Rosemary Lane - concluded

[wytchcroft]

. 



Rosemary Lane

Ah to be broken into joy.

“Oh Rose,” Jack sighed with his head lolling on the lathed smoothness of my shoulder, “you have quite killed me.”

The little death, and my poor frock all torn and my petticoats disarrayed; by pleasure.

The rumpled sheets their every crease proclaiming; “what ho, mischief in the Master’s house!” And I myself so gleefully destroyed, reduced to spastic judders and twitches – peering through eyes sticky with fallen lashes, whose insides were ruptured and brazenly exposed, cogs and levers, my pretty hinges, the secret inner workings all revealed.

“And where is the lad eh? Where is the sailor boy?” My father swung his head from side to side as if to find the culprit, the enactor of his ruination would be crouching behind a cabinet, skulking shame-faced behind the marionette of the Great Ozu.

But Jack had gone at first light with a jaunty step, a tip of his cap and three shiny coins laid on the bed. Jack had gone and it was for Jill to go tumbling after...


...

Part 2:

My father, I well knew, had never been a sailor but he had been to sea, ranging far and wide. Often would he hold forth upon the subject and many a dining table had been enlivened by the forthright recollection of his adventures in distant and exotic lands. He had voyaged through the far flung colonial domains of the Indies, East and West. He had visited Tibet with its snowy mountains that serve to hide in plain sight the realm of those spiritual beings under whom he studied.

He had been as well on many a scientific expedition, travelling through the heat curdled interior of the Afrique coast and even, by experimental stratospheric balloon, to regions high above our world. He would always say – and with a throb in his voice and a watery look in his eyes, that he had never been so moved by any sight so much as by that of the Earth at home in the Heavens.

But he was not a sailor.

And he was not MY sailor. Not Jack with his hard frame of muscle and bone, with an easy eye made for the ruination of many a poor lass (of that I’m sure). Yet with his youth, nimble baring and smart-as-a-pin uniform all done up and polished, he could seem just as dainty, in his way, as I.

And Jack was attentive; attention was something my father lived for, why else would he engage in public performances that, whilst hailed by many as a revolutionary scientific breakthrough, were commonly perceived to be merely an act of charlatanism and but one remove from the circus. My father, therefore, was won over by any sign of genuine interest.
And yet –

And yet and yet and yet... the attention was not my Father’s to bask in. Not that night. No. Jolly Jack Tar saved all attention, all intention, for me. It was behind each nod of his head, each thoughtful bob of his chin. It lurked behind those button bright eyes that seemed only to look so bright and direct when gazing into mine.

So we were all betrayed.

Lightly as dancing he stepped up from amongst the audience and the wild applause that our exhibition had provoked, stepped up to us - and before man or maid or I could have blinked, he had stepped across our threshold and into my home.

We sat then like a real family around the table and I watched Jack fork down hot mouthfuls of roasted food; spiced ham, devilled kidneys and the breast of chickens. My father offered him wine and brandy and no sailor born could refuse that hospitality.

In turn, he graced us with the ear he lent and the appreciative comments he made, his smooth tongue rolling them out like pastry. “Oh indeed Sir,” with a smile, “we could use a fleet of such clockwork men as you talk of and many a rigging-rat and deck hand would be relieved! Aye, and swell our Navy’s ranks it would at that.”

A considered reaction from my master, a fine performer himself as you should not forget. “Indeed. Well we shall see. There are many patents pending and I have hopes that a crew of my Metallions would prove itself in engine rooms, or under oceans, and in all wise, those positions and conditions too dangerous to risk a human soul. Such a development may be imperative for it is well known that our beloved Royal Highness desires to add another jewel to her diadem and count the moon among her list of valued colonies.”

Impatient time sprang ahead of us once again and it was dark outside and the fire a-blaze within and all of us drowsy in its glow and from the soft warmth of the wine.

So it was night.

“Well then,” said my father with a luxuriant yawn, “after today and its excitements so it is at last to bed.” He was smiling in a vague way, clearly exhausted. Such a state was not unusual for him. Following on from the volatile reaction to a performance he was frequently left in need of profound sleep. He would rise of a morning once more hale, refreshed and rested.

“Aye, and well earned in your case Sir, after such success,” said Jack. Of course he did.

“Hmm.” The master’s face clouded with the effort of thought. “Well, as things are my boy, it would be less than honourable for a host and gentleman to throw a fellow out into the night... where are your bags?”

“I’ve but the one. No other luggage does a sailor need.”

“Quite so – ah, I’m sorry, the only free room that may be readied at such a late hour is the cabinet room.”

That room, dear God, was mine.

Jack smiled. “I shall feel it a privilege Sir.”

My father ‘hmmed’ once more. Perhaps he felt suddenly uneasy in himself, I shall never know. “Well, it is something of a museum for therein is held all my earlier pieces, my first successes. You may perhaps have heard of the Great Ozu and Little Jimmy. But there are those who find the company of my inventions, my children I might say, to be a little, uh, uncanny.”

And my pretty sailor scoffed openly at this. I was so proud. He hastened to reassure the master and me. “Ha! I have bunked with those as would slit a throat for the glimpse of a star through the deck boards, or for a packet of shag, aye, or just for the pure devilment of it. My hairs are not so quick to stir, no, nor my knees to knock. I shall sleep as well, better I reckon, among your cabinets, as anywhere.”

Hearing those words, the master raised a hand in imperious fashion. “In that case, I shall lead you myself for I must put Rosemary to her bed also. Indeed I cannot recall when she last was up as late as this.” And the men chuckled together whilst my father reached out and picked me up in his arms and carried me from the room, followed dutifully by Jack - Jack whose burning eyes never left mine as I spied him from over the master’s shoulder, Jack that murmured, “Rosemary... it is a fine name.”

Indeed. Rosemary; made to be given away by poor mad girls or to be passed like a cup from hand to hand gathering money from an eager wassail – were sailors all - there was a - sailor once – did sail upon the night drunk tides, under cold stars, sailing between the silver and the salt, come with the wind and singing the fine and saddest of songs.

As young I was, and foolish, could pretend it no harm
To lie on the bed and keep myself warm
And what then was done I shall never declare
Yet for one such short night I’d give seven long years.

For thus do we come to the darkest of hours, in the deep of the night, the heart of the song, the nub of the tale and how should it be told? Perhaps with delicacy; there in the darkness they lay; the sailor and the other, that half suspected secret soul that was the beating human heart of Rosemary and the master’s hidden servant.

And for that brief moment they found content.

Alas, come morning and they were discovered, all three; Jack, the other and Rosemary.

To phrase the revelation in such a way may spare an audience’s sensibilities but it does me little justice to have my feelings kept hidden, my Self still hidden. After a lifetime of clever concealment behind screens and walls, beneath thick costumes and under the floor, there is little justice in that.

And as to that self, what became? My poor self, split clean in two – fine as any surgeon’s work, my sailor’s knife, my father’s wrath, split in two and ne’er the twain shall be suffered to meet.

I watched with eyes as black and hard as mahogany beads, watched my sundered self run ragged from the room, pursued by the master’s curses and the coins he threw, and what became I do not know.

And if ‘tis a boy he shall sail on the sea
And if ‘tis a girl she shall stay home with me.

And as I am a place call me Rosemary Lane, find a house there and search, if you will, for my pieces. They are where my father left them as punishment, lodged behind a fireplace, concealed by the wall of a room, hidden in the airless still of a dusty attic. Play ‘find the lady’ for the years have spun the architecture first one way then another and the parts of me are now divided indeed.

And time rapacious time with an appetite insatiable feeds finally on the whole of my song, the past of me, the memory, what little truth there was of my life, (my lives), all that might have been. My master long gone, my father’s ghost has never haunted me.

But my ghost is here still in Rosemary Lane.

And what of my poor sailor, the secret he found? That too may be a ghost, perhaps it haunts him. But, more likely, he was pursued by greater spirits than mine, those spirits known to every sailor, Rum, Whiskey and the like. Poor Jack Tar, did he know what he would find? Did someone send him? The questions have faded. I have grown old in my ageless way and he is long forgiven - indeed I believe there was little to forgive. He was, in his way, but a boy besotted – whatever his ostensible motive. No doubt he is a part of someone else’s song now, a sea shanty, he would have liked that.

Remember Jack Tar that poor sailor
He’ll go to sea no more.

..............





many thanks to alicia_h and eila and to auguris at http://stayintheroom.dreamwidth.org/161429.html



also; weird but i only just realised (2/4/13) how much this has in common with the Alien fic. That whole pieces of a person thing, AGAIN. hey ho.