Gerry is not, by nature, an early riser. He’s something of a night owl, actually, prone to staying up until the wee small hours with paintbrush and stereo and then collapsing for the better part of the morning. He’s the sort of man who would have worked the swing shift at the factory during the war or taken third watch on a sailing vessel, keener-sighted with nothing to light his way but a quarter moon and the occasional amber glow of a street lamp than with full sun in a cloudless sky, and should he tend towards one of the Fears would be well on his way to being the monster under the bed or the shadow in the alley.
But he can get up early when it’s important, so he steps out into the grey light of pre-dawn, locks the shop door behind himself, and sets off across London.
He doesn’t bother going to the house. It’s going to be chaos this morning, with Aunt Lily probably trying to delay things as much as possible and Martin actually considering staying and Melanie bullying him out the door while simultaneously forgetting half a dozen things, and Uncle Roger in the midst of it all being helpful in the most cheerfully unhelpful way imaginable. He can picture it all in his mind’s eye. No, best he stay away. He knows where they’ll be, so he stops long enough to pick up another pack of Woodbines and smokes one as he makes his way to the King’s Cross St. Pancras Underground stop.
Over the years, Gerry has traveled out of every station in London, most of them a dozen times, and St. Pancras has always been his favorite. There’s no real reason for it, especially since they don’t usually spend a lot of time waiting in the stations—his mother, and by extension Gerry and his siblings, have the timetables memorized and their timing down to almost an art, so they never have to wait more than eight minutes unless there’s a delay. He supposes it’s the memories. King’s Cross, just across the road, is good too, but he prefers St. Pancras if he has a choice. He usually doesn’t.
It’s raining, and it’s also early, which means limited traffic. Gerry leans against the wall just outside the Tube entrance, smokes his cigarette, and waits. There’s a café just over there he could probably wait in if he really wanted to, but he’s afraid of missing them if he does.
Suddenly he sees a familiar car pull up to the curb, exactly where he thought it would. Smiling, he flicks the remains of his cigarette into a puddle and moves towards it as the doors open and the occupants—or three of them, at any rate, he doesn’t know if the fourth is there—climb out.
“Carry your bags, miss?” he asks in his best Cockney accent.
“Gerry!” Melanie drops the suitcase she was starting to haul out back into the boot and hugs him tightly. Since he’s gone on a growth spurt since the last time he saw her, she misjudges slightly, but it’s no less welcome. “Are you just getting back in from—where was it this time?”
“Salzberg, by way of most of the former Austrian Empire. And no, I’ve been back since Tuesday.” Gerry hugs her back. “Been a bit busy, but I wasn’t going to miss this. Hey, Martin.”
“Hey.” Martin smiles brightly and comes over to hug him. He’s hit another growth spurt, too, and for the first time Gerry finds he has to look up at his little brother.
That never stops being a novelty, does it? A voice, tinged with melancholy, murmurs in the back of his mind, and Gerry agrees before it occurs to him that he doesn’t know where that thought, or for that matter the voice, came from.
“I can smell the cigarette smoke,” Martin whispers in his ear, bringing his attention back to the present. “Those things’ll kill you, you know.”
“I know, but you can’t blame me for needing stress relief today,” Gerry whispers back, giving Martin an extra squeeze before letting him go.
Uncle Roger gives him a fond smile and claps him on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, Harold.”
“Gerard,” Gerry corrects him automatically. “It’s good to see you, too, Uncle Roger.”
For just a second, there’s a flicker of something in Uncle Roger’s eyes, but it’s there and gone in a flash. “All right, all right. We’ve left it enough time for you to grab something if you hurry. Have you got your tickets?”
“Right here, Dad.” Martin pats his jacket pocket.
“Mine’s here.” Melanie holds up her bag, the one Gerry bought her in Cairo five years ago. It makes him absurdly happy that she’s still using it.
There’s a few moments of confusion as Gerry and Uncle Roger get Melanie and Martin’s luggage out of the boot and Melanie and Martin reassure him several times that they have both money and tickets, and then there’s another round of hugs in the rain. Then Uncle Roger turns to Gerry.
“Where are you going to school?” he asks, sounding slightly confused. “Which train will you be taking?”
“I’m staying right here in London, Uncle Roger.” Gerry carefully doesn’t look at Melanie. “Mum needs me at the shop. But I’ll make sure they get off safe.”
“Oh. Good. Thank you.” That thing flits through Uncle Roger’s eyes again, and this time, it lingers long enough that Gerry is able to identify it—mingled fear and dismay. He knows he’s forgetting things, and it’s upsetting him. “I need to get home to my bride. Make sure you phone when you get safely to school, all right?”
“We will. Love you, Dad.” Melanie hugs her father tightly one more time. “Tell Mum we’ll call.”
“Of course.” Uncle Roger kisses her forehead, then turns to Martin and hugs him as well. “Let us know when your first performance is and we’ll come see you.”
“I will, Dad. Love you.” Martin smiles wanly as he hugs him.
They wave as Uncle Roger pulls away. Then Gerry hefts Melanie’s trunk, which is much heavier than the time she took it to Poland, and turns towards the café. “Come on, let’s get out of this rain and have a bite.”
It’s a forgettable little place, the kind that changes names and hands like a small child changes shirts, but it’s also a place that knows its customers. The food they serve is hot, quick, neat, and above all cheap. Gerry buys breakfast for all three of them and takes it over to the table in the corner.
“How much time do you have?” he asks.
Martin checks his watch. “My train leaves in an hour.”
“Hour fifteen for me,” Melanie says. “Could’ve left later, honestly, but I wasn’t going to ask Dad to come out here twice and…”
“No, I get it,” Gerry assures her. “That’s good, though, it’ll give us a bit of time.” He pauses, then adds, not bothering to hide his smirk, “You’re leaving out of St. Pancreas, right?”
Melanie punches him in the arm, not gently. “Shut up. I can’t believe you let me call it that. At least Martin thought I was talking about a different station.”
“I thought it was cute. So, St. Pancras?”
“Yeah.” Melanie sighs. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and Gordon will be my engine.”
“I don’t think you’re going quite that far,” Martin says. “And he pulled the Express, remember? So if you’re not stopping at the exchange, it won’t be him.”
Gerry laughs. “Speaking of…well, not exactly, but I’ve got something for you.”
Melanie blinks. “For me?”
“For both of you. Hold on.” Gerry reaches under his coat for his bag.
He left Austria ahead of his mother, much to her annoyance, because it’s important that he be here for this. Melanie and Martin are both going away to school for the first time, and Gerry wants to be there to send them off. Especially since, for the first time since they were eight years old, they won’t be attending the same school, or even in the same city. Martin is heading up to Edinburgh, where one of the best music programs in the UK outside of London offered him a place, while Melanie heads to Folkestone and the school her mother attended.
He knows they’re both excited. He’s known that since they started telling him about applying. But he also knows they’re a little nervous, and a little melancholy, and he’s hoping to alleviate that a bit.
There are two packages of roughly the same size and shape, but Gerry was smart enough to put different colored bows on them before he labeled them. He presents Melanie hers first, just because it’s on top. “Go on, open it. Something to help you out when you get there.”
Melanie removes the bow and sticks it on the band holding her hair in place, then rips through the paper and lays the gift bare. She stares at it for a moment, then looks up at Gerry, eyes wide and shining. “For me? Really?”
“So you don’t forget the way,” Gerry tells her.
She touches it lightly, then draws back hastily. “It’s not under glass!”
“It’s canvas. It doesn’t need glass. Go on, you can touch it, the paint’s long dry.”
Melanie carefully traces a line, her face creased in concentration. “What’s that dot for?”
Gerry leans over Melanie’s shoulder as Martin does the same on the other side. “The green one there is Martin’s school, more or less. The blue dot is yours. And the copper one on the close-up map of London is me, obviously, not that you’ll forget where I am. But, you know, if I was going to mark important places on it, I reckoned where we were living was important.”
Melanie laughs quietly as she scans the drawing. It’s not exactly a faithful or detailed map; Gerry didn’t put most of the real cities in the United Kingdom on it. It has all the places they’ve gone for Martin’s birthday or hunting books for his mum, the cities where Martin and Melanie will be, and—most crucially—all the fictional places in England that they’ve been able to work out the locations of: Pepperinge Eye, the Island of Sodor, the Gump…it’s not exactly a map of fairyland, more just an alternate England, or several alternate Englands. Places they wish they could really escape to and be free of the Fourteen.
“I love it.” Melanie lays it on the table and gives Gerry a hug. “Thank you. I’ll treasure it forever.”
Gerry hands Martin his. “And this one’s for you. It’s not the same thing, but I think you’ll need this more.”
Martin is much more methodical about opening his gift, carefully working the tape loose and removing the paper carefully. After a moment, he, too, has exposed a framed picture. He gasps and his eyes fill with tears, but he smiles when he looks up. “Gerry, this is so good. It makes you really want to reach out and take their hands.”
“That was the idea, yeah.”
Melanie looks over Martin’s shoulder. “Do you really think I look like that?” she asks, sounding awed.
Gerry smiles at her. “You do.”
It’s not exactly life-size, but it’ll do well enough, he figures. One of Martin’s deepest, darkest fears is of forgetting faces; he still can’t really remember his grandfather’s, and even if they’re only going to be apart for a few months—this time around, anyway—he’s terrified of forgetting Gerry and Melanie. No matter how much they promise him they know he’ll still love them even if he can’t recall their faces, it still worries him. Add that to the forgetfulness that’s afflicted him since he was Marked by the Spiral, and the only thing Gerry could think of to give him was a picture of them. And he hopes that if Martin knows that Gerry painted it for him, rather than just framing a photograph, he’ll have less trouble believing he’s loved.
Does he really doubt that? The voice in the back of his mind sounds shocked. Doubt you? How can he believe you don’t love him?
Gerry mentally shrugs and tells the voice, His self-esteem isn’t great. It’s not that he doesn’t think I love him, it’s that he doesn’t think he deserves it.
It doesn’t feel like talking to himself, but he can’t quite put his finger on who he is talking to.
“I wish I could do something like this for you,” Martin says softly. “So you don’t forget I love you, too.”
Gerry wonders, for a fleeting second, if Martin is reading his mind, but that’s not the hold the Ceaseless Watcher has on him right now and it would be a cruel thing to do to—well, to anyone, let alone a sixteen-year-old, and especially not to Martin. The last thing Martin needs is to be able to read his mother’s mind and know exactly what she thinks of him.
“Martin,” he says, “I’ve known that for eight years. I’m not likely to forget it any time soon. Cross my heart.”
“I love you, too,” Melanie tells him. She reaches for their hands and squeezes tightly. “Both of you. And, Martin, you write me and let me know when your winter concert is and I’ll try to come too. If nothing else, I’ll see you at the Christmas holidays, right?”
“Of course,” Martin promises. He reaches for Gerry’s hand to close the circle. “Will you come, too?”
“I’ll try,” Gerry assures him. “And like Melanie said, I’ll at least see you over the holidays. I’ll look in on Uncle Roger and Aunt Lily for you, too.”
Melanie frowns. “I wish you could get out of London, too. I know you never went to school like—well, not traditionally, anyway—but maybe you could get into university or something?”
Gerry hesitates, then drops his voice, even though he knows no one is there to overhear. “I’m not going to stay in London. Once you two get through your first term, once we’re sure you’re going to get out, I’m leaving. I’ll come back to visit you two, and then once you go to university, I’ll figure out somewhere to live close to you. Then once you graduate, we can get a house together somewhere Mum and Aunt Lily can’t get at us and start a new life.”
Martin looks hopeful. “Do you really think we can?”
“Of course,” Gerry says stoutly.
“I like that idea.” Melanie grins. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. Once we’re sure escape is possible, we run away together.”
Gerry squeezes their hands and lets go, glancing at the clock on the café’s wall quickly to check how much time they have left. “Oh, it’s possible, all right. It’s more than possible. The three of us together? There’s nothing we can’t do.” He grins. “Including escape our mums once and for all.”