| Current mood: |  anxious |
about tomorrow
I've sent everything down by courier, except the cherrywood, which Mr. Allarbee should be dropping off this evening, and the goat's milk that you've arranged for. You're sure you've found a hair of father's? Clothes and the gold watch weren't such a problem (I'm glad Grandfather's was still in his desk, for some reason I think it will help to have one Daddy knows.)
Rudi is spending the evening making sure he knows the ritual thoroughly. Some parts of it take very careful timing apparently, so he can't be always checking his notes during the procedure itself.
So now I have nothing to do but fret.
How is mother doing?
To be honest I haven't been able to work since Monday, when, to overstate, perhaps not to overstate, the full enormity of what we were planning to do dawned upon me. I had finished a draft of the revisions for my Alternative Theory paper, and was brewing a cup of tea while I thought what to do next, and suddenly I thought, four days from now I will be crouched in mother's back garden, trying to entice a mole I am practically certain is my father out of the rhododendrons with a bowl of warm milk. And then I will be assisting with a powerful magical procedure, albeit performed by a first-rate practitioner, to restore him to human form.
Although I am almost certain that what we restore will not be father anymore. Rudi says that the chance that his mind will retain any human memory or cognitive functioning, after seven years as a mole, is very close to zero.
That's the part that's really disturbing me, of course. I don't know that we're doing father any favours by going through with this. I suspect we're not. But I think mother feels that she has to do it, if there is any chance that it is still father in there.
I suspect, to be honest, that if she didn't very obviously have feelings for the vicar she might not be trying to restore father. I think she may be afraid that her judgment isn't to be trusted on the matter, and wonders if perhaps her natural doubts about the wisdom of attempting the spell are actually doubts about whether she wants father back at all, now.
If the vicar weren't in the picture, she would be able to decide more clearly on the basis of what is best for father.
But perhaps she'd try to do it anyway. If it were Rudi, I keep asking myself, would I try to restore him? I would. If I thought there were any chance, I would.
But my doubts keep recurring, no matter what I'm trying to work on. I try not to imagine all the ways it could go horribly wrong. I reassure myself that Rudi is very good at this, and ten minutes later I'm fretting again.
I have handed in the draft of the revised chapter to Travers, to keep him happy. I have been going over my notes on William the Bloody's preferred victims, and I think his patterns are fairly obvious, especially when correlated with the standard models for serial killers. He fits very closely the profile of a "thrill killer", would be doing it, if he were human, for the adrenaline rush, as his attraction to Slayers as victims makes clear. There are, once again, troubling divergences between his profile and that of most vampires, or what we've always assumed most vampires were like. I'm not sure if I should address that issue - again - in this chapter, or if I should hold off until Travers calms down a little, and introduce it again later. probably the latter. Diplomacy has never been my greatest talent, but I do want to get this thing done so I can get on with some Travers-less research.
re: Rudi, of course we are, what do you think "reconciliation" means? Though I am a bit warier than I was. But he has been volunteering his activities of the day quite conscientiously, which makes me realise that he had done that in the past and had stopped suddenly after I came back from Prague. No wonder I felt so lonely. I'm not sure why I didn't see earlier what he was doing. I suppose he was being so courteous, as usual, that I wondered if I was simply imagining that frozen feeling, and felt that I had no real right to complain.
But I'm glad I did, because I would have had to leave him if he had continued to shut me out. No matter how conventionally attentive and considerate he was being.
I am still feeling a bit bruised and anxious, to be honest. He has lived longer than I have, and has had time to acquire scars much worse than I had suspected. So I should not be surprised that there will be things for us to work through. I think that we are both suffering the shock of discovering that this is not the ideal painless relationship both of us had imagined it was or could be. I'm not putting this well.
I mean, Rudi thought he could trust me never to hurt him, because I am nothing like Gwendolyn. And he's right, he can trust me, and I'm nothing like Gwendolyn. But that doesn't mean he'll never get hurt through me. Because he loves me, and that always entails a risk. As he discovered when he thought I'd been killed.
And I thought I'd met the perfect man who would never do anything to distress me. In fact I'd met a very good man who will do his best not to distress me.
I expect everything will be all right. There's just this irrational feeling of disappointment. On both sides, I think. The moment when one is finally forced to face the real world. Like the research project that glows so perfect in the distance, until one gets up close and discovers that some of one's assumptions are quite wrong, and others will ahve to be modified, and the whole thing is going to involve a lot of work, and perhaps after all one has chosen the wrong approach and will find nothing really to add to the body of knowledge on the subject. But that's no time to quit - because you will reach that moment of disillusionment with every research project, when one actually begins the real work. And that's precisely the time when one has to trust one's previous judgement that the subject was a good one and the work will be rewarding. That feeling of let-down is not a useful guide.
And in any event, I'm not feeling anything so strong as "let-down". It's just a faint pang. His shining armour turns out to be a bit dented. But I shouldn't be surprised -he's been wearing it for awhile.
I'm going over to Rudi's later this evening, after he's done his review; we'll set out from his place in the morning. I'll distract myself in the interim by setting up an outline for the "preferred victims" chapter. I hope my meanderings haven't upset you, Pamela; I am nervous about tomorrow and wanted to tell someone my fears. I mean, someone who loves father too. But I know we'll all do everything possible to ensure a favourable outcome.
love, Lydia
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watchergrrl) wrote,
