The Choices of Raoul de Chagny (Phantom/Love never Dies fanfic)

A World With No More Night

...in which we glimpse the phantom of a Phantom...

Epilogue: A World With No More Night

"Gustave, slow down. You can't possibly expect your mother to keep up that pace in this heat—"

It was the third time in the last quarter-hour that Raoul had had to call their son back since they left the water-front here in Paramaribo, and a certain note of frustration was beginning to make itself felt. Christine, who had paused to lean against the trunk of one of the trees that brought welcome shade to the Gravesandestraat, thrust damp wisps of hair back from her eyes, admiring the apparently inexhaustible energy with which the small figure came galloping back down the hill, darting from porch to porch in some undisclosed game of his own.

Her husband was looking rather anxiously at her, and she smiled up at him, grateful for the supporting arm he had slipped around her shoulders. In the creamy linen of the tropical kit they'd bought in distant grey Paris — and in which both he and Gustave had been living almost constantly for the past month and a half — he was far more comfortable with this draining heat than she was; the flimsy fabric of her gown dragged and clung and her head was beginning to ache fiercely beneath its high-pinned weight of hair. It was not the hot sun itself: they'd had that on board, and for all the shady hats and canvas screens that Raoul had sought to rig up, her throat and arms were ripe and brown now as those of any farm-girl from the Midi, while her husband and son were as frankly tanned as the rest of the deck-hands.

No, the sun was an old friend, and she'd thought she'd known how to accommodate herself to its vagaries. It was the damp, sucking heat that seemed to breathe out of the vast greenness all around, from the vivid pale growth in the fields surrounding the city to the vast walls of forest that lined the rivers upstream, as far — and further — than the eye could see. It was as if every step up the gently curving street was wilting her strength like a starched collar beginning to droop. Even Raoul was beginning to flag a little: she could see the sheen of sweat at his wrists, where a faint ticking of hairs glinted pale against his tan, and he'd taken advantage of the forced halt to catch his own breath.

Only Gustave seemed impervious to fatigue, joyfully letting off steam with all the enthusiasm of one who had been a week and a half on board since their last port. She returned his beaming grin as he came crashing down the last few metres of the dusty street.

"Aren't these houses wonderful, Mother? Like the gingerbread houses we had when I was little, when the icing curled round and round and all the patterns matched up to make bigger patterns..."

Startled, Christine looked a little more closely at the intricate woodwork that surrounded them, impressed. Gustave noticed things — but not always the things that one would expect from a lively ten-year-old.

"Hendrick was right," Raoul was saying in an undertone beside her. "We should never have tried to find the place in this midday heat... I don't suppose his friend is expecting us for hours yet: do you want to go back?"

Christine wavered for a moment, tempted by the prospect of a cool drink down on the Waterkant, or even the privacy of their cabin with the screens up, where she could lie down in nothing but her chemise and sponge away the prickling perspiration. But no — the Arauca would be busy unloading by now.

Instinctively she glanced back towards the waterfront where they had docked this morning, but the streets through which they had climbed hid the near edge of the river from view. Sturdy modern houses with slatted shutters and little outbuildings behind them lined the lower town, with fanciful balconies and fretted porches blossoming forth in curlicues of wood from the older quarter nearby. Here on the Gravesandestraat the houses straggled higher in all their sunbleached glory.