'Emilia, Perhaps' --- short story

As promised, to serve as my penance for being the slackest blogger in the world, here's an old short story that I find really embarrassing. Back when I was in a writing group, one month our theme was given as 'Romance'. And this is what I came up with. I never posted it back then because it's (probably) the schmaltziest thing I've ever written---it's got an amnesia plotline for fuck's sake. What was I thinking?!? 

Emilia, Perhaps

He opened the door, allowing the corridor’s weak light to slice into the darkened room. The woman in the bed could not see it, but she lifted her head all the same.

‘Doctor Cuthbertson?’
 

How did you know it was me?’

‘You always hesitate rather charmingly on the threshold. The rest of them simply come barging in as they please.’ Julian, his hand still on the porcelain doorknob, swallowed nervously. After a moment’s wait, she beckoned him in. ‘You may enter, sir. You have my permission.’ He thought he could sense a smile in her voice. With her head completely swathed in bandages, he was having to rely on his ears to a greater degree than he was accustomed. But then, of course, so was she.

When the door closed behind him, the darkness of her room was absolute. He pulled a box of matches from his pocket and lit a candle.

‘So it is night, then,’ she said. ‘I have trouble keeping track. Sometimes, when nobody comes in to check on me for a time, I can’t even tell if I have slept or not. Sleep and waking have more in common than they used to.’

‘I’m sure.’ He carried the candle across to the windows and made sure that the heavy black-out curtains were fastened securely.

‘One certainly couldn’t tell the time from the temperature. It is so stuffy in here!’

‘It gets more stuffy at night, because we have to keep the curtains closed.’ He took a deep breath, and asked the question that he dreaded so much: ‘Has any more of your memory returned?’

Every time he asked, the brief moment of silence before she began her reply stretched wide, transforming into an eternity of hope and regret, of love found and love lost.

‘Yes,’ she said, and his shoulders slumped. ‘I believe, as a girl, I used to ride. I had a white pony, a mare. I plaited her mane. Her name was … was … Sylvia, or Sybil … or Susannah.’ She threw up her hands. ‘The name won’t come. Yet. But I can see her. She was beautiful.’

‘Where do you see her? There may be elements in the background that will provide us with a clue to your origins.’ He did his best to regulate his voice, to give all his words a professional veneer, no matter how much his heart was breaking.

‘It is a country house, a very large one. There are servants. A humbly dressed man hands me the reins and touches his cap as he does so. It is all horribly opulent.’

‘Ah! You are wealthy, then.’

‘My accent ought to have told you that long ago.’

He smiled. ‘You might have been an actress.’

‘What a scandalous suggestion! Can you really think so poorly of me as that?’

‘I have no frame of reference. I could think anything of you. That is the problem.’

She sighed in frustration. ‘Well … tell me what you do think.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I am sick of being nobody,’ she cried. ‘Tell me my story, even if it is a fiction. I am sick of being a blank canvas. Paint a picture with words and fill me in. Even a made-up life is better than no life at all. Please, doctor. I beg you.’

Julian was taken aback by her request. He poured himself a glass of water from the jug next to her bed to give himself time to think. For, of course, inventing this mystery woman’s past had occupied every moment of his waking hours since he had first heard her remarkable voice. He saw, now, that those imaginings had been the rehearsal for this shining moment.

Her hand lay upturned upon the coverlet, as though she was inviting him to take it in his own. He did not.

He thought of all the names he had imagined for her and tried to decide which would suit her best. ‘Your name,’ he began softly, ‘is Emilia.’ She gasped with joy and clapped her hands together.

‘Emilia,’ she repeated, and her voice was beaming. He smiled.

‘Everyone in your family calls you Ducky, however, because as a girl your greatest joy was to explore the ponds and streams and fountains on your father’s estate. You had a pet frog named Gerald, and your nanny despaired of keeping your skirts free of grass and mud for even a single hour. You must have had more baths than any other child in England.

‘Your father was a stern man with a red beard. In your earliest years you were fascinated by his watch and chain. He was loving but distant, trusting your nanny—and later, your governess—more than he trusted himself. He loved you very much but didn’t know how to show it.

‘You were an only child, and your mother died giving birth to you. There was a portrait of her on the mantle in the sitting room. You would sneak in sometimes and look at it for hours at a time, trying to puzzle out just which emotion was being conveyed by the flakes of blue paint that were her eyes.

‘You had a white pony, a mare, named Sylvia. You plaited her mane. When you grew too long in the leg for her, your father bought you a beautiful chestnut horse with snow-white legs. He liked to watch you ride, calling advice and encouragement from outside the yard. It was the thing that brought you closest.

‘You had no friends, but you weren’t lonely. You read voraciously, and imagined a thousand adventures more spectacular than those of Mr Carroll or Mr Barrie. You charged around the estate as you pleased.

‘As you entered your teenage years, you learned how to sit, and how to serve tea. You learned French and German, how to play the harp and sing, and how to paint. Though you submitted to your lessons, you realised in your heart of hearts that it was all quite ridiculous.

‘When you first began to get your womanly discharge, nobody had enlightened you to expect it. You were mortified. You tried to steal down to the laundry and wash your own sheets. It was the scullery maid, Rhona, with her red face and red hands, who found you out and kindly explained the facts of life to you. She became your greatest friend, until—

‘Your father had invested heavily in stocks, and the depression was not kind to him. Rhona was let go, along with all the rest of the servants. Your father was forced to sell off your horses, and let the great house. “I am so sorry, Ducky,” he said, and it was the only time you ever heard his voice catch.

‘His friends in government secured him a paid diplomatic post, as ambassador to Tanganyika. The two of you repaired to the consul house in Dar Es Salaam, and you spent the remainder of the time before the war in Africa.

‘The fauna of East Africa, the lions and zebras and hippopotami, made the change in circumstances delightful to you. Even the snakes were something to be exclaimed over, rather than feared. You once saw a giraffe giving birth, and you rank it as the most wondrous, beautiful thing you have ever seen.

‘You had a sharp wit, and a keen eye for the ridiculous. Your pith had never sat well with the stuffy ladies of English drawing rooms, but the wilder sort who forged a path at the very edges of the Empire were delighted by you. For the first time in your life, you tasted popularity, though your father made damn sure it didn’t go to your head.

‘And that wasn’t all: by now you were beautiful. Your negro maid Hebe marvelled at your hair every morning as she brushed it. Your attendance at a soiree given amongst the colonials would swell the attendance as young men drove in from all across the territory for a glimpse of you. You remained happily modest and unassuming, but also had the strength of mind to resist the overtures of countless men. You were determined to fall in love, but—a romantic at heart—you did not believe in picking the best of a bad bunch. The right man must be out there, you reasoned, and you would find him eventually.

‘Even as far from Europe as that, the coming war began to loom over all. At the outbreak, your father sent you back to England on the steamer, to live with your Aunt Dulcie. Changing boats at Suez, you made it as far as Alexandria. Your boat’s arrival coincided with a German air-raid. A bomb hit the boat.

‘You thought you must be dead. The noise was immense, the pain unbearable. You were flung, burning, into the water. But still you lived.

‘Only one person escaped from that wreckage, only one person made it to the Alexandria Hospital still breathing. You.

‘When you finally woke, after three weeks in a coma, you had no recollection of who you were. Exploring with your hands you discovered that both your legs were broken and your entire head was wrapped in bandages. When the nurses discovered you moving, they ran for a doctor.

‘And here, in the most unfelicitous of circumstances, you found the man you had waited so long for. At first the callow young doctor was nervous, reticent and shy. You spoke warmly and put him at ease. His voice grew stronger, more confident, and kept you company in your cage of darkness.

‘You fell in love with him.

‘But at the back of your mind was a lingering doubt. You might love him, but how could he love you in return? Your famous beauty was surely no more, and what could you offer instead? A life of pushing a wheelchair, of changing bandages? Whenever he left your bedside, you imagined it was for the last time, and cried.

‘What you couldn’t know was the effect that your voice had on him. He had always been frightened in society, terrified of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. So for most of his life, he had stayed silent. When he did speak, it was with a stutter. It was only with you that he could be the man he always knew he was inside. You brought him out of his shell.

‘Every moment he was apart from you was spent in thinking of you. Nothing else occupied his mind. He spent hours at night, lying awake and imagining your past, piecing together in his fevered brain just who it was that he was falling head over heels in love with.

‘At last, the moment came. He arrived in your room in dead of night. You recognised him before he opened his mouth, because of the charming way he hesitated on the threshold. Sick of being nobody, you implored him to fill you up with a story, with your story. As he did so, you began to weep with joy.’

She was weeping, though she had done her best to hide it. Wet patches had appeared on her bandage, right above her eyes.

Julian continued: ‘He took your hand …’ Her fingers had lain on the sheet through his recitation, inviting him to grasp them, but until this moment he had held back. When they touched, he felt delirious with pleasure. It was some moments before he could continue. ‘And … and he lowered his lips to kiss it.’ He did so. ‘And he told you that he loved you, and would love you always.’

‘Julian,’ she whispered. ‘You have seen me without these bandages, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And was I horrible to look at?’

Internally, he debated the merits of a lie, but he could not do it.

Under her dressings, she smiled sadly. ‘Do not fret: your silence is all the answer I need. And yet … somehow ... you love me regardless?’

‘Yes. Good God, yes. Of course.’

It was the most perfect moment in either of their lives.

***

Behind the Alexandria Hospital is a small cemetery reserved for Englishmen and women, and other Christians. When she was buried there two weeks later, having died of an infection, he insisted that her tombstone read Emilia Cuthbertson.

He never married, and never forgot her.

Story notes:

• There is NO FRIGGIN' WAY that a giraffe giving birth would be pleasant to look at.
• Looking back, the gender politics of this weirds me out: the man is literally proscribing the woman's life (and, even more troublingly, her personality) to her. 'Emilia' has no agency whatsoever, and isn't even allowed to discover her own past. I know she asks Julian to tell the story, but still. Given it's set in WWII, surely the more obvious thing would be to have a wounded soldier in a hospital, being tended by a nurse. The fact that didn't occur to me until two years later is a bit strange.
• As dorky as it is, I quite like the structure of it, where Julian's story catches up to the beginning of my story, re-casting the earlier events in the light of his undying love.
• Easter Eggs: 'Cuthbertson' is the name of a now-retired footballer who played for my favourite team; the negro maid Hebe is lifted straight from the Hornblower books; the business about a girl not being told about her period and not understanding when it happens for the first time is borrowed wholesale from Michel Faber's brilliant 'The Crimson Petal and the White'; Tanganyika as a setting is a deliberate homage to Roald Dahl's 'Going Solo'.
• When we did the group reading, everyone in the room gasped in shock when I killed 'Emilia'. It was a brilliant moment: the looks on their faces were priceless. Even in a romance, happy endings are for suckers.

Cheers, JC.

Aboriginal Stories of Australia, Aboriginal Fables and Legendary Tales, and Aboriginal Words of Australia (#90-#88)

Aboriginal Stories of Australia, Aboriginal Fables and Legendary Tales, and Aboriginal Words of Australia by A.W. Reed

What I said then:

They’re pretty much what they say on the tin, collections of Aboriginal dreamtime fables. I originally bought them as research for a long-delayed writing project.

What I say now:

Okay, I'm no expert at this sort of stuff, but the universality to the stories in these collections was pretty mind-blowing. By that I mean, if you replaced boomerangs and nulla-nullas with spears and swords, and swapped Wahn the mischievous crow for an evil witch, and changed the tribal elders to Kings and Queens, the vast majority of these dreamtime stories would be pretty much indistinguishable from a tale out of the Brothers Grimm. No matter who we are, or which corner of the globe our descendants wandered to back in the dawn of man, we all tell the exact same sorts of stories to try and explain the world around us.

That's pretty amazing to me. Aboriginal Australians arrived on this continent somewhere between 40,000 and 125,000 years ago, and never had contact with any outside influence until the late eighteenth century. And yet, despite that enormous gap when they were evolving separately, the stories they told around their camps were, in every narrative essential, exactly the same as the people of Europe (at this point I should admit my ignorance of the rest of the world's mythologies). It's not surprising that Joseph Campbell collated folktales from all over the world to create the idea of the 'monomyth' --- what's surprising is that it took someone so long to twig that we were all telling the same stories all along. If you ever needed more evidence that the very idea of racism is ridiculous, the universal nature of these stories would, I imagine, make anybody who reads them more aware of the fact that deep deep down, we are all the same. Heck, there's even one story, titled The Coming of Death, which is a nearly exact replica of the story of Adam and Eve.

(It's worth noting that these stories were all collected by white men, and it's impossible for a casual reader like me to know how much the narratives have been changed from their original form. It is certainly possible that the story's collectors and translators have adapted the tales to fit a more European narrative form, which could at least partially explain the universality I'm talking about. To get a definitive answer on that point would take a hell of a lot of time and research, but I feel it would be remiss of me to leave it unremarked. Reed's versions contain one element which points to this ambiguity: when specific geographical locations are mentioned, he uses their current names. It's hard not to realise that there's been editorialising by a white man when you're reading an ancient fable that's been given the title How the Murray River Was Made.)

One other fascinating element to these stories was the way that animals were once men, who had turned into animals as punishment for their misdeeds in a sort of reverse evolution. Many of them begin with the different animals in human form, then use the narrative to explain how each animal gained their unique characteristics. Why the kookaburra laughs in the morning, for example, or why koalas don't have tails, or where the galah got its unique plumage. Often devolving from human to animal is a punishment dished out by Baiame, the Great Spirit, or one of the other God-like beings that populate the sky. Often it's not actually possible until the end of a story to tell if it is about animals, or about dreamtime humans with animal names.

I probably shouldn't have include Aboriginal Words of Australia on my list of books to read in the first place. I'd thought it included essays and analysis of the language differences within the continent, but I was remembering wrong. It was actually just an alphabetical list of words, like a two-way dictionary, so obviously I didn't bother reading that. Apologies for the faulty memory (but I'm not too sorry, because hey, that's one more book down).

Anyway, reading these was a fascinating experience, and has me wanting to better explore and understand Aboriginal culture, as well as explore the oral histories and folk traditions of other regions of the world. And I should probably give Joseph Campbell a look as well, I guess.

Cheers, JC.


about to read: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
books to go: 87

'First and Last Thoughts' --- short story

'Sup everybody. Drood is continuing to be boring as hell. I just checked the dates and holy shit, in three days I'll have been reading it for a whole frickin' month. Ugh. I've got Thursday off, so if I really plow through the ending maybe I can beat the one-month deadline.

Anyways, given the relative silence recently I thought I'd throw up an old story from one of the writing groups I used to be a part of. I dropped out of them earlier this year because I was embarking on a big writing project which has taken up a heap of my time and energy. I'll have more details on that 'big writing project' reasonably soon. Hopefully. (Ooo, mysterious!)

So this particular story was for the --- how can I put this? --- vastly sillier of the two writing groups, and the theme was Trashy Vampire Fiction. It may or may not be the funniest thing I've ever written, but it's certainly the dopiest. But before we begin, here's a little something to get you in the mood:

Remember, if you think the story sucks, you can always scroll back up and gaze into R-Pattz's horrifyingly dead eyes. On that note, enjoy!

First and Last Thoughts

Doctor Isabelle Lee’s first thought was that the girl was terrified.  Her second thought was that the boy’s hairstyle was ridiculous.  It swept upwards in artfully asymmetrical swoops and swirls, like a disaster of post-modern architecture, or like a half-melted soft-serve cone from McDonalds.  Her third thought was that, despite the hair, he was smoking hot.

It was nearing four a.m., and nearing the end of her shift in the E.R.  It had been a relatively quiet evening: most of the drug-related gunshot wounds and stabbings had had the good grace to be D.O.A., and she’d even been able to snatch moments of sleep in between signing off on them and sending them down to the morgue.

All her tiredness disappeared, however, as she gazed into the calm young man’s limpid green eyes.  She put his age at about sixteen, but his eyes seemed older somehow.  His skin was white, the pure white of a blank sheet of paper, as though there was no blood beneath the surface to stain it pink.  His lips, however, were brilliant red, and the contrast with his skin was dazzling.  They were like juicy fresh-picked strawberries perched atop a dollop of thick, luscious cream.

Isabelle became suddenly aware of her own skin, and began to feel hot underneath her scrubs.  For a brief moment, everything was forgotten—the hospital, the injured girl, her boyfriend Lorenzo waiting at home in their cramped apartment—everything was lost, except for him, and her.  Isabelle’s heart beat a tattoo against her ribs.

The boy smiled, a perfect dimple cleaving his hard, masculine chin.  ‘My girlfriend caught her tongue on something,’ he said.  ‘Could you take a look at it?’

His voice was unusually deep, and it shook through Isabelle like the bass in a nightclub.  It took her a moment to register what he’d actually said.

‘What?’  The world—the cruel grey world—came flooding back.  ‘Oh, yes, of course.  So, uhh, what seems to be the trouble?’

Turning to the girl, Isabelle again saw in an instant that something was scaring her out of her wits.

‘Mppffhhmm,’ she mumbled, refusing to open her mouth.  Isabelle pulled up a stool in front of her and laid her hand on the girl’s knee.

‘It’s okay.  You’re safe here.  What happened?’

In answer, the girl opened her mouth, revealing that her tongue had been shredded to ribbons.  She was a beautiful girl, Isabelle reflected.  Or, more accurately, she would be beautiful if her mascara hadn’t dripped to form black tear-streaks on her cheeks, and if her hair wasn’t in disarray, and if her clothes weren’t torn …

‘We were making out …’  The boy was stealthy; he had crept up behind Isabelle without a sound, and his deep voice purred into her ear.  Just hearing him say the words ‘making out’ in his Barry White-esque timbre made her lose herself.  A shiver ran down her spine and she shifted on her stool.  She grew damp, and not with sweat.

Staring blankly into the girl’s open mouth, at the half-cooked bolognese that was all that was left of her tongue, Isabelle surrendered to the boy’s lustrous voice.  She let out a whimper.

‘… and I grazed her tongue with my fangs …’

As he spoke, the boy hooked a finger underneath Isabelle’s pony-tail and draped it over one shoulder, exposing the back of her neck.  The faint whisper of his breath on her skin made her arch her back in delight.

‘… and I tasted her blood …’

He stroked Isabelle’s tight pink flesh.  His fingers were icy cold, like frozen sausages left to thaw in the kitchen sink of her burning skin.  She shuddered at his touch, closed her eyes and leaned back, biting her lip to keep from groaning out loud.

‘… and it tasted good.  Once a vampire tastes blood, his thirst is almost unquenchable, he can’t be stopped …’

Wait … fangs?  Vampire?  Huh?  Isabelle opened her eyes and the boy’s pale unearthly face was mere inches from hers.  His skin was smooth as marble, and just as cold.  But his eyes, despite their agelessness, were warm.  She was overwhelmed by his beauty, by the sheer perfection of his astonishing face—he was like a perfect meld of Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Zac Efron and all three Jonas Brothers.  She felt a monstrous heat growing inside her, a heat that Lorenzo had failed to make her feel in years.

‘… but I love my Lydia …’

The girl, her fear replaced by something close to joy, stroked the boy’s pale hand.

‘… so stop I did.  It almost killed me …’

He smiled.  Even the sight of his snow-white fangs couldn’t mar his angelic beauty.  Isabelle gasped and writhed in delight, intoxicated by his very presence.  The heat inside her was building to a crashing crescendo.

‘… and now I’m sooooo hungry,’ the boy crooned.

As the two pin-pricks of his fangs sank into her neck, as her life drained away, as her orgasm sent great rolling waves of hot pleasure that wracked her body like a lifeboat in a storm, the last thing that Doctor Isabelle Lee ever thought was: it was worth it.

And then she died.

THE END

Story notes:

• In all honesty, this barely qualifies as a story. It's more like a Trashy Vampire Anecdote, or something. Even the wizard one, which is shorter, at least has a beginning, middle and end. This is too slight. It's just kind of a run of gags.
• A shout out to my good friend Kerls, whose series of Bad Fiction Friday Arvos over on his blog A Totally Irrelevant Title made me more willing to throw up something that's deeply terrible.
• I still giggle at the frozen sausages metaphor. I do wish that sentence was phrased a bit more elegantly though. Ah well, can't win 'em all. 
• I hope you laughed at least once. If you didn't, I'm not as good a writer as I think I am. 
• I genuinely have no idea what the Jonas Brothers look like.

Cheers, JC.

currently reading: Drood by Dan Simmons

books to go: 97

'Questions Never Asked' --- short story

Last night was the first 20 Melbourne Writers meeting for the year. The theme/challenge this time around was (gack!) 'Unrequited Love' ... which I can't say I was really looking forward to writing about. Hence the majority of this story got written at the last possible moment: I was up to about midnight on Sunday rushing to get it finished. Anyway, enjoy!

Questions Never Asked

Below decks, the orlop was fetid with lantern-smoke, bilge-water and sweat. Though the engagement with the French privateer had ended hours ago, the acrid stench of gunpowder lingered in the wood. Sequestered together out of the way, the wounded men groaned with every pitch and roll of the ship.

Beeton lay in a hammock in a fevered dream. They had given him laudanum and rum, and a strip of leather to bite down on, before the surgeon had sawed off what remained of his leg. He tried to doze, but his missing leg still burned with terrible pain, as though the grape-shot had torn through it mere moments ago. To take his mind off his agonies, he thought of Captain Pullings.

He even managed a smile, weak though it was, as he recollected his first interview in the Captain’s great cabin, when he had been on board only a matter of days, back on the far side of the globe.

*

When he and his fellow convicts had come on board, still in fetters, their chains clanking, the Captain had made a short, disinterested speech, exhorting them all to learn their duties, to perform them to their utmost, and, if they did all that, promising that when they returned once more to England, they would be returned to civilized society. The only part of the speech which was truly inspiring came at the very end, when the Captain had turned to Horning, the beefy master-at-arms, and commanded them to be released from their manacles.

Rubbing life back into his wrists and ankles, Beeton had watched the Captain’s glittering, brocaded back as he descended to his cabin and wondered what kind of man he was in the charge of now. A ship of His Majesty’s Navy was a small step up from a cold gaol, but the wrong Captain could easily make it seem a floating wooden prison all of its own.

Asking around, the other sailors were as in the dark about Captain Pullings as he was. Only lately to command, the Captain had never yet taken the HMS Splendide to sea, and was still a mystery to his men. His seamanship, his courage, and his philosophy of discipline were all the subject of much speculation amongst the foremast jacks.

Beeton only espied the Captain once more as the ship took on its stores; one afternoon he called out his gig and had himself rowed in a wide circle about the Splendide, before coming back on board and ordering a complete re-organisation of her holds. The newer men grumbled as they laboured amongst the casks, but the older hands were quietly pleased. ‘Shows he knows ships,’ Half-Nose Watkin explained to Beeton. ‘We wasn’t balanced proper, we was too heavy in the bow. She’ll grip the water better now.’

The next day found the Splendide anchored in Portsmouth still, and Beeton manning the capstan bars, helping to heave up the last of their salt-beef from the lighter overside. His hands were blistered and bleeding when Horning pulled him from his place without a whit of explanation and dragged him below. ‘Make y’self smart,’ the master grunted.

‘In these rags?’ Beeton protested, but he did his best, buttoning his shirt and wiping the sweat from his brow as they descended to the Captain’s cabin.

On nearer inspection, Captain Pullings was young for command, and handsome. A fine mouth was set in his tanned face, black hair tumbled casually across his forehead, and his eyes were blue. Setting off his features was a quality more ineffable; he had the blithe, careless confidence that came with privileged birth.

He looked up from his desk when the door opened and eyed Beeton shrewdly. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Stand there.’ Beeton did as he was told. ‘You came to us from the Exeter Assizes, did you not?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Captain smiled. ‘You’re at sea, now, Beeton.’

‘Sir?’

‘ “Aye-aye,” Beeton, is the correct affirmative response.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Captain raised an eyebrow and Beeton blushed. ‘Aye-aye, sir.’

‘How long were you in prison?’

‘Not three months.’

‘And you were offered the choice between a naval career, or else …?’

‘Transportation to the colonies, sir.’

‘I am informed,’ said the Captain, searching in his desk drawers for a quill, ‘that before you were a criminal you made a living for a time as a gentleman’s servant. Is that correct?’

‘It is, sir. I was first valet for Lord Marlborough.’

‘I know Lord Marlborough.’ The Captain cocked his head and studied Beeton thoughtfully. ‘You are well-spoken, and even in those slops, you are presentable. How came you to prison?’

Beeton shuffled his feet. ‘I do not wish to dissemble, sir,’ he said, choosing his words with care, ‘but it is a matter of some … delicacy.’

Captain Pullings laughed aloud. ‘Ha! So it is true! He caught you meddling with his daughter. The cantankerous old fool. I had heard rumours to that effect, when he sent his whole family back to the country at the height of the season. I think all of England heard those rumours. You’re a famous man, Mr Beeton.’

Beeton could think of nothing to say; he went so far as to allow a faint smile to play across his lips, but did not dare more. In truth, it was Lord Marlborough’s son, a beautiful but callow youth, in whose embraces he had been caught. He considered himself lucky not to have been strung up.

The daughter was a sweet girl of fifteen. Beeton was sorry to learn that this garbled version of his foolishness was getting about; doubtless it would be injurious to her future prospects.

‘Keep your own counsel, then,’ said the Captain, ‘but I can read the truth writ all across your face.’

‘Aye, sir.’

The Captain jabbed his quill into a near-empty bottle of ink and began transcribing some orders or other. ‘I am currently without a steward, Mr Beeton, and I’ve a mind to appoint you to the task. Have you any objections?’

‘No, sir.’

Captain Pullings eyed the weeping blisters on Beeton’s cracked and bleeding palms. ‘Hands like yours were made for finer work than hauling on ropes,’ he commented. ‘The purser and the cook can instruct you in your new duties. Get below and fetch me a cup of coffee.’

‘Aye-aye, sir. And thank you, sir.’

*

The Splendide’s orders took them to the West Indies. Once out of harbour, the pitch and yaw of the ship as she rolled through the waves made all the new hands sea-sick, or at least made them stumble about like drunkards, flailing for handholds. Within a week, however, stomachs and feet had settled, and Beeton no longer noticed the floor’s listing, except when he tried to set the captain’s table.

The first part of the voyage seemed charmed; the French fleet was blockaded in their ports, giving the English rule of the oceans, and every sail they met was friendly. The only time the guns had cause to be run out was when the crew spent a few mornings practicing their revolutions.

The lubbers had time and peace to learn their duties well, and of the three men who slipped from the masts in their first fortnight aboard, only one had the misfortune to land on deck and break his neck. The others dropped overside into the water, and Captain Pullings had no hesitation in ordering the ship about to pick them up. Other captains, Beeton was told, might have simply sailed on.

These humanitarian acts were not the only thing to endear Captain Pullings to his crew. When, after a solid day of sail-drill, he timed the crew hauling in the flysheets and furling the mainsail in less than twenty minutes, he allowed an extra ration of grog for the entire ship. When he invited the lieutenants and midshipmen to dine with him from his private stores, he bade Beeton and Stuart, the cook, to add the leftovers to the men’s dinner the next day. And when, during a gale, the wind had veered six points and threatened to take them all aback, he had handled the ship with calm, purpose, and—even to Beeton’s uneducated eyes—tremendous skill. He had refused to yield the quarterdeck all that long, dark night, until morning and calm had arrived together.

As steward, Beeton’s duty was to be at the captain’s side always, and he relished it. Captain Pullings had ordered that each dawn he be woken at four bells in the morning watch; Beeton rolled from his hammock at three bells so as to have a coffee brewed, a cigar lit, and to have time to memorise the direction and strength of the wind, which was invariably the captain’s first question upon being shook from his slumber.

In action, the captain gravely informed him, Beeton’s place was on the quarterdeck, ready to convey the captain’s messages or, at the last, to protect him with cutlass and pike. One of the few jacks to stand such exalted station, Beeton was not envied for this: opponent gunners would invariably aim for the cocked hats and brocade of the senior officers, oft times turning the planks of the quarterdeck into a splintering abattoir.

Beeton was an observant man, and sensitive to the intricate moods of men of great birth. Soon enough he could predict the captain in his wants: arriving with a boat cloak just as the northerly breeze became too cold to stand; or unpacking the card table before it was ever called for, when the captain was merry; or subtly warning off gregarious lieutenants when the captain wished to pace the deck in silent thought.

However inappropriate, Captain Pullings didn’t bother to hide his delight with his new subordinate. Of a naturally light-hearted disposition, he was as at ease with Beeton as he was with those nearer to him in rank and class: First Lieutenant Fotherington, sixth son of an earl, and the doe-eyed young Midshipman Blakeny, who was apparently the captain’s own relation—both his second and third cousin, according to rumour, or some other connection equally mysterious.

As Beeton, with each passing day, revealed himself a man of sense and intelligence, the captain even came occasionally to solicit his opinions. Only ever about inconsequential matters—at what latitude it would be safe to pack away his warmest clothes; whether, when the original supplies of sealing wax ran out, ordinary candles might be adapted to the purpose—yet each inquiry was an example of considerable condescencion all the same.

It wasn’t long before Beeton was bewitched by the captain’s beauty, by his passion and skill, by his intelligence and his wit, and by his considerate nature.

Sometimes, in quieter moments, Beeton thought he could sense that the captain thought well of him too. He seemed unattached: there was no ring on his slender fingers, and no letters to sweethearts from Captain Pullings’ pen were ever added to the mailbag waiting for the next ship they met headed back to England.

And there were looks they shared, glances that hinted at an understanding deeper than they had ever openly acknowledged. Towards the end of one particularly raucous wardroom dinner, the captain had insisted each of the attendants share in the last bottle of wine. Every other jack was given a fresh mug, but Captain Pullings poured a generous few mouthfuls into his own fine-stemmed glass and offered it to Beeton, looking him solemnly in the eye as he took it and drank. Handing the glass back, their fingers touched, and Beeton didn’t believe that the captain was unaware of the currents that passed through their clammy skin.

Approaching the West Indies, the atmosphere below decks became stifling. The collected savage breaths of four hundred sweating men were trapped by the low wooden ceilings and transformed the boiling ship into a hot, humid oven. Sweat clung to every pore and, except when duty required it, every man on board did away with as much of his uniform as his own modesty allowed.

On deck, the captain was exempt from this indiscipline, only ever emerging from his cabin in full uniform. In the privacy of his cabin, however, he would often strip off his shirt; Beeton was the only man allowed to intrude on this intimacy, and he drank in the sight. Whether Captain Pullings understood the torture that his blasé nudity was inflicting, Beeton could never be sure. From simple admiration, Beeton was shaken to vicious lust, and he could think of little else but the captain’s imagined embraces.

But each hint of fellow-feeling the captain betrayed was followed by a moment of bitter-tasting coolness. Which was the real man: the jocular captain who laughed gaily as an ill-timed roll would send them both sprawling as Beeton helped him into his pants, or the stern taskmaster who could stand unbending on the quarterdeck for twelve hours or more without so much as a single backwards glance for his patient, lovelorn steward?

In torment, Beeton invented fantastic scenarios in his mind, running through every conceivable and inconceivable scenario that might lead them to the brink. But rank and class stood between them, an impenetrable wall of glass that could only be seen through, never smashed. How could he, a lowly gaol-rat, proposition a ship’s captain, a man destined since birth for a seat in the House of Lords? The thing was impossible.

It was up to Captain Pullings then; it must be. Beeton thought the captain wanted him; on more confident days he was certain of it. Whether it was modesty or propriety that held the captain back, Beeton tried to give him an easier time of it by deliberately placing himself in compromising situations. He would wake the captain before lighting the lantern, rather than after, to give them a few minutes in a cabin dark and furtive. Twice he grew so desperate that he deliberately spilled wine on the captain’s pants, so he could kneel at his feet and wipe at his crotch. None of it availed.

Beeton envied the other foremast jacks; their clumsy trysts seemed, to him, absurd in their simplicity. Take a liking to a common sailor and all you had to do was wait until the rum was ladled out on Sundays, then stumble with him down to the cable tiers and grope together in the dark, rats scurrying about your feet. There were many that chose not to exercise themselves thus, but they simply turned a blind eye to the buggery—for it is a simple truth that questions never asked are never answered.

*

Beeton couldn’t remember the shot that had taken his leg, but he had no wish to. His laudanum dreams had only one object: Captain Pullings. Lying half-dead in the orlop, surrounded by those just as mangled as he, Beeton knew that the captain would come to him.

He could recall, above the tremendous crashing of the guns, the sincere alarm in the captain’s tone as he had shouted for the loblolly boys to carry him below. Through a veil of powder-smoke, he could picture in his mind’s eye the fright in the captain’s visage as he watched his beloved steward dragged off the shattered quarterdeck. In that moment, leg gone, Beeton finally knew for certain that Captain Pullings loved him.

And so he waited, for the captain would come. The battle was fought and won above him, and he waited. In the dark and the stink, he waited. Men died around him, and Braun, the surgeon, sniffed his wounds for gangrene, and the collecting blood on the orlop decking had to be sluiced clean every two bells, and he waited. Day became night became day, and every able man had to help plug the shot holes to keep the old Splendide from sinking, and he waited. Ignoring the crippling pains still emanating from his phantom leg, Beeton patiently waited.

At last, the captain came. ‘Beeton. I’m glad to see you still alive.’ Captain Pullings had scarce ceased barking orders for forty-eight hours, and his voice was a rasp.

‘I am happy to be so, sir.’ It was no lie: at that moment Beeton was truly happy. Though the words were spoken through grinding teeth, the sight of the captain’s sweet face, lined with such tender compassion, had sent angels dancing into Beeton’s heart.

‘I wanted to ask you, Beeton …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I wanted to ask … do you know of any other man on board who could act as my steward?’

‘Sir?’

‘It will doubtless be a long time until you are fully recovered. We are making for Kingston, and we’ll be disembarking all our injured at the Naval Hospital there. When you’re gone, is there anyone you think suitable to replace you?’

Beeton’s angels vanished, laughing over their shoulders. ‘Replace me?’

Captain Pullings clapped him on the shoulder, smiling gently. ‘Well, I need a steward, and it can’t be you, can it? Is there anyone you can recommend?’

‘I … I …’ The captain looked him straight in the eye, frank and friendly as ever, but nothing more. ‘No, sir. Nobody springs to mind.’

*

Beeton lived. He avoided gangrene, and as he learned to walk on his new peg-leg, the pad of meat at the end of his stump grew calloused and hard.

But there was a second wound he had taken, less noticable than the first, but far more painful. And no matter how calloused and hard his heart grew, that second wound would never truly heal.

THE END

Story notes:

• Can you tell that I'm a Hornblower fan? I didn't need to do any research for this story, because I've read so much C.S. Forester that all the technical vocabulary of those olden-timey sailing ships is ingrained in my memory.
• And look, when I used the line 'doubtless it would be injurious to her future prospects,' the Jane Austen fan in me gave a little thrill as well.
• Reading back over it, I can sense the rush I was in to get it finished. I think the second half of the story is much weaker than the first. From 'Beeton was bewitched by the captain's beauty' onwards, it devolves into a (really pretty silly) bodice-ripper ... or whatever a male equivalent of a bodice-ripper is. In the next draft I'd like to make the 'is he?/isn't he?' romance plot much more subtle. At the moment it's about as subtle as a cannonball to the head.
• (Oh God, I'm such a wanker for even thinking this, let alone writing it:) My usual philosophy of story-telling is to try, as the writer, to become invisible. I normally don't want people to notice the 'writerly-ness' of my stories, because I think it distracts from the story itself (on a side note, this is my problem with so much literary writing - authors want me to notice how clever they are and what pretty sentences they can write, which actually detracts from my enjoyment of the plot). If you're truly caught up in a story, you can lose yourself in it, and nothing's worse than being dragged back to reality by a bit of self-indulgent writing. So normally I try to hide my tracks, hoping that as you read you're only thinking about the characters, my puppets, and not about the writer behind the scenes pulling the strings.
• But in this case the style is very obvious. My excuse is this: if the bulk of the story were written in a modern fashion, but the characters spoke in a pastiche-Georgian sort of way, then the clash between the two styles would be jarring, and that would, I thought, be even more distracting. So the lesser of two evils was to write the whole thing in that ye-olde style and hope I could do it well enough that the 'writerly-ness' of the whole thing didn't detract too much from your enjoyment. I doubt, on a first draft, I was successful, but maybe I can neaten it up and smooth the edges when I go back over it.

Cheers, JC 


currently reading: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
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