Sometimes, a little fact will stick in our heads and take us to odd places. This fic is inspired by some bits of character background provided by Doctor Turner’s Casebook. If I’ve gotten any details about British grammar school years, or fruits available to greengrocers in Northern Scotland in the 1930’s, or Victorian theater, it isn’t for lack of trying.
Chaos reigned supreme that afternoon. Timothy , gearing up for exams, needed quiet to study, whilst Angela was busy in the discovery of music, and determined to make as much noise as possible. Between preparing dinner, cleaning a lunchtime spill on Patrick’s new jacket, and preventing Angela from both banging the piano keys and crushing her wee fingers under the keyboard cover, Shelagh was exhausted. It was a weary woman that crawled into bed that night.
“Tomorrow will be easier,” Patrick promised, looking up from his book. “I’m off, and I’ll take Angela to the park. She needs a good long run-around to work off all that steam.”
Shelagh rolled over to face him and burrowed her face into his side. “Mmmph,” she breathed. “You’ll need to run her for another four months if we’re to head off the terrible two’s.”
Patrick stretched, then placed his book on his nightstand. “I’m afraid the two’s are nothing on the three’s, my love. We’re in this for the long haul.”
Shelagh’s eyes blinked wide as she watched her husband thump his pillow into shape. “Patrick, please humour me tonight. I only managed today by telling myself she’s getting it out of her system.”
“Alright, then. We’ll run her like a puppy every day and she’ll be through this in no time. I’m sure we won’t even have a single issue during her entire adolescence.”
Patrick chuckled, but when he glanced down at her he saw a gleam of tears in her eye. He switched off the lamp and pulled her back into his arms. “Here, now. A good night’s sleep and you’ll feel better, and that’s my official medical diagnosis.”
“I hope so,” Shelagh answered. They lay in the quiet dark together, and Patrick could feel the trials of the day slip from his own shoulders. “What can I do to help?”
“You do so much, already, Patrick, and I don’t know what I’d do without Mrs. Penney. I should be able to manage.”
“You do manage, my love. You manage beautifully. You’re tired, that’s all.” His hands slid up to knead her shoulder. “Roll over and let me rub your back.”
She shook her head and burrowed her face against his chest. “Tell me a story,” she whispered.
That surprised him. In the early days of their engagement, when there were still so many details to learn, they would take turns sharing stories from their pasts. The business of juggling family and work didn’t leave much time for it anymore. He missed it, now he thought of it, and so, it seemed, did Shelagh. “It’s your turn, I told the last one. Back at Christmas?”
Shelagh lifted herself up to look into his face. “You did not. It was my turn last, remember? The night it snowed, I told you about the Apple Brownie.”
Patrick’s shoulders shook. The “Apple Brownie.” He recalled how each morning of her childhood, a young Shelagh would wake to find a an apple, or an orange, or even once a mango (but almost always an apple) perched upon her chest of drawers. When Shelagh had first mentioned this, he hadn’t been surprised. Her father was a greengrocer, after all. If any house would have an abundance of produce, it would be the Mannion’s, and Patrick called shenanigans.
“Don’t be so sure you know me, Patrick Turner,” Shelagh scolded that night. “There’s much more to me than what’s on the surface.”
“Thank goodness for that,” he murmured in her ear. Years in a habit had effectively hidden many of his wife’s secrets from the world. One of the great joys of this marriage was the discovery of those secrets.
“Patrick, if you’re not going to listen, you shouldn’t be quite so hopeful.”
Schooling his features to an attentive expression, Patrick begged her to continue.
“It was always the loveliest piece of fruit, much nicer than the fruit left after the shop finally closed for the day. Sometimes the stuff Dad would bring up was so bruised it was only fit for stewing,” she shuddered. “I hate stewed fruit.
“When I was old enough to ask, my mother simply said that it must’ve been left by the Apple Brownie, and went about her day. I didn’t question her, and I don’t think I ever asked again.” A shadow passed over her face. “As I got a bit older, I started to suspect that perhaps my mother knew more about it than she let on. I thought I was very clever, and would set my alarm earlier and earlier to try to catch my mother out, but I never could. No matter what time I woke, the fruit was always there, waiting for me. It wasn’t until she became ill and then. . . later . . . that I realized it must have been my father all the while.
“Up until the day I left for school, never a day went by that I didn’t wake to a piece of fruit.” Shelagh’s voice drifted into quiet. “He never told me he loved me, my father. It wasn’t his way. But now I think perhaps he had his own way.”
Patrick pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He knew better than most, better than Shelagh even, the struggles her father would have faced as a widowed father alone with a child. Hadn’t he himself hidden behind his practice during those first terrible months after Marianne’s death? But some force pulled him back to life; back to his son and opened his heart to Shelagh. Shelagh’s father never knew that redemption.
Angus Mannion was a man who knew love, but was afraid of it. A polished apple was the most he could give his daughter, and when his pain became too much for him, he found a new place for Shelagh at a convent school.
Lying next to her now, Patrick caught her hand and brought it to his lips. As long as it was up to him, Shelagh would never doubt she was loved. He searched his mind for a new story to share, but could think of none. She knew of the days spent running about the parks near Alder Hey Hospital, and how he would watch the wounded soldiers in their “hospital blues.” She knew of his determined studies, how he pushed himself to the top of his class in order to prove to his father that he was better suited to a medical career than the accountant’s life. As Shelagh’s confidence in their relationship grew, she had begun to ask questions of her own, and by now Patrick felt he had shared it all.
“Cranes,” Shelagh murmured. “Timothy made one for Angela this morning before school. He told me you taught him how. Where did you learn to make cranes?”
A laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “The musicals!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t thought about those for years!”
“What musicals?” Shelagh was alert again.
“At school. Liverpool Collegiate.” He chuckled again. “It was always Gilbert and Sullivan, every year.” His mind flooded with memories long forgotten.
“Patrick, you can’t stop there! Tell me more,” Shelagh begged.
“Every year the school would do a production of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. When I was–oh, sixteen, maybe?” He nodded. “Yes. My fifth form year I was cast as Yum-Yum in The Mikado, and we were required to make cranes by the dozen for the prop department.”
“You most certainly were not! You’re making this up.” Shelagh pressed her lips together in disbelief.
“No, no, I’m not! My voice hadn’t changed yet, and there were no other older boys who could sing the soprano part. Even so, I could barely hit the notes they wanted me to sing, and then my voice broke right in the middle of dress rehearsals. Headmaster Brown was convinced I’d done it on purpose.”
Shelagh sat upright. “Patrick Turner, you’re teasing me.”
He looked up at her outraged face. “Honest, Shelagh, it’s true! Headmaster Brown started those productions before the Great War. By the time I was there, it was a tradition. I’m not sure why, it was always so hard to cast the soprano parts. But if you were tapped, you did your service to the school.
“Anyway, I was fitted for the costume and learned the part, and then my voice broke. I could only manage if I did a falsetto, and it sounded so ridiculous, the director gave the part to a second year. They never let me try out again, even though I have a perfectly reasonable tenor.”
Shelagh leant back against the headboard. “Well, I never expected that. A thwarted acting career. Patrick, imagine if you’d gone on to play the part? Everything would have turned out differently. How could we ever have met? You’ve shaken my belief in fate.” Her eyes danced with humour.
He tugged her back into his arms. “Oh, we would have found each other, my love. You would have seen me in some West End production and fallen in love with me from the mezzanine.”
“You’re ridiculous. I think you’ve made up this whole preposterous tale just to shake me from my mood.” She snuggled in closer.
“Man cannot live by hope alone, my love.”
The next morning, the mood in the house was brighter. Angela’s ambitions shifted from music to drawing, and she quickly added many crayon masterpieces to her portfolio. Timothy was less tense with a weekend to master Geometry proofs, and both Shelagh and Patrick hummed as they set out the morning meal.
Patrick pulled a face as he reached for the cereal box. “Cheerios? On a Saturday?”
“Angela prefers them to eggs, dear. Could you please set her up?” Patrick did not notice the mischievous glance exchanged between his wife and son.
Angela’s squeal of delight drew his attention to the bowl. There, wading amongst the Cheerios, were a pair of origami cranes.
“Ha, ha, very funny, Shelagh.” He rolled his eyes in faux annoyance.
“You never were in The Mikado, Dad! You would have said,” Timothy teased.
“I’ll have you know there are many mysteries in your old dad’s past, young man.” He placed a crane into Angela’s outstretched hand. His head came up with a jerk. “Hang on,” he muttered.
Sounds of boxes being moved travelled down the hall from the storage closet.
“Patrick, what on earth?” Shelagh called.
He popped his head out the doorway. “Don’t come in. I’ve just remembered something.”
Shelagh muttered under her breath. “I’ve finally gotten that room organized and you’ll make a mess in the work of a moment.” She sighed, her annoyance not entirely pretend, and returned to the kitchen.
Several minutes later she called down the hall, “Patrick, come and sit down. Your eggs will get cold.”
Patrick shuffled back and stood in the doorway for several moments before his family looked up. Collectively, they gasped.
Before them stood the family patriarch, stalwart and steady pillar of the community, trusted friend and confidante, bewigged and wrapped in a satiny yellow and blue kimono.
“They never collected the costume after they sacked me. I’d forgotten all about this old thing, it was with the boxes from my parents’ house. . .” Patrick’s voice trailed off as he looked up at the faces of his family.
Timothy paled. “Dad,” he whispered in the horrified voice only an adolescent can muster, “Take. Off. The. Wig.”
Patrick grinned wickedly. “I can sing “Three Little Maids from School Are We,” if you like.”
“No!” came the family chorus.
Pulling the wig off, Patrick continued, “Well, the wig is a bit scratchy, certainly, but this might do very well for a dressing gown.” He stroked his thumbs across the hem of the wide sleeve.
At the sound of the postman, Timothy jumped up. “I’ll get that,” he announced.
“No, Tim, you finish your breakfast. I’ll get the post,” his father replied.
“Dad, no!” Timothy was aghast. “You can’t go to the door like that! You look . . .”
Patrick schooled his features into an expression of pained shock, an effort made more difficult by Timothy’s efforts to protect his father’s dignity.
“Dad, it’s fine, having a keepsake and all, but if you . . .if you went to the door in that people would not smile at you–or–or want to associate with you. Put it back in the box, Dad.” Worn from his efforts at parent-managing, Timothy went for the post.
The wicked grin returned as Patrick turned back to his wife. “He makes it so easy sometimes.”
Rolling her eyes, Shelagh buttered another piece of toast for Angela. “Yes, you’re very funny, dearest. Now go put that back in its box and eat your breakfast. Angela’s looking forward to her day in the park with you.”
“Oh, it’s not going back in the box, my love.” Patrick shrugged the robe off his shoulders and folded it over the back of his chair. As he took his seat, his eyes caught hers, their expression bring the color to her cheeks. “I’m quite. . . hopeful you’ll like to wear it yourself.”
My Little Yellowbird 