Eternity Was In Our Lips and Eyes: Jean Brodie fic

[dianahawthorne]

I finally finished my epic fanmix for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, complete with mini-fics for each song. I do hope you enjoy! If you are interested, the fanmix can be found here.

PART ONE: it is not forever (Hugh/Jean)

1. Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
He takes her to bed three times, provoking a languid passion in her that unfolds slowly but completely. The third time he watches her as she sleeps afterwards, quietly, economically, her arms folded neatly over the blankets. Even her dark hair lies obediently against the pillow.

She is wiser than he, more mature, and older – her beauty not the vivid sexuality of youth but something more subdued, more sensual and developed. She loves him deeper and more lastingly than the other girls he knows.

He will be leaving her soon, leaving the comfort that her slender, strong arms around him bring. He is glad, now, that he has taken her to bed, for he can cherish the memory of her in his arms when he arrives in Belgium. He can remember the way she sleeps, the way she breathes, the proud strength of her tanned profile against the whiteness of the pillow.



2. The Girl in No-Man’s Land
How can he be here? The war-torn fields of Flanders are not what he wants to see. He wants, more than anything, to return home, to his fiancée, to his love. Yes, he knows that she is waiting for him, but he doesn’t want her to have to wait. They should be married now, they should be together and happy and in love.

Her letters are his only salvation during the long, lonely nights of keeping watch. Pages of her flowing script, some words blocked out by the censors, but always the same message – ‘I love you, I need you, please come home.’

He wants to give her what she asks for, wants more than anything to return to the love he knows is waiting for him... even changed as he now is. He knows she will love him no matter what. He will love her until the day he dies.



3. Ain True Love
He isn’t expecting this. Never could he have imagined what is happening now.

The sky seems red; the echo of guns louder than thunder. He is bleeding, slipping further and further away the more he tries to keep his grasp on his life. There is no one around him, no one to help him. He knows now that he will never return to Jean, never see her again, never kiss her again. He wishes they had married before he had left, as she had suggested... but it is too late for that now.

‘Jean...’ Her name slips from his lips, his last word, followed by a deep, final sigh.

The sky is no longer red. The sound of the guns echoes on.



4. You Are The Moon
The telegram lies open next to her, telling her of his death. Her fingers tremble; she folds her hands in her lap and tries to ignore the despair that settles over her like a pall.

He is dead.

The lamplight casts a bright golden puddle, and she cannot bear it anymore. She wants to be anywhere but her flat, cheerful as it is. She runs, for the first time since her childhood, down the stairs and onto the streets, ignoring the few people awake at this hour.

He is dead.

The park is not far, and she unconsciously makes her way to the pond in the centre. It reminds her of Hugh, of the first time they had made love, in the middle of the night in Ayrshire, sleeping next to the stream. In the morning he had stripped and jumped in, splashing her. She does that now, kicking off her boots and hiking up the skirts of her dress, wading into the water.

He is dead.

Tears stream down her face as she splashes, trying to remember how it felt to have his arms around her. She cannot; the memories are faded and lifeless, like pictures in a storybook. An anguished wail is torn from her throat as she falls to her knees.

He is dead.

[dianahawthorne]

PART TWO: and we are for the dark (Gordon/Jean)

1. Again I Go Unnoticed
He does not know where he stands with her. Yes, they sleep together; yes, she takes care of him; yes, she says that she loves him... but her kisses are dispassionate, impersonal, barely kisses at all; her thoughts wander frequently, to other places, other men, or so he believes. But her voice, when she is alone with him, takes on a softer, broader accent, its tone gentle and loving, though her actions belie the promises that lay in her words.

But the tender tones of her voice are her only softness. Even in bed together (and he is not able to bring her as much pleasure as she brings him, though he tries hard), she remains reserved, aloof. She shows the most passion in slumber, tossing and turning and crying out into the night, tears streaming down her face. He never mentions to her that he is wakened by her rather violent outpourings of emotion, never mentions the wordless cries that are torn from her throat.

They are short, these storms of emotion, but during them he cannot take his eyes off her. How can he? Even though she is asleep, she is more alive than when she is awake and with him. He wonders of whom she dreams.



2. Secret Garden
She is a mystery to him. Perhaps that is why he falls in love with her, gives into her desires so easily. He is bewitched by her, she has him completely under her thumb... though he knows so very little about her. But he cannot help himself, despite her coolness, her detachment.

Her eyes are often empty when she looks at him. He wants her to share her thoughts with him. After all, even though he rarely speaks, he shares his emotions and feelings with her through music. He wants to get to know her, wants to learn the secrets of her heart.

But when he enquires after her thoughts, what has passed through her mind when she sighs or looks longingly out of the window, she turns to him with her blank, blank gaze and he sighs too, knowing he is firmly and forcefully barred from knowing the only woman he has ever loved.



3. Fakin’ It
What she wants, whatever she wants, is hers. He can refuse her nothing, and even if he could, she would take what she wants anyway. She is determined, almost single-minded in attaining her wishes.

Much of the time he is uncomfortable with what she decides, but he won’t, or can’t, argue with her. He has quickly learned that, with her, the best way is to nod and smile and turn back to the piano, drowning his discomfort with the sweet sounds of old Scottish ballads.



4. Love Me, Please Love Me
Nights are the hardest. Being in bed with her... he can tell that she wants someone else to be there with her, instead of him. It is the moments after he falls back against the pillows, when she gathers her reserve around her like a silk dressing gown, which hurt him the most. How can she show such indifference? And how can he not be wounded when he turns to her, hand on her waist, breath hot and heavy against her cheek with unsuppressed longing... and she turns frigid eyes on him, questioning him, ‘wasn’t that enough?’

It isn’t enough for him.

But then in the mornings, when he brings her breakfast, when she opens bleary eyes and smiles and says to him, in her Edinburgh voice still husky from sleep, ‘thank you,’ he believes everything might be all right.

[dianahawthorne]

PART THREE: your heart wants to laugh; mine wants to cry (Teddy/Jean)

1. À La Claire Fontaine
How long has it been now, that she’s loved him? An hour, a day, a year, or eternity? She can barely remember a time when she was not in love with him, when the thought of him has not excited her passions, has not made her heart beat faster. How can she remember a time when she was not herself?

She is leaving now. Her position at Marcia Blaine has not just been her vocation, it has been her lifeline. Now, her life is empty, for he is no longer a part of it. How can he be? He is married, and, besides, this school has been their world. Their love, renounced as it is, will not survive outside the sheltered confines of this institution.

No one is left here; her footsteps echo hollowly as she walks, defeated and betrayed, to the tram stop, clutching her possessions like an anchor. Numbly, she navigates her way home as though in a dream, and when she finally realises she is home, she cannot remember how she got there.

There is a nightingale singing in the oak tree outside her window, and she begins to cry. How can she go on without him?

She’s loved him so long... and, though she might want to forget, she never will.



2. A Case of You
‘Love is touching souls.’

She told him that, once upon a time, and he knows that it is true. How else can this be explained? She still possesses him, obsesses him... whenever he paints, whatever he paints, resembles her in a way quite unfathomable to him.

He thinks of her always; her name, her face, her scent an ever-present companion. He wants her still, after six years of loving her and living without her. He doesn’t know why he loves her. Perhaps it is her supreme and enchanting disregard for anything that does not conform to her lifestyle; perhaps it is her sheer hypocrisy – going to church (any church, as long as it is not Catholic) faithfully and then falling into bed with Gordon Lowther (a thought that always makes him clench his fists. Why Gordon and not he? He often tries to forget the fact that he is married; that he is Catholic – two things that, despite her love for him, she cannot forget even if he can). But he loves her. She is a part of him now, emerging willy-nilly the more he tries to forget her. It’s hard to do that when everywhere he looks, there she is.



3. To His Coy Mistress
The years they do not have together are not enough for him to love her. He wants to linger in her eyes, their deep depths unfathomable and mysterious; the gentle curves of her lips enrapturing him. He can never paint her the way she deserves to be painted, and even the hours she might have spent posing for him would never have been enough to cure the endless fascination she holds for him.

He wishes they might have had their own tiny island, a world apart from everything they had known. And time, he wishes they might have had time to learn each other, to love each other. Why does he remain so consistently in love with her? He knows they have no future; they never have. But still, he hopes against hope that one day they might have world enough and time.



4. Almost Lover
She goes to his studio for the first and last time a year after her dismissal, a month after Sandy leaves Edinburgh. The second War has begun, and the bouquet of flowers she brings for Teddy’s wife seem to bring a false cheeriness to the loud room. Six children run wild on the lower floors of the house, so loud she cannot bear it.

He sees her discomfort, always alert to every shift in her emotion, and brings the defeated, melancholy woman up to his studio. It is quiet there, quiet and bright with the light that streams through open windows. She wants to shy away, feeling safer in the shadows, but he takes her hand and draws her out.

Portraits surround her, but she cannot take them in; faces merge into each other, colours combine as he pulls her closer, desperate to possess her, at long last. Footsteps on the stairs signal the arrival of his wife, and she reluctantly frees herself from his ever-tightening embrace. She turns away from him, facing Mrs. Lloyd with a stoicism that is so particular to martyrs. She feels him staring at her, hears his silent plea for her to stay... but she follows Mrs. Lloyd down the stairs, leaving him forever while her heart breaks.

[dianahawthorne]

PART FOUR: you claim a bleeding heart (Teddy/Deirdre)

1. The Gallery
They first meet years ago, just after the War, when they are studying at St. Andrew’s. He is an art student, and she is attracted to his bohemian ways and the red-gold comma of hair that falls so casually into his eyes.

He takes her out to tea several times before she gets up the courage to ask him about his portraits. His eyes light up with excitement as he takes her hand and brings her to his studio, a fourth-floor room near the Greyfriars Kirkyard.

There are many portraits, mostly of women, and she looks through them all with a discerning yet appreciative eye. When she looks up at him she sees him studying her intently, as though he is placing her in a portrait he has yet to paint.

‘Will you pose for me?’ he asks her, and she agreed, flattered.

It is winter, so he first paints her standing by the window, the icicles behind her catching the light and shimmering. By the time he is finished with that portrait, it is spring and the roses are blooming.

The next time she visits the studio, he greets her with a bouquet of roses. She holds them to her nose and inhales their heady scent. She will always believe that this is why she kisses him a few moments later.

He quickly pushes her back to the bed, the roses falling forgotten on the floor.

Afterwards, he picks up the roses and handed them to her.

‘Stay still,’ he says, ‘don’t move,’ and sets up a blank canvas. She watches him paint her, her clothes still on the back of the chair, his dungarees still on the floor.



2. The Artist
It is a casual remark of Sandy’s that opens her eyes to her husband’s infidelity. She knows, of course, that he’s had affairs since their precipitate marriage, but they do not bother her. It is what he feels for this colleague of his, this schoolmarm, that disturbs her and changes the way she views their marriage.

She’s known for years that he doesn’t really love her, that he had only married her because he had gotten her pregnant that first time they made love. But she has been content with that realisation, for he had loved no one else either... until now.

It’s not so much Sandy’s remark that all the portraits of Rose look like Miss Brodie that worries her – after all, perhaps Rose herself resembles Miss Brodie in a way. But it is the way he reacts to her remark that Miss Brodie seems a bit queer – the way he storms out of the room – that makes her suspect his feelings for her run far deeper than professional regard.

When she finds the small snapshot of Miss Brodie in his studio, then compares it with Rose’s portrait, she sees what Sandy means.



3. Unusual Way
When he begins spending the evenings in his studio, several years after she first realises he is in love with Miss Brodie, she grows worried. What is he doing up there, why is he ignoring her and the children? She sneaks up one afternoon, when he and the children are at school, and pulls off the sheet that covers his latest portrait from view.

It is Miss Brodie embodied on the canvas, as she knew she would be. It is a very good portrait, she is forced to admit, even as she hates him for loving her. She covers the portrait up again and goes downstairs.

When he slips into bed late that night, smelling of paint, she knows he has been working on his portrait of her.

‘What were you doing?’ she asks anyway.

‘Nothing,’ he lies, and begins to kiss her.

‘Do you love me?’

‘Let me show you,’ he replies, evading her question even as he gently makes love to her.

Afterwards, she cries. He is cruel, terribly cruel to lie to her about this. She cannot bear it anymore.

He listens to her cry but does nothing.



4. Overs
He has paid more attention to her in the past year, and at first she is curious why that is. Sandy enlightens her, telling her that Miss Brodie has been dismissed. How else can she respond to this news but with joy? She no longer has such a hold over her husband, no longer sees him every day and enraptures him.

So it is a surprise to her when Teddy tells her over the breakfast table, a year after she begins to breathe easier, ‘Oh, by the way, Miss Brodie is coming to tea today.’

Her hands begin to shake, and she deliberately sets down her cup of tea, looking at him.

‘She’ll be here at five,’ he continues, ignoring the glare she directs his way.

When Miss Brodie does arrive, she is not the woman Deirdre expects to see. There is nothing of the determined glint in her eyes, the noble bearing of her head, the aura of superiority, shown in the portrait her husband painted several years ago. There is only a defeated, melancholy, out-of-place woman clutching a bouquet of flowers, its colours garish in the evening gloom.

Her children run screaming through the house, and Deirdre feels a burst of pride when she notices the other woman’s discomfort. But her husband is solicitous, drawing Miss Brodie away and up the stairs to his studio.

She wonders what they are doing up there, but suspects that he may be showing her the portrait. But perhaps, just perhaps, he is kissing her in the way he has not kissed her in so long. Her footsteps are loud and quick on the rickety attic stairs, and when she reaches the studio, she is glad to find Miss Brodie’s portrait still covered by the same sheet, glad to see that they are not standing together, but apart.

Miss Brodie faces her, stoic and controlled in her defeat, eyes downcast as she follows Deirdre down the stairs.

[dianahawthorne]

PART FIVE: things visible and invisible (Teddy/Sandy)

1. If I Fell
She makes him promise, before they begin their inevitable affair, that he is no longer in love with Jean Brodie. She wants her first lover to be devoted to her and her alone; and, although that he has a wife, she doesn’t matter. Both of them are perfectly aware that Jean is the only one who matters, the only one, Sandy believes, who can come between them.

He promises, but as their affair progresses, it becomes more and more obvious he has lied. Her portrait, painted during those weeks when his wife and children are away in the country, looks Jean and she makes him start again.

Her portrait still resembles Jean.



2. The Spy
She eventually accepts that she still bewitches him, and decides, upon reading several books by Freud, to treat this love-affair as a research project. She questions him about Jean, subtly prying into the recesses of the mind that is still so obsessed with such a ridiculous woman. His answers, dropped casually into the conversation as he continues to paint her (and Jean as well, for she is still present in the portrait, an ever-present, unseen ghost), reveal to her complexities she has never imagined.

She finds the truth, after many weeks of painstaking research, and, when her portrait is finished, she goes back to Marcia Blaine and betrays Miss Brodie, as economically as she learned about her from Teddy. He never knows that she betrayed her. Jean never knows either.



3. Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles
She has always been ‘precocious’, to use Miss Mackay’s word. Not just in her education, for she was one of the smartest girls at Marcia Blaine, but in life itself. It is Jean’s influence, of course.

She, more than any other member of the Brodie set, has never known how to act her age. She more, than any of them, is the most precocious, the most manipulative... the most vindictive. It is thanks to Jean, of course. She does not spend time with people her age; she spends her time at the Lloyds’, with Deirdre or with Teddy. When she decides to learn about love, it is not in the back rows of dark movie theatres; it is in the sunny brightness of the studio, with a man old enough to be her father.

Curiously, she feels nothing – not sadness, not regret, not even anger – when she realises her relationship with Teddy is doomed. It is Jean’s fault, of course, that she does not know how to be happy. She will never escape her.



4. Let It Die
When she goes to the Lloyds’ to say goodbye, on her way to Cambridge to study psychology, she says her goodbyes not only to Deirdre and the children, but to her lover. He knows why she is leaving, of course. She wants to escape Jean’s influence.

She leaves him a few weeks earlier, much to his confusion.

‘Don’t you see?’ she tells him, ‘we were never in love.’

He knows this, but still tries to protest. He wants her to stay; he is comfortable with her and in a way she is like Jean, the closest to Jean he will ever be. But she leaves, and, a few weeks later, returns for the last time.

‘Goodbye,’ he tells her, bending to kiss her cheek. When he straightens up, he looks into her eyes, silently asking her to stay. She shakes her head, pressing his hand as she coolly pulls away, embracing his wife and promising to write. When she walks out the door, both she and he know that his last link to Jean is finally gone.