Title: Pilgrim's Chorus
Author: CGB
Email:
luberluber@yahoo.com.au
Web:
http://Appelsini.tripod.com/Christine/
Category: Ainsley fic
(some Sam thrown in for good measure)
Spoilers: And it's
Surely to Their Credit
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Insert
appropriate witty comment about ownership of
these characters here.
Feedback: Is good.
Archive: Sure.
Summary: "She's not
sure how she got here."
This one's for Liz who
is definitely a woman in need of something to
eat and someone to
listen to her when she can't stop talking. She's in
good company.
*
"I can be a
complicated communicator" - Liz Phair
*
She's not sure how she
got here.
Not here. Not the White
House.
Here. Thirty two year
old Ainsley Hayes, Republican working for
the Democrat
Administration, Deputy White House Counsel.
It's like she woke up
today and she's here. Not so long ago she was
attempting handstands on
her neighbour's lawn and showing off her
pink underwear (mother
practically leapt the fence in an attempt to
curb her eight year old
daughter's exhibitionism) and then suddenly
she's an adult debating
the fate of the country whilst eyeing the last
muffin.
Her Republican friends
think she's insane and the Democrats in
power don't trust her at
all. She went to bed yesterday and woke up
in a rip, the point
where currents meet and drag the poor swimmer
out to sea.
Sometimes it's lonely.
Father calls often. He's
loud and he's brash but he's her father and
she loves to hear from
him. Cynics and dissidents in the Republican
Party whisper that
Selwyn Hayes is mad. Madder than a blonde with
ambition and a pretty
smile trying to be taken seriously in
Republican Party
politics. Madder than a Republican in Bartlet's
White House.
So she's her father's
daughter? She hopes not. Whispers might be
insidious but she
worries, sometimes, they're right.
After all, when
she told him about her
new job he laughed, a big booming laugh that
shook its way through
the telephone to the foundations of her
apartment.
"Well now,
honey" he said, "You give those Democrats a good
seeing to from me."
He's proud of her. He
says so when he calls and she thinks maybe
Selwyn Hayes carried the
seed that bore the monster that she is.
Because she is a
monster. She's blonde and she's pretty, she always
hungry and she can't
stop talking. She's a Republican who refused a
six-figure offer to
critique the current government on national
television so she could
work in the basement of the White House.
Oh yes, she's quite
possibly crazy.
And never more so than
when she's here on a Saturday, debating
with Sam Seabourne.
Debating because that's what they do.
"Do you really
believe that?" he says, "I don't think you believe that.
I think you're being
incendiary."
He is standing. She is
sitting. She has work to do. She always has
work to do. No one can
say she's a decorative addition to the
Democrats' White House.
Why else would she be here on a
Saturday? Sam likes to
argue and she knows it's flattering that he
seeks her out to argue
with but she has work to do, and the bottle of
wine she had with dinner
last night left a lingering effect on her
senses.
"The point is,
Sam..." she cuts herself off. The point has escaped her
entirely. It's unlike
her to lose track. She hasn't been concentrating.
" Sam I've
forgotten what the point is exactly. Needless to say, your
argument is flawed and
ill considered and you reject as simplistic the
needs and concerns of
real people in real jobs with real values, not to
mention belittling the
ideals of 51% percent of voters who voted
Republican in the last
election. And what are you doing in my office
anyway? For the good of
this country I'm going to assume you
didn't come here on a
Saturday just to argue with me, and you have
pressing matters of
national importance to attend to."
She's amazed sometimes,
at how she can open her mouth and the
words just fall out. And
she's surprised to find they make sense.
Good sense. Sometimes.
"You know Ainsley,
I can't help being impressed by your ability to
argue a point you not
only don't agree with, but don't remember in
the first
instance."
"It's an art,"
she says sardonically, "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"I have work to do
Sam."
"OK," he
shrugs. Damn, if he didn't look so good when he shrugged
she'd have security down
here to drag him from her office bodily.
She wonders whether she
can do that.
*
Sam placed Gilbert and Sullivan posters
around her office. It makes
her smile because she
joined the Operatic Society at Harvard and
was dismayed to learn
that Gilbert and Sullivan constituted the
societies next three
performances. She preferred Bizet or
Puccini - a
secret, guilty pleasure
because her mother always insisted that
Puccini was 'vulgar'.
Her father preferred the
romantic stirrings of Wagner. "The Ride of
the Valkyries"
still instills mild horror in her when she hears it. She
remembers the music
filling the household late at night when her
father had come home
drunk and as a small child she found the
soaring crescendo's
frighteningly ominous.
But the thought of
Wagner's "Pilgrim's Chorus" from Tannhauser
reminds her of his
gentler moments and makes her office seem
lonelier. She regrets
turning Sam away. She hums the tune to
herself
and sneaks a look at the
CD player Sam has left in her office since
her welcome. She's
grateful because at times the office is lively with
music when it's lively
with little else.
*
Her mother doesn't call
at all. She took the news silently at first.
Separated by the phone
line, Ainsley could only imagine the pursed
lips and slightly
raised, pencil thin eyebrows that would signal her
mother's disapproval.
"Ainsley, dear, is this
really the right decision? Have you thought
about what it could do
to your career?"
"Mother, I'm the
White House Counsel. As a career move most
people would consider it
optimal positioning.
Her mother should have
been proud. She knew her mother should be
proud of her. She was
bright and accomplished and the recipient of
many desirable job
offers which she had turned down to serve her
country. So why did she
never say so? I love you honey and I
support whatever
decision you make - was that too much to ask? Did
anyone's parents say
that?
"Your career in the
Republican Party Ainsley."
That argument was
probably justified. Any fraternizations she made,
any concessions or
compromises would be seen as being sympathetic
to the Democratic
position. An election could change everything
around. Everything.
"Mother, by the
time this President is voted out in the next election,
which we both know he
will be, I'll be an experienced Executive
Office Counsel. Who
better qualified to serve the new Republican
government?"
"I just hope you
know what you're doing."
So did she.
Somewhere in North
Carolina, Ainsley's mother places the phone
back on the hook with a
sigh and a shake of her head.
"Selwyn," she
says, "Ainsley's working for a Democrat."
"How about
that!" He thunders, and then they
speak of it no more.
Ainsley's mother and
father have had separate rooms for as long as
she can remember. They
criticize the Bartlet administration for their
lack of family values
but Ainsley knows from tell around the West
Wing that the President
and the First Lady leap at the chance to
spend time 'intimately
relating' with each other.
*
Carol, CJ Cregg's
assistant, appears at her door.
"Ms Hayes?"
"Ainsley," she
smiles "please call me Ainsley."
The Governor of North
Carolina once told her she had a pretty smile.
She tries to smile
often. Especially in the White House. They don't
trust her, they might
even dislike her but she's damned if she'll let
them see that it gets to
her.
"CJ wants you to go
over these when you have a moment."
Carol hands Ainsley a
small pile of folders. Ainsley opens the top
one and scans the
contents.
"What am I looking
at?"
"I honestly don't
know. CJ wrote some notes..." Carol points to CJ's
scribbles in the
margins.
Ainsley sighs
inwardly. CJ should have come herself.
She should
have set up an
appointment. CJ is avoiding her or avoiding her
office, she's not sure
which. CJ is another tall intelligent woman like
her mother, a woman she
looks up to and admires and who doesn't
really know what to make
of her.
*
From the moment she
first opened her mouth she's been talking.
Mother never told her
that of course, but Aunt Louise loved to tell
her how she jabbered at
them all wide eyed in the crib. She
mimicked their tones.
They sang at her and she sang back. Aunt
Louise said it was the
cutest thing she ever saw but Ainsley knows it
was just another sad
attempt to be heard falling on deaf ears.
In school the teacher
picked on her first when she heard talking
behind her back and she
was usually justified. Quiet classrooms
made her restless.
Sometimes she felt she was going to explode if
she didn't start a
conversation soon. She'd be in trouble of course,
but she couldn't stop.
Talking was always going
to get her into trouble and she couldn't
stop talking so she
became better at it.
*
She reaches for her
jacket. It's not quite lunchtime yet but she needs
to go out.
Later she is sitting in
memorial park with a paper bag in her hand
that doesn't contain her
lunch. She watches birds, watches the sky
for a while, counts
aeroplanes and thinks about going back to work.
She wonders whether anyone
missed her.
*
"Ainsley, where
have you been?" Sam Seabourne apparently has.
She smiles in spite of
herself. She falls into a convenient habit of
pretending they hate her
to justify her low opinion of all that they
stand for, but all
evidence points to the contrary. But they are nice.
At times they are really
nice.
"Shopping,"
she says jutting her chin out in defiance.
"Ah shopping,"
Sam says. She keeps moving but casts a glance in
his direction as she
heads for her office. He follows her.
"I see your
workload is not so full
that you can't afford some time to go out and
buy a new pair of
pumps."
"Pumps?"
"For example."
"Bad example,
Sam."
"I'm showing an
interest. I thought most women liked to show off
their purchases after
shopping."
She reaches into the
paper bag stuffed into her handbag and extracts
a CD. She passes it to
Sam without pausing in her walk.
"Music?" He
studies the cover. " Tannhauser. Wagner. Great choice.
You know Wagner once
went by the name of Richard Geer."
She throws him a pointed
look.
"Yes. And it's
Geher. He was also a German nationalist who wrote
an anti-Semitic paper
called "Judaism in Music" and he composed a
piece for the US
Centennial entitled "American
Centennial March"
commissioned by the City
of Philadelphia. He also married Liszt's
daughter, and lived in a
house called 'Asyl' which is German for
Asylum. Sam?"
"Yes?"
"Are you walking me
to my office?"
Sam looks around. They
have already arrived at the basement and
are wandering the
corridors leading to her office.
"It would appear
so," Sam says, and he smiles his best I-may-be-
boring-but-aren't-I-adorable
smile. She rolls her eyes. Unfortunately
he is. There are some
things she doesn't tell her father. Like the fact
that the senior staff
took her drinking and got her drunk on three
Brandy Alexanders, like
the fact that she glows when they praise her
and shrinks when they
admonish her, and the fact that she looks at
Sam Seabourne and thinks
about whether he has a snail trail between
his naval and his crotch
and how much she'd like to run her hand
along his abdomen just
to find out.
She gives herself a
small shake to loosen the image from her mind.
Sam checks the song list
on the back of the CD and opens the cover.
She wonders whether he
is really that interested or whether he is
feigning his attention
so that he has an excuse to accompany her.
"So who gets the
shepherd's staff?" He says
finally.
"Excuse me?"
"Tannhauser is in
exile because he defied the orthodoxy of the Court
and the church by
challenging their notions of love and sex and by
enjoying the sensual
delights of the Kingdom of Free love. The Pope
decrees that only when
the shepherd's staff sprouts leaves again will
Tannhauser be
pardoned," Sam has an enthusiasm for the tale that is
endearing. She can't
help listening to him when he's so damned
sincere. "The
pilgrims bring a sprouted staff home to the German
Court to show that
Tannhauser is forgiven. Your office is in the
basement of the White
House, as a Republican in a Democrat White
House you sit between
two worlds. Are you telling me you didn't
buy this because of the
parallels to your situation?"
She looks at him like he
has grown another head. They have reached
the stairs that lead
down to her office. She stands at the top trying to
fathom the conundrum
that is Sam Seabourne.
"Sam, your grade
school teachers hated you didn't they?"
"No," he says
looking injured, "well, not all of them."
She grins. "I can
just picture it, poor Mrs Wimplebottom or whatever
her name is, calls for
show and tell and there's Sam Seabourne with
his hand in the air and
she's hoping like hell some other kid puts her
hand up because they're
all in for another forty five minutes of how
television works
otherwise."
Sam looks thoughtful.
"Ok, I admit that
as a child I was a little over zealous when it came
to show and tell, but
Mrs Wimplebottom loved me. I was her
favourite student."
He grins sheepishly. Another endearing quality of
Sam's is his ability to
laugh at himself.
Ainsley takes off her
jacket and places it on a hook behind the door.
She holds out her hand
and Sam looks at it momentarily before the
understanding sinks in
and he hands her the CD. She places it
in the
CD player and the
overture for Tannhauser fills the room.
They listen in silence.
She leans on the desk with her arms folded
and he stands in the
middle of the room deep in thought.
"God forgave
Tannhauser Sam," she says eventually. "The pilgrims
carried the shepherd's
staff that was touched by God. There are
times when I think
neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have a
sense of the
righteousness of what we do, or the wrong, and maybe
it's all just about
their own agenda."
She sighs deeply.
"I don't care
whether anyone forgives me for challenging them, for
saying something
contrary to what they believe in. Not the
Republican Party, not
you or the White House, not my father or my
mother who I know has
already forgiven me in her heart, I just want
to do what's right. I
don't always know what that is and maybe that's
where I let everyone
down. What good am I to serve if I don't have
the strength of my convictions?
You see, I need to forgive me Sam. I
need to be able to say
that I did the right thing, that I was good and
just, and then maybe I
can bring the sprouted staff home."
Sam comes and leans
against the desk next to her. He smells like
soap and aftershave that
is slightly citrusy. Her father favours musky
odours as many of the
men his age do. She always liked the smell of
men's aftershave.
"So you do see
yourself as Tannhauser?" he grins conspiratorially.
She grins back
"No, just one more
pilgrim trying to be heard."
"Then keep
talking," he says.
She smiles. The
orchestral overture ends and the soprano solo
begins.
"I can do
that."
Fini