Fic: A little space to weep

[cat-13145.livejournal.com]

Title: A Little Space to Weep
Chapter: The Ways of God are strange
Pairing: Wooster/OMC, Jeeves/Wooster in later chapters
Summary: There are some things Bertie can't talk about with Jeeves. Or what happened after Sir Roderick came to lunch
Rating: PG13?
Warnings: Reference to attempted suicide, homophobia, bad attitudes towards women, mental ill health, trenches and character death (OC)
Disclaimer: I wish I was talented enough to have created Jeeves and Wooster. But I'm not, they belong to P.G. Wodehouse's estate.
Edit: Now Betaed by erynn999.
 Master Post of Previous chapters

 

Chapter 7

“Rienkes jumped in to the trench about five minutes afterwards.” I sighed and leant back against the bath. There it was, all out in the open.

I wasn’t a hero, wasn’t worth of the captaincy they’d given me afterwards. If I’d been there on my own, I wouldn’t have survived. First Curly had saved me by leaving me behind, then Sergeant Jeeves had kept me alive until help had arrived.

I wasn’t brave. I was just lucky.

I risked a glance at Caroline, not sure what I was going to see in her face, but it wasn’t what I saw there. Confusion.

“Bertie, what are you sorry for?”

I blinked, had she not heard a word I’d said.

I was about to begin again, but Caroline interrupted me.

“Curly knew the likely hood was he wasn’t going to survive that charge. I think he’d just be dashed pleased that you were alright. He knew the risks Bertie, after 3 years in France, you all did.” She paused. “As for this other Chap, you may have been as instrumental to his survival, as he was to yours. Got to have someone to fight for, else it’s pointless.” Her voice shook on the last word, and I looked her square in the face.

Tears were slowly starting to steam down them.
”I say.” I had to protest. “What’s the matter?”

Caroline was sobbing now. An odd word or two made it though. “Relieved. Thought. Ran away.”

I blinked. “You thought I survived because I was a coward.”
She turned at me. “Hell teeth, Bertie No! No!” she swallowed. “I thought, maybe, Curly had though.”

I stared at her in total incomprehension. “How could you…?”

“You couldn’t remember.” Caroline swallowed. “And then when you did, you tried to…” She shook her hands in the direction of my wrists. “And get yourself locked up by admitting homosexuality to Charleston.”

Dr. Charleston, head of the Casborn had absolutely no doubt that sodomists were mad. His normal reaction to such practises was to send the deviant to his clinic at Turro on the Cornish coast, where he had quite a high success rate in “Cures.” If the men he cured were never the same afterwards, well all the better really, what?

I’d told him what Curly and I were to each other, about three days after the incident in the bathroom, when an investigation was going on into how it could have happened. Thoroughly expected to get my marching orders the next day, only Rivers had a word with him and convinced him that I was off my onion, but not a homosexual.

Caroline was still talking. “I thought you were trying to protect me. From what my brother had done.”

I gazed at her, feeling like an absolute cad. “I wanted to protect you from the horrors.”
Caroline smiled though her tears. “Bit late for that.” She shook her head. “No matter how bad it was, Bertie, it was infinitely preferable to what I was thinking; even when I thought my brother had run away.”

There didn’t seem to be anything much to say to that, so I stay ed silent, leaning back against bath, as Caroline hunted through her pockets for a handkerchief. A small cough made us both look up.

While Caroline had shut the bathroom door after her, she hadn’t locked it. Rivers stood in the doorway.

“What a day.” He said, putting down his black bag. “Remind me why I agreed to go into private practise.”
”Because you couldn’t agree with old Charleston on the treatment of Inverts.” Caroline muttered, getting to her feet.

“Yes, but it was better than spending the better part of the day caught in the middle between Captains Blackadder and Flash.” He shook his head. “Army and Air Corps should stay separate. For everyone’s sanity.” He glanced at me, then at Caroline. “Is everything alright? Berties’s man said it was urgent, but I was sure you have everything under control…” He frowned. Peering closer. “Caroline, you’re crying.”

“Been crying.” She corrected him. “And it’s alright.” She rubbed at her face. “I’ll go and see how Jeeves in getting on with that tea.”

“Tea? Caroline, what on earth…?”

He turned to me. “Can you explain what’s going on here, Bertie?”

I took a deep breath and told him, skimming over Caroline’s own surpiciuosions. If she chose to share them with him, well that was her b.

Rivers still looked confused when I finished, but he was hiding it better. I suddenly let off a terrific yawn, and Rivers face softened.

“Come on, Captain. Let’s get you to bed.” He said, bodily lifting me and ignoring my protests. “We can talk more in the morning.”

I couldn’t protest, as I was asleep, as soon as my head hit the pillow.

TBC