A Whale of a Tale 3

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“I bought as much of the best she could afford,” the galley master insisted. He gave one of the ship’s beams an affectionate pat. “And if you’re still unhappy, you can write to the King and ask for a fatter treasury.”

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“Right,” Jack exclaimed. “An’ after ye git done doin’ that, Liam, could ye pass on dat oi’m still waitin ’ on my emanipashun ?”

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“ Har-har , Jack-O,” Liam said and elbowed Jack so that the rum sloshed over the side of his mug. “I’m only sayin’, Barney. Why haven’t we ever had a spread like that?”

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Liam nodded his head in the direction of another long, wooden table. There were eight chairs – three on each side and one at each end – pulled up around it and five place settings. In the middle was a pitcher of a ruby liquid and a rounded plate full of sweet meats and soft bread. There was a smaller platter next to it, too. Cheeses and dark apples were arranged on that one; there were hardly any spots of mold on them, either.

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Liam looked back down at his own clay plate where the hardtack and raisins sat. “Maybe next time you’d like to put a little of your own treasury towards foods,” Barnabas huffed and lumbered back to the iron stove.

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Liam stared at his plate a second longer. “Hey, toss me a shilling,” he declared and shoved the tin plate away. Liam wiped the sickened look (and a few smatterings of crumbs and grease) off his face with the back of his hand.

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“ Waaat ?” When he spoke, Jack’s own smattering of crumbs sprayed out of his mouth and scattered across the table and Liam’s plate. “No I’m not really going to eat it. Come on, Jack. Gimme a shilling.” Jack stared at Liam as if observing a lunatic. He made no reach for the money pouch at his belt, either.

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Liam stuck his hand out, palm up, and beckoned impatiently with his fingers. “Come on, you. I’ll repay you when we dock.” Jack groaned and rolled his eyes. “Why can’t yer ever hold onto your own shilling longer than one night in town?” He stuck two fingers in the narrow neck of the leather money pouch, fished for a shilling, and slapped it into Liam’s palm.

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Jack muttered under his breath in Gaelic. “Mark me words, Brit,” he added. “By Mary, you’ll pay me back. Plus interest!”

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But Liam was already heading for the other table.

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“‘ Scuse me,” Liam said to the oldest man at the table. “I’m a midshipman on this ship and… well, my mate and I were wondering if we could conduct a bit of trade.” He held up the shilling and nodded toward the banquet.

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The aged man chuckled, his laughter ruffling bits of his large, graying beard. “You can put your money away, son,” he said in a deep American accent. “Wave your mate over. You two can sit with my youngest, Becky.”

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A shy girl at the end of the table glanced up through her thick eyelashes, flushed pink, and looked away from the uniformed men.

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“Thank you, sir,” Liam said and, as instructed, motioned for Jack to come. The men settled to the left of Becky, who continued to blush and stare at a dish of a thick, custardy concoction. The woman at the head of the table took another child’s tin dish and set to filling it with sweet meats and breads.

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“So you’re from the states?” Liam asked.

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“Second generation,” the man confirmed. He took a long drink from a mug of thick, frothy liquid, swallowed, and sank back against the wall. “What about you lads? Are you celebrating Thanksgiving this evening?”

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“Hah!” The laugh escaped Jack’s lips. Liam elbowed him in the ribs.

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“Don’t mind him,” Liam insisted. “We Brits don’t have a problem with Thanksgiving. Jack-O here’s still just getting used to being a Brit himself.” “More like coping with,” Jack muttered.

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The man chuckled. “That’s alright. It’s a tradition in the states to go around the table after dinner and state what each of us is thankful for. Perhaps you gentlemen would like to begin?”

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“Indeed, sir,” a new voice replied. Everyone looked up to see the Captain standing at the edge of the table.

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“Well, Captain Dawkins!” the mother exclaimed, flushing a bit pink her own self and fanning herself with a glove. “Please, do sit!”

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Captain Dawkins nodded and took a seat at the edge of the table. He placed several ponds next to the plate he was handed by the still pink woman. She leaned forward on her elbows and smiled softly. “So tell us, Captain,” she said, saying the last word carefully. “What are you thankful for?” Brian took a deep breath and began…

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For years, Angus Dawkins had been sailing aboard the HMS Fin .

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For just as long, I had been left to Pilsley to look after the hut for the months he was away, always with the same instructions: “Air my room our once for every week I’m gone; feed your sister; and please, Brian (my father’s voice lilted as he reached the chore I tended to forget), lock the door before you go to sleep.”

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I can recall these instructions that he had all but engraved in my behavior with his own cutlass. I can recall blurry folds of sand, too, that fluffed up around my little toes where I stood and waved him off until the Corvette’s sails mingled too much with the darkening clouds to tell them apart. Easily , I can recall the idea of visiting the shore as a boy. But I recall the distinct events of only my last visit there.

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The summer had passed, my mornings early, my bedtimes late, and the days in between bursting with games and horseplay and walks through the market we’d take when my friends and I needed a rest from the heat.

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Once August had neared its end, the world revealed to me the company of a young girl.

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She was the daughter of the cost’s pub owner. Her birth name was Angelica Abrey, though she always introduced herself as ‘Annie.’

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Early Saturday mornings, and sometimes Fridays (if she finished her reading in time), her father would lift her onto the back of his horse and carry her to the shore along with him.

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Then, at the pub she would cover her dress with a brown, roughly sewn frock (which I suspect was the handiwork of her father) and mop the floors and tables, rinse the glasses and turn them upside down on cloths to let the dry, scrub the potatoes and carrots, and collect farthings and pennies in her pockets and carry them to the jar behind the counters.

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She had thick, brown hair that was always twisted into long braids tied in ribbons, like I’d sometimes seen my friend Jacob do his dog’s hair.

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I didn’t talk to Annie about pirates, and she never argued with I’d boast how I would follow in my father’s footsteps aboard the Fin . Sometimes, she even used words like “respectable” when we talked about me being a soldier. And when we went to the back, it was never to run, to swine, and certainly never to horse around and throw each other from the wooden docks.

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And almost every weekend, I, too, would roll up the cotton sleeves of my father’s old sea shirt to serve the frothing mugs of beer, stack oily wedges of wood against the stone hearth and keep the fire churning.

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I worked hard around the pub. I grew to learn my way around the kitchen, too. Annie taught me how to knead loaves of bread and Mr. Abrey had be chasing down the chickens and swine when he got the urge to fatten up the evening’s stew.

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I even fixed a hole in a wall and aired my father’s bedroom at least twice. (I was still working on remembering to lock the door.)

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By spring, we’d fallen comfortably into a pattern. During the afternoons, when the sun sweltered most and cut strongest through the breezy air, I set about dealing out another round of drinks to familiar faces and pocketbooks that occupied the same tables day after day.

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And Annie, taking my sister, Sybil, by the hand on days I’d let her trade her own books in for the pub, would take out the armful of was rags to be hung and dried.

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Along the way, she stopped at the market to greet a woman who once lived on her street.

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The pub always seemed to be running out of something or other by the afternoon. She liked to bring Sybil, who would carry the basket as she browsed the stands of fruits and vegetables that lined the cobblestones and scoured for the finest sack of flour.

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Once on Sybil’s birthday, she paused long enough to collect a fresh handful of eggs from one of the market people that she put into a pastry later that evening. Waving goodbye to her friend again on the way out and a few farthings lighter, Annie would set out toward the pub again. On her way, she would make a detour to the shore. On occasions when an uncharacteristically large throng of customers occupied the front steps of Mr. Abrey’s pub, Annie would hurry extra fast and skip the market altogether.

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And some afternoons, when she was in an especially good mood, or Sybil was behaving herself especially well and I had done an especially good job in the pub that morning, she wouldn’t just stop at the ledge that overlooked the harbor, either. On those days, she would continue on all the way to the port itself, where determinedly she sought the harbormaster himself and inquired as to the location or arrival of the Fin .

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Sybil in particular enjoyed these walks. But detour after detour, the girls returned to the pub with no information and with their sleeves rolled even higher. I could tell that each vain trip disappointed them, too.

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Word of the Fin came by navy ship November 29 th . According to the sailors who had found their way into Mr. Abrey’s pub, the ship was making its way from the Irish Isles and would return before Christmas. Sybil couldn’t quit grinning that evening. Annie and I fed the lads another round of soft biscuits (a treat they hadn’t tasted since departing from the Americas) and sweet ale. And when they left, we closed up early to celebrate.

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Annie produced a pastry from the cupboard, a sweet, flakey treat she had kept for weeks in anticipation of the Fin and that we cut into small thirds.

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It was Sunday night, but before any of us realized the time, an inky, blustery darkness shrouded the brick building. Outside the pub, her horse brayed and shuddered in the wind that swirled along the coast. Her father, infected still by a light cold that had blows its way through Pilsley, had not ridden down that weekend.

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We took her horse to our neighbor’s barn later that night when all the tea had been drank up and several more celebratory biscuits had passed our lips and bundled her inside Sybil’s room.

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For hours, no one slept. Sybil nodded off first, followed shortly by Annie. I sat up a good hour longer.

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I fixed my eyes on the indigo horizon, scanning for any sign of the Fin . Occasionally I checked the whitewashed room of the girls, only to find them sleeping comfortably and undisturbed every time.

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But mostly, I stood in the doorway.

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I fell asleep with my father’s old midshipman uniform in my hands and the feel of an abrasive chill against my skin. On my lips, mixed with the biscuit crumbs and flecks of flour, remained the hope that the Fin would return early. But with a ship like the HMS Fin , such hope was futile.

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We’d moved our work to the ledge by the shore so while we kept our hands busy we could keep our eyes on the harbor. I worked at shaping the corners of a thick slab of wood. Sitting at my feet, Sybil worked with her paints and brushes to inscribe Mr. Abrey’s name on the wood and encompass the rectangle in delicate interpretations of overflowing bowls of four and tall, cool glasses inscribed with flowers.

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To my right laid Annie. At each elbow sat a bowl and into them she sorted berries and nuts she was to bake into a loaf of bread that evening. She hummed sweetly and distractedly, as if she didn’t even notice the notes that bubbled from her own throat.

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In comfortable silence, we continued our work while Mr. Abrey tended to the customers in the pub. The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer’s day; The Knave of Hearts, he stole the tarts and took them clean away. The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore. The Knave of hearts brought back the tarts and vowed he’d steal no more.

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An oddity on the street below interrupted the song. There was first a strange silence, mutual, it seemed among all of Pilsley, that stretched only for a few breaths, but during which even the horses who pulled strenuously at carriages full of plump prime ministers and their wives paused to listen.

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Then there was a roaring cheer that erupted from the cobblestones. Birds squawked, Jacob’s dog joined the other animals in howling and growling, and the horses once again stomped their feet over the rocks. The men pumped their fists into the air, swatting at the clouds like bugs, and the children dropped their schoolbooks and ran from their parents’ sides. Even the women clapped their hands and added their voices to the noise. And from the top of the ledge, distinctly we could see the tips of the HMS Fin .

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For the hour, the cheering continued, Sybil included. Townspeople ran in and out of their homes, of their shops, to catch glimpses of the naval ship as it neared. Annie and I continued dutifully our work under the kind eye of her father. I did my best to hide my shaking fingers from view and I finished filling in Sybil’s letters with purple paints.

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Only when the crows noticed the black sails did Pilsley resume the eerie silence.

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My bare feet slapped against the packed hillside, bits of mud splashing up around my ankles and browning the cuffs of my trousers. Somewhere in the foreground sprinted Sybil, her crimson hair blowing in about out of her face and her face puffed into a determined expression. She kept quickly at my heels. We each left Annie far behind on the ledge, scrambling to her feet beneath her bowls of berries and thick folds of her dress’s fine fabric.

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Only the sound of blood swarming in my ears and a thick heartbeat that shook with fear on every other beat reached me. Only the black wings of the Fin met my eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d come to a stop, nor come to the water’s edge so quickly, until I felt Annie’s hand grab onto my wrist and Sybil’s smaller hand slide into my own.

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My breath, like Sybil’s was short and puffy. I worked hard to get the dribbles of sweat and hair from my eyes. I recognized the uniformed man who leapt straight from the ship to the dock, without waiting for the gangplank, as my father’s friend, Winston Gresham.

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His footsteps across the wood were the only sound that played before the enticed, wide stares of the townspeople. He strode quickly to me – and no matter how I wished, how I hoped that he wouldn’t, he stopped just short of Sybil and me.

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His expression was regrettably easy to read. Sybil burst into noise tears on Annie’s shoulder before Mr. Gresham’s lips had even parted. “Brian. Sybil.” His voice was thick, and my skin crawled with the sensation of being watched from all around. I shifted uncomfortably between bare feet, the skin of which had now begun to feel scraped and raw from the run to the shore.

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Knowingly, I dropped my head to my chest at first, the shook it ‘yes’. “Where did you bury him?” “Off the coast of the Irish Isles. It was a proper sailor’s burial.”

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I nodded my head again, more slowly this time, and let Annie slip her hand into mine. With a queasy stomach, I thought of the pastry we’d shared the night they buried my father.

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The December rains set in. Quickly, Christmas came. Annie had invited Sybil and me to her father’s house in the town above ours, where her family was to roast one of the fattest swine kept in the pen behind the pub and bring the finest beers and wines up to the main house.

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As gracious a rejection I could muster was delivered. I believe I told Sybil something along the lines of “I will not celebrate a fatherless Christmas,” to which she responded there “would be pies and cakes,” to which I interrupted with several colorful adjectives I had picked up from my father and Mr. Gresham. I would not eat another pasty so long as I should live, I was sure.

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Still, I sent Sybil in my place. She returned January third, two days after the New Year, her skin flushed pink and her eyes bright with the merry time she had enjoyed at Annie’s. I told her I was glad she had enjoyed herself.

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But at nearly the same time she was setting her suitcase back in the corner of her bedroom, I removed my father’s old sea bag from the top shelf of his closet.

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Packing my good shoes inside and donning his old midshipman’s uniform, I slung the bag over one shoulder.

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I came out to find Sybil standing by the window, painting cheerily. At first she didn’t notice me.

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But the moment I stepped fully into the room she began bawling.

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“Mr. Gresham offered me my father’s job aboard the Fin . They lost a lot of men out there, Annie. They need everyone they can get.” I paused, hesitating to admit to the next part. “And Sybil and I need every penny we can get.” Never one for demureness, Annie retorted quickly, but in a soft voice. “You know my father would give you a job at the pub. Sybil, too.”

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I shook my head ‘no.’ I’d always known I’d end up aboard the Fin . “They’re starting me as midshipman. Your father couldn’t afford the kind of wages they’ve got danglin’ before me.” Her eyes glinted angrily and she pressed her lips shut.

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“I didn’t mean it like that,” I retracted quickly the comment about her father. “I only mean: do you know how long it would take me to work up to midshipman? Years, Annie. Years .”

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She huffed audibly and pulled both braids back over her shoulders. The brown pinafore, splattered with stale dishwater and suds of soap, was still pinned over her dress. Her father worked in the other room. Her fingers worked quickly at a pair of dishes that she scrubbed the crusts of this morning’s eggs out of.

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“But I was thinking that you could come with me,” I offered in a small voice. I tested one of the words she used to talk to me with. “It’s respectable, you know, to be a midshipman’s wife.” Perhaps it was the rain that pattered softly on the cobblestones behind me or the soft clanking of the wooden dishes that I was hearing – or perhaps she really had laughed aloud.

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“Respectable,” she repeated under her breath, shaking her head slowly. Finally she turned. Half expecting a verbal slaughter, or to be shoved back into place by the quick-tongued girl that stood before me, I cowered in the doorway of the pub. Part of my heart, beneath the glossy buttons of the midshipman’s jackets and tassels, wished she would argue my departure. Part of my heart still hoped she would have cause enough for me to stay. But all she said was: “Please get out of the doorway.”

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I took one step back into the rain. Thick droplets of water splattered onto my head and plastered my hair in smooth lines over my forehead. “Annie?”

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Here, the fire finally flared. “I will not leave this town,” she snapped. “This is my father’s pub; this will be my pub. I will stay .”

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She dumped the dishes into the sink, the water splashing along her front and forearms, and hurried out of the room. I could hear the sound of her serving drinks ant taking pennies and fathering in the other room.

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The words ‘look after Sybil’ died on my lips.

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The table had fallen so quiet that only the gentle creaking of the ship’s sides and Becky sucking sugar crystals off the tips of her fingers could be heard. Captain Dawkins took his cup of wine into his hand and took a slow, thoughtful sip like he had so many times throughout the story. His eyes had darkened some. But his shoulders had relaxed as he sat back in his seat.

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Liam cleared his throat. “Did you… I mean, is that the end?”

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“Aye, my boy, it is the end.” The Captain set his cup back on the table as it pitched and rolled a bit with the ship.

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Becky sucked the sugar off her last finger loudly then exclaimed: “How are you thankful for that ?”

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As if realizing what she’d said for the first time, she gasped and clapped both hands over her mouth. She stared with wide eyes at Captain Dawkins before losing her nerve and blushing. Fluttering her fingers at her neck, she muttered: “I didn’t mean… Well, I didn’t mean to say that… Oh…”

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“It’s alright.” Captain Dawkins smiled to prove his point. Then, slipping into his more comfortable way of talk, he added: “I’d ‘ave asked the same question if I didn’t already know the answer. In nineteen years I ain’t spoken wif me Annie. But I am grateful to ‘ave known ‘er.”

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He cut his eyes at Liam. “Let that be a lesson ter ya.” _ _

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The flame of the candle flickered violently; the ship rolled over a steep wave. Liam huddled closer to the halo of light that the candle cast in his dank cabin.

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He squinted at the coarse parchment and dipped the tip of the quill into the unsteady bottle of ink. And his hands shook as he sat with his hand poised above the top left of the page. Slowly, he brought the sharp tip down to touch the page and took a deep breath.

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My dear Mellie , he wrote. On this strange American holiday you have, I find myself thinking only of you. I am thankful for our broken carriage that brought our eyes together and the rainstorm that kept them there a little longer. I am thankful for the hat shop where we ran into each other again weeks later. And for the following winter we passed at your father’s cottage in the country.

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My Mellie , I am grateful to have had you. And I entertain great remorse and guilt over not having written to say so earlier. The ship I am on will dock in your America by the end of this month. And the moment her sides brush the dock, my notice of my resignation will be delivered to Captain Dawkins.

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Marry me, Amelia Caroline Black. With best love, &c., I am affectionately yours, Liam C. Flynn