(no subject)
Title:.... Call it what you will.
Pairing: Jack/James... various OCS
Warnings: Blatant anachronisms, undefinable era, old people living a lot longer than they did in the 18th century. Unbeta'd
Summary: James moved back to the Caribbean with Jack- their blissful retirement is interrupted by the arrival of a granddaughter.
Author's notes: Well that's it finished. I'm a bit concerened by it. What do you think?
Chapter One: A Respectable Scandal
Chapter Two: "Why two men living together is like two old people living together," Or, "you'll never get it if you go too fast"
Chapter Three: Opening Manoeuvres
Millie was not the sort of woman who believed in keeping secrets. They confused matters, muddied the water, and you’d never be sure where you stood. She was also fairly quick on the uptake.
She knocked on the door of Grace’s room,
“Miss Haversham, are you in there?”
She heard a shuffling of papers.
“No! I mean, one moment, ma’am.”
Millie waited what she considered a moment, and then opened the door, to a curse.
“A fine way to spend your afternoon off, Miss Haversham.”
Grace sat on her bed, surrounded by a sea of papery despair, swallowing hard.
“The stupid thing is, most of these are mine. I wrote at least eleven twelfths of them, and never sent them.” She picked one up at random.
“’Dear Jonathon, I wish you could see this place. It’s perfectly amazing. It’s right over the sea, and the sunsets- the only thing that would make it better is having you here.’ Sentimental nonsense, I know, but it passes the time… He’s not written to me. Not once.”
Millie knelt on the bed next to her, “Do you love him?”
“I think so. I hope so- I’d hate to think I could feel like this and it not be…but that’s not the only thing, ma’am.”
“I know.” Millie held her hands.
Her eyes were glazed as though staring through Millie at some disaster, “I couldn’t tell anyone. He promised not to either.”
“How long?”
She counted on her fingers, “I worked it out the first month. The ship sailed almost straight there-so it took only a little over a week. And we’ve been here nearly two months, so I’m only four months gone. Jonathon arranged for me and Amy sent here, when his father was away- he agreed Amy needed to get out of England, away from…it all. I think that’s what hurt the most- I could bear all this if he hadn’t acted like he was ashamed too.”
Millie stared at her own hands, at the ring on her finger, finding herself entirely unequipped to help, “… you have to tell James.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t be frightened of him, Grace. He’s an open minded sort of a chap.”
Grace hugged her knees, “Mrs. Kelso, may I speak to you as I might a close friend...?”
“I should have hoped by now that you knew you may?”
“Mrs. Kelso…I know it was wrong… but it was good… so good, while it lasted; I was…the happiest person you could have met.”
Millie and Grace saw Jack and James in the office. Elizabeth and Will took the children out, as they knew there would be shouting.
And, after he had made sure Grace knew he wasn’t angry with her, shouting there was, and even the native fishermen, bringing in the evening’s haul heard it carried on the wind and were glad they were not the man who had angered him. James Norrington was a big man with big lungs. He had an even temper most of the time, but, like all of us, he had a breaking point.
If Jack resented the feeling of being the little wife begging her husband to just “Calm down and think”, he never said it; James had been in that position often enough. Mr. Gregory was waiting by the door to grab his shoulder as he pushed past him, off to do something rash. And when he had been calmed down, he explained what he was going to do very calmly, and that was even scarier, because those who knew him of old had recognised the steel in his eyes, and knew there was no way they could turn him from it.
Jack came to find him while he was packing.
“I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are.”
“Me and Grace are coming with you and you can’t stop us…..”
James smiled a little, “They’re my family- my problem.”
“No- it your family but it’s Grace who’s having the kid, not you; she got a right to see him.”
“But what about Amy?”
“Lizzie and Will say they’ll stay here.”
“But one of us ought to… they aren’t the…”
“She’ll be fine. I swear, Jim. She and Mabel’ll barely notice we’re gone.”
“But…”
Jack slammed the trunk shut, barely missing James’ fingers.
“No, you listen, Jim, I watched you sail out of my life once and I’m buggered if I’ll be doing it again, even if it’s for only a month or so.”
The good people of Maderia Road twitched their curtains aside to watch as, late one afternoon, a man some recognised as an old and sunburnt Admiral James Norrington came thundering up the cobbles, coat flapping behind him and pursued by a pretty and plump young woman whose arm was linked with another old man nobody recognised, but whose greying hair was dreadlocked in a manner they’d only ever seen in pictures.
After three minutes of pounding the door to his son’s house, it was jerked open by a harassed looking footman,
“Yes! Yes, sir?” His stress became recognition, “Miss Haversham? Admiral Norrington?”
James had no idea who he was, his eyes flailed at Grace for help. She smiled serenely,
“Hello Mick.”
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss, really it is.” He led them through to the sitting room. “I’m afraid Mister Norrington is at the fort- but he’ll be back later- and Master Norrington is working in his office; shall I take him a message or would you prefer to go yourselves?”
They exchanged brief glances, James took the lead, “If you two would stay here, I’ll go and get him myself.”
Jonathon Norrington who had his father’s face and mother’s hands was not in fact working. He was sitting at his desk, in his office, holding a pen, with papers spread in front of him, to be sure. However, not only was he staring out the window, watching the harbour, but all the papers in front of him were headed either “Dear Father” or “My Darling” and then followed with several lines of crossing out.
“My Darling,
I miss you more than. I never made a bigger mistake.”
His father was so cocooned in his own pain, there was no space left for John to grieve. Thus, he was seething with resentment. He had in the last six months lost his mother, his father, his sister, his lover and, he suspected, his child. His bereavement turned to anger at his mother for not being able to survive that last fever, at his father for shutting himself away, and at himself for not being half the man he felt he ought to be.
When the knock at the door came, he was, ironically you might say, thinking about how he longed to run away, and couldn’t. It was bloody unfair of grandfather, to leave them all to their misery.
“Enter.” He was tired, and had sat most of the day in this room, his head thick with dust and longing.
“Hello, boy.” James blocked the light from the corridor behind him.
Jon leapt up, absolutely aware why the man was here, “Grandfather! It’s so good to see you… You should have written ahead.” He is struck by how old the man looked.
James sat in the chair opposite the window, “There wasn’t time. And it’s wonderful to see you too. How is your father?”
Jon played for time, not wanting the imminent confrontation, “He’s not very well actually…I do hope you’ll stay to see him.”
“Of course.” James made like he’d forgotten something, “But wait…I should be congratulating you on the conception of your first child, shouldn’t I?”
“Grace told you then…” it was a foolish thing to say, and suddenly James was on his feet and dangerously close, and Jon realised this was still the big man of his childhood, who had slightly frightened him then, and certainly frightened him now.
“She did indeed, you little gobshite.” A finger pokes his chest, “You, sir, are a disgrace- to this family, and more importantly, to yourself.”
This was at this time a bit too much for Jon to bear, “Look” he cried, “I know how it seems and I swear to you…”
“Oh it’s not me you have to swear to. The mother of your child is downstairs-”
For the first time in two months, Jon’s heart leapt, “Grace is here?”
“She is- waiting for you to give some semblance of an explanation-and it had better be a good one, boy. I never raised a hand to you or your father, but by God, I’ll throttle you myself if you’ve been stringing the girl along.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why didn’t you propose? What could you possibly gain from avoiding your problems.”
Jon slammed a hand against the wall; rage returning, he half screamed, “Who the hell are you to say anything to me about avoiding your problems, you absolute bastard! Do you have any idea what it’s been like since you’ve been gone? And you couldn’t even spare us a month when mother…died- not even for your damn son. I am going insane, Grandfather. Absolutely mad. And I couldn’t leave! Unlike you, I didn’t have a boat to disappear on! And I actually had responsibilities to my father, who might I add has been falling apart. Can you blame me for getting them out of here? I love her, and I wasn’t going to watch her become the subject of everybody’s gossip. And no, I didn’t write to her, because father is trying to get me married off to a Miss Hermione Sampson-Harris, and I thought it would be better if…”He went very quiet, “I always meant to find a way of joining her there...” James had closed his eyes, breathed deeply.
“Jon…I”
“Oh, I don’t think you were wrong to leave, but you should have come back. I needed somebody- and I really, really thought it would be you… I don’t know what to do.” His voice shook and his Adam’s apple bobbed, “You’ve got to promise me you’ll stay, for a while. Please.” James squeezed the boy’s shoulder, and hoped it was assurance enough.
Half an hour later, Jon followed James back to the sitting room, where Grace sat demurely with Jack on the sofa by the fire. She stood up when Jon entered the room, but didn’t cross to him, showing no expression. Jon crept forward, almost reverently, knelt before her and took her hand.
“Grace, I-”
“Jon-”
“No, please hear me out. Grace I have been the most unspeakable idiot. I wronged you very badly, and I’m sorry.” He glanced at her face, impassive and cold, above him. “But… and this absolves me of nothing, but…please… I only did what I thought was best.” He babbled through the explanation he had given James, but with less swearing. James in this had taken off the ring he wore on his little finger. It was the ring he had given Ana- a gold band, with a lapis lazuli carved with a tiny ship. He turned it around in the firelight and stared at Jack.
“And I want you to know… I love you… I really do.”
“But you love your father too. And I don’t think your Miss Hermione would be too happy.”
“Oh, hang father’s plans for me, and damn that tittering idiot. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, every minute of it, and if I have to spend the rest of my life proving it, I will. If you’ll have me.”
Grace almost staggered, “Is that a proposal?”
Jon’s face screwed up, “Well…yes. Of course. It’s what I should have done half a year ago.”
She drew herself tall, “Then I’m afraid Master Norrington that I shall have to regretfully decline.”
“What…You…?”
“Am I supposed to just take you at your word, sir? To just assume that you shall keep to your promise? Is it to be as secret as our meetings?”
Jack caught James’ eye, a glance at the ring; James nodded, a smile on his face.
Jon’s frown became one of confusion, and he slumped from his kneel to the floor, “I don’t quite…” Grace turned from him. Jack piped up,
“I think what the young lady is saying is, after all that she’s been through, she’d like a symbol a bit more solid like, something a bit more obvious, especially as a warning to all Hermione Sampson-Harrises that you, and all the bits attached to you, are, as it were, a strictly off limits area.”
If anything, Jon looks even more lost; James stretched and stood up,
“When your father married your mother, he bought a ring for her. I have to say I was a bit insulted; I was hoping to give him the one I had given Ana.”
Jon was certain he was missing something. James sighed, grabbed the boy’s hand and shoved the ring into it.
Jon stared at the little circle in his palm. “Oh!” He coughed, thought about some of his letters, “Miss Haversham, over the time that I have known you, I have come to love and respect you more than anything else in the world. You are in my thoughts every waking hour and in my dreams at night. I have never known another woman like you, could never care for another as I care for you. With this in mind, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
She held his gaze, “Me, and no other?” He nodded feverishly,
“For the rest of our lives.”
She dragged him to his feet, said “excuse me Admiral Norrington, Mr. Sparrow,” pulled him to her by the lapels and captured his mouth with hers.
James averted his eyes; Jack nudged him and said, “I told her to do that. Either that or slap him.”
When Malcolm Norrington returned home that evening, he staggered into his late wife’s study, only to find his father sitting on her desk, glasses perched at the end of his nose.
He stopped dead, “Father….what are you doing here?”
James stood, “Sorting your son out. Seems I had more need to sort out mine. I’m so sorry Malcolm.”
“How’s Amy?”
“Oh she’s fine…”
Malcolm stared past him at the portrait of Gwendolyn, “twenty years we were married; I can’t bear it, dad. I feel like if I stop now everything will crumble away to nothing, so I get up everyday and go to work and come back and drink and go to sleep and then the next day I do exactly the same thing. It’s getting to Jon I know, and I don’t know how to talk to him any more.”
James coughed, “He’s getting married- we were going to send someone to tell you.”
“Oh! Did he finally propose to Hermione?”
“No…in fact, he has just this instant proposed to Miss Haversham.”
Malcolm spluttered, “What!”
“With my blessing, as you’re in no state to give yours.”
“You had no right- I have just spent…”
“Malcolm, Jon is coming back to the Caribbean with Jack, Miss Haversham and I. I believe it’s there he intends to marry her. Son, I want you to request some leave of absence, and come with us. To see your daughter and to take a break.”
“I…”
“Grace is pregnant, you know.”
“WHAT? How…I don’t believe…”
“So was your mother when I married her. And we had a happy ten years together.”
Malcolm smiled, then shuddered- “Does it get easier? Does it ever stop hurting?”
“No, not really. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a happy life.”
Malcolm wrung his hands, “Is that why you stopped talking about her, after she was dead? I never heard you say a word about her…”
James nodded, “The single biggest mistake of my life. Amy didn’t even know who Ana was. I think that’s when I realised…”
Malcolm sighed, “When do you leave?”
James did a lot of work, wrote letters, visited, explained and agreements were reached, a point of understanding. Five months passed, and then another week, to give the new mother some time to recover. James surveyed his huge family from the depths of an armchair. Jacob and Alex drank whiskey, while their brother downed water. They slapped Jon’s back, and Grace, beaming and clutching her daughter to her, allowed the women to fuss over her and bring her tea.
The younger children sat on the floor occupying themselves as children do, Amy and Mabel read in a corner.
The clock struck six; Amy and Mabel put down the book, Malcolm looked expectantly at his father, who smiled at Jack.
“Shall we?”
Jack grinned, “Right, mates, this one’s about the time me and Ana and Jim got caught in this horrible Spanish town…”
Pairing: Jack/James... various OCS
Warnings: Blatant anachronisms, undefinable era, old people living a lot longer than they did in the 18th century. Unbeta'd
Summary: James moved back to the Caribbean with Jack- their blissful retirement is interrupted by the arrival of a granddaughter.
Author's notes: Well that's it finished. I'm a bit concerened by it. What do you think?
Chapter One: A Respectable Scandal
Chapter Two: "Why two men living together is like two old people living together," Or, "you'll never get it if you go too fast"
Chapter Three: Opening Manoeuvres
Millie was not the sort of woman who believed in keeping secrets. They confused matters, muddied the water, and you’d never be sure where you stood. She was also fairly quick on the uptake.
She knocked on the door of Grace’s room,
“Miss Haversham, are you in there?”
She heard a shuffling of papers.
“No! I mean, one moment, ma’am.”
Millie waited what she considered a moment, and then opened the door, to a curse.
“A fine way to spend your afternoon off, Miss Haversham.”
Grace sat on her bed, surrounded by a sea of papery despair, swallowing hard.
“The stupid thing is, most of these are mine. I wrote at least eleven twelfths of them, and never sent them.” She picked one up at random.
“’Dear Jonathon, I wish you could see this place. It’s perfectly amazing. It’s right over the sea, and the sunsets- the only thing that would make it better is having you here.’ Sentimental nonsense, I know, but it passes the time… He’s not written to me. Not once.”
Millie knelt on the bed next to her, “Do you love him?”
“I think so. I hope so- I’d hate to think I could feel like this and it not be…but that’s not the only thing, ma’am.”
“I know.” Millie held her hands.
Her eyes were glazed as though staring through Millie at some disaster, “I couldn’t tell anyone. He promised not to either.”
“How long?”
She counted on her fingers, “I worked it out the first month. The ship sailed almost straight there-so it took only a little over a week. And we’ve been here nearly two months, so I’m only four months gone. Jonathon arranged for me and Amy sent here, when his father was away- he agreed Amy needed to get out of England, away from…it all. I think that’s what hurt the most- I could bear all this if he hadn’t acted like he was ashamed too.”
Millie stared at her own hands, at the ring on her finger, finding herself entirely unequipped to help, “… you have to tell James.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t be frightened of him, Grace. He’s an open minded sort of a chap.”
Grace hugged her knees, “Mrs. Kelso, may I speak to you as I might a close friend...?”
“I should have hoped by now that you knew you may?”
“Mrs. Kelso…I know it was wrong… but it was good… so good, while it lasted; I was…the happiest person you could have met.”
Millie and Grace saw Jack and James in the office. Elizabeth and Will took the children out, as they knew there would be shouting.
And, after he had made sure Grace knew he wasn’t angry with her, shouting there was, and even the native fishermen, bringing in the evening’s haul heard it carried on the wind and were glad they were not the man who had angered him. James Norrington was a big man with big lungs. He had an even temper most of the time, but, like all of us, he had a breaking point.
If Jack resented the feeling of being the little wife begging her husband to just “Calm down and think”, he never said it; James had been in that position often enough. Mr. Gregory was waiting by the door to grab his shoulder as he pushed past him, off to do something rash. And when he had been calmed down, he explained what he was going to do very calmly, and that was even scarier, because those who knew him of old had recognised the steel in his eyes, and knew there was no way they could turn him from it.
Jack came to find him while he was packing.
“I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are.”
“Me and Grace are coming with you and you can’t stop us…..”
James smiled a little, “They’re my family- my problem.”
“No- it your family but it’s Grace who’s having the kid, not you; she got a right to see him.”
“But what about Amy?”
“Lizzie and Will say they’ll stay here.”
“But one of us ought to… they aren’t the…”
“She’ll be fine. I swear, Jim. She and Mabel’ll barely notice we’re gone.”
“But…”
Jack slammed the trunk shut, barely missing James’ fingers.
“No, you listen, Jim, I watched you sail out of my life once and I’m buggered if I’ll be doing it again, even if it’s for only a month or so.”
The good people of Maderia Road twitched their curtains aside to watch as, late one afternoon, a man some recognised as an old and sunburnt Admiral James Norrington came thundering up the cobbles, coat flapping behind him and pursued by a pretty and plump young woman whose arm was linked with another old man nobody recognised, but whose greying hair was dreadlocked in a manner they’d only ever seen in pictures.
After three minutes of pounding the door to his son’s house, it was jerked open by a harassed looking footman,
“Yes! Yes, sir?” His stress became recognition, “Miss Haversham? Admiral Norrington?”
James had no idea who he was, his eyes flailed at Grace for help. She smiled serenely,
“Hello Mick.”
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss, really it is.” He led them through to the sitting room. “I’m afraid Mister Norrington is at the fort- but he’ll be back later- and Master Norrington is working in his office; shall I take him a message or would you prefer to go yourselves?”
They exchanged brief glances, James took the lead, “If you two would stay here, I’ll go and get him myself.”
Jonathon Norrington who had his father’s face and mother’s hands was not in fact working. He was sitting at his desk, in his office, holding a pen, with papers spread in front of him, to be sure. However, not only was he staring out the window, watching the harbour, but all the papers in front of him were headed either “Dear Father” or “My Darling” and then followed with several lines of crossing out.
“My Darling,
I miss you more than. I never made a bigger mistake.”
His father was so cocooned in his own pain, there was no space left for John to grieve. Thus, he was seething with resentment. He had in the last six months lost his mother, his father, his sister, his lover and, he suspected, his child. His bereavement turned to anger at his mother for not being able to survive that last fever, at his father for shutting himself away, and at himself for not being half the man he felt he ought to be.
When the knock at the door came, he was, ironically you might say, thinking about how he longed to run away, and couldn’t. It was bloody unfair of grandfather, to leave them all to their misery.
“Enter.” He was tired, and had sat most of the day in this room, his head thick with dust and longing.
“Hello, boy.” James blocked the light from the corridor behind him.
Jon leapt up, absolutely aware why the man was here, “Grandfather! It’s so good to see you… You should have written ahead.” He is struck by how old the man looked.
James sat in the chair opposite the window, “There wasn’t time. And it’s wonderful to see you too. How is your father?”
Jon played for time, not wanting the imminent confrontation, “He’s not very well actually…I do hope you’ll stay to see him.”
“Of course.” James made like he’d forgotten something, “But wait…I should be congratulating you on the conception of your first child, shouldn’t I?”
“Grace told you then…” it was a foolish thing to say, and suddenly James was on his feet and dangerously close, and Jon realised this was still the big man of his childhood, who had slightly frightened him then, and certainly frightened him now.
“She did indeed, you little gobshite.” A finger pokes his chest, “You, sir, are a disgrace- to this family, and more importantly, to yourself.”
This was at this time a bit too much for Jon to bear, “Look” he cried, “I know how it seems and I swear to you…”
“Oh it’s not me you have to swear to. The mother of your child is downstairs-”
For the first time in two months, Jon’s heart leapt, “Grace is here?”
“She is- waiting for you to give some semblance of an explanation-and it had better be a good one, boy. I never raised a hand to you or your father, but by God, I’ll throttle you myself if you’ve been stringing the girl along.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why didn’t you propose? What could you possibly gain from avoiding your problems.”
Jon slammed a hand against the wall; rage returning, he half screamed, “Who the hell are you to say anything to me about avoiding your problems, you absolute bastard! Do you have any idea what it’s been like since you’ve been gone? And you couldn’t even spare us a month when mother…died- not even for your damn son. I am going insane, Grandfather. Absolutely mad. And I couldn’t leave! Unlike you, I didn’t have a boat to disappear on! And I actually had responsibilities to my father, who might I add has been falling apart. Can you blame me for getting them out of here? I love her, and I wasn’t going to watch her become the subject of everybody’s gossip. And no, I didn’t write to her, because father is trying to get me married off to a Miss Hermione Sampson-Harris, and I thought it would be better if…”He went very quiet, “I always meant to find a way of joining her there...” James had closed his eyes, breathed deeply.
“Jon…I”
“Oh, I don’t think you were wrong to leave, but you should have come back. I needed somebody- and I really, really thought it would be you… I don’t know what to do.” His voice shook and his Adam’s apple bobbed, “You’ve got to promise me you’ll stay, for a while. Please.” James squeezed the boy’s shoulder, and hoped it was assurance enough.
Half an hour later, Jon followed James back to the sitting room, where Grace sat demurely with Jack on the sofa by the fire. She stood up when Jon entered the room, but didn’t cross to him, showing no expression. Jon crept forward, almost reverently, knelt before her and took her hand.
“Grace, I-”
“Jon-”
“No, please hear me out. Grace I have been the most unspeakable idiot. I wronged you very badly, and I’m sorry.” He glanced at her face, impassive and cold, above him. “But… and this absolves me of nothing, but…please… I only did what I thought was best.” He babbled through the explanation he had given James, but with less swearing. James in this had taken off the ring he wore on his little finger. It was the ring he had given Ana- a gold band, with a lapis lazuli carved with a tiny ship. He turned it around in the firelight and stared at Jack.
“And I want you to know… I love you… I really do.”
“But you love your father too. And I don’t think your Miss Hermione would be too happy.”
“Oh, hang father’s plans for me, and damn that tittering idiot. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, every minute of it, and if I have to spend the rest of my life proving it, I will. If you’ll have me.”
Grace almost staggered, “Is that a proposal?”
Jon’s face screwed up, “Well…yes. Of course. It’s what I should have done half a year ago.”
She drew herself tall, “Then I’m afraid Master Norrington that I shall have to regretfully decline.”
“What…You…?”
“Am I supposed to just take you at your word, sir? To just assume that you shall keep to your promise? Is it to be as secret as our meetings?”
Jack caught James’ eye, a glance at the ring; James nodded, a smile on his face.
Jon’s frown became one of confusion, and he slumped from his kneel to the floor, “I don’t quite…” Grace turned from him. Jack piped up,
“I think what the young lady is saying is, after all that she’s been through, she’d like a symbol a bit more solid like, something a bit more obvious, especially as a warning to all Hermione Sampson-Harrises that you, and all the bits attached to you, are, as it were, a strictly off limits area.”
If anything, Jon looks even more lost; James stretched and stood up,
“When your father married your mother, he bought a ring for her. I have to say I was a bit insulted; I was hoping to give him the one I had given Ana.”
Jon was certain he was missing something. James sighed, grabbed the boy’s hand and shoved the ring into it.
Jon stared at the little circle in his palm. “Oh!” He coughed, thought about some of his letters, “Miss Haversham, over the time that I have known you, I have come to love and respect you more than anything else in the world. You are in my thoughts every waking hour and in my dreams at night. I have never known another woman like you, could never care for another as I care for you. With this in mind, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
She held his gaze, “Me, and no other?” He nodded feverishly,
“For the rest of our lives.”
She dragged him to his feet, said “excuse me Admiral Norrington, Mr. Sparrow,” pulled him to her by the lapels and captured his mouth with hers.
James averted his eyes; Jack nudged him and said, “I told her to do that. Either that or slap him.”
When Malcolm Norrington returned home that evening, he staggered into his late wife’s study, only to find his father sitting on her desk, glasses perched at the end of his nose.
He stopped dead, “Father….what are you doing here?”
James stood, “Sorting your son out. Seems I had more need to sort out mine. I’m so sorry Malcolm.”
“How’s Amy?”
“Oh she’s fine…”
Malcolm stared past him at the portrait of Gwendolyn, “twenty years we were married; I can’t bear it, dad. I feel like if I stop now everything will crumble away to nothing, so I get up everyday and go to work and come back and drink and go to sleep and then the next day I do exactly the same thing. It’s getting to Jon I know, and I don’t know how to talk to him any more.”
James coughed, “He’s getting married- we were going to send someone to tell you.”
“Oh! Did he finally propose to Hermione?”
“No…in fact, he has just this instant proposed to Miss Haversham.”
Malcolm spluttered, “What!”
“With my blessing, as you’re in no state to give yours.”
“You had no right- I have just spent…”
“Malcolm, Jon is coming back to the Caribbean with Jack, Miss Haversham and I. I believe it’s there he intends to marry her. Son, I want you to request some leave of absence, and come with us. To see your daughter and to take a break.”
“I…”
“Grace is pregnant, you know.”
“WHAT? How…I don’t believe…”
“So was your mother when I married her. And we had a happy ten years together.”
Malcolm smiled, then shuddered- “Does it get easier? Does it ever stop hurting?”
“No, not really. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a happy life.”
Malcolm wrung his hands, “Is that why you stopped talking about her, after she was dead? I never heard you say a word about her…”
James nodded, “The single biggest mistake of my life. Amy didn’t even know who Ana was. I think that’s when I realised…”
Malcolm sighed, “When do you leave?”
James did a lot of work, wrote letters, visited, explained and agreements were reached, a point of understanding. Five months passed, and then another week, to give the new mother some time to recover. James surveyed his huge family from the depths of an armchair. Jacob and Alex drank whiskey, while their brother downed water. They slapped Jon’s back, and Grace, beaming and clutching her daughter to her, allowed the women to fuss over her and bring her tea.
The younger children sat on the floor occupying themselves as children do, Amy and Mabel read in a corner.
The clock struck six; Amy and Mabel put down the book, Malcolm looked expectantly at his father, who smiled at Jack.
“Shall we?”
Jack grinned, “Right, mates, this one’s about the time me and Ana and Jim got caught in this horrible Spanish town…”