milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Owen Davies has prayer meeting tonight, so it is a good night for Bran to come to Milliways. Bran sits on his bed, harp on his lap, and plays the high strange song that has always opened the Milliways door for him. When he reaches the bar, Bran finds a table where he can sit and observe the crowd, his back to the wall.

A little while later, Bran is surprised to hear the same high music beginning to play near the front door. Owen, still dressed for chapel in his second-best suit, his hair neatly combed back, walks into the bar.

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Bran waves. "Mary! It is all right. Da, this is Mary Lennox. Very brave, she is. Mary, this is my da, Owen Davies."

"Very pleased to meet you." Owen attempts a kind smile, but all the lines on his face go nowhere.

Mary flushes a little at the 'very brave', and marches the rest of the way over to Bran and Owen.

"You are Bran's father?" she repeats; eyeing Owen with a good deal of curiosity, now.

Mary does not know very many fathers.

"You do not look much like Bran. He is all white."

Owen shifts awkwardly in his seat.

When Bran answers, he looks at Owen rather than at Mary. "He is my da, who raised me in love and in goodness since I was a baby."

Mary looks Wise.

"I do not know much about fathers," she informs Bran and Owen, "but I have talked to Mr. Tam several times. He is River and Simon's father. So I know a little more than I did."

Mary is only a child, and one who may not ever have had a father. Owen says gently, "A father does not have to look like his son. But he should raise his child to be a good person, to do what is right, to live in a good way."

"No," Mary agrees, sagely, "but fathers often think their sons are going to look like them. That is why my uncle thought Colin was going to be a hunchback - because he is a hunchback himself."

...

Owen, at a loss for words for a moment, eventually manages, "I have never expected that."

Bran laughs. "I do not look like anyone, really. Funny, that."

"Well, of course you did not," Mary says, patiently, to Owen. "You are not a hunchback."

She considers Bran carefully.

"You look," she decides, eventually, "a little like a picture in a book I saw once - but I cannot remember which. Anyways I have read lots of books with lots of pictures in them, so most people look like one of them."

Bran laughs. "If you find it, bring it here to show me."

Even Owen almost smiles.

"I would," Mary says, "only it is still in India - I could not bring my books with me. I only can read Colin's books now, and the ones I get from here."

"I look like a book in India, then? Funny, I do not think anyone in my family has ever come from there."

Owen answers, "You should not make jokes about these things," but his voice is missing some of the force it used to have.

Mary is very patient.

"All my books are from England. They came with my governesses. Only the governesses left, and the books stayed."

A little scornfully: "The natives do not write books."

"Then you might find the same books in England," Bran points out.

"There are many many books in the world," Mary says, wisely.

"It is not likely that there would be the same books in my uncle's house as in my parent's house. Anyways, Colin never had a governess. He was too ill."

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