Happy Thirsty Thursday Merc! Might I suggest whiskey and fog for Dick and Joan? Thank you, and have a lovely day! 💙💙
The only bad thing about being married to a writer, Dick thinks, is that sometimes they have to take time to actually write.
Joan’s taken what was a throw-away, puff-piece job after the war writing columns on battlefields and war cemeteries into a full time career that puts her work in with the Conde Nasts and Town and Countries of the world. As jobs go, it’s not a bad one. Just busy enough to keep her own her toes, not so busy that she can’t have some quality time with her husband in there, too. Nothing says the writer has to use that expense account alone, right?
They've been in the Highlands for a week now, and Joan's sketched and photographed dozens of castles and cafes and barns and haymows and cows, and now she just has to...sit down and make the article happen. Today's not a great day for sightseeing anyway, with all the low-hanging fog, so Dick eats breakfast, packs a lunch, and takes himself for a hike on the moor just outside of town.
He likes Scotland, maybe because it doesn't remind him of anything but itself. It's an honest landscape, one that doesn't hide things. It's rocks and wind and moss and small, stubborn plants that won't say die, and there's a stark beauty in all of it. Where they're staying's pretty rural, and coming back into town, he can smell peat fires. It feels like a simpler place.
When he arrives back, Joan is just where he left her, parked in front of the big window in their hotel room with her typewriter blazing away, a plaid wrapped loosely around her shoulders. The room's cold, and sitting in front of that window's probably not helping. And her feet get cold easily. Tonight will be a good night for a hot water bottle, or those icey toes of hers will keep him up all night.
"That's enough of that for today," he says, pouring a finger or so of whiskey into a glass and setting it down next to her sketchpad.
"Five more minutes and I'm done," she promises, taking a sip of the whiskey to let him know she's good for it.
"Can I see?" He points to the pad, and she gives a gesture of permission so he can take the pad and she can keep typing.
He loves her sketches - has ever since he watched her try to put Littlecote on a piece of paper. There's a lightness to what she captures, an energy, the suggestion of a larger whole. She has an architect's eye for form - which is why he's surprised to find himself in the sketches, leaning over a gate admiring the distant mountains. That was just yesterday. She's made him look - ready for something. "My love" she has written in her tiny perfect script on the bottom. He'd touch it, but he doesn't want to make it smudge.
"I thought you didn't do people," he accuses, holding up the pad. She turns around in her chair and smiles.
"I'm trying something new," she replies. "That one's not for the magazine."
