Brawny Bloke: Paterfamilias, Horseman, Nobleman, Knight

By Shirley Bookman

“What if my daughter had lived? Rachel—would she have looked like Jay’s daughters? She died because of me.”

Lord Jim Fausscyn. Spare to the heir. Unprovided for. Must make his own way. Naval career first. Then His Majesty’s foreign service. Luckily, he’d won the pulchritudinous Rana, whose huge endowment of South African investments would keep them afloat. She’d also the rectitude of six Caesar’s wives! Although the bloody-mindedness of a child age nine. Childish nightmares too, hadn’t she once mentioned?

Yes, they’d married, she warning him beforehand that adultery wouldn’t be tolerated. She’d meant it, her first husband having been a notorious womanizer. Her second husband should’ve been faithful if not to find himself in punishing pain. Now bloke in a choke hold, brawny bloke down for the count. His noble Pa threatened to disown him. She herself threatened to leave him unless he shaped up pronto! Career in ruins too. Would he lose everything? Lose his sons? Chap on his knees. Chap driven to prayer though he’d not trusted to prayer since boyhood.

Family man pressing on—chastened chappie will muddle through. Rana struggles too. She and Jim hardly mesh; it’s jarring, even hilarious! Seriously though, why’s she so phobic? And what really happened to Rachel’s mum? Lost her mind, losing her baby? Occasionally even Rana weeps, wondering.

This story, taking place in the midtwentieth century, is both serious and humorous. Foibles, idiosyncrasies, the utterly unexpected of silliness, irony upon irony, from intimate disaster to spiritual redemption. There’s a mystery of deceit and lies, or well-meant misdirection. Crucial names get changed—so who’s who? The younger generation is protected till truth must out. Forgiveness remains the issue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662422386

Book preview

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Brawny Bloke

Paterfamilias, Horseman, Nobleman, Knight

Shirley Bookman

Copyright © 2021 Shirley Bookman

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-2237-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-2238-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Unto the praising and divine glory of God, which is lord and sovereign king above and over all things celestial and worldly, we begin this book of the order of chivalry…

The office of a knight is to maintain and defend women, widows and orphans…

The office of a knight is to have a castle and a horse for to keep the highways, and for to defend them that labor on the lands, and the earth…

Unto a knight is given a sword… For chivalry is to maintain justice… To the knight is given a spear for to signify truth. For truth is a thing right and even.

—Ramón Lull, The Book of the Order of Chivalry

Part One

1922–30

Brawny Bloke

One

Beauty and the Brawny Bloke or Beau or Brave

C an you see Rill House? Red granite bell towers, Spanish tiles, said the brawny bloke or beau or brave to the petite blonde beauty. She upped like a ballerina to spy across a thicket of greenery on Rill Cliff. See the weathercock, Rana?

Sh’ s’poses weath’cocks are cockups, scoffed her husband, coming up behind with his two sisters, a girl cousin and an unrelated male. Bloody obtuse female, y’ ruddy hulker, he added.

Did the ruddy hulker’s skin crawl? Why did she marry Dickie? A haunting question. Gadzooks. Beastly bad choice.

Sh’ s’poses w’ can’t ease m’ boat along, jumbo milud.

Jumbo Milord thought, Seems an inebriated bumblebee, that boat upside down on Beast and Third Male buzzing along, pocket flask between them.

Shamefully neglected, Rana only thought, Husbandly one’s Jim.

Brambleberry’s blockin’ you, dear heart?

Thorns, Lord Jim. Those things you’re bashing at are thorns.

He emitted a corroborative Ouch! But also an Ain’t life a bowl o’ cherries?

As if mine is, Jim.

Beast ignorin’ you, Beauty? May I pay you court?

Surely never, sir! she hissed, feeling frighteningly vulnerable.

Such a hiss in fright no kind man ignores, so this one only ventured Someday see me as I am? before making a joke, Eyesight’s poor past your shoes? He looked at her grass-stained yellowy tan slip-ons.

Dickie, she cried out, you might’ve told me to wear boots! Trousers too. See my insect bites? She lifted her skirt. The third male ogled her legs, her husband disdained to look, and his noble bachelor friend (or most aristo enemy) did the noble (or aristo) thing to avenge her, crying out, Off with their heads! Stuck his tongue out too. But he’d a sexual look she disliked. She told him so, though not flat out. I’ve class, she childishly bragged. Happens you’re no authentic beau of a brave of a bloke, Jimmy?

Jimmy replied quietly, Can’t you in pulchritude of class simply pronounce me a good ol’ tomfool romantic?

No romance from you. Besides, you’re immature in it.

That had him snorting, I’m twenty to your seventeen, which makes it six months for us both to official adulthood. He paused. Has the hasty marriage got you feeling aged? He sighed. Gad, gel, you no longer remember what chivalrous attention is?

Gosh, too late for it! Wicked!

Okay-ay, lady-oh, came he in the transatlantic drawl affected from reading American Don Everhard pulp thrillers. I’m th’ guy for bluntness, eh? His eyes looked skyward. Cloud looks like a dragon, he said, into medieval romance once again. A knight in shining armor slays…or is it a sea serpent? Audible was the tide in the gravel below the cliff. Moon’s pull makes the oceans heave, Rana. Later this year, he would be Royal Navy. Imagine moonlight upon the Pacific.

Never imagine I’m imaginative.

Requires no great imagination to see you’re cranky. That she might laugh, he drawled, Rah-aw-on-nie? (You’d think him a Texan.) Ronnie, honey, give th’ horizon a real look!

Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not as things were, not as she was, a short married female clutched at by hulks of thorny organic imponderables. Besides, she was near tears, her arms akimbo. Dickie’s so hateful as Jim stands by. Why did I come? Group’s sole tolerable member is Ness. (Ness for Vanessa. Girl cousin.) Hangs back and says little.

The group had come together at bachelor Jim’s family place. A castle? Holy mother of God! Over centuries the Fausscyn family castle had become the towering thing of fairy tales; it was a fierce-looking crenellated fortress upon a rock as ragged and wild with brambles and ferns as Rill Cliff. At both castle and cliff, she dared sigh, Seems I married wrong. Her hubby oblivious, occupied at the castle with chal­lenging the third male to a fling off the drawbridge, occupied at the cliff with balancing that boat upon his head. Both times, both places, the Fausscyn family’s younger son’s premonition remained unspoken: Daredevilry might make me her second husband, eh? Although now he himself stood upon Rill Cliff’s brink throwing pebbles into the sea below. Jimmy! she cried. Oh, don’t slip! Frenziedly she gestured forth the group’s only stern member. Mandy, do something about his hyperactivity. Oh, you know, ubiquitousness. Persistence?

Like the ghastly ferns—Mandy smirked at him—from Rill House to kingdom come. She added, Forbidding structure, that.

Ness disagreed and ventured, Who lives there?

Jim winked and whooped, Princess! O’ Durham-Dee!

If such a person, nobody knew her. And Dickie told his other sister, Fausscyn’s gone damn dim on the brink of—

Pooh, can’t be dizzy over one tiny question.

Third male said, Tolly, have Ness repeat it. Ness opened her mouth but snapped it shut as a trombone sounded seemingly nearby playing a familiar hymn. Weird. Nearby? It was playing a familiar hymn in a jazzy way.

Jesus! Shall reign! Where’er the sun does its suc-ccc—cess-ss-sive jour-rrrr-neys—

No use t’ us, that pompous Jesus, scoffed Dickie.

Fausscyn just slowly said, still contemplating the hillside house, Widow Rector O’ Durham-Dee’s a churchgoer. Bible reader. Whoa. Did her two soarin’ architectural businesses sway?

Oh dear, bats in each belfry. Rana sighed under her breath.

Chap with two heads, am I? Fausscyn tossed his one head and took her arm to usher her down the cliff: A gritty stone stairway led down. At times she cried, I’m dizzy! Awesome were the rugged walls, both sides. Slabs towered, boulders crowded, gaps revealed hundreds more slabs and boulders down below. Rill Cliff, not a mile long but at least ninety feet high, was a deeply scarred ruby granite and vermilion sandstone monument on the Firth of Forth east of North Berwick, toward Tantallon Castle, East Lothian. The stairway of grit through rock was miraculously straight but nail-bitingly narrow. Slowly the seven proceeded down to the narrow shore.

Would three of the four females sunbathe? It was August 1922 and splendid in the sun despite the cold North Sea. Fausscyn slowly emitted, I wonder why, oh why ever, oh why dunk yourselves in ice water. Why, oh why ever, oh why? Why, oh why ever, oh why? Why, oh why ever, oh why? Question form famous in my family. Famous with his father and much admired because it came from that princess, she of Durham-Dee, a poetic brainiac with a penchant for expressing herself like a fairytale phrase book. Or like Rapunzel when the enchantress takes the scissors to her braided locks: Why, oh why ever, oh why? She confided that phrase to Jim’s pa enough times that Jim’s pa repeated it around. It struck the three daughters of the family as outlandish! Whew! But the too easily likeable second son had to frown down his own chuckles. The stodgy and bluntly unexciting firstborn son could mutter it and mangle it forever without attracting undesirable attention, but let the second son even mouth it, like words stuck in mind, and he’d have her sticking too, drat, that princess of Durham-Dee. In her quietly lingeringly lonesome way, she’s stuck on me. Why, oh why ever, oh why? Good looks for one thing. The shared penchant for another. A penchant for fairy tales is shared, his father had dared babble to her. Second son’s as daydreamy as yourself, or more, his father had blabbed one day in a babble of a bubble of affection. My, oh me, oh, dynamic day­dreaminess would be that chap’s distinctive feature, his father had bubbled on. Th’ lad sees himself as a knight in shining armor. You yourself being an orphan lorn…mayn’t the knightly lad view you as a damsel in distress? Jim might offer uplifting comradeship? Er…no! (Or no, sir, no, Pater sir.) This son, however gallant or spry, refuses to forecast anything, even plain scholarly, between himself and her, whom (Pa informs him) they’re rearing as an educated noblewoman. She’s a well-read gentle thing (says Pa). An acceptable brainiac (comes Pa again). Son was unmoved; Pa was too impressionable when it came to female brainiacs—an’ this one’s awfully green, unready for quite the man’s company. Huh? Hey, kiddo, no ogling! Gad, she could look infatuated. Crazy. Boy-crazy in a precocious way? Hard to tell with a midteen female brainiac, but adult females eyeing him that way would have him feeling like a sex object. (The tables turn.) Scoot, skedaddle, go, you overcurious young lady. Body’s past the flat-kid stage. Therefore the no-kidding staring? Cut it out! Discretion, gal. Assuming you want a decent chap? As juvenile as Rana could be, especially when startled, he valued her taste and overall spirit of discretion.

Good job sun’s out today, eh, for her, Pacton-Fee?

He flung this over his shoulder to Dickie. However, today was apparently intent on being a bad job: Dickie’d bumped his head on the boat and was as berserk as bumblebees. He called her frigid, which mortified her. He also complained about their honeymoon: Up Mount Hermon ’stead o’ th’ Nile. Actually, he’d only this moment thought of the Nile because it happened that Ness of the unusually dark olive complexion and the black bangs reminded him of Cleopatra. She’s Egyptian! he giggled. Her marine-green eyes flashed. Or Neptune’s daughter she’d be! he went on giggling. This plain cruelty got him shunned the rest of the way down. Ness, brain endowed, if looks deprived, pondered how to get Jim to introduce her to his brother.

Rana said to Jim, Hands off. I can do the stairs alone.

No, you can’t. You’re deathly afraid of heights.

Listen. Dickie is too unpredictable or too predictably desultory on sultry days like today. Don’t touch me.

Give me your hand, for pity’s sake.

Mutually their unspoken thought was, Why are regretted vows sacred?

She dared, Jim, you’re a dear bloke.

Quietly he, Shore below is where Bobber and I occasionally played at being Knights of the Round Table.

Your brother as a boy was Bobber?

Jim answered, He’d rather no one call him that, though family do. Jim paused and added, We also played Saint George and the Dragon. Concept of hero. Chap confronts evil…

I see.

Fausscyns of Lothian and Northumb… rumbled Dickie. Certified nob we’ve here. Articulate one. Brother Bob chokes out his words. But Bob is busyness, meaning business because he’s the heir. Make no mistake, nobs do city finance while sayin’ not. Jim hasn’t a bean. Must make his own way. Royal Navy. Nessie, go charm the dukedom’s heir, be a Cleopatra, aha.

This embarrassed Ness deeply again, Jim saw.

Rana mounted an attack on Dickie so cleverly off topic, she had him pinned and almost down for the count. Might’ve warned me, hubby, that we’d descend through an oven and look down on blazing hell. Whole way treading hot coals. Could’ve worn the desert boots I wore in Egypt and the Sudan with Soldier Daddy.

Daddy’d been Royal Army.

Pooh, Daddy’s bitty girlieboo, tittered Dickie, momentarily lost for a sharper comeback, and Jim’s thought was Mr. Brass Knuckles discovers he has a Mrs. Brass Knuckles. Dickie said to Jim, You in bloody thick boots can carry her.

Rana said, Ah no, m’sweet, you yourself can, and to Dickie she scampered to hang a big hug from his neck. She shamed him with sloppy kisses too, standing on tiptoe and bouncing like a girlieboo to plant them on his ear and whiskers. Then in a stage whisper, going up his snout, she said, Get the drift, I’m a sticker. Deal with it. You’ve the insouciance, eh? Recall your who-cares-anyhow style of courtship?

Fausscyn gave a snort or a cantankerous snuffle.

Couldn’t help but hear the whole of it, as he hung close, to know all, for her protection, as it were. He ran a finger the length of his moustache, giving one end a furious jerk, then bowed his head to hide what would be visible in his umber eyes, that her situation infuriated him. That she’d obstinately persisted in declining to become his own wife was the worst disappointment of his life (so far). Yet he did respect her for being a sticker. To me she stands for fidelity. Hope I can too. Family reputation to uphold, I suppose. Also public school education to live up to, eh?

Greek tragic poet Aeschylus for example: His resolve is not to seem the bravest, but to be.

Down on the beach he sat distanced from Rana, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke rings at him who was preparing to sail himself at a peninsula east of… Familiar faces, pah ha? came a fourth male voice, and out from a sandstone formation nearby came, lo and behold, Harold Grenstearn!

Ho, chum.

Ho, chummy, oh. Hal and Jim were almost exactly the same age and Oxford grads this year. Dickie, considerably older, had ducked serious studies, instead going dilatorily at travelogue writing or finding fine art for private museums or else Oriental gemstones or else fancy bits of ancient buildings. He also played golf. But mostly sailed. Which costs me, he told them all in passing. See? The boat’s paint scraped off as he shoved it afloat. Blondie, will Granddaddy Moneybags shell out for r’pairs?

Grenstearn queried Fausscyn, Married mostly for money?

Surprised?

Which grandfather?

Maternal.

You’re hectic, Jim F.

What? Am not, Hal G.

Sunburn. Lots. Put your shirt back on. Jim was down to walking shorts. Baggy things. Maybe awning cloth? Awning stripes of maroon and forest-green on camel.

Ness whispered, You’re looking rather lobsterish.

Rana gave an authoritarian Psst! Don’t boil.

Mandy snapped, Shirt on this minute!

Whee! A fight! Lookee! giggled Tolly as, for a playful moment, Hal was fists up as if to fight the nearly naked chap, his feet planted, chin jutted, eyes beady black, arms akimbo. However, Rana believed they were for real, called them fighting fools, and spread a towel at the water’s edge where she sank down and sat stiffly intent on wave motion. Respectfully Hal lowered his fists and did the same. Sunburned Jim needed shade. Good, a tall sandstone slab. He took Mandy’s sombrero to cover his eyes. He needed a towel against the scratchy surface at his back but daren’t ask for one because Tolly would’ve brought it; she wanted to sit with him. Fortunately, Mandy cried out against that, also against the third male’s stripping down. She fairly wrenched Tolly away from him afar. He had to make do with Ness, whom he chatted to the water’s edge where, clunk-clunk, sandals off and, swish, long skirt too, bathing gear underneath, Jim saw, one eye coming slightly open for a glimpse of Scene from under Sombrero, say. Ho or uh-oh? As Ness bent to stow her sandals and her skirt on a hump of shingle, the middle-aged man took a gander at her legs and abruptly seemed approving—a lustful grin and a sidling up close. He even let his thigh graze hers. He bent and touched his nose to hers. His eyes went to her lips and then down her blouse, which he began unbuttoning. Ness stammered, I-I’m too shy for that. She would but loosen her collar and roll her sleeves. He waded her into the surf. Oh, how very cold! Slippery rocks underwater too. She skidded. He gripped her, which made her squeal.

Rana said, Golly, he in the water, I shall stay out.

Hal asked, Better I rescue Ness?

Mandy had Tolly distanced, tramping to Dickie’s peninsula. Eventually the only sounds were gulls and surf, the bathing couple simply bathing, Rana and Hal silent, Mandy and Tolly returning exhausted, Dickie still invisible, Jim fast asleep. Hal remarked that his shade had swallowed him up and Rana that the cliff seemed fallen on him. Then, as if making way for his worst mishap in her presence (so far and his only truly blackening one for some years to come), a dark cloud crossed the sun and the golden afternoon went dross. Mandy considered shaking him awake. Hard climb ahead. Boat to be dismantled. Dickie oh where? Just a dot at the peninsula? She waved, but as if in response, a dot appeared on the shore itself, opposite the peninsula, then another dot, and another, the three bounding up the beach toward her. Two more dots appeared, these leading a big dot that began to be an animal loping up the beach as the five dots were becoming big men in pith helmets and black boots, black trousers, tailcoats royal purple and silver trimmed. And one man had a trombone. Another a shiny black whip, which he held at the ready toward a lion that bounded awkwardly and then dragged its feet. It was muddy, mane stringy and drizzly on one side, matted on the other. Coat bloodied? Why on a Scottish beach, though, these empurpled beings? Oh yes. Mandy recalled having overtaken gaudy wagons at North Berwick where she’d seen this silver banner: Circus Signus! August 16! Now the circus men seemed to glide up the beach toward her, but stagger too, then jog heavily over the distance between her brother now rounding the peninsula and her group near the cliff stairs. Closer, the circus men appeared mightily agitated or tense with triumph. Indeed the lion was bleeding; one haunch was lacerated, and it was quivering fearfully, as behind came…a Buddhist or Tibetan or Gobi Desert woman? Dark skin, blue-black hair, tiny eyes. Blue and saffron drapery, one edge shredded that she was trying to weave whole though she wept as she nuzzled a dove on her shoulder. Two times it opened its beak as if to coo. Yet it mourned not yet. So the lion and the dove, the Asian and the showfolk approached the cliff stairs so soundlessly that Mandy alone noticed.

But! Suddenly the dove cooed and the lion snarled.

The bathing couple bounced from surf to sand. Rana and Hal scrambled to their feet. Tolly scurried to Jimmy. Lion! Lion! she screamed into his ear as the lion snarled again. He rocketed up, scraping his backside on the rough slab and scraping his shorts down his rear. Chap kept what Rana might see fit to euphemize as the manful toolkit covered by gripping their front. But they’d hung up on a thornbush, a branch of one, beside the slab. He sank to a squat and with his free hand worked at the snag. Hal, he called, you might help me. The showfolk chief came to glare in sheer consternation. White knuckle moment, eh? Jim said. Tolly was tittering, Unbelievable’s happened! A naked man! Or almost. Whee! He’s funny. Rana slapped her and skirled her to the cliff stairs, all the way reviling a male letting females see him that way: Barbarous humiliation, James. The showfolk chief conscripted Hal to help him, saying, Hoot, mon, get thuz scant trews off tha brier lest ye be a moron? Hal shot a damn and blast at Jim for having got him called a moron, and Ness’s wading buddy yanked those scant trews off the brier. Now Saffron of Asia shrieked Eee oop t’ere! About forty feet above Jim was a lanky girl wedged into a crevice. "Oop t’ere too yung skinnied, missee? Missy showed her acuity under pressure by casting at Saffron an I’m fifteen and fleshed-out! then disappeared. American loon? That accent, said Mandy. Hal told Jim, Could be that Yank orphan. You know, schooled with your sisters. Guardian’s Rector Huldane’s widow. Had parishes of Durham and Dundee. Kid’s probably up summering with her."

Jim said, Oops, Durham-Dee’s ward spied me?

Durham-Dee’s ward finally reached Rill House. Rill Cliff had a ragged cut, steeply up. She got badly scraped. She scooted upstairs, elbows and knees tightly tucked. Grandauntie was suspicious but only sent up a hot supper and a reassuring note: My dear Mélisande, do rest in my love. The maid placing the note upon the cutlery and uncovering the dishes chattered a mile a minute around the mysteriously scraped Méli (the ward’s nickname). Turning down the coverlet of the ward’s bed, the maid hummed like a trombone jazzing up that old hymn: Jesus! Shall reign! Quieting toward sleep, Méli herself hummed it but dreamed of brawny male shoulders. She yearned to touch them though a Christian girl mustn’t? She loved him—Jimmy of the muscles, the freckled neck, and the debonair copper-colored moustache.

Two

Rapunzel Nowadays

In Old Town Edinburgh, the city’s medieval half, there was an Anglican girls’ school that happened to have been founded in an octagonal bulk, its central lantern of quartz glass, its portico of dank igneous brownstone, and its sixteen towers sheathed in slate. Méli, past her seventeenth birthday by six months, two weeks, three days as of this day in October 1924, was without exception the tiptop brain in the upper sixth form and so had herself a tower-top room to herself, eight windows, desk at the northwest window, slightly open. Rain rustled the prickly hedge below, along the abutting lane. Possibly finches chirped, but she, having a bad earache today, was hearing impaired. She put pen to paper. At long last… ( i.e. , at long last Méli was getting down to work on a letter to her guardian).

Dear Grandaunt Marjorie…

Topic: Picardy toward Paris then almost Belgium… (i.e., in progress was a How I Spent Last Summer report).

The battlefields we schoolgirls toured are pasture now if not graveyards for those…

"Sent, Grandauntie, to be the knights of the generation before mine, in terrible earnest dying. We saw the trenches in photos and on film. Thank you for affording me the tour with my form. I trust my absence afforded you productive time with your favorite aristocrat? (Just joking. Well aware he proposed.) Tell him we skipped Ypres (‘wipers’ to the Brits). Hard rain on Flanders (i.e., ‘mud sea’). But we walked a mile, supposedly, of the first sustained Yank offensive: Somme Sector."

War supposedly to end all war. Rah-rah, League of Nations? Hand-wringing forum. Power acts as a micromanipulator until it causes sic semper tyrannis.

Human nature is as is, she declared as she wrote: Harvest past, summer of small hope ended, and no, we are not saved. Out of a brutal babyhood she had brought much—and bitter—distrust of the innate iniquitousness in humankind.

She muttered, "’Twas midnight—"

Bwhaaaackk!

She cried out and hurled her pen. But oh… Chem text edged off… Now where’s m’ pen? She groped under the Sunday paper while dragging for the chemistry textbook at her feet. Something metallic down there too. She ducked down to see what. Brass-framed photo of my parents on their wedding day. No jolly twenty-four hours? The nuptial eyes looked fighting mad under the web of cracked glass between the nuptial headgear and the nuptial neckwear. Yep, already disillusioned. Aside went their photo to a shelf where their orphaned daughter had another. His Grace and Grandauntie. Charlie to her, Marjo to him. Solace for her loss of dear Rex. Early 1922 to viral pneumonia. Two marriages. Sigh. Amazons an’ Hottentots will be in high heels an’ brocade wedding gowns up to C of E cathedral altars before I’m ever even kissed—

Offended, she scoured for her pen as if it was something to chomp on. Only ivory tower, am I? Once upon a time o’er rolling ocean wide came a lass so head-in-the-clouds and chary, her guardian aunt reckoned her a scholar, or saint. The lass herself was direly offended at mention of chaste St. Mary of Oignies but couldn’t argue against a bookish calling since it would keep her cloistered. Social, I’m not. Haven’t small talk. Can’t flirt. Am shocking stiff! she thought, quoting a rude classmate. Only literary romance for me. Cannot attract th’…corker? warily quoting a slang usage. He was both dumbfounded an’ bemused by my crown of braids when once Ethel nagged him here to tea. (Ethel was the youngest of Jim’s three sisters.) Am sure we’re scatty kiddies to him.

For diversion Méli cleared her desk of the immaterial. Sunday paper. Postcard of Princes Street from Calton Hill. Stack of bills stamped paid thanks to His Grace (who was voluntarily paying this school year, she at Dunskyre). Friendly note from his daughter-in-law (Ness). Birthday card from a woman who knew Mum in America. Zip ever from Dad’s folks. Happily rid of me since guardianship’s official in Marj…

Her thoughts suspended, Méli rubbed her throbbing ear. Then…

Oh good. Under an anthology of mysteries and thrillers she’d found a slender volume of Renaissance art that His Grace lent her. Carefully she leafed through to Dürer’s Adam and Eve but thought of Jim who fascinated her despite himself back when they were introduced. It’d been the summer of his seventeenth year, and His Grace had disgraced him by merrily calling him my daydreamy laddie! I remember giving Jim top marks for his firmness. Rubbish, so leave off, Pater, he’d responded in monotone. Nobody likin’ or needin’ your message. Whoa though! I’m nobody? I flunked him in gallantry or chivalry! As he growled, I’m no knight for a kid of ten. Hey, Lancelot, Uncle Rex told you Méli is twelve as you trotted in. Thereafter I amused myself imagining myself thumping good ol’ Lance on his polished steel épaulière.

Chap remains reluctant to consort with me, putting it lightly. My accidental little part in his circus-day calamity has disgraced me. Heaven help us, his pa’s pal’s widow’s ward saw his behind. And Méli sighed. If this were the USSR and he a Bolshie, I’d be disappeared. Why ever, oh why can’t he even like me?

She dipped again into His Grace’s book: Michelangelo—The Dying Slave and David. Also, The Creation of Adam. Otherwise she mightn’t know how a male looks, she an only child, no baby brothers to have been nursemaid to. Jim could page through this book to see how a female looks, I guess? Nothing explicit could she find, and of porn mags she was unaware. She had read a novel in which the titled father took his son to a house of delight. But I believe His Grace would not have done that. I gather he’s just about the only upper-class widower who didn’t desecrate his first marriage. Purity would’ve been his theme to Jim. Méli purely kissed Michelangelo’s pleasantly brand-new Adam in substitute for the unfriendly Jimmy. The very idea of kissing me would produce a loud ‘Harrumph no!’ from him. She rated herself unattractive though she was a purplish-blackish brunette or the duskiest of the dark redheads like her grandaunt.

Must stow His Grace’s book out of Miss Nosy’s reach. This was Jim’s middle sister, Julia, two years older than Ethel and Méli. She scoffed at me awhile back—for collecting nudes! Lah!

Méli slid His Grace’s book under an atlas that she slapped shut on: Southern States—she was from Virginia. Her father had written for the state capital’s one evening paper and only genuinely literary one. Which is a high callin’! he’d always declared. Meaning, Méli had realized, he begrudged clock time to ordinary folk. Under an encyclopedic European history in six volumes weighing, together, eighteen or nineteen pounds, Méli wedged both His Grace’s book and the atlas. Nevvuh will Julia risk a finganail…

Outside, clocks were tolling the hour: five.

Curtain of cloud lifting. Sunset glowing on the steep roofs of Old Town. Violet sky behind Castle Rock. St. Giles Cathedral appearing a golden ornament. To the rescue, Gil? came a woman’s voice out of the dark in the abutting lane below.

Uncle Gil once rescued Mummy and me, recalled Méli.

One August Saturday noonday, a brand-spanking-new 1914 black-and-white Buick touring car pulled up to the shotgun house that had been her babyhood home and set down on their doorstep a threesome that she hadn’t known but soon learned were her father’s parents and brother outta Philadelphia bound for th’ Great Smoky Mountains by waya Richmond.

Mummy was her natural self. Pass on in, ignore Deadline Gus, also her who’s mute unless she’s off-putting quaint. Which hurt, she thought now as she’d thought back then, to be summed up that way to guests. Poss’bly s’more c-c-cake? became her whole afternoon’s best effort, and it only registered with the peevish one there. He’d quelled the four gossipers by sending Méli a curt Mellie, shut up. Mummy reacted, Gus! Flat-out publicly rude.

What say? Frightfully loud in our tiny front room. Up he sprang too, scaring her, possibly even Mummy till he tripped over Gil’s foot and lurched headforemost out of the room. What the hey? Gil dared call after him. Gil also dared saunter to the buffet for slab number three of cake. Equally massively he slabbed his niece too, she eyeing his slab while fingering the pattern on her empty plate. To her he said, From any distress there’s solace in cake, deary? Sugar pie? Kid? Oh now, buck up. As he’d swept the sugary mass at me, I’d slid down my chair. His conclusion? Lordy! Shy. Seems we’ve a bitty somebody who could do with an outing. Think so, peanut, wanna go? Peanut looks go-ish, Gus. Back in the room now…

Not so nonplussed, either, that he couldn’t try to coax me off any outing. Mellie, said he, decline to be spoilt. One fancy automobile outing sparks hope of another. They’re no proper part of a household budget, hey ha? Keeping it jaunty, his folks listening in. Meant every word, though. His eyes had the flinty look they got whenever he was pulling a fast one. Could be chilling the way a big rollicking dog on the loose is chilling: let it get a sniff of your jeans pocket of ham sandwich and darn, you’re dead. Actually Méli had emitted a one tiny Mummy? At mothering, Mum was, not to put too fine a point, a klutz. But at literal manhandling, hurrah!

Gus said, Thing is, Mellie, I’m paid as a public servant whereas your uncle Gil has th’ family factory in Philly for filthy lucre—

Lena interrupted, Heavens! Let her off th’ hook. She’s only seven.

Gil said, Come for mountain refreshment with her, Justilena.

Mother and daughter had gone. But no mountain refreshment sufficed to save us that particular winter in the claustrophobic closeness of the Richmond Cullullay household (their family name was Cullullay). Mum was regretful. Should’ve thought to escape to Marge. As I’ve done, America left behind.

Méli lighted a lamp. Her desk was cleared. From a book of poetry in her bookcase she retrieved an unframed photo of Jim.

My son James—

His father’s handwriting.

She had also found her journal, latest entry a month old:

29 Sept 1924—Today Julia turned up here and, wouldn’t you know, insulted a lower sixth: Gretchen Harsnalt. Her sister is ‘still infatuated’—as she puts it—‘with the House of Krennzelser’s dashing young scion.’ Admittedly hopelessly. The pharmaceutics princelet remains unaware of his admirer, and Gretchen had no sensible idea of how they’d meet up and fall in love, but Julia snapped, ‘You’ve got a Cinderella complex because you continue a fool about life! Zut alors.’ Julia can be unaristocratically loud or aristocratically braying (whichever is preferable to those among whom I move and have my being these days). Of course Gretchen was crushed; she’s no fool, is quite sensitive and concerned for her sister’s heartache, which I, unlike Miss Thick Skin, can understand. By the way, does Jim get Julia? Why, oh why has he no eyes for me? Plain Janes do dream. Once upon a time in a faraway land lived a sweet and pretty girl named… Oh well. Jim isn’t going to notice me. Upon moonbeams from afar the hopes of us ordinary girls may stream, but however ardently we dream, we shan’t win a prince’s love. Jim’s ship might as well be sailing the seventh sea on another planet for all the likelihood he’ll ever be Lord Dreamboat into my arms. ‘Harrumph no!’ surely would be his response.

Evenhanded of me, eh, to have written so.

She read on.

It’s n-o—spelled out emphatically slowly as if I’m a nitwit, which I am. Why moon over tales of wellborn chaps falling in love with penniless beauts when I am no beaut. Seems brains are a problem too, Jim’s sisters uniformly saying, ‘Ladies don’t make a display of them.’

His Grace does highly regard me, but only for love of Marjo?

Yes, he figures that in outlook I’m much like his bachelor son, but I cannot let myself suppose he’ll make a match of us.

Nope. Second sons must wed wealth. Or find a sinecure, a living in the C of E, for example.

Enough of this. She turned away and, in despair, surveyed the lanky girl in the rumpled pleats that was herself in the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door. Wedding day. (His Grace and Grandauntie’s.) Jim cannot more than chinwag at me on the run, being limited to six hours ashore that day. (December 29.) Eh, Jimmy, sweetie, you’ll use the six hours for running down blondes? Thinks sexiness is genetically linked to blondeness. Birthday bash once, a pale girl glided in, and he was all ‘Is that Blondie?’ under his breath (I lipread). Is it true that blondes, as the tiresome saying goes, have more fun? Brunettes get marked down as bookish; old ones are rectors’ widows or librarians or heads of girls’ schools, young ones are schoolgirl kooks. Jim in a Don-Everhard mood might exclaim, ‘Whew, a kiss would shock her socks off.’ Boot socks. Archeologist’s assistant. Or entomologist’s. Fetches insects tongue out. Zappo like a toad. Yeah, yeah, garden-variety insectivores, that’s us drab ’uns. In sum, Jimmy is no kisser of frogs. He’d sooner croak. (Pun intended.)

Yet yesterday his pa on the phone said to Méli, He’s attending, and if I may venture some avuncular correction, my dear, you’re not to be head down. He’ll wonder at it.

Well, even my parents kept me head down.

Méli, baby, there’s no Brothers Grimm ’bout a frog princess.

It’d be crap anyhow, Lena. An’ kid’s got a lesson t’ redo. Damn fine mess you’ve made o’ your long division, Mellie.

Well, hey, don’t cheer me up or anything, Daddy.

Years later, Méli informed her grandaunt, Mum’s invariable ad­monition was, quote, ‘Damn but forget about princes.’

Avoid quoting curse words to Rector Rex.

Righto. Mum also actually told me, ‘Gus had me risk myself.’

A nigh criminal thing to’ve told a child!

"Was she naive because of overprotective grandparents?"

"Your mother said that? My own parents, they!"

Méli could only end the discussion this way: That she ‘mistook Mercury for Eros,’ Mum merely joked.

No, actually Lena had quite seriously said this to certain conversable matrons (her term).

Certain neighbor ladies daring enough (Méli’s own thought as a girl all-ears at five or six or seven) to come for gossip at the dreaded Augustus Cullullay residence.

A sample of marital squabbling narrated in little girl Méli’s hearing:

I got told, ladies, Lena had narrated, to stop clinging like a damn barnacle!

And according to her, she’d replied, Oh, Gussie, I’d like some sweet—

I’m undemonstrative. Hear?

Thump on the wall between the bedrooms.

Well, Gus, your fist was hardly undemonstrative.

Quiet, woman, quiet.

Only when you speak kindly, O-gust-us.

He wouldn’t, so she couldn’t: It’d be suicide, she told those conversable matrons the very week things became bloody, although the week before she’d been reassuring girl Méli, saying, Got your nickel last Saturday for chocs, didn’t you? Still in his good books! Just don’t idolize him. Idols fall. Can only kick the pieces then.

I didn’t idolize him, but… Shouldn’t Mum have lightened up on him? He sacrificed time to help me with such things as long division, till I got the hang of it. And spelling words. He didn’t delegate them to Mum then belittle her definitions. Still she sneered at him. Once, he even chucked the dictionary at her (almost creamed me but didn’t notice) as he was hollering, ‘Can’t you see how hard I’m trying.’ (To kill me? Was terror becoming an everyday thing?) Mum called him a stick-insect sicko… Darn, I’m remembering bad of poor Mum when Dad, generally self-centered, was at fault too.

Charity suffereth long and thinketh no evil…

Obviously Méli knew precious little of charity till landing up at Grandauntie’s and coming to know Uncle Rex, then Rex’s chum His Grace. Back in Virginia, her feeling had often been O God, please watch over me because what’ll happen to us here?

She glanced down into her journal.

Desirable men don’t go for plain Janes? Bob has married Ness, you know. I guess anyone can be a Cinderella…

Sitting down again at her desk, she propped the unframed 3 1/4 × 4 1/2 of Jim for observation but daren’t write what she was thinking. It was silly: Imagine a modern Adonis draped in Savile Row’s best…

Random words and phrases…

Accelerated navel career. Admiralty? Foreign Office? Has several languages… Though rather a quick temper. Bluntly, is darn blunt.

A sexual thought…

Into his bride’s pool the groom dives…

Just possibly the sex education that Marjorie had in due diligence provided Méli was too imaginatively enlightened.

And she wrote, Oh, Jim, I should so like to make love to you.

Heaven help me if Grandauntie ever gets hold of my journal.

Grandauntie had already detected what tactfully she’d termed a physical component to Méli’s guileless little infatuation that merits warning. Basically, no staring at Jim below the waist. For one, it’s embarrassing on your behalf and mine. For another, Jim carries on as if virtue is to be found nowhere. Ladylove married somebody else. Innocent young ladies oughtn’t to give him notions.

Thus no more unsafe scrutiny of a pants rise.

Grandauntie said, in closing, After all, Boaz chose Ruth for virtue.

As has His Grace chosen Grandauntie. Negligible class disparity though. The Reverend Rector Rex Quintavian Huldane’s widow is suitable indeed for an aristocrat who’s done actual work for actual cash.

Charles wasn’t born the heir, nor even the spare, happening into title and estate as a barrister. An ordinary fellow.

Sixteen years of wooing juries of ordinary folk. Now will marry his rector-crony’s widow whose descent from Boaz wins him not a jot of negative comment?

Sardonic—Méli herself had experienced anti-Semitism.

Pater no bigot, son not either? Charlie offering to marry a Hebraic Christian, Jim just might too? Oh girl, give it up. So what that the reputed brainiac in his father’s fiancée’s care is coming into his father’s care? It will remain the joke of high society that his old family has made low IQ the very fad.

Thing is, only each third generation of Fausscyn heirs could be schooled enough to maneuver the title and estate off the brink of disfavor and insolvency, and only the twentieth-century His Grace got a university education, then only his second son, not the heir.

Gee though, Bob is a good sort. Works at learning the stuff of title and estate. Spends next to nothing on himself. And married sensibly. Which, eventually, Jim will do too. Sensible upper-class females exist. Astounding, eh?

Tired, hungry, ear aching, she threw aside her pen.

It struck the unframed photo of Jim and sent it unfortunately flying on a gust of wind from the open window. The photo went clear across the room and down into a crack under a warped wainscot. But not a bit of what had happened to the photo did she see, weary as she was, head in hands. So, finally rubbing her eyes and spying no photo where it’d been, she couldn’t say where it’d have gone. She’d never noticed a warped wainscot. Which, in nighttime lamplight, wasn’t visible.

Got what I deserved? Didn’t ask permission…

Without His Grace’s permission, she had pocketed the photo because she found three in a desk drawer in the library of the Fausscyn family castle, when there for Easter.

Cannot pocket another one. Too daring. Too noticeable. Can’t leave just one in the drawer. Oh Jimmy…

Old Town Edinburgh’s clocks could be heard striking six, discordantly and off-time…

Ding, ding. Dong, dong. Bing, bong. Ping, clang, ding. Gong, gong. Clank.

May as well be twelve. I’m a pumpkin bumpkin.

Three

Twelfth Day of Christmas, My True Love…

Rana would only read Elizabeth random sentences or paragraphs of Jim’s ten 6×9 pages dated Sunday, 6 Jan 1929 .

My dear widow should know, she read aloud, I do often think to think. Oops, Ronnie, I know your reaction: ‘Often you don’t? Golly! But you’re joking?’ Mrs. Pac, you’re so transparent.

Elizabeth tittered.

Pluckily, Rana said, Onward, with omissions.

Certainly the disappointing bottom of the next page.

Elizabeth asked sharply, You don’t wear Dickie’s ring?

Haven’t for ages but won’t discuss it.

She hid her left hand while eyeing Jim’s letter in her right.

Today, Ronnie, she read aloud from that letter, we’d a delegation of Argentinian cattlemen aboard.

Gosh. Cowboy. Wild.

Elizabeth was mimicking her brother’s probable fiancée, who pretended obliviousness, saying, Pooh, that bit’s tame, Liza.

His canary bird’s a silly goose, thought Elizabeth.

And she said, Keep references to me and him formal. Do also render Ronnie as Rana while reading aloud.

A flat Oh righto. A smiled "Lord James would appreciate all riddance of my own diminution."

Shall have Lady Elizabeth braying like a donkey.

Elizabeth, as the family firstborn, ahead of Robert her twin, dominated everyone, and considered Rana a mere scrappy beaut, a silly literalist—inadvertently funny at times, even a real scream.

Rana dared, Best you calm yourself, Lady Elizabeth.

Am so always, Mrs. Pacton-Fee. Calm I mean.

Laughing internally, Mrs. P-F settled serenely back into her sofa pillows, head back, platinum bangs parting. Silence. Till she said, Pooh, much more of this, we’re blue. Golly, I rhymed—c’n you believe it?

No, Elizabeth flatly replied.

New topic. Girlish bounce forward. See this date?

Tuesday, 5 Mar 1929.

Elizabeth tried to grab the page itself, but Rana kept hold of it and continued, Date’s when his ship reaches Plymouth. This about Dickie might interest—

Myself? gasped Elizabeth.

"Dickie’s locker’s been found. Porto Santo—not Peniche, where the Oceanid washed ashore. She paused. Year and a half gone by. Another pause. ‘Kids fishing from a rock’ (this is your James translating the official statement) ‘tried to break the lock.’ Constables—since this letter hasn’t the Portuguese or Spanish for local police—"

We’ve an interruption—good!

My daughters. Into the room the taller glided as the shorter hopped. Frances, age four on New Year’s Day. Leanora won’t be six till July but acts twenty-six. She said crisply to them, Downstairs, why? What’ve you done to poor Nanny?

Falled asleep! Frances grinned in perfect triumph.

My younger hasn’t her verb forms entirely sorted yet, Rana explained, but we’re working on them, aren’t we, dear? This her sister answered with a tiny no while she herself just pointed a stubby and grubby finger at Elizabeth and hollered, Who’s that? Big sis pushed little sis’s finger down as their guest answered or played at answering by asking, Girls, shall I be your Auntie Elizabeth?

Rana said crisply, For now she’s Lady Elizabeth to you.

Leanora replied after an extremely long pause, Splendid. Why these? New to the table at the sofa were colored-glass animals varying in height from two to five inches.

Frances asked, Where from?

Lady Elizabeth replied, Guess.

Won’t.

Leanora said, I’ve truly not the least idea.

I see. Well. They’re from your potential stepfather through me. You do know of Lord James? Puzzlement upon little faces. Their mother had to prompt, It’s the Navy man she means. You know, the giant with the moustache? May turn up in uniform, even possibly a hat? Finally she said, Brings us gifts from distant lands? To Elizabeth, she said, Hasn’t required of us the Lord James—do take it up with him if you’re miffed?

Bet that strikes her dumb.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…

Big sis was counting the glass animals. Little sis had to stand by because she was unable to count past ten without jumping to fourteen then to sixteen then getting stroppy.

Thirty-one animals here, declared big sis.

Elizabeth said, "Forty-eight in toto until your father sold these to get ready cash. Hands clapped at the girls. Subtract!"

Leanora said coldly, Seventeen, but I dislike performing as much as I dislike maths. Elizabeth squinted balefully, Rana balefully back. Adults’ eyes shut, Frances picked her nose and studied the result. Lea­nora stepped in front of it and asked their guest, Jade eyes—made in China?

Lemme see. Fran pushed in and grabbed up a giraffe by its fragile neck. Yella eyes. Green? Dunno.

Notwithstanding, began Elizabeth while wresting the giraffe away to return it and all the animals to the box she’d brought them in, they’re safer stowed.

Frances’s hands flew to grab into the box. Leanora writhed anxiously by, bumped the box, and caused the polar bear and the jaguar to flip onto the tortoise. No breakable extensions on those creatures, but Rana got so rattled, she let Frances rampage and rebuked anxious Leanora, Why must you writhe so like a cobra?

Frances wildly hissed.

Leanora fell back and tripped herself.

Elizabeth, moving not a muscle to stop the fall, ordered Rana to do so, which Rana certainly resented as she obeyed—darn, to be ordered about by a visitor to her home!

Leanora whispered, Mama, remember, the snakes at the zoo scared me even behind glass.

Yeah, came Frances, she puked, eyeballin’ ’em.

Goodness.

"Thanks much, Fran, for that information to our guest."

Mercy, but it would have been your mother’s fault, right?

"Lord James suggested we go," snarled she.

Slowly Leanora asked, Mama, does that letter say Dada will return?

No chance, Nora. Hasn’t our Navy man put that across?

Luckily, at this awkward moment, Nanny appeared, diagnosed upheaval here, then hugged both girls tight and swayed and wobbled them from the room to the hall stairs and up; it was like a six-legged dromedary up.

Daredevil Daddy neither girl wanted, I’m sure, came Elizabeth as the six footfalls died away.

Thankfully Jim is taking them up.

How could Dickie have been for you a case of seductiveness?

Let’s just say I didn’t wish a philanderer.

Should any bride? Notwithstanding, Elizabeth proceeded in changing the subject, why make James be a substitute father?

He’s fairly good at it—patient with endless questions, tolerant of din and outcry. Anyhow, about Dickie’s locker. From a legal someone I’m eventually to reclaim it. Here. London. Dickie’s wristwatch, signet ring, and cuff links inside. Jim had identified him by his wedding ring.

Oh?

Jim graciously went in my place to identify him.

Also, as she’d been approaching the half-year mark after Dickie’s death, Jim had urged her to book herself a tour to Lebanon to seek, if perhaps only for Dickie’s daughters’ sake, any good feeling that might linger from her honeymoon there. Then Jim himself had turned up, following her as she was following a tour guide up into an ancient ruin near Mount Hermon. Jim had explained his presence this way: It’s my obsession, one and only you. Please accept me, Rana. I love you. And in love he’d truly seemed to be, only holding hands. Later, alone with her, kissing her brow…eyelids…cheeks…and lips lingeringly. Hadn’t embraced her, not yet, but facing her at a crumbling parapet at their hotel, he’d rested a hand on hers on the parapet and caressed her jaw with his other hand, even trembling over her in an agony of…love? Really, she’d thought so, so kindly did he limit himself to kisses, saying he knew that her life with Dickie could only have been a misery of pressurization alternating with neglect.

Jimmy now too? Please no repeat of—

She took one quick look at the bottom of his page six.

Is there something nefarious behind ‘busy’?

Am busy, he’d written, so best postpone the altar somewhere with a priestly chap. Sorry, dear chum. Will still come, kiss your etc. Always feel gratitude for your pulchritude and rectitude and customary attitude of latitude! Multitudinous beatitude! How’s that! Don’t slap me and don’t post banns yet.

Never should’ve allowed kissing of my ‘etc.’

Elizabeth asked, Royal Navy frees him, he’ll marry you?

"Time will tell. Let it go. Here’s Jim on current affairs: ‘We command the waves, but of concern is, forces dispensed with, i.e., scrapped. Here I speak of the States allied with Britain. As if either’ve a clue to what’s best done? The Memorial