FIC: The Need of Comrades [prologue]
Mar. 20th, 2013 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
splixTitle: The Need of Comrades
Author: Alex
Fandom: VigBean
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No profit made, no harm intended.
Notes: Title courtesy of Walt Whitman. Thanks to the following for alpha-and-beta reading this story for me and giving really swell advice:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberlite, govi20, yaoichick, mooms, honscot, hominysnark, and lauramcewan. Thank you all.
Summary: In 1906, two young men from very different backgrounds meet and form a friendship.
The Need of Comrades
Prologue
Christmas Day, 1905
Sean had never traveled outside of Yorkshire, but all it took was a quick peering-round to know the truth: there was no spot on earth drearier than a Northern moor in winter. A man could look at the overturned steel dome of frozen sky for miles, searching in vain for a bit of blue quarried from a vast expanse of grey.
The cottage door creaked open. "For the love of God, Sean, what are you gawping at?"
"Nowt, Mam. Just thinking."
"Well, thinking's not getting the fire built. Fill the hod and come inside. Your poor dad's fair nithered up there."
"Sorry, Mam," Sean said, but his mother had already banged the door shut.
He cast his gaze upward again at the barren, imprisoning sky. She was right. Thinking wasn't building a fire, nor doing any bloody thing except tantalizing his imagination. He trudged to the bin and heaped glistening coal into the bucket. Fine dust clung to his hands and the sleeves of his thin coat. He brought the hod inside and crouched before the freshly swept hearth, arranging wood chips and newspaper spills. He struck a match to light the spills and shook lumps of coal onto the fire, watching them catch.
"All right, then, lad. Don't block all the heat. Come wash your hands and have your breakfast." Sean's mother, Sarah, tall, fair-haired and green-eyed, set a plate of oat cakes on the table.
Sean washed and dried his hands obediently. "Shall I bring Dad down?"
"Aye, if he's up to it."
The staircase was dark and as chill as death. Sean tapped on the door of his parents' room, pushed it open, and peered inside. "Dad?" It smelled of sweat, sickness, cabbage, coal, and the paraffin lamp that threw off a faint smoky glow. Upon the bed lay a crumpled, frail form, barely visible beneath the woolen blankets. "Dad." Sean knelt beside the bed, a knot of love and helpless rage tightening his chest.
Twelve years ago, an accident in the mines had left Jack Bean crippled, and he'd been summarily dismissed. No pensioning-off at F. H. Watkins and Glenhall Coal Company, Limited. Then, four years ago, the coughing fits had begun, leaving Jack red-faced and gasping, dark flecks staining his handkerchief. The village doctor had confirmed what Sarah and Sean already knew: it was the black lung. No one knew why some men could go their whole lives in the mines without so much as a sneeze, and why others ended up hacking out shreds of their lungs until they bled to death inside, but it was agreed that once those spots of black appeared, a man's life was as good as over. For four years Jack had lain in his bed, dying by inches while Sean watched his slow descent, mute with fury and powerless to save him.
Jack lay still, his face hidden. Sean shook his shoulder roughly, frightened by his motionless body. "Dad! Wake up."
A faint movement stirred the blankets. "Ah, lad…sorry. I didn't hear you call."
"Fast asleep, I expect." Sean grinned to cover his distress. "Lazy. Come on downstairs. Mam's made breakfast."
"I don't want owt, lad. Maybe a cup of tea."
Sean ignored the feeble protest and rose to his feet, gathering the blankets about his father's emaciated body. "You'll never get well on just tea, Dad."
Jack hooked an arm round Sean's neck and offered a sweet and lavish smile."You're a good lad, our Sean, none better." He coughed violently, a deep booming that shook his frame.
Sean averted his eyes from the black spittle on Jack's kerchief and the grey pallor of his skin, as if the coal had leached into every part of his body, not just his rotting lungs. "Careful now." He swung Jack into his arms; it was like lifting a child. He carried his father downstairs and settled him on the worn green sofa near the hearth. "Warm enough, Dad?"
"It's lovely, son. Thank you."
Sarah placed a pottery mug of tea into Jack's hand and set a plate with a bacon sandwich on the rickety table. "Hurry it up, lad," she said to Sean, moving to the sink where a rather sad and gaunt chicken, their Christmas feast, lay waiting to be dressed and cooked. "Yours is on the table, and time's wasting. You have the list?"
Sean gazed out the window, watching the snow batter against the glass. The prospect of nearly an hour's walk across the frozen, wind-blasted moorland into town was only slightly less disheartening than the thought of staying indoors all day. He patted his trouser pocket and managed a smile. "Aye, Mam. I've got it. You've asked me twice already."
"Don't be cheeky, you," Sarah admonished absently. She busied herself plucking the chicken, her long hands moving in a rapid blur. "Wrap up tight now. Can't have you ill on Christmas day."
*
No indeed, couldn't be ill on Christmas day, Sean thought as he sprinted across the moors toward Whitley. If he were bedridden, he'd miss Reverend Pomeroy's yearly Christmas sermon, contrary admonitions to feel joy on this festive holiday and keep themselves sober. Christ had been born to an unworthy world, and the world was thus obligated to rejoice, but not too much. Most Covenanter families happily ignored the vicar, and celebrated in boisterous fashion. Sean remembered the festivity of Yule logs, evergreen wreaths, candles, mistletoe. Oranges and hazelnuts in stockings, biscuits and toffee in crisp paper. Plum puddings, crackling goose, mincemeat. Bowls of lamb’s-wool punch, cups of mulled wine. Crackers and candy on ironed tablecloths. Presents in gilt wrapping beside plates. Visits from friends and family bundled up so warmly their faces looked like muffler-swathed apples set atop woolen barrels.
It had been years since the Bean cottage had seen that sort of merriment. When Jack fell ill, all gaiety in the Bean household had ceased. Sean was twenty-two now, no child to be disappointed by a lack of revelry, but it might have been a cheerful thing, a lift to his dad's spirits, to have had a Christmas wreath, or even a few extra candles. But there was no money for frivolities any longer; every penny of the money Sean earned in the brickyard bought only rent, the barest food, and Jack's medicine, and it wasn't for Sean to be resentful.
At the grocer's, the proprietor set a laden box on the counter. "Now then, Sean lad. How's Jack?"
"Much better. Ta, Mr. Murray." Sean would cheerfully run bare-arsed through the center of Whitley before he'd give chin-wagging Alfie Murray fodder for gossip. "I expect he'll be up and about for Christmas."
"That's good to hear, lad. Good to hear. He's a fine man, God bless him and keep him. Such a sad thing, the black lung." Murray examined the money Sean placed on the counter as if it were crawling with pox. "That's a shilling and sixpence owing, lad."
Sean scowled. "Prices rose since you spoke to my mam, did they?"
Murray's mouth opened and closed and his eyes blinked like a chicken's. He collected himself enough to put a touch of frost in his voice. "Your mam must have had it wrong, lad. If you like, I can –"
"Give over." Sean slapped more money on the counter. "Next time I'll do the marketing myself." He examined the box of groceries and leveled a glare at Murray. "You think I'm gormless, Mr. Murray?"
"How's that, lad?" Murray tried for an air of innocent inquiry, but his waxen face turned a mottled red.
"The sugar's missing, and the vinegar. We haven't a lot of brass, Mr. Murray, but we're not bleeding daft. You wouldn't want it all over town that you cheated a sick man and his family, would you?"
The blinking increased in speed. "You've got a cheek, you pup. Are you saying I've cheated you?"
"I am that. And if you don't do something about it, I've a mind to start talking."
Murray executed a sharp about-face and rummaged behind the counter. He came back with the vinegar and sugar and dropped them into the box, heedless of their fragility. "You've got some bloody gob on you, haven't you, Sean Bean? Think you're better than owt because you clerked for fancy Mr. Watkins, don't you? Well, he sacked you right quick, that's what I heard. Caught you scarpering off with some of his cash, I'll wager." His crimson face curled into a sneer. "Now what are you doing – slogging at the brickyard for thirteen bob a week. Not so bloody high and mighty any more, are you?"
"Oh, aye. Lowest of the low, that's me." Sean drew the box close.
"That's it. Make a mock of it. You'll see. You'll come to nowt, useless, just like –" Murray clamped his mouth shut and took a step back.
"Just like who, Mr. Murray?" Sean asked softly, advancing toward the gap in the counter.
"Get out," Murray squawked, flapping his hands. His eyes darted back and forth, trapped and nervous. "Go on with you."
Sean lifted the box and cradled it in his arms. "Ta'ra, then, Mr. Murray. You have a happy Christmas, and a prosperous New Year." He turned on his heel and banged out of the shop, setting the bell to jangling. "Bloody thick bugger."
Choked with resentment, Sean trudged down the street. Life was hard enough: Jack's slow dying and Sarah's increasingly thorny exterior, earning a pittance at the brickyard, never able to stand the lads at the pub a pint now and then, the dismal cottage on the moors, and now bloody chicken-hearted Alfie Murray gouging them for an extra shilling and sixpence, as if he needed the brass. He tightened his fingers on the box of groceries, wishing it was Alfie Murray's scrawny neck. Mardy bastard, what did he know? Miserable gossip, that was all.
To distract himself, he gazed into the shop windows. He'd been saving off and on all autumn and winter, and he'd collected two pounds. For Jack, he'd buy a warm jumper and a little bottle of brandy, but Sarah was a more difficult prospect. She had all the clothes she needed, or so she said. He examined a little bonnet decorated with feathers and dismissed it as too fussy. There was a pretty pair of crocheted gloves, but they looked too petite for Sarah's hands. Then he saw it – an intricate brooch, tiny lilies-of-the-valley on a background of golden filigree. Lily-of-the-valley was Sarah's favorite flower, and the brooch would look smart on her Sunday blue wool.
He could hear her protests already. All that money spent on a piece of jewelry I could well do without. Doesn't every penny of your earnings go toward the rent and food and your dad's medicines? Don't you break your back enough to buy the necessary things, and here you are spending money on a silly gimcrack. Years of privation had made her hard-headed, and often hard-hearted. She was ruthlessly practical, and unlike her sweet-natured husband, almost utterly without sentiment. But it was such a little luxury, that brooch. It was scarce enough that she saw anything pretty, never mind adorned herself.
"Why, Sean Bean," a masculine voice said. "What brings you out on a day like this? Christmas shopping, I'll be bound."
Sean turned to face Freddy Watkins, resplendent in a long, fur-trimmed overcoat and a tall hat of sleek, gleaming fur. "How do, Freddy," he said without pleasure.
"Quite well, quite well." Freddy's handsome face glowed in the cold. "What on earth could you possibly be buying here? Haven't got a lady friend, have you, old chap?"
"Nay. It's for me mam."
"Naturally, naturally." Freddy gave Sean a broad wink. "And what are you buying for her?"
"That." Sean pointed proudly at the brooch.
"I see." Freddy managed to convey a wealth of distaste without moving a muscle. "Frightfully nice. I'm sure she'll adore it. I hope you've been well. I keep meaning to stop by the brickyard now and then to say hello. Father would like me to look in on things, of course. But with one matter and another, I never seem to manage it. You're getting on there, I presume."
"Oh, aye," Sean replied with a touch of acid. "I'm in clover, I am."
Freddy didn't blink. "Look here, Sean. I hope you're not holding any grudges. All that was so long ago. And you are still working for the Watkins family, after all." He offered Sean a winning smile, revealing even white teeth. "If it's any consolation, I've gone through a series of clerks since you left, and none of them have proved as…competent as you."
"Thanks for that, Freddy."
"Well, I won't keep you. Have a merry Christmas, Sean." Freddy's eyes lingered soulfully on Sean's face. "It's good to see you again."
"Aye, you too." Sean watched Freddy saunter down the street. Freddy wanted everybody's good will, even when he treated them like dirt. Sean had been sacked, to be sure, but not for scarpering off like Alfie Murray said. He'd been sacked for another reason altogether, and it had been Freddy's dad who'd sacked him. Even now Sean tasted the shame of it.
For sixpence he'd leave Whitley, but he had nowhere else to go.
*
There was no noise as delightfully anticipatory as that of a tuning orchestra. The ballroom of the Mortensen mansion in Montgomery County on the outskirts of Philadelphia comfortably accommodated six hundred souls, and fifty of those souls were members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, hired at considerable expense for tonight's Christmas ball. Viggo, smoothing his gloves, paused to cock an ear toward the discordant but exciting sounds drifting from the lower floor.
"Turn to the left, sir."
"Really, Pearce, I can step out of the shoes." Viggo turned as Stephen Pearce, a footman recently elevated to the status of valet de chambre, knelt at his feet with a soft cotton cloth, bringing his patent leather dancing shoes to a final gloss.
"No trouble, sir."
"I must tell you, Pearce, I'm still a bit disquieted by all this. I don't know that I shall ever get used to it."
"Sure it's a strange thing to come into a new house, especially after being away so long." Pearce spoke soothingly, his accent thick enough to cut. Even in august Philadelphia, proper English gentlemen's gentlemen were difficult to find, or perhaps simply snobbish, refusing to work for a family itself only one generation removed from poverty. Pearce rose to his full six foot three and began to whisk at Viggo's black evening clothes with a stiff brush.
"Yes. But such a house!" Viggo glanced around his bedroom, all glowing mahogany and tobacco-brown silk. "Do you know I actually got lost on my first few days back? This place is like a hotel."
"It's a grand huge place, that it is."
"And the staff necessary to keep the place running! Chambermaids, footmen, lady's maids, scullery maids, stable boys, valets – I told Mother that I could dress, bathe, and shave myself perfectly well without assistance, and I've been doing so for quite some time. That fell upon deaf ears, of course. She told me every gentleman of means had a valet, and there was an end to it. She – I'm sorry, Pearce. I'm blathering."
Pearce never faltered in his quick, efficient movements. "If them as has the money to spend it, why not?"
"Oh, you're a diplomat, aren't you? Well done."
"Just practical, sir. There you are."
Viggo moved to his dressing table and affixed a cream-colored rose in his buttonhole. "I like to think I'm practical too, Pearce. I simply find all this a trifle…undemocratic, don't you agree?"
Pearce caught Viggo's eye in the mirror. "That's as may be, sir, but if it's all the same to you, I hope you won't say as much to your mam. I've got a job and a roof over my head and food to eat, and I shouldn't like to be sacked for the cause of democracy."
"That's true." Viggo twisted his hands together. "Dash it, I'm always putting my foot in my mouth. I'm terribly sorry. Of course I won't say a word to her."
A smile creased Pearce's broad red face. "You'll cut a fine figure tonight, sir." Gently, Pearce steered Viggo toward the door. "I hope the madam won't be cross that you've missed the receiving."
"With so many people, she'll hardly notice I was absent."
"Tell her you got lost again," Pearce suggested. "Have a fine time, sir." He closed Viggo's bedroom door, leaving him alone in the hall.
Good advice, Viggo reflected. He paused at the top of the vast staircase, its balustrades looped with holly, box, and ivy, and ran an appreciative hand over cool, smooth marble. Below him, groups of tail-coated men and women in bright satin and velvet gowns formed, broke apart, and re-formed, clusters of sociable hummingbirds. Jewels glittered on feminine necks and ears, blazing under the electric lights. The orchestra had begun the waltz, and Strauss floated over the chatter of the guests, lively and bright, luring couples into the ballroom.
Viggo grasped the banister and started down the broad sweep of staircase. His childhood had been one of comfort if not wealth. But in the past few years, the fortunes of the Mortensen family had soared to staggering heights, and it was a difficult thing to reconcile himself to this new affluence.
In 1902, Harald Mortensen, a one-time railroad superintendent, had acquired through shrewd trading five anthracite mines in northeastern Pennsylvania. Harald was fond of saying he had a nose for coal, but even he was stunned when the largest of the mines had produced an astounding yield, a deep, glistening seam of endless black gold.
When the mines had begun to bear fruit, Viggo had decided to transfer from the University of Pennsylvania to Stanford. A month ago, after two years in California, he had returned to a Renaissance Revival mansion on Old York Road, an army of servants anxious to cater to his every whim, and a new standard of living: luxury that bordered on the obscene.
"You missed receiving."
Viggo wheeled to face his sister Grace, who managed to look brisk and bookish even in her butter-yellow taffeta gown, pearls, and elaborate pompadour.
He tried the lie. "I was lost."
Grace eyed her brother balefully. "Oh, fiddlesticks, you were not. You just didn't want to bow and hand-kiss for an hour. Meantime, I was trapped with Colonel Pennington, who smelled like he ate an entire tin of sardines before coming, and Mrs. Fitzhugh, who wanted to know where on earth you were, for she'd heard you'd undergone quite a transformation at college and were quite the handsomest man here tonight."
"Mrs. Fitzhugh?"
"The widow Fitzhugh, or the former Fanny Stewart." Grace craned her neck, peering into the crowd, and pointed with her fan at a pretty young woman in black velvet that showed a great deal of décolletage, laughing in the midst of a crowd of admiring men. "There! See her? I must say she doesn't seem to be grieving much."
"Grace," Viggo chided, "people display their grief in peculiar ways at times. I'm sure she's…." As he watched, the widow Fitzhugh drank the entire contents of her glass of champagne and leaned suggestively against the shoulder of one of her handsomer companions, lifting the bottom of her trailing skirt to show off ankles and daring high heels. "Well, perhaps not."
"Ha."
Viggo tugged at his gloves. "Grace, doesn't all this seem awfully strange to you?"
"I don't know." Grace surveyed the room. "I see what you mean, of course, but I've had two years to get used to it. You've only just come back. I expect it's a shock. You've changed too, you know."
"Coastal effulgence," Viggo said with a tight smile. Trust Grace to notice everything.
"Yes…no. Never mind. Dance with me."
"Good idea." He extended his arm, and Grace slipped her hand through it. They passed through the ballroom doorway and directly into the path of their mother, Katherine.
"Well, it's nice to see you dancing with someone this evening, Viggo." Katherine Mortensen swept toward her children in her pale-grey Worth gown, diamonds and pearls at her throat and ears and gleaming against her dark hair, where a long aigrette bobbed in time with her every step. "I had despaired of seeing you dance at all. Don't think I didn't notice your absence while we were receiving. Grace, my dear, if you absolutely refuse to dance with anyone but your brother, at least pretend to have a good time for my sake."
"I wouldn't have to lie if you excused me from this, Mama."
"Nonsense. I won't have you sulking in your room. What with all the trouble I go through to try to secure a beau for you, young lady, the least you could do is cooperate with me."
Grace rolled her eyes. "I don't want a beau."
"Don't be absurd. Every girl wants a beau," Katherine snapped. "And Viggo, I wish you'd make an effort tonight, too. All this is for you. I've invited so many of your old college friends, and they're terribly eager to see you." She waved her plumed fan at a group of young men in the corner, gathered around a bowl of punch. The young men hooted and pinwheeled their arms in greeting, staggering against each other. "Isn't that nice?"
"Dear me," said Viggo.
"Vig! Merry Christmas, old man! Come over here!" Archie Lockwood bellowed.
Viggo waved in return and held up a just-a-moment finger. "Well, they wasted no time, did they?"
"They're just exercising their high spirits," Katherine said. "Grace, come with me. The Hewitts have brought their nephew from Providence –" She steered Grace, protesting, across the parquet floor.
A hand fell on Viggo's shoulder. "Having fun, old man?"
"Thank God." Viggo clutched the sleeve of his brother Michael's cassock. "Get me out of here."
Michael nodded toward a side door. They ducked through it into the hallway that led to the conservatory. They slumped into a cushioned window seat and chorused a sigh of relief.
Michael propped his feet up on the cushion, a most un-clerical gesture. "That Archie Lockwood is a boor to defeat all boors."
"He's not so bad."
"I doubt that."
"He means well."
"I doubt that even more. Nevertheless, you should be a little more social than you are now. Hiding up in your room –"
"Oh, don't you start," Viggo groaned, and leaned his head against the frosty windowpane, savoring its chill. "You could at least wait a day or two before you start lecturing me." He'd collected Michael from the station that morning; it was an odd sight to see a priest alighting from a private railroad car, but Michael apparently thought nothing of it and made nothing of it.
"Very well. I shan't lecture. It's wonderful to see you again."
"It's good to be back."
"But not all that good." Michael's pale blue eyes were sharp. "Oh, don't worry. No lectures."
Viggo shifted in his seat. "I suppose. But good God, Michael, none of us were meant to loll around this great vast cavern of a house eating bon-bons and going to balls every night. It's ridiculous."
"Don't let Mother hear you say that. She'd have an attack of apoplexy."
"Mother's part of it," Viggo said. "So is Father."
"Are they pressuring you?"
Viggo sighed. "What do you think? Naturally. Mother, mostly. I haven't been home a month and already I'm beset by expectations. She wants me to resume old friendships – college friends from Penn, not the poor friends from Roxborough, mind you. She wants me to establish myself in the upper echelons of Catholic Philadelphia society, whatever that is, to court and marry a suitable girl, to produce heirs."
"That's no more and no less than any well-bred young man can expect from life," Michael said gently.
"I know. I haven't said a word against it to either of them. I don't intend to be ungrateful." Viggo rubbed the window clear. The outside gas lamps illuminated heavily falling snow. It sparkled in the lamplight, transforming Old York Road into a white-blanketed fairyland. A thick layer of snow coated the ground like icing sugar and encrusted the iron fences, the bare black trees, and the roofs and porticoes of the nearby houses. It was perfect Christmas weather, cold and snowy and festive.
He traced a jagged line in the reconstituted frost on the glass. To tell Michael about the change that wasn't a change at all, but a realization, the coalescence of years of hazy, half-formed ideas into blazing, terrifying truth? Impossible.
He watched the ice cloud over the window again, obscuring the falling snow.
to be continued.....
*
Author: Alex
Fandom: VigBean
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No profit made, no harm intended.
Notes: Title courtesy of Walt Whitman. Thanks to the following for alpha-and-beta reading this story for me and giving really swell advice:
kimberlite, govi20, yaoichick, mooms, honscot, hominysnark, and lauramcewan. Thank you all.Summary: In 1906, two young men from very different backgrounds meet and form a friendship.
The Need of Comrades
Prologue
Christmas Day, 1905
Sean had never traveled outside of Yorkshire, but all it took was a quick peering-round to know the truth: there was no spot on earth drearier than a Northern moor in winter. A man could look at the overturned steel dome of frozen sky for miles, searching in vain for a bit of blue quarried from a vast expanse of grey.
The cottage door creaked open. "For the love of God, Sean, what are you gawping at?"
"Nowt, Mam. Just thinking."
"Well, thinking's not getting the fire built. Fill the hod and come inside. Your poor dad's fair nithered up there."
"Sorry, Mam," Sean said, but his mother had already banged the door shut.
He cast his gaze upward again at the barren, imprisoning sky. She was right. Thinking wasn't building a fire, nor doing any bloody thing except tantalizing his imagination. He trudged to the bin and heaped glistening coal into the bucket. Fine dust clung to his hands and the sleeves of his thin coat. He brought the hod inside and crouched before the freshly swept hearth, arranging wood chips and newspaper spills. He struck a match to light the spills and shook lumps of coal onto the fire, watching them catch.
"All right, then, lad. Don't block all the heat. Come wash your hands and have your breakfast." Sean's mother, Sarah, tall, fair-haired and green-eyed, set a plate of oat cakes on the table.
Sean washed and dried his hands obediently. "Shall I bring Dad down?"
"Aye, if he's up to it."
The staircase was dark and as chill as death. Sean tapped on the door of his parents' room, pushed it open, and peered inside. "Dad?" It smelled of sweat, sickness, cabbage, coal, and the paraffin lamp that threw off a faint smoky glow. Upon the bed lay a crumpled, frail form, barely visible beneath the woolen blankets. "Dad." Sean knelt beside the bed, a knot of love and helpless rage tightening his chest.
Twelve years ago, an accident in the mines had left Jack Bean crippled, and he'd been summarily dismissed. No pensioning-off at F. H. Watkins and Glenhall Coal Company, Limited. Then, four years ago, the coughing fits had begun, leaving Jack red-faced and gasping, dark flecks staining his handkerchief. The village doctor had confirmed what Sarah and Sean already knew: it was the black lung. No one knew why some men could go their whole lives in the mines without so much as a sneeze, and why others ended up hacking out shreds of their lungs until they bled to death inside, but it was agreed that once those spots of black appeared, a man's life was as good as over. For four years Jack had lain in his bed, dying by inches while Sean watched his slow descent, mute with fury and powerless to save him.
Jack lay still, his face hidden. Sean shook his shoulder roughly, frightened by his motionless body. "Dad! Wake up."
A faint movement stirred the blankets. "Ah, lad…sorry. I didn't hear you call."
"Fast asleep, I expect." Sean grinned to cover his distress. "Lazy. Come on downstairs. Mam's made breakfast."
"I don't want owt, lad. Maybe a cup of tea."
Sean ignored the feeble protest and rose to his feet, gathering the blankets about his father's emaciated body. "You'll never get well on just tea, Dad."
Jack hooked an arm round Sean's neck and offered a sweet and lavish smile."You're a good lad, our Sean, none better." He coughed violently, a deep booming that shook his frame.
Sean averted his eyes from the black spittle on Jack's kerchief and the grey pallor of his skin, as if the coal had leached into every part of his body, not just his rotting lungs. "Careful now." He swung Jack into his arms; it was like lifting a child. He carried his father downstairs and settled him on the worn green sofa near the hearth. "Warm enough, Dad?"
"It's lovely, son. Thank you."
Sarah placed a pottery mug of tea into Jack's hand and set a plate with a bacon sandwich on the rickety table. "Hurry it up, lad," she said to Sean, moving to the sink where a rather sad and gaunt chicken, their Christmas feast, lay waiting to be dressed and cooked. "Yours is on the table, and time's wasting. You have the list?"
Sean gazed out the window, watching the snow batter against the glass. The prospect of nearly an hour's walk across the frozen, wind-blasted moorland into town was only slightly less disheartening than the thought of staying indoors all day. He patted his trouser pocket and managed a smile. "Aye, Mam. I've got it. You've asked me twice already."
"Don't be cheeky, you," Sarah admonished absently. She busied herself plucking the chicken, her long hands moving in a rapid blur. "Wrap up tight now. Can't have you ill on Christmas day."
*
No indeed, couldn't be ill on Christmas day, Sean thought as he sprinted across the moors toward Whitley. If he were bedridden, he'd miss Reverend Pomeroy's yearly Christmas sermon, contrary admonitions to feel joy on this festive holiday and keep themselves sober. Christ had been born to an unworthy world, and the world was thus obligated to rejoice, but not too much. Most Covenanter families happily ignored the vicar, and celebrated in boisterous fashion. Sean remembered the festivity of Yule logs, evergreen wreaths, candles, mistletoe. Oranges and hazelnuts in stockings, biscuits and toffee in crisp paper. Plum puddings, crackling goose, mincemeat. Bowls of lamb’s-wool punch, cups of mulled wine. Crackers and candy on ironed tablecloths. Presents in gilt wrapping beside plates. Visits from friends and family bundled up so warmly their faces looked like muffler-swathed apples set atop woolen barrels.
It had been years since the Bean cottage had seen that sort of merriment. When Jack fell ill, all gaiety in the Bean household had ceased. Sean was twenty-two now, no child to be disappointed by a lack of revelry, but it might have been a cheerful thing, a lift to his dad's spirits, to have had a Christmas wreath, or even a few extra candles. But there was no money for frivolities any longer; every penny of the money Sean earned in the brickyard bought only rent, the barest food, and Jack's medicine, and it wasn't for Sean to be resentful.
At the grocer's, the proprietor set a laden box on the counter. "Now then, Sean lad. How's Jack?"
"Much better. Ta, Mr. Murray." Sean would cheerfully run bare-arsed through the center of Whitley before he'd give chin-wagging Alfie Murray fodder for gossip. "I expect he'll be up and about for Christmas."
"That's good to hear, lad. Good to hear. He's a fine man, God bless him and keep him. Such a sad thing, the black lung." Murray examined the money Sean placed on the counter as if it were crawling with pox. "That's a shilling and sixpence owing, lad."
Sean scowled. "Prices rose since you spoke to my mam, did they?"
Murray's mouth opened and closed and his eyes blinked like a chicken's. He collected himself enough to put a touch of frost in his voice. "Your mam must have had it wrong, lad. If you like, I can –"
"Give over." Sean slapped more money on the counter. "Next time I'll do the marketing myself." He examined the box of groceries and leveled a glare at Murray. "You think I'm gormless, Mr. Murray?"
"How's that, lad?" Murray tried for an air of innocent inquiry, but his waxen face turned a mottled red.
"The sugar's missing, and the vinegar. We haven't a lot of brass, Mr. Murray, but we're not bleeding daft. You wouldn't want it all over town that you cheated a sick man and his family, would you?"
The blinking increased in speed. "You've got a cheek, you pup. Are you saying I've cheated you?"
"I am that. And if you don't do something about it, I've a mind to start talking."
Murray executed a sharp about-face and rummaged behind the counter. He came back with the vinegar and sugar and dropped them into the box, heedless of their fragility. "You've got some bloody gob on you, haven't you, Sean Bean? Think you're better than owt because you clerked for fancy Mr. Watkins, don't you? Well, he sacked you right quick, that's what I heard. Caught you scarpering off with some of his cash, I'll wager." His crimson face curled into a sneer. "Now what are you doing – slogging at the brickyard for thirteen bob a week. Not so bloody high and mighty any more, are you?"
"Oh, aye. Lowest of the low, that's me." Sean drew the box close.
"That's it. Make a mock of it. You'll see. You'll come to nowt, useless, just like –" Murray clamped his mouth shut and took a step back.
"Just like who, Mr. Murray?" Sean asked softly, advancing toward the gap in the counter.
"Get out," Murray squawked, flapping his hands. His eyes darted back and forth, trapped and nervous. "Go on with you."
Sean lifted the box and cradled it in his arms. "Ta'ra, then, Mr. Murray. You have a happy Christmas, and a prosperous New Year." He turned on his heel and banged out of the shop, setting the bell to jangling. "Bloody thick bugger."
Choked with resentment, Sean trudged down the street. Life was hard enough: Jack's slow dying and Sarah's increasingly thorny exterior, earning a pittance at the brickyard, never able to stand the lads at the pub a pint now and then, the dismal cottage on the moors, and now bloody chicken-hearted Alfie Murray gouging them for an extra shilling and sixpence, as if he needed the brass. He tightened his fingers on the box of groceries, wishing it was Alfie Murray's scrawny neck. Mardy bastard, what did he know? Miserable gossip, that was all.
To distract himself, he gazed into the shop windows. He'd been saving off and on all autumn and winter, and he'd collected two pounds. For Jack, he'd buy a warm jumper and a little bottle of brandy, but Sarah was a more difficult prospect. She had all the clothes she needed, or so she said. He examined a little bonnet decorated with feathers and dismissed it as too fussy. There was a pretty pair of crocheted gloves, but they looked too petite for Sarah's hands. Then he saw it – an intricate brooch, tiny lilies-of-the-valley on a background of golden filigree. Lily-of-the-valley was Sarah's favorite flower, and the brooch would look smart on her Sunday blue wool.
He could hear her protests already. All that money spent on a piece of jewelry I could well do without. Doesn't every penny of your earnings go toward the rent and food and your dad's medicines? Don't you break your back enough to buy the necessary things, and here you are spending money on a silly gimcrack. Years of privation had made her hard-headed, and often hard-hearted. She was ruthlessly practical, and unlike her sweet-natured husband, almost utterly without sentiment. But it was such a little luxury, that brooch. It was scarce enough that she saw anything pretty, never mind adorned herself.
"Why, Sean Bean," a masculine voice said. "What brings you out on a day like this? Christmas shopping, I'll be bound."
Sean turned to face Freddy Watkins, resplendent in a long, fur-trimmed overcoat and a tall hat of sleek, gleaming fur. "How do, Freddy," he said without pleasure.
"Quite well, quite well." Freddy's handsome face glowed in the cold. "What on earth could you possibly be buying here? Haven't got a lady friend, have you, old chap?"
"Nay. It's for me mam."
"Naturally, naturally." Freddy gave Sean a broad wink. "And what are you buying for her?"
"That." Sean pointed proudly at the brooch.
"I see." Freddy managed to convey a wealth of distaste without moving a muscle. "Frightfully nice. I'm sure she'll adore it. I hope you've been well. I keep meaning to stop by the brickyard now and then to say hello. Father would like me to look in on things, of course. But with one matter and another, I never seem to manage it. You're getting on there, I presume."
"Oh, aye," Sean replied with a touch of acid. "I'm in clover, I am."
Freddy didn't blink. "Look here, Sean. I hope you're not holding any grudges. All that was so long ago. And you are still working for the Watkins family, after all." He offered Sean a winning smile, revealing even white teeth. "If it's any consolation, I've gone through a series of clerks since you left, and none of them have proved as…competent as you."
"Thanks for that, Freddy."
"Well, I won't keep you. Have a merry Christmas, Sean." Freddy's eyes lingered soulfully on Sean's face. "It's good to see you again."
"Aye, you too." Sean watched Freddy saunter down the street. Freddy wanted everybody's good will, even when he treated them like dirt. Sean had been sacked, to be sure, but not for scarpering off like Alfie Murray said. He'd been sacked for another reason altogether, and it had been Freddy's dad who'd sacked him. Even now Sean tasted the shame of it.
For sixpence he'd leave Whitley, but he had nowhere else to go.
*
There was no noise as delightfully anticipatory as that of a tuning orchestra. The ballroom of the Mortensen mansion in Montgomery County on the outskirts of Philadelphia comfortably accommodated six hundred souls, and fifty of those souls were members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, hired at considerable expense for tonight's Christmas ball. Viggo, smoothing his gloves, paused to cock an ear toward the discordant but exciting sounds drifting from the lower floor.
"Turn to the left, sir."
"Really, Pearce, I can step out of the shoes." Viggo turned as Stephen Pearce, a footman recently elevated to the status of valet de chambre, knelt at his feet with a soft cotton cloth, bringing his patent leather dancing shoes to a final gloss.
"No trouble, sir."
"I must tell you, Pearce, I'm still a bit disquieted by all this. I don't know that I shall ever get used to it."
"Sure it's a strange thing to come into a new house, especially after being away so long." Pearce spoke soothingly, his accent thick enough to cut. Even in august Philadelphia, proper English gentlemen's gentlemen were difficult to find, or perhaps simply snobbish, refusing to work for a family itself only one generation removed from poverty. Pearce rose to his full six foot three and began to whisk at Viggo's black evening clothes with a stiff brush.
"Yes. But such a house!" Viggo glanced around his bedroom, all glowing mahogany and tobacco-brown silk. "Do you know I actually got lost on my first few days back? This place is like a hotel."
"It's a grand huge place, that it is."
"And the staff necessary to keep the place running! Chambermaids, footmen, lady's maids, scullery maids, stable boys, valets – I told Mother that I could dress, bathe, and shave myself perfectly well without assistance, and I've been doing so for quite some time. That fell upon deaf ears, of course. She told me every gentleman of means had a valet, and there was an end to it. She – I'm sorry, Pearce. I'm blathering."
Pearce never faltered in his quick, efficient movements. "If them as has the money to spend it, why not?"
"Oh, you're a diplomat, aren't you? Well done."
"Just practical, sir. There you are."
Viggo moved to his dressing table and affixed a cream-colored rose in his buttonhole. "I like to think I'm practical too, Pearce. I simply find all this a trifle…undemocratic, don't you agree?"
Pearce caught Viggo's eye in the mirror. "That's as may be, sir, but if it's all the same to you, I hope you won't say as much to your mam. I've got a job and a roof over my head and food to eat, and I shouldn't like to be sacked for the cause of democracy."
"That's true." Viggo twisted his hands together. "Dash it, I'm always putting my foot in my mouth. I'm terribly sorry. Of course I won't say a word to her."
A smile creased Pearce's broad red face. "You'll cut a fine figure tonight, sir." Gently, Pearce steered Viggo toward the door. "I hope the madam won't be cross that you've missed the receiving."
"With so many people, she'll hardly notice I was absent."
"Tell her you got lost again," Pearce suggested. "Have a fine time, sir." He closed Viggo's bedroom door, leaving him alone in the hall.
Good advice, Viggo reflected. He paused at the top of the vast staircase, its balustrades looped with holly, box, and ivy, and ran an appreciative hand over cool, smooth marble. Below him, groups of tail-coated men and women in bright satin and velvet gowns formed, broke apart, and re-formed, clusters of sociable hummingbirds. Jewels glittered on feminine necks and ears, blazing under the electric lights. The orchestra had begun the waltz, and Strauss floated over the chatter of the guests, lively and bright, luring couples into the ballroom.
Viggo grasped the banister and started down the broad sweep of staircase. His childhood had been one of comfort if not wealth. But in the past few years, the fortunes of the Mortensen family had soared to staggering heights, and it was a difficult thing to reconcile himself to this new affluence.
In 1902, Harald Mortensen, a one-time railroad superintendent, had acquired through shrewd trading five anthracite mines in northeastern Pennsylvania. Harald was fond of saying he had a nose for coal, but even he was stunned when the largest of the mines had produced an astounding yield, a deep, glistening seam of endless black gold.
When the mines had begun to bear fruit, Viggo had decided to transfer from the University of Pennsylvania to Stanford. A month ago, after two years in California, he had returned to a Renaissance Revival mansion on Old York Road, an army of servants anxious to cater to his every whim, and a new standard of living: luxury that bordered on the obscene.
"You missed receiving."
Viggo wheeled to face his sister Grace, who managed to look brisk and bookish even in her butter-yellow taffeta gown, pearls, and elaborate pompadour.
He tried the lie. "I was lost."
Grace eyed her brother balefully. "Oh, fiddlesticks, you were not. You just didn't want to bow and hand-kiss for an hour. Meantime, I was trapped with Colonel Pennington, who smelled like he ate an entire tin of sardines before coming, and Mrs. Fitzhugh, who wanted to know where on earth you were, for she'd heard you'd undergone quite a transformation at college and were quite the handsomest man here tonight."
"Mrs. Fitzhugh?"
"The widow Fitzhugh, or the former Fanny Stewart." Grace craned her neck, peering into the crowd, and pointed with her fan at a pretty young woman in black velvet that showed a great deal of décolletage, laughing in the midst of a crowd of admiring men. "There! See her? I must say she doesn't seem to be grieving much."
"Grace," Viggo chided, "people display their grief in peculiar ways at times. I'm sure she's…." As he watched, the widow Fitzhugh drank the entire contents of her glass of champagne and leaned suggestively against the shoulder of one of her handsomer companions, lifting the bottom of her trailing skirt to show off ankles and daring high heels. "Well, perhaps not."
"Ha."
Viggo tugged at his gloves. "Grace, doesn't all this seem awfully strange to you?"
"I don't know." Grace surveyed the room. "I see what you mean, of course, but I've had two years to get used to it. You've only just come back. I expect it's a shock. You've changed too, you know."
"Coastal effulgence," Viggo said with a tight smile. Trust Grace to notice everything.
"Yes…no. Never mind. Dance with me."
"Good idea." He extended his arm, and Grace slipped her hand through it. They passed through the ballroom doorway and directly into the path of their mother, Katherine.
"Well, it's nice to see you dancing with someone this evening, Viggo." Katherine Mortensen swept toward her children in her pale-grey Worth gown, diamonds and pearls at her throat and ears and gleaming against her dark hair, where a long aigrette bobbed in time with her every step. "I had despaired of seeing you dance at all. Don't think I didn't notice your absence while we were receiving. Grace, my dear, if you absolutely refuse to dance with anyone but your brother, at least pretend to have a good time for my sake."
"I wouldn't have to lie if you excused me from this, Mama."
"Nonsense. I won't have you sulking in your room. What with all the trouble I go through to try to secure a beau for you, young lady, the least you could do is cooperate with me."
Grace rolled her eyes. "I don't want a beau."
"Don't be absurd. Every girl wants a beau," Katherine snapped. "And Viggo, I wish you'd make an effort tonight, too. All this is for you. I've invited so many of your old college friends, and they're terribly eager to see you." She waved her plumed fan at a group of young men in the corner, gathered around a bowl of punch. The young men hooted and pinwheeled their arms in greeting, staggering against each other. "Isn't that nice?"
"Dear me," said Viggo.
"Vig! Merry Christmas, old man! Come over here!" Archie Lockwood bellowed.
Viggo waved in return and held up a just-a-moment finger. "Well, they wasted no time, did they?"
"They're just exercising their high spirits," Katherine said. "Grace, come with me. The Hewitts have brought their nephew from Providence –" She steered Grace, protesting, across the parquet floor.
A hand fell on Viggo's shoulder. "Having fun, old man?"
"Thank God." Viggo clutched the sleeve of his brother Michael's cassock. "Get me out of here."
Michael nodded toward a side door. They ducked through it into the hallway that led to the conservatory. They slumped into a cushioned window seat and chorused a sigh of relief.
Michael propped his feet up on the cushion, a most un-clerical gesture. "That Archie Lockwood is a boor to defeat all boors."
"He's not so bad."
"I doubt that."
"He means well."
"I doubt that even more. Nevertheless, you should be a little more social than you are now. Hiding up in your room –"
"Oh, don't you start," Viggo groaned, and leaned his head against the frosty windowpane, savoring its chill. "You could at least wait a day or two before you start lecturing me." He'd collected Michael from the station that morning; it was an odd sight to see a priest alighting from a private railroad car, but Michael apparently thought nothing of it and made nothing of it.
"Very well. I shan't lecture. It's wonderful to see you again."
"It's good to be back."
"But not all that good." Michael's pale blue eyes were sharp. "Oh, don't worry. No lectures."
Viggo shifted in his seat. "I suppose. But good God, Michael, none of us were meant to loll around this great vast cavern of a house eating bon-bons and going to balls every night. It's ridiculous."
"Don't let Mother hear you say that. She'd have an attack of apoplexy."
"Mother's part of it," Viggo said. "So is Father."
"Are they pressuring you?"
Viggo sighed. "What do you think? Naturally. Mother, mostly. I haven't been home a month and already I'm beset by expectations. She wants me to resume old friendships – college friends from Penn, not the poor friends from Roxborough, mind you. She wants me to establish myself in the upper echelons of Catholic Philadelphia society, whatever that is, to court and marry a suitable girl, to produce heirs."
"That's no more and no less than any well-bred young man can expect from life," Michael said gently.
"I know. I haven't said a word against it to either of them. I don't intend to be ungrateful." Viggo rubbed the window clear. The outside gas lamps illuminated heavily falling snow. It sparkled in the lamplight, transforming Old York Road into a white-blanketed fairyland. A thick layer of snow coated the ground like icing sugar and encrusted the iron fences, the bare black trees, and the roofs and porticoes of the nearby houses. It was perfect Christmas weather, cold and snowy and festive.
He traced a jagged line in the reconstituted frost on the glass. To tell Michael about the change that wasn't a change at all, but a realization, the coalescence of years of hazy, half-formed ideas into blazing, terrifying truth? Impossible.
He watched the ice cloud over the window again, obscuring the falling snow.
to be continued.....
*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 09:51 am (UTC)Thanks so much for these... oh boy oh boy. And bah goom, thee hast thicky Yarkshire reet. I lived in a place like that in the war!!!!!!!! FABULOUS! Oh bless you. and hope all is progressing well? HUGS special.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 03:19 pm (UTC)One suspects that Michael will be fairly content with the possibility of a glittering career within the Catholic Church
in which his family's wealth and influence will be no bad thing, whereas Grace's road could be harder, particularly
if Viggo makes his escape and she is left behind.
Their separate worlds are filled with detail and distinctive atmospheres. I am curious as to why you've called
the mining family 'Covenanters'. I have Scottish Covenanter ancestry and didn't know that there were English
Covenanters at the beginning of the twentieth century in Yorkshire...lots of non-Conformist Protestants of various sorts.
There were Scottish Covenanters who emigrated to the Philadelphia area around 1717, so perhaps that gives your
Sean a place to go towards.
I'll be looking forward to seeing how this develops,
great fun and thanks for sharing, *g*
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 03:04 pm (UTC)Also, your icon and comment to someone else reminded me I never did read your War Horse fic. Must be sure to do that too. Mmm, Tom.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 06:32 pm (UTC)Firstly, it was wonderful to see the North-of-England expressions so accurately portrayed – I particularly enjoyed “nithering” and “mardy”!!
Well, as I said, change is in the air, but at present you’ve truly encompassed the enormous gap between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ ~
”…there was no spot on earth drearier than a Northern moor in winter. A man could look at the overturned steel dome of frozen sky for miles, searching in vain for a bit of blue quarried from a vast expanse of grey.”
contrasted with ~
”…groups of tail-coated men and women in bright satin and velvet gowns formed, broke apart, and re-formed, clusters of sociable hummingbirds. Jewels glittered on feminine necks and ears, blazing under the electric lights.”
I’m really looking forward to finding out what happens to Sean and Viggo, individually and collectively, but this is a wonderful start.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-21 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 12:29 am (UTC)Father Michael and his pale blue eyes intrigues me. As does Grace.
Thank you for breaking it down to manageable size. I can afford to take the time to read it and not forever storing for later reads.
How I have missed your writing...
no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 11:21 am (UTC)Lovely that you've begun posting this. I am enjoying it all over again. *Hugs*
no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-23 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-26 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-26 04:13 am (UTC)sounds exactly like where i grew up (in the US), and aptly described.
Even now Sean tasted the shame of it
goodness, you write such beautiful, atmospheric things. i can already see them both so clearly in my mind. very much looking forward to the next part!
no subject
Date: 2013-03-26 04:59 am (UTC)