|
Counterpoint, Interfolio
Tone: The intonation, pitch, and modulation of a composition expressing the meaning, feeling, or attitude of the music.
A/N: Co-authored by Willow-wode
* * *
Well, she has to admit that it's a fine day for football, though she thinks the game would have gone on even were it raining… or even snowing, knowing her son, and they all would have gone along with it because Merry just has that 'follow me' way about him and they certainly do. It's become a tradition over the past few years, and she thinks at least half of those who look forward to Merry's birthday every year look forward to it mostly for the football game.
Lads, she supposes, will be lads.
And she sighs.
It is gorgeous this afternoon, she has to allow that, though it's a little warm to be crashing up and down a football field, if anyone wants her opinion, though they don't seem to. Unseasonable for so early in the summer. Still, it's almost too perfect not to enjoy, with the sun streaming down on the crown of her head and warming her right through to the ground, splashing out and over the greenway, and if she squints her eyes just right, she can almost imagine it's a swath of emeralds, just waiting about for someone to come and snatch up a pocketful. And even now, beneath the chatter and din all around her, a bolt of firth and field and Buck Hill between, still she can hear the River speaking to her, low and secret in her ear like the breath of a lover.
For all that she's a Took, born and bred, and had christened the wilds of her home with blood from scraped elbows and skinned knees, still she doesn't think she could love this land more. Sometimes she thinks she'd fallen in love with it and then her husband and not the other way 'round, like it's supposed to be. And she wonders sometimes if her own love and care for it is at least some small part of the reason why her husband's love of it has gone fallow, but there hadn't been a choice back then, or at least not one she'd been able to reconcile. No choice now, either, and she knows it's unfair, but still she pins her hope to their son where her husband would pin contempt. Tells herself that Merry will understand one day and perhaps forgive his father for letting go of those things he's not strong enough to hold and blaming those who are.
Thoughts best left for another day, she tells herself. It's the anniversary of the birth of her only child and not a time for looking back, but forward. She shakes herself, skirts around the beer kegs and water barrels, and heads to the sidelines.
She doesn't often come out to the games anymore. Well, she never comes out to the games anymore, if she really thinks about it, which she rarely does, or at least tries not to. Not since Merry had changed it from cricket to football, anyway, and oh, that had been a sly thing he'd done, but it was over and the teams had been chosen before she'd even really known what was happening. And that just seems to be the way of things with her son.
Only three girls are out on the pitch, giving the lads a run for their money; most of the others are dressed in their finest, hair done up and only watching from the sidelines, sitting primly in the grass, and those not absorbed in their own playmates are eyeing the lads like they've never seen sweat-wet shirts clinging to muscle before. It wasn't so many years ago that the proportions of lad-to-lass on the field had been fairly even, and she wonders that all of these lovely young girls, so pretty and reserved on the sidelines like so many nodding daffodils, could have been those scabby-kneed tomboys all too willing to jump into a pair of trousers at game time. But, she supposes, she shouldn't roll her eyes too much—she remembers very well when she herself had suddenly found watching more stimulating than playing, remembers too well how the sight of tousled gold hair and muscle rippling beneath damp linen had set her heart to racing more than any sprint up the pitch could have done.
She stops, gaze fixed to the field, and for a moment, time folds back on itself, and there is another young Brandybuck tearing up the turf with a carefree laugh and a spark in clear eyes, captaining his team in a drive towards the opposing goal with easy strength and grim determination. Too young to be thinking of anything so hidebound as futures and spouses, but those eyes full of sun and fun and glorious life had fixed onto hers and she'd been…
Well, she'd been lost. Still is, in a different way, and she blinks away the past once again so easily that is doesn't occur to her anymore to mark the fact that it's easy because she's been doing it for almost as long as she's been married.
"Afternoon, Mistress!" someone calls and Esme turns her head with a smile that she knows is polite and at least looks natural as she returns the greeting, then turns her attention back to the field, watches her son and tries not to see that brilliant smile with an edge of years and bitterness and too many nights soaking in failures and drink. Tries not to see eyes gone flat and bloodshot, peering out from within a chasm of remorse and resentment.
Tells herself that it's the ghost of the Past visiting upon the Present, and Sight is no more than a myth told so often it's broached the thin, misty barrier between legend and almost-belief. Tells herself the son won't—can't—become the father, and that niggle she's had behind her breastbone since Merry came back from Hobbiton, with a more temperate smile and an apparent new security in the love of his young life, is not the least bit Tookish.
Another greeting behind her and she smiles again, sweeps her gaze over the young faces peering back at her, hopes that's greeting enough, and starts walking again. Shouts, both gleeful and irate, roll from the field in a swelling wave and she turns back just in time to watch her son leap then dive and drive the ball just past the keeper's left hip as he hits the ground in a spray of dirt and grass. He only lies there for a moment, gold splashed over green, breath knocking out of his chest like a bellows and the feet of his team-mates dancing about in celebration too close to his head. One of the lads—Berilac, she notes with a smile—offers a hand and Merry grins, takes it then surges to his feet and into the arms of his cousin, backslaps exchanged so enthusiastically that Esmeralda almost wonders if they're not actually trying to break a rib or two.
A grimace and a shake of her head, and she wishes once again for a nice, calm game of cricket. Or maybe even hoops and mallets. Or golf! Nice Tookish game, that.
Bah.
She dislikes football, as she supposes most mothers with young sons do. Funny; she used to like to watch it back when she was a girl, liked to play it even more, and she doesn't remember it ever even occurring to her that exhilaration could sometimes equal danger, but she understands that well enough now. Motherhood sometimes brings revelations over which young lasses flip their fair hair and tut, and it makes it harder when the Mother remembers the Lass. Or maybe it's harder when she watches her own lad running headlong into a wall of bodies with a grim smile of abandoned relish, when all the while she's tallying up the evidence of already-flowering bruises and small trickles of blood that look too red and too bright to be as harmless as her mind tells her they must be.
Visions of bandages and splints run through her head as the players all move back to their starting positions for kick-off, shoving at each other and laughing all the way, as they curse and jibe and call each other names that anywhere else would be cause for fisticuffs.
Lads will be lads, she chants to herself and winces as the ball goes into motion and a head of sweat-matted gold arrows straight into a barrier of flailing limbs and kicking feet and laughter that's just a little too bloodthirsty. Lads will be… too bloody reckless, and she tries to loosen up the smile that she knows is wound a bit too tight.
A loud stream of rather-filthy invective from the field and then Merry's clear voice, rich with laughter and adrenaline: "Hoy, Fatty, save that mouth, you'll be needing it to kiss my arse later," and more laughter blooms as the thunderous herd follows the ball down the pitch, Merry, naturally, in the lead.
Esme shakes her head again, follows the action with a smile on the outside, pride and alarm in equal measure on the inside.
Cricket, her son had told her on his seventeenth birthday, is for ponces. This, as he'd sat in the grass in front of her and hissed and twitched as she'd spit-cleaned a nasty gash up the side of his calf. "Slide-tackle," he'd told her with a ruthless grin then yipped as she'd pressed a little too hard at torn and abraded skin. Right, she'd thought but hadn't said, and you're all, every one of you, blood-and-glory, until you've a boo-boo and then you're Mumma's Lad again.
She holds back a bit of a snort, rolls her eyes—at herself as much as males in general—and sighs instead. Cricket may be for ponces, but she never felt tight and tense when she watched it, at least. And anyway, it's cricket season, not football season, but no one seems to mind but Esmeralda herself, so she keeps that to herself. It's Merry's birthday, after all, and she supposes she should be grateful that he still humours her and allows her to throw him a party, though that's getting to be more and more a question from one year to the next. He'd forgone it altogether last year, and if he and Frodo hadn't managed to sort… whatever they'd been on about, she supposes he'd have forgone it this year, as well.
Not Mumma's Lad, not for a very long time, too long for all that he's so young, and she doesn't suppose she deserves to feel any sort of remorse over it all, though she does and deeply. Plenty enough blame to go around for the way things had all come to pass, and Esmeralda with the lion's share of it, she knows; she'd let pride in her son, bright as a new penny and too clever and headstrong, to sway her mind from turning to what her eyes had seen from the first time he'd come in, exhausted and chuffed, from a day in the fields. Necessity had a hand in it all, she knows, because she'd understood for some time before that day that her shoulders weren't quite broad enough to support all of her husband's responsibilities, so she can't very well deny that she'd let some relief mingle in with that pride. She'd known for more years than she wanted to think about that her son had more promise than his father could even dream of.
She remembers, more to her own shame, gazing at her newborn son—all scrunched and red and fists balled and waving beneath her nose, railing against the rude expulsion from his safe, warm haven—and sighing through a mist of exhausted tears that he was as beautiful as his father. A right bonny Brandybuck, the midwife had declared, and Esme had closed her eyes and held him close, and allowed the midwife to assume her tears were joyful. And then more tears—these grateful—when he was still but a sprite and she'd realised that perhaps her son was all Brandybuck in looks and temperament, but there was a meticulous, clever mind beneath all of those wheaten curls, and a heart so big it was bound to break in very big ways and probably more times than was just.
It's unfair that her eyes turn to Frodo with this thought, but she's sure it isn't a conscious reflex, and unfair doesn't make it untrue. If anyone has the power to break her son's heart and in the biggest way possible, it's this one, and the fact that it will be unintentional and most probably necessary doesn't make the inevitable any easier—not for her now and not for her son later.
She'd been watching them before the party had moved itself outside, watched how reticence and that small bit of wariness that had always confused her had been suddenly replaced by easy smiles and looks that were soft and lingered just a little too long. Watched how barbed banter sometimes turned to quiet conversation between one parry and the next and to the exclusion of everyone else in the room. There's confidence now, where before there'd been caution. And she can't help wondering how they'd got from where they'd been only weeks ago to this place where a lift of an eyebrow and a twitch of the lip are a private language all their own, but she supposes it's not really any of her business. She's known from the time they started where their hearts lay, and though they manage to beat each other bloody with them a little too often, she doesn't think she could ask more for either one of them than that they have what they want. After all, when you love someone, you want to see them happy, and oh, she does love them both so.
She's not sure she's ever seen Frodo love anyone the way he does Merry, and she can't help the smile—tinged with resignation, though it's fond—as she peers down along the grass where he sits amongst a smattering of girls far too young to be thinking of snagging a bachelor. But Esmeralda notes the straight backs and resulting presentation of 'assets' and has to chuckle. Chuckles even more when she further notes a distinct pinkening of eartips through tangles of dark hair, as Frodo bends his head studiously to the…
Just exactly what is he doing, anyway?
A few steps closer, and ah, she might have known: sketchbook and pencil, and as she draws nearer and catches a glimpse at what he's drawing as he tries to politely ignore the 'assets' all about him, she grins and rolls her eyes. Honestly, lasses are just too forward and oblivious these days; if Esmeralda were sitting next to a lad who was busy sketching another lad whilst that other lad rammed up and down the pitch, all the while with quick, surreptitious glances towards the sketcher, she thinks she would have the sense to put two and two together and remove her 'assets' to a more interested field. Though Frodo always has been a little too biddable where 'assets' are concerned, she notes wryly.
She'd worried for quite some time over Frodo and Pearl. Lovely girl she is, her brother's daughter, but even more reticent—sometimes viciously so—about marriage in general, and where it concerns herself in particular, than Frodo is, and they've been thick as thieves for years, and so she'd worried. Pearl's got assets of her own and to spare, after all, and knows exactly how to use them, and if Frodo's heart had turned from companionship to romance, Pearl might have chewed him up with a grin then picked her teeth with his bones. But Esme's only grateful they've never seemed to want to take their relationship any further than friendship, though she knows Eglantine would wish otherwise. Everyone knows Eglantine would wish otherwise, and Esme chuckles and takes a moment for quiet gratitude that Merry's own obsession with everything in skirts ended before he'd gone and got himself in real trouble, though he's never seemed to be quite as… enthusiastic about the subject of 'assets' as Frodo's always been.
Males.
She should rescue Frodo from his little predicament and she does plan to, but it's a little too much fun to watch him try to carry on polite conversation and ignore innuendo, while his attention is very plainly—to anyone possessed of more sense than apparently all of the lasses on the blanket beside him combined—divided between his sketchbook and the football field, though not necessarily following the ball. She steps slowly closer, peers down and over his shoulder to see more clearly the picture unfolding beneath his hand. And it's odd; she'd expected to see wisps of grey lines, sketchy facial-features and at least a ball in the background or something to denote that a football game is in progress. She sees none of these things.
The eyes that peer back at her from the page hold a look like nothing she's ever seen in her son, dark and knowing and perhaps even a little sad, half in shadow, half in light, and sober, but…
Esmeralda's hand creeps to her breast and she swallows, takes a breath.
Is this really what her son looks like? Is this the face that looks back at the rest of the world, at those who don't see it through the ghosts of chubby cheeks and a little bow of a mouth that unfailingly turned up at the corners when she entered a room? Are these the eyes that blinked up at her, filled with softness and sleep, as a fair-haired babe suckled at her breast?
Is this what her son looks like through the eyes of a lover?
For a moment, there is an ache, so deep and profound it near takes her breath away, and she knows before she's even really thought about it that it's the empty space in her arms that causes it. For another moment, this one filled with panic, she tries to call to mind that chubby-cheeked lad, all knees and elbows and a grin that could get him anything from extra biscuits to a reprieve from a well-deserved hiding, and… she can't, can't see him, can't remember a time when there was true youth in that face and not just the wishful remembrance of a mother whose son grew up all too soon. Can't remember what he looked like before that jaw chiselled itself from roundness to lines firm and straight, before that nose unsnubbed itself, before those eyes…
Ah, my own, when did your eyes grow so… aware?
She stares at the drawing, almost doesn't see Frodo's hand flying over it, adding shadow here, contrast there.
She can still remember how the top of her son's head smelled when she'd dip her nose into golden curls, can still feel the warm weight of his little body pressed against her own and his breath, all milk-sweet and soft as butterfly-feet on her nape, as she made her careful way from rocker to cradle. Can still remember the sudden blank chill against sweat-damp bodice and blouse as she reluctantly emptied her arms and gently put her son to bed.
A sudden burn wells behind her eyes and her fingers twitch with the furious impulse to take hold of Frodo, beg him not to take her son where she knows he'll lead, demand that he bring her lad back to her and let her cling to that ghost for just a little while longer.
Don't take him from me, don't love him, don't let him love you, because love hurts, it hurts, even when it's more beautiful for the pain, and it gives you the power to destroy the one you love, even if you try not to, and sometimes the damage is worse for the trying, and oh, if any two have the power to ruin each other…
She must have made some sort of sound, because five faces are suddenly turned her way, looks that vary from mild surprise to downright chagrin. With the exception of Frodo—he looks at her as he always has done, with pleasure and respect, and he stands quickly with a genuine smile, extends his hand.
"Hullo, Aunt. So, you've decided to come out, after all."
Esme swallows possessive instinct, and it near chokes her as she blinks away memory and melancholy. She smiles back and takes Frodo's hand, allows him to pull her about the small crowd, who—wonder of wonders—all seem to take the hint, standing slowly and edging away with a polite, "Mistress," scattered here and there. Frodo stoops, sweeps a small clutch of pencils out of the centre of the blanket, along with a waterskin that Esme is almost certain doesn't actually hold water, and the small basket she'd handed him on his way out to the pitch. And none of this, she notes, had he done for the small contingent that has just vacated the space more demurely than she'll warrant they've done anything all day. She keeps her smile as she lowers herself to the blanket, Frodo keeping hold of her hand until she's seated with her skirts flared about her.
"You should have said," Frodo tells her with a grin of his own as he folds himself down beside her. "I'd've brought a chair out, had I known."
She turns her smile into a smirk, lifts an eyebrow. "Are you implying, young hobbit, that I'm—"
"Youthful as spring and twice as fair," Frodo cuts in and he widens his grin, all cheeky and teasing, though his ears are on fire and his cheeks are flushed.
Esme's smirk broadens. "Flattery will get you extra pudding, impertinent thing."
"Mm, yes, and I hear it's chocolate icing on the cake this year." His mouth flattens into a straight line and one dark eyebrow rises.
She snorts at that one. "You'll come around one day," she tells him, and now she's grinning, unrepentant. "This year, you'll just have to scrape it off, if you insist upon being daft and refusing to take advantage of one of life's most basic pleasures."
Now the other eyebrow goes up. "Chocolate is a basic pleasure?" A shake of the dark head and the near-constant bashful blush loses in favour of scepticism. "I'll take beer, thank you. Or even cabbage sprouts." And he winks with another teasing grin.
A roar goes up from the spectators about them; too late they both realise they've missed a goal. Esme sees Merry stomping up the pitch, a look of disgust on his face, and so assumes his team is not the one that scored. His glance cuts their way, all fire and fury, and he shakes his head, rolls his eyes at Frodo; Esme slides her glance sideways, sees Frodo send him a sympathetic smile and a shrug, then turns her eyes back again to her son. And she has to laugh a little because she's sitting not six inches from where her son's gaze is locked and he's not even noticed her.
"Hoy, Merry!" comes from farther down the pitch as the players move towards their positions for kick-off. "I might even be a sport and take a bath before you have to kiss my arse!"
And Esme watches Merry's jaw clench, his eyes narrow and his hands curl into fists. Almost unwillingly, she notes the grey-blue smudge on the left side of his chin, the red patches along his forearms that flare fire over his skin, and his shins… oh, mercy, those shins. She shakes her head, wonders if she remembers how to set broken bones, and is only grateful that she'd thought to prep some powders for headache teas and compresses, then…
Merry just keeps peering at Frodo, long enough that most of the others have already taken their places on the field and have begun to look about them, wondering why they've not started. And then he grins, spins about, shouts, "Mind on the game, Fatty, you can't play with a chubby, you know!" then jogs over to his place in the centre of the field, laughter and a few groans coming from all around. He slants a look back over to Frodo just before the rush for the ball, waggles his eyebrows, and then play has begun and his head is once again in the game.
Well, then. This is new.
Esme smiles, finds herself rolling her eyes once again, and peers over at Frodo. And she almost laughs, because he's the last person in the world she'd ever suspect of sop, but the grin on his face is near dripping with it, and his eyes seem at once soft and intense as they remain on Merry, driving through the defence and towards the opposite goal. She doesn't laugh; instead, she feels her smile fade and she peers at the look on Frodo's face, remembers the one on Merry's, and knows that there is no stopping any of it, even did she want to.
So, she thinks to herself, and can't help the bit of resignation that curls in her breast, this is what it looks like when stars collide. And she would have thought there should be explosions and casualties in the wake of it all, but there's only… them.
One bright and sparking, and white-hot fire only just kept simmering beneath new and still-tenuous restraint; one cool and careworn, the soft light within more stunning for that, and bridled close, shared with only those who can appreciate its singular heat and darkling flame.
She won't wonder if her son sees it; she knows well enough that it's the only thing he can see sometimes.
Her gaze drifts to the sketchbook, still held loosely in Frodo's hand and resting atop one knee, the pencil still between lax fingers drumming against the other. She holds out her hand.
"May I?"
Frodo looks at her then down to his lap. Long fingers tighten on the book for the briefest of moments then colour rises again and he smiles a little, shrugs and hands it over.
"It's lovely," Esme tells him as she draws it closer, peers down into the face of a son she doesn't know.
Frodo clears his throat, shifts. "Thank you," he says and looks away again.
Her fingertips ghost over the page, careful not to touch and smudge. "I've still the one you did of Brandy and me, you know."
He looks at her again, eyebrows rising into his fringe. "Have you?"
And why is he so surprised? Is it possible that he still doesn't know?
"I have." She reaches over and makes a business of straightening his collar. "You're quite good at this sort of thing, you know. I had it framed several years ago when she had to be put down and it's been upon the mantel since…" She pulls her hand away, shrugs. "Oh, I don't know—going on five years or so now, I'd guess. It's nice to have it about. Brandy was mine before I even got married and I miss her."
"Well, she was a beautiful pony," Frodo answers quietly, and his head dips down again, though the flush keeps rising.
"She was, wasn't she?" Esme smiles softly. "And you captured her spirit so well. You can almost look into her eyes and see her soul." She looks back down to the drawing, only just stops herself from carelessly running her fingers over it. "You've done the same here," she continues. "Only I'm not so sure I recognise the soul I see."
Frodo says nothing, but she doesn't really expect him to. All closed up, this one, and a person won't get in unless he lets them. So long, she'd waited, sometimes with more patience than she in truth possessed, as a reticent young lad peered at her across the table, his voice saying nothing but his eyes saying more than she sometimes thought she could bear. Pulled in three different directions and grief ever too close for all the months between, and still that inability to understand why acceptance had to mean submission, the further inability to bend to it.
And for all of the things she'd heard—the pranks, the misbehaving, the out-and-out thievery—still, she'd never seen someone so young with the ability to be so quiet. Not just in voice, but in heart and spirit, and though she'd never been unnerved by it, she could almost understand why others were. But she'd always seen the restlessness beneath the stillness that cloaked it, and she knew it because it spoke to her in ways that he couldn't.
"Too young," she whispers as her fingers edge about the page, and she hadn't meant to say that out loud, but now that she has, she wonders which one of them she meant.
Frodo snaps a look at her, something perhaps a tiny bit wary and almost… expectant. Like he's only been waiting for something like it and is now resigning himself to answering to it.
His eyes drift down, rest on the drawing. "Older than his years," is the soft reply.
A nod and Esme smiles, though her eyes are suddenly burning again. "Too old." This time she shakes her head. "No one should have to grow up so fast."
Silence for a few moments; even the hum of the spectators and the foul language and laughter coming from the field has receded into the thick of the stillness between them.
Then Frodo takes a long breath, turns to face her. "Aunt," and his tone is soft, steady, and his gaze is frank, "I don't… If you're—"
"You're both too young," she cuts in; she thinks she knows what he's going to say and she doesn't want him to say it, because despite herself, her answer may well be 'yes' and she's already failed her son in too many ways. "And you're both too old."
And it occurs to her now that this would be so much easier if she didn't love him as she does.
He's gone quiet again, waiting, and she realises with a bit of shame that she wants nothing more at this moment than to flee. Just stand up, turn around and walk away—get away.
She bites her lip, goes on, "I need you to promise me something." And she hadn't intended to say that, either, not in that way, at least, but now she has and it's too late to pull it back.
Frodo only keeps looking at her, that quiet wrapped about him like a shield of armour, and he nods slowly, his gaze still frank but slipping from direct to something poignant and resigned.
You think you know what I'll ask and you're sure you know how you'll answer, she thinks, and she wonders if her gaze looks the same as Frodo's. But I think I know what you would say and I think you'd be the only one surprised by your answer, if I dared to ask what you're so sure is coming.
She draws a breath, reaches out and lays a hand to his knee; he doesn't move, but she can feel the vibration beneath her fingertips, and thinks maybe he's not so still as he'd like to be.
"Let him be good to you," she says and she waits for a moment while Frodo blinks, frowns as it sinks in. He shakes his head, opens his mouth, but Esme doesn't want him to answer, not yet. "He needs to give and you're always so afraid of taking, afraid to be bound, but a person is only ever as bound as he wants to be, only as trapped as he lets himself think he is. He'll hold on too tight because that's who he is, but he loves you hard and his heart always wins, even when he doesn't want it to. He'll let go if you really need him to."
She has no idea where all of that came from—she'd only opened her mouth and it all fell out without her even realising it was coming. But now that she's said it, she doesn't think she'd take it back, doesn't think she should, because it's right and it had to be said, whether she'd meant to say it or no.
Frodo only stares for a moment, and the look in his eyes brings back echoes of a little boy, torn too soon from home and hearth, thrust into a mourning process that suborned his own.
I don't mean to dodge Uncle Rory, but… But I can see him seeing them when he looks at me and it makes us both sad.
And how many months had it taken him to make even so small a confession as that? Yet, it had said in two truncated sentences everything she really needed to know about her young cousin, hadn't it?
"You're right," he says quietly after a moment, turns his glance to the game and smiles a little, small and distracted, as he watches Merry plough his way over the pitch. "He's too young." His eyes drift, turn downwards. "And he's too old, as well, but…" Dark eyebrows come together, twist, and he peers at the grass as though it holds the answers to all the universe. Then a shrug and a small laugh. "But he has no idea."
She almost shakes her head and chuckles, but he wouldn't understand.
And do you really think you have an idea? You, who can't fathom how all that love can be for you and why?
He turns, peers at Esme with a gaze as sharp as it had been distant only a moment ago.
"What would you have of me?"
And here it is. She could ask it, any mother would, and though he's so sure he'll do what she asks, Esme is just as sure that he can't, not now—it's too late for them both or he wouldn't be here now in the first place, not here in this place that holds too many memories and too much rancour from one who simply could never see past the 'threat' of one odd little cousin's place in his wife's heart. And now in his son's. She almost pities her husband in this, but she's known for years she can't save him, that it was too late before their son had even been born.
So, she won't ask what Frodo thinks she will, isn't even sure she'd want to did she dare. Instead, she draws a deep breath, exercises the only power she has, the only power she should have, to ensure that the fate of the father will not be the fate of the son.
"I would have you love him." She squeezes his knee, leans in. "And when the day comes that you leave him…" She pauses, swallows. "I would have you break him."
Frodo twitches, almost a flinch, stares as if she's slapped him, and she supposes she has. Still, she is not yet through.
"You can't have half-measures with Merry, you're either in it, or you're not. And perhaps you'll both be old and grey when it happens, both with your own wives and your own lives, and perhaps it won't ever happen at all. But if you leave him with even a small hope of another tomorrow, that's where he'll always bide, do you understand?"
Frodo stares for another long moment before he drops his gaze, slants it towards the drawing in her lap. "And what," he begins, pauses, lifts his eyes slowly to Esme's. "What makes you think that I will?"
Esme only looks back at him, this lad she'd once wished were her own.
Because it's what you do, love. If you think it's best, you walk away. And for someone who has only ever wanted a safe place in another's heart, I can't even begin to fathom the terrible strength that takes. Nor do I think I ever want to.
She only smiles, pats his knee. "Perhaps it's all female nonsense," she tells him, surprised by the lightness of her tone. "Or a mother's wish to keep her son her own." She shrugs, looks down, holds out the sketchbook and lifts her gaze back to Frodo's. "I suppose it's come to a point where you know more than I."
Frodo keeps looking at her for another moment, a frown still furrowing his brow. Then he takes the book, peers down at the drawing, fingertips lightly tracing over the lines as Esme had dared not do.
"Do you… Would you like to have it?" he asks quietly, keeps his eyes on his fingers.
And she looks again at the drawing, at a young hobbit who is a stranger to his mother, who has secrets he shares with another now, and will never be Mumma's Lad again.
Esme smiles, though it's sad. "No," she answers, just as quietly, "Not this one. Perhaps… perhaps you'll do another, just for me, yes?" She's too close to tears again, so she shakes her head, brightens her smile, and changes the subject. "Is that the indigo coat, then? The one with the dyed bone buttons?"
Frodo shrugs a little, his fingers still tracing, lightly smudging a line along the jaw into shadow. "Well, the coat is indigo, but I don't remember the buttons. I meant to sketch him playing, but this…" Another shrug and a shift on the blanket. "Well, this came to mind and…"
And does she really want to know why and how and when?
"Well, you've done a fine job," she says, keeps her tone light and her conversation lighter. "Will you colour it, do you think? It might be difficult to match the—"
"Hoy, Mum, when did you get here?"
Esme thinks she and Frodo both must look a comical sight, jumping as they'd done like a couple of guilty teenagers. She peers about, only now noting that the other players have all wandered from the field, as well.
"Did you win, then?" she asks her son.
He smirks at her, shakes his head, droplets of sweat flying off in little cascades. "It's half," he answers, swoops behind Frodo and snatches up the waterskin, and Esme watches as one drop of sweat lands on Frodo's drawing; Frodo sees it too, swipes his finger over it and smears it into a smudge beneath a cheekbone. Merry peers down, lifts his eyebrows. "Hair's too short," he tells Frodo and only grins then takes a swig from the waterskin when Frodo glares up at him over his shoulder.
"That's mead, y'know," Frodo answers, as Merry coughs up a long pull. "Water's keeping cool in the basket." He slants a smirk at Esme and she returns it with a grin. "And anyway, your hair's too long. If you won't cut it, I can at least fix it on paper."
Merry only shakes his head, coughs subsiding into a few choked snickers as he digs about for the water, finds it, takes a swig. "But if it's me you're drawing, you should capture the true essence, yeah?" And he flings his hair back, sweat showering down in misted droplets.
"Hoy!" Frodo cries and pulls the sketchbook to his chest, slings his elbow back and connects with Merry's shin.
Esme cringes in sympathy—those shins look so raw and sore—as Merry yips, dances back then turns to her with a grin that's trying very hard to be an offended scowl and failing. "Mum, you saw it—he attacked me! Wounded me!" He clutches at Frodo's shoulder, limps about him then falls to the blanket with a dramatic moan. "I shall never walk again."
"And you just rained 'essence' all over me," Frodo tells him as he makes a show of brushing off his shoulder.
"Wouldn't have to if you weren't such a girl." He cranes his neck to peer at his mother. "Won't play, can you believe it? Says he's too old. Honestly!"
"You've stacked the field with gigantic Brandybucks," Frodo retorts, shoves at Merry until he rolls off his pencils then snatches them up. "I never said I was too old—I said I was too smart."
Merry grimaces as he rolls back, reaches beneath his shoulder and comes up with another pencil. He holds it up, waves it about. "And now he's trying to kill me! Look—a pencil in the back! Sharpened to a bloody dagger-point and just lying—"
"Watch your mouth," Frodo snorts, flashes a glance at Esme, and the blush is back again. "There happens to be a lady present."
And that seems to remind Merry of his earlier complaint. "Yes, Mum, he's assaulting me and I'm already wounded. No pudding, don't you think?"
Frodo rolls his eyes, deliberately turns his back on Merry. "I'll so miss the chocolate icing."
An unrepentant grin from Merry. "P'raps next time you'll put some thought into my birthday present." He turns again to his mother. "A hat! I ask you!"
Frodo reaches back, takes hold of Merry's sunburned nose, squeezes.
"Hey, ow!"
"That wouldn't hurt so much," Frodo says through a grin, shakes him a bit before releasing him, "if you'd wear a hat!" then he gives a smug nod and turns his back again.
Merry answers that one with a smack to the back of Frodo's head, which Frodo, in his turn, answers with another quick turn and a rabbit-punch to Merry's shoulder.
And that's about enough for Esme; she is suddenly feeling far too feminine and not quite young enough. She chuckles, says, "I think I remember why I don't come out to the games." She gathers her skirts, finds two hands reaching for her—one fine-boned, long fingers smudged with black pencil; one broad and brown, stained with grass and dirt and bleeding at the knuckles—and takes them both. Her skirts are a little worse for sitting in the grass and she brushes at them as they all three stand. She turns to Frodo first, leans up and kisses his cheek. "I'll see if Fern can't come up with something especially for you that doesn't have chocolate in it, shall I?"
"Mum!" is Merry's indignant cry. "Wounded!" And he points down to his shin where Frodo had elbowed him, then to his back, reminder of the pencil. "If you loved me, he wouldn't get cake!"
"Right," Frodo snorts, shoots a quick glance at Merry and sidesteps away from him. "If."
Merry only stares at him, indignation battling amusement and losing, then he turns back to his mum. "Are you going to stand for that?" he wants to know.
Esme allows her own snort, takes hold of Merry's chin—careful of the smudge that promises to be a stunning bruise later—then drags him down and drops a light kiss to his nose. She draws back, wipes the fingers now coated with sweat on Merry's shirt with a bit of a grimace, shoots a quick, steady glance to Frodo.
"I don't think you'll be needing your mum for this," she tells Merry. "You're a big lad now, aren't you, then?"
Another quick glance aside and Frodo looks back at her with a small smile, says, "Oh, I don't know." Ducks his head and the tips of his ears are once again rosy. "You never get too old for some things, I think."
"Speak for yourself," Merry pipes in. "If I never see cod liver oil again, it will be far too soon."
Esme snorts again, turns. "Behave, lads," she calls with a wave behind her as she picks her way through the players and spectators sprawled along the grass, though she knows good and well they have no intention of even pretending to behave.
That's all right, too.
And for all that her smile turns once again melancholy as she makes her way back to the Hall, and tears have been far too close this afternoon…
Still, she's glad she'd come.
She turns back once more, sees Merry gesturing wildly, pointing out various spots on the field—re-living bits of the game, no doubt—sees Frodo nodding with a smile as his eyes flick back and forth from where Merry points to Merry's face.
And then Frodo tilts in close, says something into Merry's ear, and Esme watches as her son goes still and sober, his eyes closing slowly as he leans in, listens with his entire self. Frodo pulls back a little with the slightest of smiles, reaches up, tucks a hank of sweat-tangled curls behind Merry's ear; it's a gesture that she's done herself more times than she can count, but now it suddenly seems one of the most intimate things she's ever witnessed. And then Merry nods, opens his eyes, and a gaze so intense is exchanged between them that, for all that they're sitting beneath the mid-day sun and in the middle of a noisy, milling crowd, she almost feels a voyeur. An interloper.
It's the first time, Esmeralda realises with something that feels too much like loss, that she has seen that young-old lad of the drawing made flesh.
And she turns away.
Lads, she thinks with a sigh and a quick swipe to her eyes, cannot stay lads forever.
* * *
|
