that would have fitted
his father and so perfectly suited this occasion. He
felt sick and wondered if it showed.
"There's a pub around the corner," Julia said. "Come
on. You could use a drink."
Wesley followed her and went to sit in the corner she
pointed to him. The smell of old cigarettes, and stout
and leather, nearly made him gag. He had forgotten
about this, about his England, in the few months he
had spent in the perpetual sunshine of California,
where everything was new and shiny and meant nothing.
He felt angry with Sunnydale, that place that had made
him forget so much, that had deceived him so. That
didn't last because other smells made themselves real
to him, that smell of age and rot near the pond on his
family's estate, the smell of winter in that old
house, of mince pies and Sunday roasts, of lemonade
and cheesecake. The leather of his boots and of his
father's, that lingered in the cupboard under the
stairs where Wesley waited for a courage that never
came.
When he had first spotted Julia, it was the good
things he had first remembered, all the little moments
of peace and the total devotion they had once silently
sworn to each other as drowning children who needed
islands would. But after all this time he should have
known it could only be something bad that would bring
them together again. He watched her order the drinks,
unresponsive to the bartender's pleasantries. Not
rude, but sticking only to what was necessary. She
rarely did anything unnecessary, which is why he was
surprised it had taken her so long to cut her hair. A
simple cut, certainly, parting in the middle as usual,
with little interest in what was fashionable, curving
on its way to her ears where she more or less neatly
tucked them away. It made her jaw look a little
sharper, her eyes a little bigger. She was still
pretty, and as beautiful as you could find a mystery.
She sat down in front of him.
"The whisky's for nerves and the beer's for time," she
said, pushing two glasses to him. Lifting her own, she
added, "The orange juice is because I'm driving."
The unnecessary obviously still included painful
things sometimes. He swallowed the whisky and thought
he might request a slap next time. It would have the
same effect and be more pleasant on his tongue. "What
happened?" he asked.
"We don't know yet. I was told they found him next to
the old cross."
"And -" he had to say it eventually "- my father was
already dead."
"It seems that way."
"What was he doing there?"
"Digging, from the look of things. He'd even borrowed
a tractor from Steve Atkins."
"So," Wesley said, " a heart attack?"
"I'm not sure." She took a sip of her orange juice.
"But from what I was told it's possible there was
_some sort_ of attack."
"What do you mean?"
"They say he looked covered with bruises. They found
him in the middle of the night; it was hard to tell.
Could have been mud."
"Or perhaps someone stood up to him."
"Wesley, please."
"We're talking about _my father_, Julia. I think we
both know what that means."
She didn't reply. He noted, not without a little
despair, that this part hadn't changed, either, that
when it came to his father they couldn't about it now
anymore than they could then, and that they envied
each other's place of pain. By the look on her face
and the dimming of the light around her, he had also
said more than he had meant to. The time to ask the
right questions had come and gone a long time ago.
"Finish your beer," she said. "It's a long drive back
to Norfolk."
***********************
It was raining hard now, in small dirty lumps that
whipped up the asphalt and the heat in the air. Julia
was driving his father's car, a large BMW, and he
realised only when she opened her window and the sound
of water and traffic came crashing on his thoughts.
She beat him to the obvious. "Your mother got back
last night. She was too tired to come." She shrugged.
"And I had some business with the Council anyway."
"The collections?"
"Indeed."
"I thought you were going to apply for the library."
"That was four years ago, and just a conversation."
"You could do better than inventory, that's all."
"Maybe I don't want to." He took little comfort from
the smile playing on her lips. "Isn't it great that
we can just pick up where we left off?"
"That's because things don't go away and disappear
when you want them to." He waited for a sign that she
had heard what he'd said but none came. He couldn't
bring himself to resent her for not saying something
he couldn't himself. Her next question took him by
surprise.
"Wesley, why are you back in England? Did something
happen to the slayers?"
"You don't know?"
"As you pointed out, I'm only collections. They find
it hard to tell me half of what it is I'm putting
away, so you can imagine I'm not the first to hear
about that business."
He had believed that telling his father would be
difficult, but telling her was just as hard. She was
home, after all, and everything that went with it. He
swallowed, and tried that tone she had once dubbed
'the upper-class twit' and that used to make her
laugh. "Let's see. One of them went mad and turned
against us. The other _got_ mad and, it seems, turned
against us as well."
"You had to fight two slayers? No wonder that school
blew up."
"I thought you hadn't heard anything."
"Sunnydale News, via the wonders of the cyber age. Not
as nice as a letter, true, but it does help to keep in
touch." Her eyes didn't leave the road, her hands
didn't move on the steering wheel. "With one of those
things that don't go away."
Steady as ever, he thought. And so very close. He was
going to have to decide whether that was a good or bad
thing. Right now he was grateful for it. "Both slayers
had... ambivalent feelings when it came to the
Council. And I did everything I could to impose on
them the very authority they resented."
"So..."
"So the Council have fired me."
She was silent for a while.
"You're going to have to tell me more than that
sometime," she said eventually.
They were pulling out of London now. Her window
whizzed shut again, and all that was left of the world
was the two of them, the dull and distant humming of
the engines, and green grass and concrete dripping
away between the wipers.
**********************
Wesley had no idea where he was when he woke up. He
thought he was dreaming at first, because he couldn't
remember how he had got from the car to his bedroom
then couldn't believe he was home or that Julia had
driven him here. The knocking on the door grew more
persistent and the voice behind it louder, and it came
back to him as he answered it, the long hours spent
dozing in the car as the rain got worse and their
arrival, in the darkness of a late and overcast summer
night, in a silent and sleeping house.
He smiled when he saw tiny and wrinkled Maggie
standing there, and so did she, but the smile faded
and the hands that were impulsively reaching out to
touch him returned to her apron. "Oh Wesley, I'm so
sorry to wake you up like this -"
"It's all right, Maggie. What's the matter?"
"Your mother asked me to wake you up. Something
dreadful has happened to the sheep - she said that you
should take a look at it."
"To the sheep?" He struggled to get that concept into
his still dozing brain. The sheep. "Any idea what?"
"You know I can hardly pluck a chicken as it is. I
think they knew better." That made him smile again,
and this time she didn't resist. She quickly grabbed
his face and kissed his cheeks. "It's so nice to have
you home again, but such dreadful circumstances... I
simply don't know what to feel."
He embraced her. "I'd rather you felt happy."
"Now that you're here, it shouldn't be too difficult."
She stepped out of his arms. "Matthew is already on
his way there, you should hurry. All your things are
still in your wardrobe."
It wasn't just his clothes that were still hanging in
place as clean and as neatly as he had left them. He
had been gone for over a year, but the ebony wood of
his bed and of the floor shone and creaked the way it
always had. He opened the curtains to white and thin
sunshine and tried not to stare too long at what he
couldn't see last night. The oak trees and flower beds
lining the garden, the greenhouse and the old cricket
stump, and beyond that all the green grass that
undulated ever so gently to the woods and the river,
to the grazing grounds near the old graves, themselves
only a short walk away from the old cross, where his
father had died. Everything was the way he remembered,
perhaps a little too much. He wondered again if he
wasn't dreaming.
A short and stocky boy called Dave, who barely looked
his seventeen years, was waiting for him with one of
the battered old Land Rovers they used to travel
around the estate. He was visiting his grandmother
Maggie for the summer from Glasgow, he told Wesley in
a dutiful and guarded tone, and was very grateful to
be able to enjoy some fresh country air. He said
nothing else for the ten minutes of the drive, except
to swear and apologise for swearing when the gear
stick slipped into neutral. He swore again when
Wesley's mother appeared as they took a steep turn,
and the car jumped and stalled to a halt.
"This isn't a race, Dave," she said over Wesley's
shoulder as he stepped out, "and you haven't stolen
this car. So slow down." The boy chewed out an
apology, but she had already turned to Wesley. She
looked him up and down before giving him a strong hug
and stirring him away up the path. "I'm sorry I
couldn't welcome you home yesterday, Wesley."
"We got here rather late."
"Are you all right?"
Did she know about the Council's decision? "I'm fine.
And you?"
"I'm fine." She stopped. He could just begin to make
out Julia and Matthew through the trees, as well as a
couple of horses. "It's been too long since I've last
seen you, you know. I've missed you." He had missed
her, too, but he didn't feel like telling her. He
didn't feel like feeling anything. She straightened.
"Well," she said, "you've probably had the same
treatment from Maggie, once must be enough. We'll talk
later. Come on."
They rounded up the corner, and walked out of the
woods. He recognised the sharp and hollow smell
immediately, before he saw the pools of dried blood,
black and silver under the sun. There were about
twenty dead sheep lying in the grass, eyes like
stones, tongues lolling out of their mouths and their
head nearly ripped from their bodies, hanging by the
skin. Wesley gagged violently.
"Fook," Dave said, coming up behind them. Then,
quickly, "Sorry, Ma'am."
"Dave, back to the car." That was Matthew, wearing his
usual stubble of golden hair. He was six years older
than Wesley, and six times his size. His dirty sweater
and large green boots at least made him look that way.
They shook hands after Dave had gone. "I'm very sorry
about your father. We're going to miss him around
here."
He nodded, trying not to look at the sheep and only at
the blood. "It doesn't look like you're going to have
the time. What happened?"
"Matt doesn't think it's an other animal," Julia said.
"Although you'd have to be to do something like this."
Wesley ignored her. "Any zoo escapes?"
"None," Matthew said. "Besides, an animal would bother
to eat some of what it's killed."
"Yet, apart from the obvious," Wesley's mother spoke,
"they've been left untouched.
I think we may be dealing with some sort of cult
ritual."
"You've seen this before?"
"Not specifically, but the police called this morning
to give the results of my husband's autopsy. He was
beaten to death, quite violently. And this is too
unnatural to be a coincidence."
They all stared at her, at her calm. Wesley thought he
might laugh, because of all the hours he had spent
wishing for this to come true, as though he had just
discovered that Santa Claus did exist after all. It
couldn't happen, all these things that had only
existed in his head, or what he had told Julia the day
before.
"Oh God, Ma'am," Julia whispered.
Matt said nothing, although some embarrassment was in
his eyes. Perhaps because he didn't know what to say,
perhaps for being caught in this mess, or perhaps
because he had once shared Wesley's wishes.
His mother looked away, towards the manor, and then
reached for the horses' reins in Julia's hands.
"Julia, if you wouldn't mind - I would like to ride
back with Wesley."
She hesitated, briefly surprised. Wesley himself still
wasn't certain he'd heard his mother correctly. "Not
at all. I think I'm needed here anyway."
"Join us for brunch?"
"Of course. Thank you for the morning ride."
**********************
The horses, Ichabod and Ligeia, were old now but
trotted with their heads high, their gaze often turned
in the direction of their stables, which they could
find wherever they found themselves on the estate.
Wesley felt the same pull, that of the familiar, but
it made him tense and tired. He wanted to go back to
bed, to pull the curtains, and fall asleep until he
really woke up and was either someone or somewhere
else. He waited for his mother to speak, but so far
she had remained quiet. She looked tired as well, but
otherwise the same way she always had: neat and
straight, with everything tugged or folded as it
should be, no matter what the weather or the
circumstances had to say. Her face followed that
pattern, too - her makeup barely perceptible, her
wrinkles almost embarrassed, and her skin a thin
creamy shade, which he remembered as soft and warm.
Plain by anyone's standards, so that you couldn't miss
who she was and what she was like, and you couldn't
forget her. Edith Wyndham-Price, so like his Edward
Wyndham-Price of a father and his passion for
following the rules, and so unlike him and the storms
that bubbled in his blood. Wesley had wished more than
once that she had never married his father; that in
one stroke she could have been happier and he would
never have been born.
"Have you had any breakfast?" she said. He stopped his
horse next to hers. "I suppose not, you were asleep. I
couldn't eat anything. Probably the jet lag."
"Eating helps with jet lag."
"That's what they say." Ichabod shook his head to
loosen the reins. "I can't quite believe it - that he
should be gone. Dead, and murdered." She swallowed
under the light silk scarf around her neck. "I think
I'm glad I didn't eat. It's funny, isn't it? I haven't
even seen his body - he could be in China in my place
for all I know - but just the thought of his death
shakes me up so much, while the very obvious reality
of those sheep leaves me so unmoved. And then with you
it's the other way around."
Her tone was gentle but it angered him that she should
try even now. The words came to his mind, that he had
his priorities straight, that he was glad his father
was finally in the morgue because he'd been dead for a
long time, but they broke somewhere in his throat and
choked him. She was watching him, and he was happy for
the moment to let her believe that it was shared
sorrow that brought tears to his eyes. It was habit
that silenced him, habit of a lifetime, and it hadn't
taken long at all to bring others he had learned here,
of bone-biting unhappiness and lies. It should have
made it easier that he was dead but it didn't, because
Wesley had wrapped everything up around his father,
just so, and now it was unravelling and making itself
quite bare. He trembled and wished he could kill those
sheep some more.
"I don't think I've ever told you this before," his
mother said, turning her horse back towards the
stables, "but you really take after him. It must be
something in your eyes."
* * *